#105: Leilani Münter: In the Driver’s Seat to Save our Planet
Leilani Münter is VEGAN STRONG
Right now, it’s no secret that our population (which is almost 8 billion now) is facing a tremendous amount of collective challenges with our health, our food system, and our planet as a whole.
We all have some work to do and this week’s interview with ECO-Activist, Leilani Münter, will illuminate conversation and elevate the positive impact that something so simple as eating a whole-foods plant-based diet can have on the environment as a WHOLE.
Leilani has been broadcasting this message for over a decade primarily from behind the wheel of a race car - I know - not exactly where you’d think you’d see these messages, but as she says on her website, “Never Underestimate a vegan hippie chick with a race car!” You’ll never underestimate Leilani after today’s conversation.
Since retiring from race car driving in 2019, she’s been revving up her advocacy engines even more through documentary films like “Racing Extinction,” keynote speaking, and non-profit work, all in a tireless effort to make a cleaner and kinder world for everyone.
Today, she talks to Rip about:
Her unique childhood as the daughter of a Japanese/Hawaiian Mother and German Father while growing up in Minnesota
Her Galileo moment when she learned the truth about our food as a young girl eating a hamburger at a fast-food restaurant
How her Biology degree from UC San Diego was the foundation of the advocacy work she does today
Why she loves being behind the wheel of a race car and the intensity, presence, and advocacy voice it provides for causes that are important to her
Her recent vegan birthday present - a meal at Eleven Madison Park - and her secret for getting reservations!
Why Leilani and her husband (and cats!) choose to be child-free
Additional causes that she advocates for the health and longevity of our planet: renewable energy, solar power, electric cars, animal rights, and, of course, a plant-based diet
As the New York Times wrote, "Steve McQueen probably never lost sleep over his carbon footprint. Not so for racecar driver Leilani Münter - a green racecar driver with a clean conscience."
Rev up your advocacy engines and enjoy this conversation with a true Eco-Hero.
About Leilani Münter
Leilani Münter is a biology graduate, professional race car driver and environmental activist. Discovery's Planet Green named her the #1 eco athlete in the world, ELLE Magazine awarded her their Genius Award, and Sports Illustrated named her one of the top ten female race car drivers in the world. Leilani is an advocate for solar power, electric cars, plant-based diet and animal rights. Leilani is active in lobbying for these causes in Washington, DC and beyond. She has been a guest at The White House and the United Nations in Geneva.
Since 2007, Leilani has been adopting an acre of rainforest for every race she runs. She uses her race car to get the environmental message in front of the 75 million race fans in the USA. Her race cars have carried messages about renewable energy from wind and solar power in addition to clean energy legislation. Leilani has also been active in the effort to end cetacean captivity and has run the documentaries The Cove and Blackfish on her race cars. She has raced both open-wheel cars (Indy Pro Series) and stock cars (NASCAR, ARCA). Leilani has recorded 9 top-five, 21 top-ten, and 37 top-fifteen finishes in 61 starts.
Leilani is on the board of the Oceanic Preservation Society, a non-profit that creates film, photography, and media, inspiring people to save the oceans. They won the Academy Award for their first documentary The Cove and Leilani is featured in their 2015 documentary Racing Extinction. Leilani is also an Ambassador for Ric O'Barry's Dolphin Project, an organization she has been volunteering for since 2010. She also sits on the board of advisors of The Solutions Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the transition to 100% renewable energy.
Leilani is vegan. Her personal car is an electric Tesla Model S. Her home features solar panels, a 550-gallon rainwater collection system, solar and LED lighting, and a vegetable garden.
Leilani’s motto is: Never underestimate a vegan hippie chick with a race car.
Episode Resources
Leilani Münter Website and Resources
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Full Transcript from YouTube Video
Leilani Münter:
If people could see the truth of what is going on in the factory farming industry, it's not just the cruelty to the animals and the suffering that takes place to all these sentience creatures, it's also the incredible environmental impact of it. So, I always do go to bat when I interact with environmentalists that are still eating meat, because if you're really trying to reduce your carbon footprint, it's the simplest and easiest thing that you can do. It's cheaper than buying an electric car. I drive an electric car, I have solar panels powering my home and our car. But being vegan is something three times a day, everybody sits down and eats a meal. And it's so easy now to make that meal, a meal that has no animal products in it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Season three of the Plantstrong podcast explores those Galileo moments, where you seek to understand the real truth around your health and dare to see the world through a different lens. This season, we honor those courageous seekers who are paving the way for you and me. So, grab your telescope, point it towards your future, and let's get Plantstrong together. I want to welcome you to the Plantstrong podcast. I am your host Rip Esselstyn, and I hope that your summers have been filled with lots of summer sweet corn, kale, and pickleball. Today, I want to introduce you to a real hero, she's a biologist, race car driver and eco activist, and her name is Leilani Munter. Now, it's no secret that our population is now fastly approaching eight billion people, and that we are facing a tremendous amount of collective challenges, not only with our health, but with our food system and our planet as a whole.
Rip Esselstyn:
And I bring this up not to frighten or threaten, but to provide hope for you, me, my children and yours. We all have work to do and much like my conversation last week with Jean Bauer, which provided insight into the beneficial work of Farm Sanctuaries, this week's interview with Leilani will aluminate and elevate the positive impact that something so simple as eating a whole foods plant-based diet can have on our environment as a whole.
Rip Esselstyn:
And here's the really cool thing, Leilani has been broadcasting this message for over a decade, primarily, from behind the wheel of a race car. I know not exactly where you think you'd see this message, but as she loves to say, "Never underestimate a vegan hippie chick with a race car." And believe me, you'll never underestimate Leilani after hearing today's conversation. Now, since retiring from race car driving in 2019, Leilani has been revving up her advocacy engines, even more through documentary films like racing extinction, which was directed by Louis Hoyas, who also did the game-changers that almost everybody listening to this podcast, I know has heard of. She also has been doing a lot of keynote speaking and tremendous amounts of non-profit work. All in a tireless effort to make a cleaner and kinder world for all of us. And if you enjoy today's conversation, you can hear Leilani speak live at our virtual Plantstrong event.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's happening September 8th to the 12th, it'll be online and streaming live from the Esselstyn family farm. She'll join your favorite broc stars like my parents Esselstyn, Dr. Michael Greger, Dr. Michael Klaper, Dr. Kristi Funk, Dean and Ayesha Sherzai, Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, Dr. Alan Desmond and so many others to help you start or strengthen your path to becoming Plantstrong. You can purchase a bundle of five tickets and get each ticket for just 10 bucks a piece by visiting plantstrong.com/plantstock, to see the up-to-date lineup and purchase your tickets for our 10th anniversary plant stock celebration.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Let's buckle up our seat belts, start your engines, and let me introduce you to a true eco hero, Leilani Munter. It's interesting. So, I've had the podcast now for a little over three years and probably done well over 110, 120 episodes. And we have people on for... like James Wilkes, that's talking about why you want to eat plant-based for performance and my father and T. Colin Campbell and Neal Barnard and others talking about why you want to eat this way for health. And people like Gene Baur from the Farm Sanctuary, why you want to eat this way for compassion and for kindness and the animals. But we haven't had many people talking about the environment. I mean, I had Susie Amos Cameron, who was very, very much behind this, but I love the fact that you have planted that stake firmly in the ground that, listen, I am a hardcore environmentalist, and these are the reasons why I eat this way and what we should be doing in our lives.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, I want to talk about all that, but before we do, I just want to know from you, so tell me a little bit about your parents and life growing up, because I think that's got to be an important part of how you've become who you are.
