"You want people to stop eating these animals and the only way to do it is to showcase them in a light where people see them as individuals, and not just a sandwich in the morning, or breakfast, or a dinner at Christmas holidays. These are individuals that feel pain, that feel happiness, that feel sadness and have friends and have families and have these big, beautiful units and they love each other. And when we showcase that, we get messages on a daily basis and people stop eating meat because of the animals at Arthur's Acres." - Todd Friedman

In 2018, Todd Friedman walked onto a property he was told was empty, and instead he found a pig - abandoned, starving and alone. Todd named him Arthur, and that moment changed everything. It led to the creation of Arthur's Acres, a sanctuary built on land that once functioned as a backyard slaughterhouse.

What followed was seven years of hard work and a commitment to doing right by animals who are almost always treated as expendable - pigs used in laboratories, pigs bred and discarded, pigs sold under the myth of being teacup pets, pigs so neglected or obese that they're on the brink of death.

Today, Arthur's Acres is home to 50 pigs, each one known by name. Each treated as an individual. It's become a place where people don't just learn about pigs, they fall in love with them. This conversation is about what happens when you really see who pigs are, and why sanctuaries matter.

https://www.arthursacresanimalsanctuary.org/

"There will come a time in the future where historians look back on this era of history and sort of see it as this moment of historical atrocity, which is what I think it is today. I do think that factory farming and the suffering caused to billions and billions of animals every single year is a moral atrocity of historic proportions.

I think we see it that way today, and I am very confident it will be seen that way by a kind of broad consensus in the future. But that's not inevitable. We have to do the work get to get there. And that's exactly what we're trying to do at the Humane League, is kind of take the steps that we think are the steps to be taken today, to ultimately bring about the end of factory farming in the long run." - Dan Shannon

Factory farming is one of the greatest moral atrocities of our time. Yet it's treated like background noise. Tens of billions of animals are raised in systems designed to keep suffering efficient and invisible. The cages, the confinement, the speed, and the cruelty are all hidden behind corporate branding and grocery store shelves. And even though awareness is growing, the numbers of animals in our food system keeps rising.

This conversation is with Dan Shannon, the CEO of The Humane League, one of the most effective organizations in the world when it comes to forcing the food industry to change.

Dan is helping lead the fight to eliminate one of the most atrocious practices in agriculture - battery cages, where chickens live in tiny, cramped cages for their entirety of their lives. This is a conversation about strategy, momentum, and what it really looks like to dismantle cruelty.

"I really think it's a story is about the heroes, the conservation heroes. It's each one of their stories and then it's about my personal growth story of being absolutely useless in the jungle and how I got decent by the end of it." – Dax Dasilva

There are moments when you look at the world — at forests collapsing, oceans warming, species disappearing — and you feel a kind of disbelief that we've allowed this to become normal. Because what's happening to the living world isn't abstract.

It's ancient ecosystems being stripped bare. It's entire islands scarred by erosion. It's extinction unfolding in real time — while most of us go about our lives as if the natural world will somehow survive without us changing anything.

This conversation not about doom. It's about what happens when someone decides: Not on my watch. It's with Dax Dasilva — founder of Lightspeed — who, after seventeen years as CEO, stepped back for two years and poured $40 million into frontline conservation projects around the world. Dax returned to Lightspeed in 2024.

He went where most people will never go — deep into the Amazon, into Haiti and Madagascar where deforestation has pushed ecosystems to the brink… onto beaches where leatherback turtles, older than the dinosaurs, are still fighting to survive.

His new book is called Echoes from Eden, a tribute to the people doing everything they can to save the planet - the local conservation heroes quietly holding the line for all of us.

"I don't know of another animal mammal that does not protect their young. Everybody protects their young. A wolf does too if another predator came. Of course they would protect their young. But with humans, they are that afraid of us, that they will leave their den. They will leave." – Rebecca Bose

At a moment when gray wolves in the United States are once again under serious threat, with the House just voting to delist them, it's worth asking a question that we seem determined to forget Once we remove protections and populations collapse. Do we really think history won't repeat itself?

