What is a Pig Worth?

In 2017, Wayne Hsiung and a crew of animal rights activists from Direct Action Everywhere broke into a Utah pig farm run by Smithfield Foods, one of the largest pork distributors in the world. They were there to capture video of what they say were thousands of mistreated and abused animals kept in tiny metal cages barely bigger than their bodies. As they were leaving, they took two sick piglets out with them. Prosecutors in Utah charged Wayne with burglary and theft. What came next was the court battle that he wanted all along. During his trial, Wayne made a truly bizarre argument that forced the jury, and all of us, to stare straight at our complicated, sometimes uncomfortable relationship with animals. This week on the show, we grapple with the impossible question at the center of it: What is the value of a piglet? Special thanks to Kim Nederveen Pieterse, Nathan Peereboom, Jo Eidman, Sam Kozloff, Rachel Gross, Alex Allaux, and Joan Schaffner. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Sindhu Gnanasambandan and Jae MinardProduced by - Sindhu Gnanasambandanwith help from - Pat Walterswith mixing help from - Jeremy BloomFact-checking by - Diane A. Kellyand Edited by - Alex Neason and Pat Walters EPISODE CITATIONS: Articles - A Rabbit, is a rabbit, is a rabbit… Not under the Law (https://zpr.io/ezUPRE36VZVk) by Schaffner, J. E. in The Global Journal of Animal Law Animal Rights Activists Are Acquitted in Smithfield Piglet Case (https://zpr.io/ayaV9gDneNsw) by Andrew Jacobs in The New York Times Meet the Activists Risking Prison to Film VR in Factory Farms (https://zpr.io/HEXdpf5Q7VAB) by Andy Greenberg in Wired Audio - VR Puts Viewers Inside the Grisly Reality of Factory Farms (https://zpr.io/pMHq5RVkzUM3) a 2-part podcast by Wired Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Wait, you're listening?

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  Okay.

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  You're listening to Radiolab.

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  Radiolab.

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  From...

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  WNYC.

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  See?

• 0:14Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 0:19Speaker 03

  Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Latif Nasser, joined by producer Sindhu Nyanasambandhan.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Hey, Latif.

• 0:26Speaker 03

  And what do you got?

• 0:27Speaker 01

  Um, okay, so this one, it starts when this guy, Jay Menard, joined my meditation group.

• 0:32Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  We're also both journalists. And so, you know, one day, we started talking about the kinds of stories we are drawn to.

• 0:39Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  And, you know, we're both Buddhist, so we're interested in like impermanence, interconnection, and suffering, you know, death.

• 0:48Speaker 03

  And why death and suffering? Like, why is that a Buddhist, uh...

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, like, the idea is that when you look at the things that scare you, there's actually a chance for kind of like a deeper truth to show itself.

• 1:03Speaker 03

  Huh.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Anyway, it was like this whole conversation, and then at some point, we realized, in our own attempts to find this kind of story, we've actually both been tracking the same guy.

• 1:14Speaker 03

  What, really?

• 1:15Speaker 04

  Hey, how are you all?

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Hi, Wayne. This guy, Wayne Sheng.

• 1:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Nice to see you.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  Good to see you.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  So that's Jay. We actually ended up calling Wayne up together.

• 1:23Speaker 03

  Great. He was in California at the time.

• 1:25Speaker 04

  Oliver.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Oliver's there? That's your dog?

• 1:28Speaker 03

  His dog was there.

• 1:29Speaker 04

  Oliver. Come here, buddy.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:31Speaker 04

  Good boy, Oliver. He's so happy.

• 1:34Speaker 03

  Um, this little mutt.

• 1:35Speaker 04

  He's from China.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  And, um, once Oliver settled down, Wayne started telling us about, oddly enough, his childhood dog.

• 1:42Speaker 04

  So, I was not a very popular kid, not a very well-adjusted kid. I was fat. I was an immigrant. Did not have any social skills. I didn't speak English that well.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  So Wayne grew up in this, like, small little town in Indiana as one of the only Chinese kids.

• 1:55Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Had a lot of trouble in the friend department.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  But his family did have this dog.

• 2:00Speaker 04

  And this dog was just the love of my life. Her name was Vivian, and...

• 2:04Speaker 01

  This like black Labrador mutt.

• 2:06Speaker 04

  Every time when I came home from school, she literally jumps up and down, out of control. Vivian would cherish my every moment. Like, she would cherish every part of me and didn't care about how fat I was, you know, how dorky I was. She just loved me.

• 2:25Speaker 04

  But when I was, I believe, nine years old, we went back to China for the first time.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Like they were taking a family trip?