Leilani Münter:
Yeah. So, I grew up in Minnesota. In fact, I just came back from visiting my mom up in Minnesota for the first time since the pandemic hit. And my mother was a hypertension nurse, she's retired now, and my father was a neurologist. So Rochester, Minnesota is very well known for the Mayo Clinic being there and they both worked there. So, I came from a medical family and I went on to earn my degree in biology and I really wanted to be a marine biologist. And then I got into a race car and it took me on a detour.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, that was really the reader's digest version right there. But tell me this, so growing up and your mother is what? Japanese and Hawaiian, is that correct?
Leilani Münter:
She's born and raised in Hawaii and she's full Japanese descent.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay.
Leilani Münter:
Unfortunately, by the time I was born, she had married my father and they lived in Germany for some time. My eldest sister was born in Berlin and then my dad and mom both got jobs at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. So, they moved to Minnesota. So, unfortunately, I got the Hawaiian name, but I got to grow up in the very cold Minnesota and did not ever visit Hawaii until I was about 12 years old. I guess, I was there as a baby, but I can barely remember that. So, when I saw Hawaii, you can imagine, I was like, "Wait, why did we live in Minnesota?"
Rip Esselstyn:
What does Leilani stand for in Hawaiian?
Leilani Münter:
So, Leilani is actually a very common name in Hawaii, which was so strange for me growing up in Minnesota and then getting to Hawaii and being in the grocery store and hearing other people calling other Leilanis. It was very confusing to me. So, lei means flower. So, when you get to Hawaii and they put the lei around your neck, lei means flower and lani means heavenly. So, together the word heavenly flower.
Rip Esselstyn:
Beautiful, beautiful name. So growing up, were you a tomboy? What kind of a girl were you?
Leilani Münter:
I was definitely a tomboy. I played football and soccer and I rode horses and I really liked being outside. I always had a love of animals, being around horses, we would board our horses at farms that also had other animals. So, I think that was one of the seeds that was planted in my head that farm animals are not unlike the pets that we have at home, like cats and dogs that have emotional bonds and they look forward to seeing you and they all have their own little personalities. So, I think getting to grow up and interacting with some farm animals in Minnesota made me look at them in a different way. I think a lot of people in the world these days never get to interact with farm animals and they just think of them as being food.
Leilani Münter:
They don't get to interact with. That's why I think what Gene Baur's done with Farm Sanctuary is so wonderful. I've stayed up at his farm in New York a couple of times. I went first for the celebration for the turkeys, and then we went for one of the hoedowns that they had. That is a really life-changing thing I think for people to interact and realize that these animals are not so different from the dogs and the cats that people have as companion animals.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, no, I had Gene on the podcast recently and it's so powerful how he talks about how as you just mentioned, we look at animals as food and not as beautiful, wonderful creatures that deserve a life just like we deserve a beautiful life and just the way the culture is right now by living our lives with our eyes closed and our head in the sand, it removes one of the greatest characteristics that makes us as humans, humans, and that's our empathy. And so, that is something that I think we all could get a little bit more of in 2021.
Leilani Münter:
Absolutely. And actually, there's a fun behind the scenes story about Gene Baur, he actually started Farm Sanctuary selling vegan hot dogs at the Grateful Dead shows. And my big sister is married to Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead. So, when the Grateful Dead were doing their final 50th shows, Gene and I teamed up and we helped get veggie dogs into the stadiums that played at in Santa Ana, California, and then Chicago. I think you just did an interview with my sister and my brother-in-law because my sister recently went vegan. And so, she wanted to talk about that. I think I bugged her for about nine years and something clicked in her and she's gone vegan as well. So, yeah, Gene and I have a little bit of a history together through the Grateful Dead.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, when was that you got them to sell vegan hot dogs at that concert? Do you know what year that was?
Leilani Münter:
I think that was 2015. They played at Soldier Field in Chicago. And then they also played a couple of shows out in California. So, yeah, it was wonderful. And a lot of the stadiums, you don't even really have to work at getting that happening because it's already now being sold on a regular basis, which is absolutely fantastic. I would love to see the NASCAR races do that. The last three years of my career, I was running a vegan themed car and we had a big tent and we were giving away free vegan hamburgers. It'd be great if we didn't have to do that. And there was already vegan options just built into the stadiums.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to get to all that for sure. So, growing up, horseback riding, you also mentioned football, which doesn't sound like a very, for the most part, female sport. How did that go for you and did you get much ridicule?
Leilani Münter:
Well, I was just playing with the neighborhood kids. It wasn't really anything like official. I did gymnastics as well. I just always was, I think, drawn to games that were more oriented towards boys. I remember my uncle coming over and I was playing an Atari game of some sort and he made the comment of, "It looks like a boy lives here." There's four daughters in our family, so we're a family of lots of women. I don't know. I would gravitate towards that and I really didn't know how much I love speed until later when I got to start driving a car and realized that I really love speed and that adrenaline rush, I think adrenaline is an addictive drug. And once I felt it, I was really attracted to it. So, that's how I ended up falling down that rabbit hole.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, so you got a need for speed. But is that something that... could you get that same kind of rush like riding a bicycle or driving parents' car and going fast on the freeway? Or is it just a whole another level?
Leilani Münter:
It's a whole nother level. I mean, you are going near 200 miles an hour within inches of other cars. When I driven the open-wheel cars, in fact, our entry speeds were higher than 200 miles an hour. So, the level of concentration of being able to focus 100% where we're really the whole world disappears and it's just you and the race car and the race track. It's very distracting when you're at the race track because there's media there and they're filming and there are sponsors there. And usually, some of my family members would be there and there's lots of people saying hello, and you're being pulled in all these different directions.
Leilani Münter:
But somehow, when I would put the helmet on and put the net up, all of that just completely faded and I could get really lost in just me and the race car, and that's what you have to do. You really have to tune everything else out. I like to describe it to people who haven't gotten to experience it, that some people describe if they've been in a car accident or they've almost been in an accident that they see everything in slow motion. So, that is what happens when I'm in the race car. So, even though we're going 200 miles an hour, to me in my brain, it looks very slow because we're all going 200 miles an hour. And I think your brain in order to be able to process all the information of those split second decisions that you're having to make, I think the brain compensates by slowing everything down.