This conversation is with Rebecca Bose, curator at the Wolf Conservation Center, where she has spent the last 25 years working at the intersection of recovery and survival for some of the most endangered wolves on the planet. Rebecca is deeply involved in the painstaking effort to undo past mistakes, helping recover Mexican gray wolves and red wolves, two species that were nearly wiped out entirely by government sanctioned killing.

Rebecca walks us through what bringing wolves back actually means - decades of captive breeding, genetic management, pup fostering operations that involve private pilots, biologists hiking for hours into remote wilderness, and an enormous amount of human labor all to give a handful of animals a chance to survive in a world that is still deeply hostile to them.

And we talk about who wolves actually are: parents, teachers, sentient beings with relationships and roles that shape entire ecosystems.

This is a conversation about memory, responsibility, and what happens when we repeat history instead of learning from it.

*Correction from the interview: the current Mexican wolf population is at a minimum of 286 animals on the landscape, not 386.

"I grew up and I became vegetarian listening to punk albums because there was a real punk scene which talked about vegetarianism, which talked about veganism, which talked about the peace movement. And that really influenced me. And there was one record specifically by a band called, Conflict that I listened to and I went vegetarian, and that's the power of music. You know, it's not traditional advocacy. So in a way, I'm kind of paying homage to how I got into animal rights. And I want this album not to be a traditional advocacy tool." - Gemunu de Silva

For nearly four decades, Gemunu de Silva has gone where almost no one else will: inside factory farms, slaughterhouses, fur farms, laboratories, and the hidden corners of global animal industries.

Gem is one of the world's most experienced undercover investigators, his work has exposed cruelty across six continents, helped shut down industries and change laws, saving millions of animals in the process.

But after 37 years of investigations, he began to realize something unexpected. It wasn't only the images that stayed with him. It was the sounds. The outcry of the animals, the hum of machinery, the clatter of metal, the silence and the noise that animals are forced to live inside every day.

In this conversation, Gem joins us to talk about his most unconventional project yet, Industry Standard, an album built from real recordings gathered during decades of undercover investigations. Part music, part journalism, part art, the record captures the industrial soundscape of animal exploitation in a way that no one has ever done before.

It's not just an album — it's evidence. And once you hear it, you can't unhear it.

Links:

https://www.tracksinvestigations.org/industrystandard

https://bandcamp.com/private/P0OU3NM2

INDUSTRY STANDARD:

Advocacy and Use - Sound as a Tool for Change

Industry Standard is more than an album. It is a resource for advocacy, education, and campaigning. Built on authentic field recordings from investigations, it offers a new way to engage audiences emotionally and viscerally, especially in spaces where imagery may not be possible, appropriate, or effective.

This is sonic storytelling with a purpose. Each track bears witness to real places, real animals, and real suffering, but also offers a reflective space to process, feel, and act.

Ways to Use the Album

Podcasts, Radio, and Media We welcome opportunities for interviews, audio features, or creative collaborations. Gemunu de Silva is available to talk about the making of the album, the field recording process, and how it connects to broader investigations and activism.

Exhibitions and Installations Industry Standard can be adapted for gallery and museum settings. The tracks can be played with or without accompanying visuals. We can also provide the full eight-page insert artwork for display or digital projection.

Outreach and Awareness The album can be shared at stalls, events, and festivals, either as a conversation starter or as part of a deeper listening experience. QR codes to the album and visuals can be printed on flyers, zines, or posters.

Campaigning The sounds and visuals can be paired with specific investigations or issues to deepen public understanding. They are especially powerful in campaign launches, press events, or screenings.

Education and Talks Use the tracks in schools, universities, or activist training settings to highlight the realities behind animal industries in a unique and memorable way. Listening together can be a powerful shared act of learning.

Get Involved

If you are part of an animal group, educational body, media outlet, or cultural space and would like to use Industry Standard, please get in touch. We can help tailor the experience to your needs.