• 2:33Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:33Speaker 04

  My main kind of recollection from that trip was relatively early on, we were in southern China. And we went to this restaurant. They're called, I think they're called, the translation is something like a Wild Earth Restaurant.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  It's like a vegan restaurant or something like that?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Uh, no, the opposite.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  It's like, you know, when you go to the seafood restaurant where all the animals are like alive in these like aquariums and you could pick what you want.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  It's like that, except

• 3:01Speaker 01

  like there's every kind of animal.

• 3:05Speaker 04

  One of the things we saw was like, like a monkey in a cage.

• 3:10Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 3:10Speaker 04

  Like with a chain around his neck.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 3:14Speaker 04

  But then, like I, I heard barking from the back of the restaurant.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  He like turns around.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  And I saw a, a black dog. You know, probably like 30 or 40 pounds, just huddled in a cage.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And remember, he's like a nine-year-old kid.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  I remember just feeling like someone was killing my dog.

• 3:40Speaker 04

  I like grabbed my dad's legs and just started weeping uncontrollably. And I kept asking him, Dad, we have to stop them. We have to stop them. We have to help.

• 3:50Speaker 04

  And I still remember the words he told me, which were, "Son, this is just what they're taught.

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  And there's nothing for us to do."

• 4:02Speaker 04

  In Chinese culture, you do what you're taught. There's this Chinese term, "guai," that every kid in Chinese culture wants to be guai. And all the parents, everybody thought I was like the most guai kid because whatever the adults told me to do, I'd always do it. I was a very, very compliant child. And this is the first time I realized not everything that I'm taught is right. And, and that, that sense of distrust ended up being very important to the next 30-plus years of my life.

• 4:34Speaker 05

  So Wayne grows up, goes off to college, reads Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, becomes a vegan, goes on to law school, becomes a law professor.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 4:44Speaker 05

  But it wasn't until years later that he finally stopped following the rules and started figuring out how to do the thing that he had wanted to do all those years ago in that restaurant in China.

• 4:56Speaker 04

  I'm gonna show you a photo of what's happening inside this farm. Our activists were in this farm as recently as a couple of days ago.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  He co-founds this group called Direct Action Everywhere.

• 5:05Speaker 04

  Folks, we are about to march into a massive factory farm with the heart of darkness and hell.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Among other things, they break into factory farms and videotape everything to show people what the farm is like inside.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  The only way to make this act, this violence, stop is for people to take direct action.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  And they've done this dozens of times. Their videos have gotten thousands of views. And in 2017, one of their videos gets published by The New York Times.

• 5:33Speaker 04

  So Circle 4 is a farm that processes and kills 1.2 million pigs every year.

• 5:40Speaker 05

  So Wayne's standing in this scrubby desert field at twilight with four other guys.

• 5:45Speaker 04

  Paul's gonna be manning the camera. The rest of you are gonna help me with logistics and supplies.

• 5:48Speaker 05

  And just over the hill behind them is this enormous pig farm owned by Smithfield Foods, one of the largest pork producers in the world.

• 5:56Speaker 04

  Our naming objective today is exposure, to show the world what's actually happening behind these closed doors. So you all ready to go? Yeah. You ready to go? Let's do this.

• 6:10Speaker 05

  Then the video cuts to night.

• 6:11Speaker 04

  Alright, folks, we're about to head into Circle 4. This is the heart of evil.

• 6:14Speaker 05

  They flip their headlamps on and go in.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  This facility is massive. Even just this one barn, you can see down here, aisle after aisle after aisle.

• 6:22Speaker 05

  So they're walking around, filming things, and eventually they come across a litter of piglets.

• 6:28Speaker 04

  And this little piglet in the corner here, her face is covered in blood and she's down on the ground.

• 6:32Speaker 05

  And this time, they take two of the piglets out with them.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  And, you know, after the video got published in The New York Times, Smithfield issued a statement saying they'd commissioned this third-party audit of the farm that found no evidence of animal mistreatment. And they accused Wayne of editing the video to make the farm look bad. They also called the cops, and Wayne got charged with multiple felonies.

• 6:58Speaker 04

  Two counts of burglary and one count of felony theft.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Each of which could lead to years in prison.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  And so Wayne eventually heads to trial, and it's there that he does something we really didn't expect, like something sort of the opposite of what we thought someone like him would do.

• 7:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, this weird legal maneuver that forces the jury, and really all of us, to look at this thing we don't normally want to look at. This messy, kind of impossible question about our relationship with animals.

• 7:38Speaker 06

  Welcome. We're on record in the matter of state versus plane.

• 7:44Speaker 05

  The trial begins on October 3rd, 2022, in Western Utah. We're in this Cherrywood courtroom.

• 7:52Speaker 06

  The state is prepared to go forward.

• 7:56Speaker 05

  On one side, you have the prosecution, a man and a woman, both attorneys for the state.

• 8:00Speaker 06

  Mr. Shaw.