Leilani Münter:
And so, it feels slow and it was funny, I would turn on like Fox sports and watch my race, and I'd look at how fast we were going in real time. And I'm like, "Geez, we're really going fast, but it doesn't feel like that from inside the car." It's really a beautiful feeling. The only other place that I feel like I've been able to get that feeling is, I'm a scuba diver. And there's something about when you drop down in the ocean, the world also seems to slow down. Everything's a little bit calmer underneath the water. And that same calmness is something that I would feel in the race car, even though it sounds counterintuitive.
Rip Esselstyn:
Sure, it does.
Leilani Münter:
It should be chaos. But I think when you are in the zone, so to speak, I feel that sense of really calm and slowness in the race car.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. It's interesting how you have to speed up to slow down. Wow. All right my cruciferous cousins, I have a favor to ask of you, if you happen to live near a whole foods market store, I want you swing by and see if you can find on the shelves all of our new vegetable broth and ready to eat chilies and stews. This new national rollout for Plantstrong foods is a milestone that the Planstrong team has been working on for over two years, and it is finally happening. The trucks have left the distribution centers and across the country, whole food market team members are now making room on the shelf for our slow simmered vegetable broth, our Shiitake mushroom broth, our Spanish style sofrito broth and our sweet corn broth.
Rip Esselstyn:
They're also stocking the return of the engine to firehouse chili, plus the all new creamy white bean chili, the Indian lentil stew and Thai carrot chickpeas stew. Let me know if you find them. I would love it if you would take a photo, share it on social and tag, goplantstrong, so we can see where our new products are located. And if you want to try them, go ahead, go for it, you're not going to find a cleaner, great tasting vegetable broth or chili or stew on the market that's oil free and has no added sugar with lower sodium. Thank you so much. And then your love for the ocean, and scuba diving, when did that start?
Leilani Münter:
So, I started scuba diving in high school, and actually when I went to school for biology at UC San Diego, the reason that I took biology is I wanted to be a marine biologist and my dream was to be out in the ocean, studying dolphins and studying whales. And I think as time went on, I realized more and more that those were very difficult and unusual jobs to get in that world. And more than likely I was as a biologist going to end up working in a lab, staring at Petri dishes and doing something that might not be as engaging as being out in the ocean. I kept scuba diving. I usually try and take a trip once a year to someplace where we can scuba dive. Since the pandemic, I was supposed to get on a scuba diving trip in March, 2020.
Leilani Münter:
And of course, we had to cancel that due to COVID. And so, I haven't been now since the pandemic began, but I really miss it. And I retired from racing in 2019. Sometimes I just need that adrenaline. There was a time where a couple months after I retired from racing, I was like, "I need to get that adrenaline." We went skydiving. I think once you felt that kind of intense adrenaline, it's a hard thing to replace. It really is.
Rip Esselstyn:
I can't even imagine or I can, but not racing cars.
Leilani Münter:
I mean, you must've felt that fighting fires. You must have that same sort of you're going into the unknown and your body is having a real reaction of fight or flight. So, I know you know what that feeling that I'm talking about?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes, absolutely, fighting fires. I was an athlete for a long time and did a lot of mountain biking. And so, mountain biking to me it's similar in that when you're on these trails and these downhills and these ledges, one of the things I love about it is, you said, when you put that helmet on, and I think you said the net goes down, everything else just disappears. It's the same way, because if you're not a hundred percent focused, you are like... Actually, the beautiful thing is you have no choice, but to be a hundred percent focused. You put yourself in that environment to allow the world to slow down and have everything that's in your mind, just evaporate away.
Leilani Münter:
Yup.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's nice. What I would love to know is, in doing my research, it looks like you've been a vegetarian for almost all your life. Is that right?
Leilani Münter:
Yeah. I went vegetarian at a pretty young age when... I remember actually I can see the moment I was sitting at a Wendy's with my mom in Rochester, Minnesota, and I was eating a hamburger and I asked her what it was made of. And she told me that it came from a cow. And I said, how cheese and milk comes from a cow. And she said, "No, it's part of the cow." And when I realized what she was saying, that it was like a piece of dead flesh from the cow, I remember putting my hamburger down and being horrified about it. I just celebrated my tenure vegan anniversary, so I went vegan on July 10th, 2011. And so, we actually went up to New York and we went to 11 Madison Park, which the three Michelin star place that just reopened completely vegan.
Leilani Münter:
I started making a bigger deal about my vegan anniversary than I do my regular birthday. I call it my vegan birthday and it means more to me because it was something that I chose and my husband went vegan with me. So, it was really us trying to live what we felt was ethical and moral, and we didn't want to hurt animals. We try to be good to the planet and reduce our carbon footprint as much as we can. So, when we made that decision, I put it on my calendar and every year I celebrate it, normally I just get vegan cupcake and I stick a candle in it. But it being the big ten-year anniversary this year, we decided to go big.
Leilani Münter:
And also we hadn't been traveling because of the pandemic, so it was a big deal to make our first trip to New York. And yeah, forks over knives was probably a piece of that. But it was also just discovering what was going on in the milk industry, the dairy industry, the cruelty that takes place there, the cruelty that takes place in the egg industry, that made me take that next step of being a vegetarian wasn't good enough anymore.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. How in the world did you get into 11 Madison avenue? How? How did that happen? Who do you know?
Leilani Münter:
No, I didn't make any special phone calls. What I did was when I found out about 11 Madison Park going vegan, it was pretty a big deal. It was on everyone's news feed. It was in all the papers. And then I put it together, oh, it's her tenure, maybe this could be our celebration. So, I called the restaurant and they told me, the first of every month is when we release the reservations for the following month. So, it was June 1st that they released all of their July reservations and I needed reservations on July 10th. So, she said, "9:00 AM the only way you can book a table is to go on our website, do it right at 9:00 AM on the first." So, I had an alarm, I had my computer open, I had my iPhone next to me in case anything went wrong with my computer.
Leilani Münter:
I was waiting for the button to turn blue to book now. And then the second it hit nine o'clock, I clicked on it, selected July 10th, I'm talking within seconds. And I selected seven, all booked up 7:30, eight, 8:30, nine, 9:30. They were all already taken. I mean, I'm telling you, this is within a minute of the reservations being released. I got us in for the final reservation, which is at 10 o'clock. But then, you enter all your credit card information and it takes you back to the main page and the whole month was sold out within minutes. It was absolutely crazy. I felt like I had gotten tickets to the last rolling stone concert.