📩 [email protected]📦 Vinyl copies available on request for partners and educational use🔊 Digital versions can be supplied with or without visuals

Thanks & Partners

This project, and the 300+ investigations behind it, would not have been possible without the collaboration and trust of more than 40 animal advocacy organisations around the world.

We would like to thank all our partners, past and present, who have supported, commissioned, and shared our work.

Tracks has conducted investigations for:

A Promise to Animals, Animals Angels, Animals Australia, Animal Equality, Animal Protection Agency, Animal Welfare Foundation, Born Free, Brigitte Bardot Foundation, Brooke, BUAV, CAPS, Cats Protection, Canadian Horse Defence, Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), Change for Animals Foundation, Cruelty Free International, Dogs Trust, Eurogroup for Animals, Equine Rescue France, Four Paws, Franz Weber Foundation, Forsøgsdyrenes Værn, GAIA, Greenpeace, Hunt Investigation Team, Humane Society International, IFAW, International Animal Rescue, Marchig Trust, Mercy for Animals, One Voice, PETA, Princess Alia Foundation, Respect for Animals, Sinergia Animal, Surfers Against Sewage, Tierschutzbund Zürich, Varkens in Nood, World Animal Protection (WAP), WAP Canada and WAP Australia.

"These workers were so courageous to go on camera to talk about what they were being forced to do, and we had a whistleblower attorney there to protect them. And then Dateline just killed the story. What I heard through the grapevine was they were afraid that people would change the channel. It's so interesting to me that you can have stabbings and starvation and murders and all sorts of stuff on TV, but if it happens to animals, they won't do it." – Gail Eisnitz

Most of what happens to animals in this country is designed to stay hidden. The violence, the speed, the scale — all of it kept out of sight, behind doors the public is never meant to open.

For more than forty years, Gail Eisnitz has documented some of the worst abuses in industrial agriculture: animals skinned alive, pigs entering scalding tanks fully conscious, workers forced to brutalize animals at speeds no living being could withstand. Her investigations exposed a system built on secrecy, protected by powerful industries, and ignored by institutions charged with enforcing the law.

Her work has forced congressional action, shut down factory farms, held corporations accountable, and revealed to the world what really happens on the kill floor — not in rare moments, but every single day. And now, in her new book Out of Sight, Gail shows us the full story: the whistleblowers the industry tried to silence, the media outlets that backed away because the truth was "too disturbing," and the personal toll she carried while uncovering evidence no one else had the courage to gather.

This conversation is about a system that harms billions of animals and dangerous workers, misleads the public, and operates with almost no meaningful oversight. Gail's work makes one thing undeniable we can't fix what we refuse to see.

A lot of people think that kosher means that animals were treated significantly better than animals that enter the non-kosher market. And largely, this is just not true, because kosher is very much now a part of the same systems that produce 99% of the animal products that get into our grocery stores, and therefore could be categorized as factory farmed." Rabbi Melissa Hoffman

Rabbi Melissa Hoffman is the director of the Center for Jewish Food Ethics, an organization bringing ancient Jewish values about land, animals, and nourishment into the realities of today's food system.

At the Center, Melissa works with synagogues, schools, summer camps, and community institutions to shift their food practices through plant-based defaults and culturally rooted changes that align with Jewish values of compassion, sustainability, and justice. She also tackles widespread misconceptions — like the belief held by half of American Jews that kosher automatically means humane.

In this conversation, we talk about how Jewish communities can rethink food in ways that are joyful, practical, and deeply values-driven — and why these small shifts can bring people together while transforming the food system from the inside out.

https://www.jewishfoodethics.org/

"It just makes everything worthwhile with what we did. It just highlights how flexible elephants are and how adaptable they are from captivity to wild, and that when given the chance, they will choose freedom. And they will choose autonomy." - Brett Mitchell

For nearly thirty years, Brett Mitchell has lived alongside elephants — first in captivity, then, eventually, in the wild. His story begins in the mid-1990s, when he managed elephant-back safaris in Zimbabwe and South Africa. But as the captive industry grew more commercialized — and cruel — Brett found himself on the front lines, witnessing wild elephants being taken from their herds and funneled into tourism and entertainment. It was a tipping point.