• 8:02Speaker 05

  And then, on the defense, Wayne.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  Oh, he's representing himself.

• 8:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  Huh.

• 8:08Speaker 05

  And he told us that

• 8:09Speaker 06

  Let's get the jury in.

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  he was feeling pretty nervous.

• 8:12Speaker 04

  Because you're waiting for these people who are going to decide your fate to come in.

• 8:17Speaker 06

  I'll rise for the jury.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  The jury files into their seats. Eight people, men and women, all locals, of course. And this is like a 75% Trump county. Smithfield is one of the biggest employers in the area.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  Oof, now great odds.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, a lawyer he talked to had begged him to take a plea.

• 8:37Speaker 04

  She described the situation as hopeless.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  No kidding.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  But he wanted the fight.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 8:45Speaker 07

  Ladies and gentlemen, the jury.

• 8:47Speaker 05

  So the trial begins with prosecution.

• 8:48Speaker 07

  The facts in this case will show.

• 8:50Speaker 05

  They argue basically.

• 8:51Speaker 07

  That among other things.

• 8:53Speaker 05

  This is simple.

• 8:53Speaker 07

  Mr. Wayne Shaw entered an unauthorized area owned by Smithfield Farms.

• 8:59Speaker 05

  Wayne broke into the farm.

• 9:00Speaker 07

  Without permission of the owners, removing two of the pigs.

• 9:03Speaker 05

  Took two piglets.

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  Skilling.

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  You know, there's really no, no question about it.

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  They actually filmed themselves doing it.

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  We have it on video.

• 9:13Speaker 07

  Then posted the video online.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Then.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  It's Wayne's turn.

• 9:20Speaker 04

  Against the advice of pretty much all the attorneys I've talked to, I'm going to tell you exactly what I did on the night of questioning.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  And he says it's true.

• 9:28Speaker 04

  I did remove two piglets from Smithfield Foods on the night of March 7th, 2017.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  I did it.

• 9:36Speaker 03

  Curious strategy for a defense attorney.

• 9:39Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Well, you know, Wayne says for better or worse.

• 9:42Speaker 04

  We weren't trying to hide what we had done.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Like in fact, he's like.

• 9:45Speaker 04

  The video should just be played before.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Play the video.

• 9:52Speaker 05

  And the prosecution is basically like.

• 9:54Speaker 08

  We have an order from the court that we would not talk about animals.

• 9:58Speaker 05

  No, no, no, no, we're not, we're not, we're not showing the video. And Wayne's like, no, come on, like, I want you to show the jury what happened.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  Why, why can't he play the video?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, like the prosecution argues that showing it would bias the jury against the farm.

• 10:14Speaker 04

  You can already hear the screams of the more pigs inside.

• 10:16Speaker 05

  And when you watch it.

• 10:17Speaker 04

  They're suffering and we're going to try and expose what's actually happening inside.

• 10:19Speaker 05

  You can understand why.

• 10:33Speaker 05

  It's this dark, endless building, um, filled with, uh, hundreds and hundreds of pigs in row on row of steel cages, not much larger than their bodies.

• 10:46Speaker 04

  These mother pigs are desperate to get out of their crates. They're smashing their heads up against these crates to the point that they have swelling on their faces, cuts on their faces.

• 10:56Speaker 05

  And the prosecution was like.

• 10:59Speaker 05

  That's not what this is about.

• 11:00Speaker 04

  The judge said over and over again, "Smithfield's not on trial, Mr. Chung, you are."

• 11:03Speaker 01

  But like, you know, like, the whole reason Wayne showed up in court and admitted what he did is that he can't actually put Smithfield on trial.

• 11:10Speaker 05

  Huh.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Because an animal doesn't have rights like a person.

• 11:14Speaker 04

  You can't file a legal complaint on their behalf.

• 11:16Speaker 05

  Right.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  But if Wayne gets arrested doing one of these rescues.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  Trusting ourselves in the position of the animal.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Then his thought is, "I can put Smithfield on trial through, you know, having him come after me."

• 11:28Speaker 05

  By putting myself on trial.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 05

  I see. So even though they rule that he cannot show the video.

• 11:33Speaker 04

  Mr. Toppin, my name is Wayne Chung. I'm the defendant in counsel in this case. I'm going to ask you a few questions to follow up on what Mr. Christiansen asked you. Is that all right? No problem.

• 11:42Speaker 05

  Whenever he starts questioning a witness.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Mr. Toppin, we testified that you viewed a video of an intrusion to your farms.

• 11:48Speaker 05

  You see him kind of sneaking in.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  But you had no knowledge of this intrusion prior to that video?

• 11:52Speaker 05

  And little details about the conditions of the farm.

• 11:55Speaker 04

  And that's probably because there are lots of piglets at Smithfield?