Rip Esselstyn:
Or Grateful Dead. Well, what's incredible about that is, I mean, what I hear is that the waiting list is 15,000 people. I didn't know that it renewed the first of every month, which is interesting. I think we'll have to take out this little segment where we talked about this, so that there's less people trying to call on the first of the month.
Leilani Münter:
Right. So, that you can get in.
Rip Esselstyn:
Exactly. Exactly. Well. Okay. Bravo to you for treating yourself to 11 Madison Park. How was it?
Leilani Münter:
It was amazing. I mean, just absolutely fantastic. I don't know that I've ever been to a three Michelin star place before. I don't think I have. So, it wasn't that I could compare it to another very fancy meal like that, but it was absolutely incredible. I mean, they had a dish that was a beet dish that was cooked in a clay pot for three days. And then they come to your table and they break open the clay pot at your table. It's just incredible. And everything looked like a piece of art. Of course, I was taking pictures of every single dish that came out. But yeah, everything was so beautifully displayed that you can tell they're decorating it with tweezers.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, he's done an amazing, amazing job in it and the transformation that happened because of COVID there, what a testament to just... His name's Daniel, right?
Leilani Münter:
Yeah. Daniel Humm.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Daniel. I think they made like two or three million meals that they were giving away to people in need. And then what came out of that whole experience and the fact that... Yeah, go ahead.
Leilani Münter:
I was just going to say they still have that food truck that's going around and giving free meals. And so, for every meal that they sell at 11 Madison Park, each of those meals provides for five more meals that they give away for free out of the truck. It's really beautiful.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Leilani Münter:
Inspiring.
Rip Esselstyn:
You mentioned your mother when you were, I think was at a Burger King or McDonald's, where she mentioned...
Leilani Münter:
It was at Wendy's.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wendy's.
Leilani Münter:
I can still see the table that we were sitting at. It was a traumatic experience. As I think I had this naive idea that it was okay to eat dairy and eggs because I didn't dive into what was going on there. And in my head, I thought, well, they're not killing the couch to get the milk. But it was fairly easy switch for me because there's so many vegan plant-based milks. There's so many things that you can substitute eggs for. It really wasn't hard to make that switch and it becomes easier and easier every day because of all of the incredible vegan options that are being offered now. In fact, when I was in Minnesota visiting my mom just over last weekend, the first place that I went when I landed in Minneapolis was a new vegan fried chicken place called Herbie Butcher's Fried Chicken.
Leilani Münter:
It's made by the people that do the herbivores butcher. It's like Kentucky fried chicken, but completely vegan. And it was wonderful. And I bought two big buckets of vegan fried chicken and brought it down to my family in Rochester to share with everyone.
Rip Esselstyn:
Share the love.
Leilani Münter:
Probably not the healthiest of vegan meals. So, I can be a little bit of a junk food vegan sometimes, but it was delicious.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, but the reason I go back to that moment at Wendy's when your mother said, "Well, it's actually part of a cow," is because I noticed on your Instagram, you had a post that really makes you think, and you said 30,000 different edible plants and you all eat the same five dead animals, chicken, fish, cow, pig, and I think it's goat. I mean, it really makes you stop in your tracks and think, "What are we thinking here, please? Really?"
Leilani Münter:
Yeah. It's so unnecessary. And I think if people could see the truth of what is going on in the factory farming industry, it's not just the cruelty to the animals and the suffering that takes place to all these sentience creature, it's also the incredible environmental impact of it. So, I always do go to bat when I interact with environmentalists that are still eating meat, because if you're really trying to reduce your carbon footprint, it's the simplest and easiest thing that you can do. It's cheaper than buying an electric car. I drive an electric car. I have solar panels powering my home and our car. But being vegan is something three times a day, everybody sits down and eats a meal. And it's so easy now to make that meal, a meal that has no animal products in it.
Leilani Münter:
And I feel like every time I turn around, there's a new vegan product that's hitting the market. It's incredible how much is out there. I've been doing it for 10 years now, but when I talk to people like Moby, for example, who's been vegan for over 30 years, I think back to how much harder it must've been 30 years ago to do this. They didn't have vegan Ben and Jerry's ice cream. They didn't have vegan mac and cheese. They didn't have all of these very easy, you can just go to store and get the vegan coffee creamer. So, I really admire people that did it back then when it was so hard. Now, it's so easy.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's a kale walk.
Leilani Münter:
I like that, a kale walk.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So, I had Ethan Brown on the podcast in season two, the CEO of Beyond Meat. Ethan, he started Beyond Meat for really one singular purpose, and that was because he felt that the number one threat to humanity was, what's going on with climate pollution, climate change and all that? And because of the carbon footprint that us eating animal products has on the planet. What was your motivation or aha moment for being, I mean, an environmentalist, which to me seems to supersede everything that you do now?
Leilani Münter:
Well, I think really the veganism initially stemmed from the animal cruelty. That was the first thing that made me... I love animals and I don't want to hurt them. Then as I became more educated about the environment as time went on and saw all of these issues that humanity is facing with the environment, habitat, destruction, pollution, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, species extinction, which this documentary here Racing Extinction that I worked on for four years is-
Rip Esselstyn:
With Louie Psihoyos.
Leilani Münter:
Yes, with Louie. I'm on the board of OPS. So, we work together closely. This movie is really about the sixth mass extinction of species that we are living through now. Scientists called this era the Anthropocene, which really translates to the age of man. It's where our human impact on the planet is so great that we're changing the fossil record of the future because so many animals are dying off due to our impact. We're making species go extinct at a rate that's about a thousand times faster than the natural background rate of extinction.
Leilani Münter:
And so, in our call to actions in the film, I drive this really cool Tesla in the film, that has a big projection system in it where I was projecting endangered species onto the sides of buildings and things like that. But we also talk quite a bit about the impact of the meat and dairy industry. I think more and more because of movies like Racing Extinction, there was also Cowspiracy, movies that are making the connection between our human impact and how we eat, and how you multiply that by we're at nearly eight billion people on the planet now. When I was born in 1974, there were four billion people on the planet, while our growth rate is currently adding a net growth of approximately a million people every four and a half days, approximately 81 million people every year.
Leilani Münter:
And that amounts to about a billion more people every 12 years. So, every single impact that we make as humans is being multiplied by billions, and it's just not sustainable. We are currently using up earth resources, the natural resources that the earth can replenish. We're using it up by July, that the earth can replenish in a whole year. They call it Earth Overshoot Day, where they're keeping track of how much natural resources we're taking from the earth and how much that the earth can replenish in one year, where every single year it gets moved back earlier and earlier in the year, the day that we hit Earth Overshoot Day.
