Species Unite

"Let's say that you eat meat and you're sitting down and you're biting into a juicy hamburger, and your dining companion turns to you and says, 'Elizabeth, you know that hamburger is actually not made from beef. It's made from golden retrievers.'" – Melanie Joy Melanie Joy is a psychologist, author, and the person who gave a name to something that most of us have been living with our whole lives without noticing. She coined the term carnism, the invisible belief system that conditions us to eat certain animals but not others. And her best selling book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows, has been asking people to question that conditioning for over a decade. We talk about how Carnism works, why even compassionate people resist the information and what it actually takes to change not just what we eat, but how we relate to each other and ourselves. It's a conversation that starts with food and ends with something much bigger.

"I think something that I learned from doing that was that this is all in our heads, like it's all for show just because there's a security guard that even if he's right in front of you, it doesn't mean you can't just run past him and carry on. Just because there's a fence doesn't mean you can't climb over or cut through it. And CCTV like it doesn't matter. We're doing this openly anyway. We're not hiding anything. So that's like, that's kind of irrelevant." - Rose Patterson Rose Patterson is co-director of Animal Rising, one of the UK's most visible and disruptive animal advocacy movements. Over the years, she's helped lead open rescues, mass direct actions and investigations that have forced national conversations about factory farming, animal testing and the systems designed to keep animal suffering out of public view. Animal rising has blockaded distribution centers, exposed RSPCA certified factory farms and rescued animals from facilities that most people didn't even know existed. This episode centers on something more immediate. In 2022, Rose and other Animal Rising activists openly rescued beagles from the UK's last beagle breeding facility for animal testing, fully aware that they could face prison for doing so. Rose and I talk about what it means to choose open rescue over covert action, how Animal Rising has evolved from headline grabbing moments to sustained, high impact campaigns, and why Rose, facing a potential prison sentence, describes her situation as a win either way. Underneath all of it runs a question at the heart of every justice movement what are we willing to risk when we know suffering is happening? Since this interview was recorded, Rose's verdict has come in — she and the four Animal Rising campaigners she was accused alongside were all found not guilty. I am very happy to share that news with you! https://www.animalrising.org/

"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,

"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.

This week, we're doing something a little different. Instead of a conversation, we're sharing something we've been working on for the past year — our new short documentary, 30,000 Monkeys in Our Backyard. It tells the unbelievable true story of how a small town in Georgia became ground zero for a proposed facility that would have housed 30,000 monkeys for laboratory testing — and how a group of everyday people stood up, fought back, and changed the course of their town's future. The film is a story about courage, community, and what happens when people refuse to stay silent. 30,000 Monkeys in Our Backyard premieres November 1st on YouTube — and you can watch it, share it, and take action at speciesunite.com/30000monkeys

"Maybe when we started doing this with animals, researching on them and studying them for human benefit hundreds of years ago, we didn't know about their sentience. We didn't know that they had emotions and feelings and felt pain. And we know all that now. We can't ignore that." – Melanie Kaplan When journalist Melanie Kaplan agreed to foster a beagle named Hammy, she knew he'd just been released from a research lab. What she didn't know was how profoundly his story — and the world he came from — would change her own. In her new book, Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research, Melanie takes readers deep inside the hidden world of animal testing — one that quietly breeds and experiments on tens of thousands of dogs each year, mostly beagles, chosen for their size and gentle nature. Through her journey with Hammy, she unravels how these animals end up in labs, what happens to them there, and what it takes to help them heal once they're free. Our conversation explores the long and often secretive history of animal testing in the U.S., the shocking revelations behind the Envigo case — where 4,000 beagles were rescued from a breeding facility in Virginia — and the growing movement toward humane, non-animal alternatives. Links: Melanie Kaplan: https://melaniedgkaplan.com/index.html Lab Dog: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/melanie-d-g-kaplan/lab-dog/9781541604988/

"All those kinds of brands in food and in fashion helped pave the way for where we are now. So, on the one hand, it's crushing that they no longer exist, but on the other hand, part of the reason they don't exist is because it has also become a bit more mainstream, you know? So, you know where we are right now in East London, there used to be an amazing vegan food market, and it went on for a number of years and then it died. But actually the founder of that vegan market said, 'guys, it's not a bad thing. The reason we don't exist anymore is because it's easy to find vegan food everywhere now. And it wasn't when we started, right?' That need is being met by way more people. It's becoming mainstream." – Annick Ireland Today's conversation is with Annick Ireland, founder of Immaculate Vegan—the world's leading destination for ethical, sustainable, and cruelty-free fashion. What started in 2019 with women's shoes and handbags has grown into a global platform featuring over 140 brands across categories from clothing to kids, pets, and even homeware. Annick and her team are proving that style and ethics not only can go hand in hand—they're reshaping the mainstream fashion industry itself. In this episode, we talk about the rise of vegan fashion, the power of conscious consumers, the exciting new wave of bio-based materials, and how inclusivity—not perfection—is what drives real change.