• 11:57Speaker 05

  Basically trying to get them to just.

• 11:59Speaker 04

  In fact, there are thousands of pigs even at a single farm like yours, correct?

• 12:02Speaker 05

  Describe what was in the video.

• 12:04Speaker 04

  It's also true that among those thousands of pigs, many of those piglets end up dying before they reach Florida, correct?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Objection at this point. But when he does that. It's relevant to the case. The prosecution objects. Sustaining objection.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  And then.

• 12:20Speaker 04

  You said previously that you cannot see the piglets inside because the building is completely enclosed, correct?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Wayne tries again. He did, Your Honor. I think the line of question we're going down is leading us toward our management practice. The prosecution objects again.

• 12:35Speaker 04

  But then I'll ask you just about a gestation.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  But Wayne does the same thing again.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  There are thousands of dead piglets at Smithfield Foods in any given one time, correct?

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Another objection. Sustained.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  And.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  And animals at Smithfield do have injuries or disease, they are often discarded, correct?

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Wayne just keeps doing this.

• 12:51Speaker 04

  And piglets are discarded into dumpsters. Presumably, these piglets are not sold for meat, correct?

• 12:57Speaker 06

  I'm just trying to establish it's sustained. I don't want you mentioning that again.

• 13:05Speaker 05

  Wayne's obviously getting nowhere.

• 13:07Speaker 06

  I'm just trying to establish I sustain the objection.

• 13:10Speaker 05

  He's pissing off the judge.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  I thought Wayne was a little cocky.

• 13:15Speaker 05

  And not just the judge.

• 13:16Speaker 09

  He's either, you know, really full of himself, hopelessly outmatched, or both.

• 13:20Speaker 05

  You know, we talked to a few of the jurors.

• 13:21Speaker 03

  Oh, wow. Amazing.

• 13:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And they said at this point, it didn't even seem like Wayne was acting like a real lawyer.

• 13:29Speaker 09

  He's an activist. People close down freeways just to get their point out there. I actually think that does a disservice, at least to me.

• 13:37Speaker 05

  You know, they felt that he was kind of using this trial to grandstand.

• 13:41Speaker 09

  I wasn't particularly happy about being tied up for a week.

• 13:45Speaker 05

  And most of them, they just wanted to get this over with.

• 13:47Speaker 09

  We need to be out of here by Saturday for game day.

• 13:50Speaker 05

  And go watch football.

• 13:51Speaker 09

  Utah's playing UCLA this weekend. So that's kind of my focus was not, was just getting done through this. Whatever we can do to speed this along, we're gonna do it.

• 14:00Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, Wayne's strategy to make this about Smithfield, like, it's really not working. But then.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  The first piglet Lily was suffering from a very serious foot injury.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  He starts to focus on these two particular piglets that he took, which he names Lily and Lizzie.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  She was starting to the point that she was approximately one-fourth the normal size. Objection, Your Honor. He's still talking about the conditions of the animals.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  And prosecution objects like always.

• 14:28Speaker 04

  This is about the individual piglet who was removed from the injury.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  But this time, the judge allows it.

• 14:34Speaker 04

  This is a piglet who had wounds all.

• 14:37Speaker 03

  Huh, why?

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, because Wayne is being charged with theft, right?

• 14:41Speaker 03

  Right.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  And in order for him to be convicted of theft, the law says the thing he took has to be worth something. So at the very least, he has to be able to talk about the objects he took.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Sure, yeah, that makes sense.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Um, so then.

• 14:56Speaker 04

  Tell us about these two individual pigs and their condition.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Wayne starts to make this case that, you know, these piglets, they're malnourished. Like, they're really sick.

• 15:04Speaker 04

  It shows the diorines were explosive.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  He calls a veterinarian to the stand.

• 15:08Speaker 08

  Kirsten Rosenberg.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Who argues.

• 15:11Speaker 08

  I don't think she had more than a 5% chance of surviving.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  The piglets probably weren't going to make it without the attention of a vet, which, you know, isn't cheap.

• 15:18Speaker 08

  That would cost a minimum of $315 to be to have heard the carrot patch to be good.

• 15:24Speaker 05

  And when you compare that to the monetary value of the piglet to the farm.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  What would be the value of a 10 to 12 pound piglet?

• 15:33Speaker 05

  Which another vet had testified was about $40.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  $42.20.

• 15:38Speaker 05

  If you do the math, these piglets would have been worth negative $272.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  Whoa, huh. So the money to rehabilitate them was more than the money that they were worth at the time?

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Exactly, which Wayne argued would mean he didn't technically commit theft.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Huh. Wow, what a weird move. It's like he clearly values the piglet because he broke into the farm to save it. But then now he's in court arguing that it actually has no value, less than no value, just so he won't get in trouble?

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like, it's more complicated than that.