Leilani Münter:
It's for me, the number one easy thing that people can do to reduce their carbon footprint, because buying an electric car, that costs more money. Not everybody has a roof to put solar panels up on, they might be in a condo or an apartment complex or their house doesn't have a good south facing roof like we have. And it's expensive. It's an investment to go electric and go solar, whereas veganism, you can make that decision any day and it doesn't take a big investment upfront financially to make that choice. In fact, you're going to save money over time, not if you're going to 11 Madison Park every evening, but as long as you're not doing that, I think that a vegan diet is very reasonable.
Leilani Münter:
I don't know where this idea came from, that veganism is expensive because I don't think that's true if you look at the prices of meat and dairy.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Or if you look at the prices of beans and bananas and potatoes and if you can't afford, let's just say fresh organic, you can do frozen, our freezer's loaded with frozen vegetables and fruits to the gills. You're right. You mentioned that we're approaching eight billion people on planet earth, I know that you are child-free and people may not know what that term means. I'd love for you to explain it, but also, that you are a part of the Population Matters movement. Can you talk about that for a sec?
Leilani Münter:
Yeah. So, Population Matters is a group out of the UK that talks about the human impact of human population growth. And I'm a patron of theirs alongside some amazing people like sir David Attenborough and Dr. Jane Goodall, who I just had a Zoom with last week. She's so amazing and inspiring. But I first got interested or became aware of the human population issue back in college. I had a biochemistry professor at UC San Diego that one day I turned up for class and he just told everyone to close our books, and weren't going to talk about biochemistry that day. And he set aside a class to show us a film about population.
Leilani Münter:
I was probably 20, 21 years old. And I remember just thinking, I can't believe this issue has never been discussed with me before. I was so into recycling and trying to be a good steward of the planet, but no one had ever brought that issue to my attention before. I remember walking with the professor all the way across campus, talking about it and just shocked at this is the driving force behind all of our other environmental issues. It's accelerating everything else. The more people that are consuming and wanting meat and wanting cell phones and wanting all these things, the more habitat destruction we will have, the more loss of biodiversity, all of it.
Leilani Münter:
We have less time to solve with more people. And I didn't talk about it for quite some time just because it's a volatile issue. It's an emotional issue. People get very defensive, it's such a personal choice. And the turning point for me was actually when Racing Extinction came out, I was doing a screening for this in Vail, Colorado, and it was a stream screening in that I was the only member of the cast of the film that was there. So, I was on stage alone in front of about 750 people that had just watched the film. And when I went up to do my Q&A, the first question that was asked, is there anything in the film that wasn't addressed that you wish had been addressed?
Leilani Münter:
And of course, my answer was population because we never... I think there's some subtle suggestions of it, but we never actually directly talk about that issue. And when I said that, I saw about two thirds of the people shake their heads in agreement like, "Oh, yes, we need to talk about this." And then about a third of the people, the body language got defensive, they sat back and crossed their arms. I could feel that it definitely, you could feel who was okay with this discussion and who wasn't. And then I spoke just a couple of weeks later in Aspen at a renewable energy event. And I threw out my whole speech and said, "I just want to talk about population." And I was so encouraged by the number of people that came over to say, "Thank you for bringing up this issue that most of us think about all the time, but we don't bring up because we don't want to offend anyone."
Leilani Münter:
So, the way that I was bringing this up to people in a friendly way, pre pandemic, of course, when I was traveling a lot more and I was sitting on a lot more airplanes, and oftentimes one of the first or second questions that people ask is, do you have children? And I learned to answer that by saying, "No, actually my husband and I are child-free by choice." And by answering with just those two extra words at the end, child-free by choice, I feel like that invited a conversation. And oftentimes I would have a great discussion with somebody because it let them know it wasn't that I was child-free because I wanted to have kids and maybe I couldn't, maybe there's a biological reason why I couldn't get pregnant or something like that, it let them know that it was a conscious choice and decision on our part.
Leilani Münter:
And that would often spurred a question of like, "Oh, that's interesting, why?" And I had a lot of really great discussions that way. And I do think that more and more people are willing to talk about the issue and the more women that come out and say, "I'm child-free by choice," or men and discuss why, the more accepted it will be and the less judged we will feel. Because I think there is a stigma around it. I think the only way we can bring it into normality is to talk about it. I was actually going to bring this up with the Vegan Strong car and your PlantStrong podcast, because when you guys reached out to me, the first thing that struck me was we were initially going to call our car plant strong.
Rip Esselstyn:
Really?
Leilani Münter:
And we were weighing out, should we use the word vegan or should we use the word plants? And we had all these meetings about it to figure out what we were going to do. And at the end of the day, we were like, "Let's make them say the word vegan on Fox sports." We put plastered vegan all over the car and it was so fun to watch my race afterwards. And hear these NASCAR guys in the NASCAR booth, the Fox sports booth saying, "The vegan strong car, and I went out and tried one of those vegan burgers and it was pretty good." I guess there's a stereotype of the NASCAR audience. It was really fun to normalize it. And I think in the same way that I'm trying to normalize the child-free movement and then it's okay to make that choice, I was also trying to normalize the word vegan being at a NASCAR track. There's this big societal expectation of it, and we need to normalize that it's okay to have one or have none, it's acceptable. Right?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep, yep. No, absolutely. And I guess in some ways, we're fighting that evolutionary I guess, desire for procreation. Right?
Leilani Münter:
Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
In some ways, I guess at the most fundamental level we're put here to procreate.
Leilani Münter:
Which would be okay if we had multiple planets that could provide for eight billion people or 10 billion people. There was an interesting study that was done by ecologists. I can't remember which university, it might've been Cambridge, I think, and the ecologists wanted to figure out what is the carrying capacity for planet earth. And this was assuming that everyone in the population would not be living in poverty. So, everyone would have electricity and clean access to clean water. So, this would assume this beautiful situation where nobody would be living in a struggling situation and in poverty. And the number that they came up with was two billion.
Leilani Münter:
So, according to that study, we're about six billion people past the carrying capacity. And that can change certainly with technology. I've been driving the electric cars since 2013 and we've got the solar on our house and there's all these things that can help us reduce our individual carbon footprint, but it's going to take a long time for us to make those switches. I mean, electric cars are becoming very popular, but it's still, when you look at the percentage of the overall cars in the world, the number that are electric is very, very small, even though it's growing rapidly.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you know what that percentage is? What percent are electric? Any idea?
Leilani Münter:
I do not know. I mean, I would say less than 5%.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right.
Leilani Münter:
Let's look it up. This is what we have Google for. Right?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes, it is. So, would you say you're super happy with how far we've come in the last seven, eight years with electric cars? Or do you think it's still not enough? Let me stop you for a sec, because in 2013 you wrote a great article in the Huffington post, Why we Need to Fight for Tesla? And basically it looked... Tesla, I mean, they broke down barriers, what a huge disruptor, and now it seems like everyone's going electric or at least hybrid.