"You know, you walk through a forest. Every leaf on every tree is unique. And that's what biology does. We are all unique, right? Everything about us that biology does, it's so magical. It's so special. And we now have the ability to harness biology in the way that nature does." – Suzanne Lee Suzanne Lee is the founder of Biofabricate and for more than two decades she's been uniting scientists, designers, artists, and dreamers to prove that biology isn't just inspiration — it's the next frontier of design. She's leading a movement to replace plastics, leather, and petrochemicals with materials born from life itself — brewed, cultivated, and created in harmony with nature. I just spent a few days in London at Biofabricate's Biofab Fair, a celebration of biology-based technologies and the innovators behind them. These weren't the usual alternatives to leather or plastic. Imagine a world where textiles aren't manufactured from fossil fuels, animal skins, or even plants — but grown from microbes, mycelium, algae, and engineered proteins. There were fabrics brewed in vats, colors grown by living microbes, perfumes made with the DNA of extinct flowers, and leather-like sheets made from banana waste and mycelium. Each innovation not only reimagines what we wear and use, but also reshapes how we think about design, beauty, and even culture. After the fair, Suzanne and I sat down to debrief — to talk about how far this movement has come, what's next for biofabrication, and how growing the materials of the future might just change everything. Links: Biofab Fair Website https://www.biofab.world/ Biofabricate Website https://www.biofabricate.co/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/biofabricate/ Materials and brands mentioned in episode: Ephea https://ephea.bio/ Polybion https://www.polybion.bio/ Uncaged Innovations: https://uncagedinnovations.com/ Spyber: https://spiber.inc/en Holon Bionics https://holonbionics.com/ Banofee https://www.banofileather.com/ AB In Bev https://www.ab-inbev.com/ MM Limited https://www.mm-greentech.com/aboutus

"Now more than ever, a lot of farmers are caught in between this kind of industrial complex that that is difficult to pay the bills with - so you got to get subsidies, and the very real problem of being exposed to all the chemicals that they have to use to make anything grow in soil that's been hammered and depleted." - Alex Woodard This episode isn't about animals. It's about the ground beneath our feet — and what happens when we forget that our own health, our food, and our future are all rooted in the soil. In his novel Ordinary Soil, Alex Woodard tells the multigenerational story of a farming family in the Oklahoma Panhandle, tracing how decades of industrial agriculture and chemical dependence have unraveled both the land and the people living on it. The result is a sweeping and deeply human narrative that blends science, history, and fiction to show just how interconnected we are with the earth that feeds us. This conversation is about more than farming. It's about resilience, healing, and the choices we still have to turn things around — for ourselves, our communities, and the planet.

"That is no life for these birds and it is definitely not what the consumer is thinking or assuming. When they see these nice labels and they think, 'oh, I'm paying so much more for this, that change must be going for the animals, right?' No, it's lining the pockets and it's keeping that status quo of that factory farm going." Amber Canavan Most of us want to make choices that are kinder—to animals, to the planet, to ourselves. But in today's food system, kindness is often buried under labels like "cage free," "humane certified," or even "climate-friendly beef." These terms are designed to make us feel good, but as PETA's Amber Canavan reveals, they hide the same suffering and environmental destruction. For more than a decade, Amber has led campaigns that expose this "humane washing" and push companies—from Starbucks to Whole Foods—to do better. This conversation is about pulling back the curtain on the myths we've been sold, and about the power each of us has to choose differently. One of the simplest, most impactful ways to take action is with what's on our plate. That's why, this October, we're inviting you to join Species Unite's Plant-Powered Challenge—a 30-day adventure to try delicious, cruelty-free food, reduce your climate footprint, and stand with the animals. Because real change doesn't come from labels. It comes from us.