• 16:13Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  So like, at one level, yes, he's saying that they don't have value, like a dollar value. But at the same time, he's also saying that they kind of have this different kind of value, like as living beings who can suffer.

• 16:28Speaker 04

  I'm going to move now to exhibit three.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  And in particular, he's arguing, like, the farm, they don't see the pigs this way.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  This is video footage of Lizzie the Piglet shortly after her first.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Like, you can really see this happening in this one moment where Wayne is trying to introduce this clip of one of the piglets.

• 16:44Speaker 04

  And what does the video show? It shows Lizzie's blood-covered face.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Ugh.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  And, you know, the prosecution objects, like always.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  You know, the district objects.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Saying like, you know, the blood on the piglet's face, that could have come from the mother. And it's not really about her.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  But the health of the piglet clearly depends on its relationship with the mom. So I don't know, it's.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Right, you can't actually separate these things, but like the judge is doing everything he can to try to do that. Like at one point, he watches the video, like when the jury's not in the room. And he's like, okay, well.

• 17:14Speaker 07

  Okay, well, look, this is, this is my concern. The, I'm not sure it's appropriate to, to show this out.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  We shouldn't see the mom. So how about, how about you just like print out a still shot and then cut out the piglet?

• 17:30Speaker 07

  That's what I would allow to go to the jury.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  This is so weird.

• 17:34Speaker 04

  I was just sitting at the defense table with a pair of scissors, cutting out eight little paper piglets. Looked like something from a second grade art class. And I just thought to myself, this is just stranger than fiction.

• 17:46Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 17:48Speaker 05

  And when the jury got these little cut out pictures.

• 17:52Speaker 10

  Hey, you, you group of adults who are all over the age of 30, we're not going to let you see this because it could be too upsetting and it could be too biasing. And I just, you know, it pissed me off.

• 18:04Speaker 11

  I remember holding this paper in my hands, looking at it as Wayne's describing it. I thought, why, why did you have to cut the paper?

• 18:11Speaker 05

  They told us at this point, they started to think like, what is it you don't want us to see here?

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:16Speaker 11

  That's when I started to question, wait a minute, if this is so clear cut, you should be able to lay out all the facts and let us

• 18:25Speaker 11

  make an educated decision.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  But before they could make any decision, we got the closing arguments.

• 18:34Speaker 07

  I think it's clear that the pigs were stolen.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  You know, the prosecution says.

• 18:37Speaker 07

  Imagine the use of the word rescue in some other contexts.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  The piglets did have value to the farm. Like even if they were sick, you can't just take them.

• 18:46Speaker 07

  Suppose you were in the grocery store and you saw a can with dented.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  They compared the piglets to a dented can?

• 18:54Speaker 03

  Uh, dent, oh, the, the runt piglets are dented cans.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. And like, you can't just take a dented can from a store.

• 19:01Speaker 07

  I'm gonna rescue that can, put it in my purse, take it out of the store.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 19:05Speaker 05

  But in Wayne's closing argument, after all this talk about economic value and these piglets being technically worth less than nothing, Wayne kind of just leaves that behind entirely and says, you know. You should just acquit me because I did the right thing. These piglets deserve to be saved.

• 19:25Speaker 04

  If you defend our right to give aid to dying animals, to defend the right of all citizens to aid dying and sick and in need animals, companies will be a little more compassionate to the creatures under their stewardship. Governments will be a little more open to animal cruelty complaints. And maybe, just maybe, a baby pig like Lily won't have to starve to death on the floor of the factory farm.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  The trial comes to a close, and after that, it's in the hands of the jury.

• 19:56Speaker 05

  So if we're thinking about this almost like 12 Angry Men, in the room, where were people's positions?

• 20:02Speaker 10

  The room was split about 50/50.

• 20:05Speaker 11

  There was one that was not guilty, two that we're pretty sure that were guilty, and then there was this mix in the middle of unsure.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  And where were you in that?

• 20:13Speaker 11

  I was the unsure.

• 20:15Speaker 10

  I wasn't sure what I was gonna do and whose side I was on. Okay.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  And since this is a criminal case, they need a unanimous vote.

• 20:22Speaker 10

  Right.

• 20:22Speaker 11

  Okay, let's do this.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Okay, so they first decide they're gonna tackle the burglary charge. And the technical definition of burglary, they're told, is...

• 20:31Speaker 10

  You're in a place that you're not supposed to be with the intent to take something of value.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  And, you know, they'd actually seen that part of the video where Wayne is like outside the farm giving his team instructions, and he says...

• 20:45Speaker 10

  If.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  If.

• 20:46Speaker 10

  If we find an animal in need, we'll do what we have to do. If. If.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  And this if, they argue, like, it frees him from intent.