Leilani Münter:
Yeah. I mean, Tesla really forced the other legacy manufacturers to go electric because Tesla was starting to steal their customers. So, I feel like they deserve the credit for shifting the paradigm and tipping the scale towards electric. I'm happy in that sense because every single manufacturer is now going electric. Solar has gotten a lot cheaper. I think veganism gives me a lot of hope. There's more and more vegans every year. It seems like... There's a great study that was done about the tipping point for ideas. I don't know if you've heard about the 10% tipping point.
Rip Esselstyn:
Sure, sure. Yes.
Leilani Münter:
So, the scientists wanted to figure out, is there a tipping point for an idea in a society? And what they found was that if just 10% of a society has an unwavering belief in an idea, it's actually inevitable that the rest of the society will adopt that idea. I feel like we've hit 10% definitely for veganism. I think we're getting closer with electric cars. And I think with all of the drastic events that we're having, what we're seeing happening to our natural world, I think every body gets that climate change is real now. Whereas 10 years ago, we would've been arguing with politicians over whether it was even happening.
Leilani Münter:
And now the arguments are more about, what do we do about it? How do we respond? What are the solutions? Where do we pour the money into? Is it carbon sequestration? Is it renewable energy? Is it electric cars? I feel a lot of hope because it seems like people are waking up. Is it enough soon enough? Is it a little too late? I do worry about that. Just a few weeks ago it was 118 degrees in the Arctic circle, the permafrost is melting, that's releasing tons of methane into the air, which as you know is more heat trapping than carbon dioxide. So, it feels like we're teetering on that tipping point. I feel like where... we have to act now and we have to always, I think, keep that hope that it's not too late, otherwise we would give up.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Leilani Münter:
But it is getting scary.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, to me, it's beyond scary. It's like, we've got a five alarm fire that's going off right now. And we need to respond to it with everything that we have, otherwise, I think as you stated in one of your Instagram posts recently, we're screwed.
Leilani Münter:
I try to be optimistic, but occasionally, the pessimists in me comes out. I feel like in the morning, I'm very positive. And then by the end of the day after I've read all the bad news, I'm more, ugh, how can we solve this? But then somehow in the morning I get up and I feel optimistic again. But speaking of fires, the fire in Oregon, when I left Charlotte to go visit my family in Minnesota, we had smoke from the wildfires in Oregon and Northern California. And Canada had actually come all the way here to Charlotte. I remember, I felt like I was smelling smoke and I was sitting in my living room, I was like, "What is that?" And then I looked outside and the whole sky was just white. The sun was not the bright sun that you're normally seeing, there was this haze.
Leilani Münter:
And sure enough, I watched this satellite image that NOAA had put out and you see the wildfire smoke making it all the way across our country. So, I feel like these things of it landing in your backyard and realizing, wow, I'm breathing smoke from the west coast, is hopefully waking up people and making them realize how real this is and how much of a true emergency that we're in. The scientists have been warning us about this for decades, but now it feels like it's landing in everybody's backyard, the heat wave in the Northwest where a lot of people don't have air conditioning and it was like 118 up there.
Rip Esselstyn:
China.
Leilani Münter:
Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
I know the droughts there that-
Leilani Münter:
The flood in Germany.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yup, yup. Yup. No, everybody on the planet is feeling the effects one way or the other. We have to collectively get our arms around this, I think get our around our arms around each other and dive in and do everything that we can collectively and as individuals to mitigate this.
Leilani Münter:
As sad as it is to see all these things happening, I feel like that's what was needed in order for people to wake up. They needed to be directly affected by it. It couldn't be this idea that, "Oh, in 10, 20 years, this is going to be an emergency." It needed to feel like an emergency right now. And it does feel like that's happening last year and this year with the pandemic and just our abusive nature is really coming back to bite us.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. Literally. I want to go back now and revisit just some of the race car stuff, because I'm really fascinated with that. What is it... because you were in the hot seat, you raced for, was it over almost a decade? Right?
Leilani Münter:
2001 was my first race. And then I've retired after Daytona 2019, I ran the what the health car in my final race at Daytona.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Leilani Münter:
And I had a great time, but I was ready to walk away. My body couldn't take 200 mile an hour hits as well anymore.
Rip Esselstyn:
I want to ask you some questions about being a race car driver, and I'm going to fire these off at you. So, what is it that makes a guy like Lewis Hamilton so amazing besides the fact that he is vegan?
Leilani Münter:
Yeah. And he credits, I think he credited his most recent formula and championship to being vegan. I think he's been in a race car or a go-cart since he was a little kid. So, it's almost like the race car is an extension of his body. I didn't start racing until my college years, so I was much older. I think he's just also a natural talent. A certain amount of it is experience of feeling what a race car is doing and being able to describe that to your crew chief so that he can make the changes in the race car to make you more comfortable and making the car go faster. And Lewis has been doing that his entire life. So, he's just an absolute pro.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. How fit do you have to be to be at the very top of this sport?
Leilani Münter:
It gets so hot. So, in the open wheel cars, it's different, like formula one and IndyCar, you're not in a cockpit, you are open and your head is open out in the air, it's much cooler. In stock cars, which is what I spent most of my career racing, and it gets incredibly hot in there. I've raced in Texas and I remember, so I have a guy that's my tire guy. And what he does is he looks at the T as a little temperature gun that he points at the surface of the race track that will tell us how hot the racetrack is. And that helps him determine how he wants to set my tire pressures. And he pointed the temperature gun inside my car, and it was 150 degrees inside the car.
Leilani Münter:
So, you're sweating like crazy. In fact, I think Tony Stewart who's retired now, but he was one of the famous NASCAR drivers, they did an experiment with him where they weighed him before and after a race and he lost 10 pounds of sweat, water waves. People always ask, that's one of the common questions I got when I was racing, is, "Do you ever have to go to the bathroom during those long races?" And I'm like, "No, you're sweating it all out, you would never have to pee in the race card because you're sweating like crazy."
Rip Esselstyn:
Typically, in the races you did, how long were you in the car at a time?
Leilani Münter:
Daytona was a 200 mile race. So, t's not as long as the guys that are in the top level, like cup, they're doing 500 miles. But it can last for a couple of hours depending on racks and things like that. Sometimes we have red flags where you have to park the car on the race track while they clean up. And you're just sitting there sweating like crazy. As I started to get up to the higher levels and get in better cars that with race teams that had a little more money, I did then have a system that was like an air vent that went into my helmet and blew a little bit of cold air to keep me cool. But for most of my career, I was not with teams that could afford expensive air conditioning system.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wait, wait, you mean to tell me Vegan Strong didn't take care of you like that with the venting system?
Leilani Münter:
Yeah. 150 degrees inside the car for an hour and a half or two hours was a little much, but I did a lot of hot yoga. That was something that I did all the time to acclimate myself to being an intense heat and still being able to concentrate because I do remember there was a race I ran in North Carolina, where I was so hot and it was so humid and it did affect my driving because it was so distracted by how... I felt like I was going to die of heat stroke, that it makes it difficult to drive if you feel like you're about to pass out.