Instead of accepting that reality, Brett made a decision that no one in South Africa had ever attempted at scale: he would return a full group of long-captive elephants back to the wild.

What followed was a decade-long experiment in patience, trust, and determination. Brett developed a gentle, step-by-step "soft release" process — walking with the elephants each day, letting them choose their waterholes, teaching them how to be wild again, and slowly removing himself from their world until one morning… they simply walked away.

"You look at these animals, and they're just so far removed from the life that I want them to have, that they should have that, we would hope that wild animals have. And they're just humiliated and degraded and they're so utterly powerless." - Nina Jackel

Today, we're taking you inside one of the darkest corners of the animal tourism industry — places where wild animals are stolen, broken, and paraded for human amusement.

Nina Jackel, founder of Lady Freethinker, an organization exposing and ending animal cruelty worldwide, and Blake Moynes, wildlife conservationist and founder of The Save Our Species Alliance, who recently went undercover in Thailand to document the hidden realities behind elephant rides, tiger selfies, and orangutan "shows."

What they found is heartbreaking — and it's happening far more often than most of us realize. Together, they're shining a light on the cruelty behind "cute" tourist attractions and building a movement to change what people see — and share — online.

Links:

https://ladyfreethinker.org/

https://thesosa.com/

"It was a really surreal experience because I didn't know what to expect from a tiger farm. I've been in a lot of industrial farms of other animals. I sort of thought to myself, 'surely it can't be, it can't be actually a farm like what we see, how we raise pigs and chickens and cows.' But it was it was literally a factory farm - a prison, essentially just row after row after row of tiger." - Amy Jones

There are moments when a single photograph can change how we see the world. For photojournalist Amy Jones that moment came inside a dark, airless building on the border of Thailand at a tiger farm.

That's where she met Salamas, a 20-year-old tiger who had spent her entire life in a concrete cell. Bred over and over again for the tourist and medicine trades. Amy's photograph of Salamas, a tiger who was skin and bones pressing her head against a cold wall, has gone on to win some of the most prestigious awards in photography, and brought international attention to an industry that almost no one knew existed, the factory farming of tigers.

This conversation is about the rescue of that tiger, about the power of visual storytelling and what it means to bear witness even when it breaks your heart.

"Because we're kind of lowering the stakes. We're saying it's okay to admit to yourself that you care about factory farming and you care about animals because we're not going to try and trick you into going vegan or whatever. And so it allows them to engage with the issue, maybe for the first time in a really serious way.

I think what we want to do is, just try and make it easier for more people to really engage with their values, and be an invitation to people to say, I know you care about this. I know when you see factory farming on you know, those annoying ads on your Instagram that show you what's going on, that you feel sad and you feel horrible about it. Let us help you do something about that in a way that fits your life and fits your lifestyle." – Thom Norman

Most of us agree that factory farming is one of the greatest sources of suffering on Earth. We hate it. We don't want to support it. And yet — it persists.

Today's guest, Thom Norman, is trying to change that. He's the co-founder of FarmKind, an organization that's asking a radical question: What if we stopped making compassion so hard?

Instead of telling people what not to eat, FarmKind is inviting everyone to help dismantle factory farming — not by guilt or purity tests, but through collective action. With their Compassion Calculator, just $23 a month has massive impact for animals. It's simple, inclusive, and it's working.

In this conversation, Thom and I talk about how factory farming got so bad, why lifestyle change alone isn't enough, and how shifting from shame to solidarity could open the biggest door yet — for animals, for people, and for real change.

Tom and his cofounder Aidan Alexander were on the show a year ago shortly after farm kind launched. A lot has happened in a year.