• 20:55Speaker 10

  Huh. We unanimously agreed you couldn't charge them with the burglary.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  So burglary, done. Next, they have theft.

• 21:04Speaker 10

  He did take the thing.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  He took the thing.

• 21:07Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  But remember, like, theft requires proving that the thing that was taken has, quote, "value." Was it monetary value or just value?

• 21:17Speaker 10

  Just value. Oh. So, yeah, they just said it has to have value.

• 21:22Speaker 05

  And you have to keep in mind here, there's two types of value in the room. There's the economic value.

• 21:27Speaker 10

  Right.

• 21:28Speaker 05

  Which, if you took this argument that it was zero or even negative, would get him off the hook.

• 21:34Speaker 10

  Correct.

• 21:35Speaker 05

  But also this other kind of value, like the inherent value of a living thing, a being. And Wayne obviously believes in this. It's what motivated him to take the piglets in the first place. And if the piglets have that kind of value, then the law says he should be guilty.

• 21:52Speaker 10

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  What?

• 21:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a paradox.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Like, the logic flips.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Flips, yeah. Right. Bizarre.

• 21:58Speaker 10

  It's a conundrum.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  The question becomes, like, what kind of value are we talking about here?

• 22:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  And so they're like, OK, well, maybe we just ask the judge.

• 22:06Speaker 10

  You know, we went and we talked to the bailiff, and we said, hey, we've got a question. Can we go give this to the judge for them to talk about? And so our question was-

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Who determines the value of the pig? To whom? Is it to Smithfield? Is it to Wayne?

• 22:19Speaker 10

  Is it us? Is it the free trade market? Is it the New York Stock Exchange? Value to whom?

• 22:25Speaker 01

  And?

• 22:26Speaker 10

  We actually asked if we could all go outside into that locked parking lot that we had all been driving into all week and just get some fresh air while they deliberated.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  They're asked to come back, and they're handed a paper that has the response and-

• 22:39Speaker 03

  From the judge.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  From the judge. And what that paper says is-

• 22:42Speaker 10

  It's for you to decide.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  They're missing that game.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And like, this, to me, is like, sort of crazy. It's like, how? Is there no answer to this question?

• 22:59Speaker 05

  We will watch the jury try to find one and try to find some answers ourselves right after we take a very quick break. We'll be right back.

• 23:18Speaker 12

  Radiolab is supported by Capital One. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com/bankai. Capital One, N.A., member FDIC.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  Pollsters are gearing up to get a bad rap yet again, but they do more than sometimes miss on election outcomes.

• 23:51Speaker 13

  People want to raise taxes on the rich. I can tell you that definitively because we know it from polling. And if we lose trust in polls, we have no way to understand what Americans want to be done.

• 24:05Speaker 00

  On this week's On the Media from WNYC. Find On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.

• 24:16Speaker 03

  Welcome back. This is Radiolab. Animal rights activist Wayne Shung is still on trial for theft. And the jury has asked the judge to clarify what it means for piglets to have, quote, unquote, "value" so they can help make their decision. And in response, the judge has basically shrugged.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, we actually ran the situation by-

• 24:39Speaker 14

  Justin Marceau, and I'm a law professor at the University of Denver.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Kristen, still at Harvard Law School. Couple of animal law professors. It's kind of crazy to me that there isn't a clear definition. Value seems like such a vague term.

• 24:52Speaker 14

  Well, yeah, I mean, yes and no, right? I mean, it rarely comes up.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Justin, he told us, like, basically with any other object-

• 24:59Speaker 14

  The value is set. The value is fixed. We know how much your car is worth. We could figure out how much your printer is worth. We could figure out how much your computer is worth, but-

• 25:07Speaker 01

  When you ask that same question about animals-

• 25:09Speaker 14

  Our intuition tells us that an animal is nothing like a couch. It's nothing like a car. It's, you know, not even really like a family heirloom.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  It gets weird.

• 25:19Speaker 14

  Like, that's a strange scenario.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Because this value question, like, it quickly gets us to this much bigger question.

• 25:25Speaker 14

  What is an animal in the law?

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Like, what even are they?

• 25:29Speaker 13

  That's a big question. That is the big question.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like it. It's a great question.

• 25:35Speaker 05

  And how you answer this question is about value, sure, but also about whether they deserve protection or, like, have rights.

• 25:42Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 25:43Speaker 05

  So legal scholars have actually come up with-

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Three big buckers.

• 25:50Speaker 14

  This three-part framework.

• 25:51Speaker 05

  Three ways of thinking about these questions. Uh huh.

• 25:53Speaker 14

  And the first is.

• 25:54Speaker 15

  They are property.

• 25:55Speaker 14

  They are just ours to use.

• 25:57Speaker 05

  Like, just think about how we farm animals that we eat. This is just like, just stuff? Yeah, yeah.