Rip Esselstyn:
How would you wear your hair? Because I would imagine your hair would affect the heat too. Could you put that up at all and have it behind you?
Leilani Münter:
So, I would take my hair and it would be in a little ponytail and then it would be tucked into my fireproof racing suit. That's the other thing that makes you sweat. We're in a three layer Nomex suit that is fireproof. So, I could be in a fire, something like 30 seconds before I would burn. Thankfully, I never was in a fire. And then you've got the helmet, so there's just very little air. It's just like you're baking in a sauna. So, even though you're going 200 miles an hour, none of that wind is coming into the race car, because the whole point is to make your car fast. You want to slip through there as fast as possible. So, the race car is shaped so that no air is coming in so that you're not getting the drag that you would get from air coming in through the window. So, yeah, it's an intense amount of heat.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. And then there's also a certain amount of claustrophobia that I'm sure that can potentially set in. I know from being a firefighter, when you've got all that gear on, you've got your face piece on, you're breathing air and you get overheated and it can be insanely uncomfortable.
Leilani Münter:
Yeah. I worked at a racing school for quite some time and there was a couple of students that when we would get them all strapped in, you're in this big harness, it's wrapping around your waist, it's coming up between your legs and then over your shoulders. And then you have a head and neck restraint device that's called a Hans device that prevents your neck from snapping when you take a big hit, and then the helmet. So, you can barely turn your head. And I had a couple of students that we got them all strapped in and they were claustrophobic and just climbed right out of the race car without ever actually driving it because of the claustrophobia.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yep. I understand, I understand.
Leilani Münter:
Do you have claustrophobia a little bit?
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, I would say that I never ever did, but I had a couple moments where I was over climbing 22 flights of stairs and the stairwells in Austin, Texas can be a hundred plus degrees and then you're wearing these suits and you're in the firefighting boots, you've got your helmet on, you're carrying 50 pounds of hose, you're taxing. It's so physically taxing. And then when you start to overheat on top of that, it adds a whole another element. At some point you just want to tear off everything that's keeping your skin from breathing, tear off the mask. But that's the worst thing you can do because obviously if there's smoke and stuff around, so, yeah, I had a time or two that I definitely experienced some of that. Yeah.
Leilani Münter:
I bet. Yeah. I can't imagine some of the experiences that you have had and how frightening some of those must've been.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, what frightening was I opened up my first book, the Engine two Diet with this really crazy fire that we made where the person in the apartment died, two firefighters got insanely badly burned. I was helping throw one of them or get him out of a second story window and lowering him down to the ground and then dropping him. But there was a flashover where everything in the room gets to a thousand degrees and it just basically ignites. And that's what happened. There was a flashover and there was a firefighter in the room at the time and the participant, or I should say the homeowner. And then one of the firefighters went in to save the firefighter, and then I help drag them to the window sill and then basically throw them to the ground. It was really, really awful, really awful.
Leilani Münter:
That sounds terrible.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Leilani Münter:
And did you get burned?
Rip Esselstyn:
I got some burns. Yeah, that actually, you mentioned Nomex, it went right through my Nomex hood-
Leilani Münter:
Oh, it did.
Rip Esselstyn:
... and burned my ears and my neck. One of the firefighters that was in there had 72% of his body, third degree burns, had to be airlifted to San Antonio to the burn unit there. It was really a life altering fire for me on several levels.
Leilani Münter:
Was that early in your career or [crosstalk 01:03:30]?
Rip Esselstyn:
No. It was three and a half, four years into my career. Yeah. And the thing with firefighting is you never know when that you're going to get a real doozy of a fire like that. And this one came in at about 2:33 AM, so, you're woken up from a dead sleep and now you've got this fire, you've got... all hell is breaking out and people are screaming and yelling. When this thing flashed over, it went from looking like a little hibachi fire to all of a sudden you've got 30 foot flames that are coming out of this apartment complex. And you're like, "Whoa." And we got some real shit on our hands right now.
Leilani Münter:
Wow. That is intense.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. And I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to go up this ladder and shine my flashlight in and wave and yell and then help get these guys to the window sill and get them out.
Leilani Münter:
So, you saved their lives.
Rip Esselstyn:
I certainly helped. Yes. Yes.
Leilani Münter:
That must be a such a rewarding feeling.
Rip Esselstyn:
At the time it didn't feel rewarding, it just felt like I was just doing my job, but yeah. Yeah.
Leilani Münter:
You're a hero.
Rip Esselstyn:
No. Well, you know what? You, you, according to Glamour Magazine, were the eco hero. You're the eco hero and we need more eco heroes on this planet. Before we wrap this thing up, I want to say that we just adopted a little baby cat, a little black cat, and we're trying to figure out a name. You have a cat named Timbo, right?
Leilani Münter:
Yes. We have three adopted kiddies.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Leilani Münter:
He's one of the three
Rip Esselstyn:
Timbo is a great name. We're trying to decide right now between French fries, Friday, velvet and pickles.
Leilani Münter:
That's cute.
Rip Esselstyn:
I am not child-free. I have three children, seven, 12, and 14. And so it's fun. It's fun trying to figure out what to name the cat because... And before we name her, we want to get to know her, know her personality a little bit.
Leilani Münter:
Yeah. Yeah. Same thing with Tim. We came to Tim's name after we got to know him. We were like, "He's definitely a Timbo." Yeah. You have to get to know their personality a little bit.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Leilani Münter:
That's great. And black cats are the least likely to be adopted. So, our other two are our two adult black cats that we adopted because for some reason, people think black cats are bad luck, which they are not. But you're definitely saving a life by getting a black kitty because they're the ones that are most likely to be put to sleep of all the colors.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, we didn't even know that, but thank you for having two, and for letting us know that. And I'm sure, but just by listening to this, we'll get more people adopting black cats.
Leilani Münter:
Yeah. They're wonderful. We love them.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. The other thing I want to say is I just think it's so wonderful. First, let me say your mother, I know you posted a photo of your mother on Instagram recently, so beautiful to see your mother and where you came from. There was also a great photo of your father that I saw, and I can't remember where I read it, but I just want to say that when you... I love that your father supported you in racing cars. And can you tell the story of what he said to you when he flew, I think to California to say two things to you and what were those two things?
Leilani Münter:
Yeah. Yeah. So, when I broke it to my family that I wanted to drive race cars and that this was something I was going to do, I got so many different reactions. One sister sent me a couple page email about why I shouldn't and how dangerous it was. And one of my other sisters was, "Go for it, I think it's super cool." And my dad just sent back an email that said, "I love you, and I'm coming to visit." And he got on a plane. He flew to LA where I was living at the time and we had lunch and he tried to talk me out of it and said, "When I was working as a resident and in the emergency room, and I saw all these horrific traumas..." And he was highlighting the risk that I was taking. But then when he got done doing that pitch, he said, "Okay, I felt like I had to do that as your dad, but I knew that you were going to race anyways. So, I just have two requests, one, don't cut your hair off and two, paint your race car pink."
