Essays grounded in the moral psychology of speciesism, the empirical record on what changes dietary behavior, and the slow, unglamorous work of widening the circle. New writing roughly every two weeks.
Ridglan Farms is empty and closed for good — 2,115 beagles out, the last 155 in August. Everyone involved tells a different story about why, and the story a movement settles on is not a postscript to the win. It is an input to the next one.
Read essay →A new review says plant-forward eating makes people look better and smell better. The fascinating question is why the mirror may move more people than the moral argument ever has — and whether that should bother us.
Read essay →The world's first octopus farm collapsed in July after five years of pressure. The surprise is not that people objected to a factory farm — it's that they objected on behalf of an animal with three hearts, no face, and eight arms that think.
Read essay →A federal law has protected America's wild horses since 1971 — as symbols of the frontier. A new investigation shows how easily a symbol can be sold for twenty-five dollars, and what the psychology of moral disengagement has to do with the rest.
Read essay →Four people who carried twenty-two beagles out of a Wisconsin lab-breeding facility face four felonies each and up to thirty-one years in prison — while the facility itself was never charged. On the category that turns a dog into property, and what a jury is about to be asked to price.
Read essay →New York's legislature has passed a ban on wild animals in traveling acts — big cats, bears, and primates — and it now waits to reach Governor Hochul's desk. On the spectacle of the trained wild thing, and what the trick requires us not to see.
Read essay →Forty cows ran from a California slaughterhouse and a whole city cheered. Two were spared and given names; thirty-eight were driven back and killed. On the identifiable victim effect, psychic numbing, and the minds we only see when they run.
Read essay →A Buenos Aires court has declared two goldfish — Fede and Magui — sentient beings rather than objects, and moved them out of a sushi shop's display case. On the animal we find easiest to overlook, and what it costs us to keep looking away.
Read essay →New York's City Council is weighing Intro 912, which would stop pet shops from selling parrots and finches — but not chickens. On the minds of birds, and the quiet logic of the exemption.
Read essay →Eleven days after another horse died in Central Park, a young man was killed there — Romanch Mahajan, eighteen — when a frightened horse bolted on a carriage ride. The welfare case was settled. Now the safety case is too. Pass Ryder's Law.
Read essay →Deniz collapsed on June 9th — the seventh horse incident in thirteen months. The mayor finally agrees the carriages have to go. So why, in 2026, is this still legal? Pass Ryder's Law.
Read essay →A Lone Star tick bite can turn a lifelong meat-eater into an accidental vegan overnight. On alpha-gal syndrome, the necessity myth, and the dignity of choosing.
Read essay →Information is not the bottleneck — defenses are. On sanctuaries, identity-safe entry points, and the slow unglamorous work that produces durable change.
Read essay →Why a fight with decisive welfare evidence keeps losing at the polls — and what the cities that won did differently.
Read essay →Why facts about animal cognition don't change minds — and what does. A reading of the meat paradox, moral disengagement, and identity-protective cognition.
Read essay →