• 26:02Speaker 14

  They just exist to do what you want to them. Category two is.

• 26:06Speaker 15

  A view in which we may still see animals as property, but we value them insofar as we benefit.

• 26:16Speaker 05

  Basically, animals are property that mean something to us. Think of a pet or a workhorse. And therefore, we protect them.

• 26:26Speaker 14

  Laws passed in that vein would be done to help animals, but the ultimate beneficiary is humans.

• 26:31Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 26:32Speaker 15

  And then the third approach is that animals, well, they have some approximate equality to humans, approximate.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  And this one, they told us, is harder to find. An example could maybe be animal testing bans on chimpanzees.

• 26:45Speaker 14

  We're providing protection for them because we think it's the right thing to do for them.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so anyway, it's a helpful framework. But the problem is, like, any certain type of animal can actually, like, fit into more than one bucket.

• 27:02Speaker 16

  What is that?

• 27:03Speaker 03

  This is a rabbit.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  A rabbit, like, consider a rabbit. I feel deeply connected to rabbits.

• 27:10Speaker 15

  A rabbit can be a pet?

• 27:11Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  And in that category, they kind of have, like, the highest level of protections. Like, you have to feed them, you have to, like, keep them warm. But also, a rabbit can be. Ooh, mess him up.

• 27:22Speaker 15

  A prey animal.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  You know, something you hunt for sport.

• 27:24Speaker 15

  A rabbit can be an animal. biomedical research with rabbits is behind the development of most prescription drugs. Who's tested upon in the lab.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  These lab rabbits, they actually have more protections than the ones that are raised.

• 27:37Speaker 15

  Almost like in a factory farm for fur.

• 27:39Speaker 16

  Mittens and liners, hats. You're just gonna need a few ingredients. You'll obviously need some rabbit.

• 27:46Speaker 15

  Or for food.

• 27:47Speaker 16

  I'm going to cut the rabbit. You just twist it off.

• 27:52Speaker 15

  A rabbit cuts across all these categories.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  And it's just context here. Context is the thing that slots the rabbit into one or another of these categories.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Right, right. Like, we kill rabbits all the time for food or fur. But let's say somebody kills your pet rabbit. That could be a felony.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  This was a pet with a name. That changed sort of the protections that it had.

• 28:15Speaker 05

  It?

• 28:15Speaker 01

  She had. Pronouns becomes this whole thing.

• 28:19Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  Right, right, right. This is funny because it's like the other pronoun battle that you're not paying attention to.

• 28:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, which seems silly, but like it gets to this question of like, what category are they? You know, are they something or someone?

• 28:34Speaker 03

  Right.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Right, right. And it's not just rabbits. Like, take dogs.

• 28:38Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Like, if your dog gets run over, you get whatever you bought the dog for. Like, you know, like the $50 adoption fee.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  Oh, wow, that's cold.

• 28:47Speaker 05

  On the other hand...

• 28:48Speaker 01

  When you die, you can leave your dog or cat all of your money.

• 28:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's pretty wild. And you can really see the court struggling with this contradiction. Like, there was this one case where a dog was run over in front of its owner.

• 29:01Speaker 15

  The court says, "Look, this dog was a family member."

• 29:03Speaker 05

  And the family got to sue for emotional distress.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 29:07Speaker 05

  And then there was this other case in Texas where they ruled, yeah, the dog is property.

• 29:10Speaker 15

  And then they literally say, "Not like a toaster."

• 29:13Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Okay. And this confusion about what animals are, like what they deserve from us in the law, like, all of that, like, that is what the jury was thrown into when the judge left it up to them to decide what the value of the piglets were. The value of the pig meant something different to different people.

• 29:32Speaker 09

  The conversation was all over the place.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  And they were bouncing around these categories, too. Like, on the one hand...

• 29:38Speaker 03

  There were some pretty impassioned arguments about, you know, the inherent value of life.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  There was this religious view in the room.

• 29:44Speaker 09

  Let's just say they have a soul.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Also, like...

• 29:46Speaker 03

  Always had dogs, cats, fish, hamsters, kind of you name it, growing up. They were my best friends.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  I just love them. Love animals. You know, it was a group of people that cared about animals. But also, some of them had strong feelings about property.

• 29:59Speaker 10

  Somebody brought up like an example of if I have a rust bucket of a lawnmower sitting in my backyard, can somebody just come in and take it and go, oh, they're not using it?

• 30:08Speaker 11

  You know, what if I had a paperclip in my hand? Would it have value to me and someone else would throw it away?

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Which sparked a lot of conversation about the value the pigs to Smithfield.

• 30:16Speaker 10

  Is there any value to a dead piglet? You know, are they put into fertilizer? Are they put into feed? Wow, they are really going all over the place here.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:25Speaker 11

  Everything someone was saying about value made sense. But you put all those legitimate thoughts together, they conflicted.