Rip Esselstyn:
Did you ever have a pink race car?
Leilani Münter:
I had a race car early on that was white and pink and purple. So, it did happen. And I did have a racing suit that had some pink on it. My favorite race car was my bright green Vegan Strong car that was just... It was glowing on the racetrack. It was very easy for my spotter to spot me, which we have these spotters that sit at the top of the racetrack and they're your eyeballs and the Vegans Strong race cars, just beautiful. In fact, I would like to send you a little... I have a little matchbox car size version of my Vegan Strong car. So, I would love to send you one. I'll have to get your address when we wrap up.
Rip Esselstyn:
I would be honored to accept that. That would be wonderful. Are you watching the Olympic games right now at all? Are you a fan of that?
Leilani Münter:
I watched a little bit of it. I saw this one amazing... My favorite part of the Olympics so far has been the swimmer from Tunisia. Did you see this?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes.
Leilani Münter:
That was the complete underdog. And he was the slowest qualifier [crosstalk 01:09:54]. It was amazing. They had video footage of his family watching that went viral because they were just screaming at the top of their lungs and it was such a beautiful moment. It's always great when the underdog wins.
Rip Esselstyn:
It is, it is. Just when, I think her name is... I'm going to butcher it, but I'm going to say... I know her last... Anyway, she's a little girl, the high schooler from Alaska that won the a hundred meter breaststroke.
Leilani Münter:
Oh, yes, I know who you're talking about.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. And what an underdog there to beat Lilly King, the world record holder.
Leilani Münter:
Yes, it's great. It's beautiful. It's beautiful to watch. I've never been into watching sports, even when I was racing I didn't really watch. I would watch my race once after I raced just to see how much coverage, like, did they talk about my vegan giveaway? And did they talk about black fish? Did they mention the dolphins from the cove, because I've run lots of documentaries on the car? So, it was always to see like, did they plug my cause? But I'm just not much of a sports watcher, but I love following the viral, beautiful moments. I'm not going to sit down and watch the whole thing, but I'll watch the beautiful stories that come out of it. So, what I've been watching.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yup. And there's so many beautiful stories that come out of every one of these Olympic games. I want you to know that, so two of my three children just went to canoe camp up in the boundary waters. Yeah. And so, we dropped them off there. And then we spent a week in Lutsen. I don't know if you ever been to Lutsen but it's on the north shore of Lake Superior.
Leilani Münter:
Okay.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's probably an hour and a half from Rochester, I think, where you said maybe you grew up, but... Lake Superior is just a beast of a lake.
Leilani Münter:
It is.
Rip Esselstyn:
And I just can't believe how beautiful it is and the water temperature and the fact that 10% of the world's fresh water is Lake Superior. What a resource you have right there.
Leilani Münter:
That's wonderful, you got to spend some time there.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, it was great. Well, this has been an absolute pleasure. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed this conversation. I feel so lucky to have to have met you. And to hear the causes that you're fighting for that are also so noble and causes that are worth fighting for. I'm behind you a hundred percent on every one of these. And thank you Leilani for being who you are.
Leilani Münter:
Thank you. Thank you so much. It was such an honor to meet you. When you said there's still a lot left that's worth fighting for, those are the words that I hang on from Dr. Jane Goodall, who I got to interview last week. And she always is one to bring hope to people. I think we see so much bad news that it's hard to stay positive. Those are the words that I always hang on that she says, which is, "There's still a lot left, that's worth fighting for." And I keep that in mind every time I get down and feel this mountain is too big to climb, how are we going to turn this around? And she always gives me so much hope.
Rip Esselstyn:
Nice. Jane Goodall. And then also, I think it was Sam from Lord of the Rings, it said, you know Mr. Frodo, what'd he say? There's some good in the world and it's worth fighting for.
Leilani Münter:
Yes. Absolutely. I love the Lord of the Rings. In fact, in my front yard garden, I have a little baby hobbit door and I've planted some creeping time that goes over the top and I put little fairy items. So, it looks like there's a little tiny hobbit living in my front yard. And my husband's from New Zealand, so I actually got to go visit the movie set. If you're ever in New Zealand, make sure you go to Matamata, which is where they filmed the parts that take place in the Shire. And they still have all those little hobbit holes, and they've even built a green dragon where you can go and have a pint of beer and they serve vegan food. You can order for your whole hobbit meal to be completely vegan, which we did, and that's just beautiful.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Leilani Münter:
Gorgeous place.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'll have to write that down for something to do on my bucket list.
Leilani Münter:
Yes. It's important to have a bucket list.
Rip Esselstyn:
Because my family, we love the Lord of the Rings. Love it. Love it. Love it.
Leilani Münter:
I know you interviewed John and Tracy Stewart, have you ever gotten to it to talk with Steven Colbert because he's obsessed with Lord of the Rings?
Rip Esselstyn:
No, no, I never have, no.
Leilani Münter:
I think he had some a bet going with John about going vegan for a certain amount of time.
Rip Esselstyn:
Interesting.
Leilani Münter:
I don't know what happened with that. We'll have to look it up, but they had some bet going and I think John won and I think Steven was supposed to go vegan or vegetarian for a certain amount of time. So, maybe there's a way for you to work out an interview with Steven.
Rip Esselstyn:
That'd be a lot of fun. So, Leilani, will you do my sign off?
Leilani Münter:
Yes. What is the sign off?
Rip Esselstyn:
Just follow me. Peace. Then turn it around. Engine two.
Leilani Münter:
Peace engine two.
Rip Esselstyn:
And strong.
Leilani Münter:
I love it.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right. With people like Leilani in the driver's seat on so many of these causes, I have continued optimism that we are moving the needle in the right direction, and so, many of these issues. And it starts with you. So, from the bottom of my Plantstrong heart, thank you for opening your minds and hearts to these conversations and sharing them across your channels. We may not have a race car like Leilani, but it is up to us to keep our foot on the pedal and our eyes on the road ahead of us. Thanks so much for listening.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thank you for listening to the Plantstrong podcast. You can support the show by taking a quick minute to follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Leaving us a positive review and sharing the show with your network is another great way to help us reach as many people as possible with the exciting news about plants. Thank you in advance for your support. It means everything. Have you had your own Galileo moment that you'd like to share? What happened when you stepped into the arena and shed the beliefs that you thought to be true? I'd love to hear about it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Visit plantstrongpodcast.com to submit your story and to learn more about today's guests and sponsors. The Plantstrong podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous true seekers, who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably, my parents, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
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