• 30:34Speaker 10

  You know, and we had been deliberating for seven hours at this point. I'd heard just about every argument I'd been running through my head. I had jumped that fence a couple of times myself.

• 30:44Speaker 09

  It was very, very emotional.

• 30:45Speaker 10

  There was tears, there was some table thumping.

• 30:48Speaker 09

  So we took a break and we all went out and walked around.

• 30:51Speaker 11

  Just had a minute to get out of the situation and allow the mind to just kind of calm a little bit.

• 30:57Speaker 09

  And I went up to the one gentleman and I says, I'm not sure we're going to get this resolved. And he says, well, I want you to go talk to the one gal that agrees with you and see if you guys would even budge.

• 31:11Speaker 09

  So I went over and talked to this gal. I said, I really think we owe it to everybody, to us as jurors, to the defendants, to the to come up with a unanimous decision.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  The court clerk called me.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  On the phone?

• 31:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, said, you know, there's a verdict, you should come in.

• 31:45Speaker 04

  Judge calls the jury in.

• 31:48Speaker 04

  When the jury walked into kind of the jury seating area, and they walked in, you know, two single file lines, got into these two rows, eight jurors. I was like on the side of the table so I could look straight at them. They didn't really give me eye contact, and they looked kind of avoidant.

• 32:05Speaker 05

  Oh, boy.

• 32:06Speaker 06

  The defendant, Jer Presen, I'd ask the jury foreperson to identify.

• 32:12Speaker 05

  The foreperson raised their hand.

• 32:14Speaker 06

  Thank you. So, sir, has the jury reached a verdict?

• 32:17Speaker 05

  The judge asks them if they had come to a unanimous decision. Yes. The man says, yes.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  Man, they've reached a verdict. Let's get ready.

• 32:25Speaker 06

  The defendant's to stand while the-

• 32:27Speaker 05

  Wayne stands up.

• 32:29Speaker 06

  Clerk reads the verdicts, and I'll ask that the people in the courtroom remain silent.

• 32:35Speaker 05

  And the clerk starts to read.

• 32:37Speaker 06

  State of these hours is Wayne in St. John's, case number 181, 500061. We, the jurors, in the above case, find an opinion of any innocent here has fault, count two. Wherever we have a-

• 32:50Speaker 01

  First burglary?

• 32:51Speaker 06

  Not guilty.

• 32:52Speaker 05

  Not guilty?

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then theft.

• 32:54Speaker 06

  Theft. Not guilty.

• 32:56Speaker 04

  Wait, what? Not guilty?

• 32:58Speaker 05

  Whoa, both not guilty.

• 33:02Speaker 04

  I did kind of a double take. I was like, oh, we've won.

• 33:05Speaker 05

  Wow, huh. And wow, I'm now so curious what these jurors said happened behind the scenes.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Well, actually, one of the jurors we spoke to, she kind of had this like, this thought, this like metaphor, that really like helped her kind of come to her decision. And apparently helped a lot of the jurors in the room.

• 33:24Speaker 11

  I just visually saw this pig just sitting in a box. And I thought, okay, who's holding this box and what value does this pig have? And I started voicing this analogy out loud, and I said, so, and I mentioned this juror's name, and I says, if you're holding this pig, this pig has huge amounts of value to you. I said, if I'm holding this pig, it has value to me. It's a living, breathing animal. It has a conscience. It's alive. And I said, what if we put it in the hands of Smithfield Farms? Does this pig have value?

• 34:04Speaker 03

  But wouldn't that logic just like either you can say it had value to him. So it is a crime or it didn't have value to Smithfield, who he took it from. So no, no value there, not a crime. Like basically this logic just lets the jury vote for whoever they want to vote for. Right?

• 34:25Speaker 11

  I mean, some of the jurors we spoke to didn't see it that way.

• 34:28Speaker 10

  I did it by the books. I did what was legally presented to me on a document that was agreed upon by all parties.

• 34:34Speaker 11

  They felt like they were following the letter of the law.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  Huh.

• 34:37Speaker 11

  But at the same time, this other juror we talked to not having an answer to the question of value gave me the instructions of it's okay to make that moral decision.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  She said she did feel like there was space for her to do what she felt was right. And, you know, this is part of what Wayne was trying to do, like to make it a moral decision, like even just giving them names, Lily and Lizzie, which by the way, even the prosecution at one point started using.

• 35:05Speaker 15

  Once you start seeing people referring to them by the name, then kind of conceptually, you're recognizing that there's something more than, you know, Smithfield 245.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Like one of the jurors told us.

• 35:17Speaker 10

  I don't remember a lot of things from that trial, but I remember those two piglets names.

• 35:21Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  And according to Justin, who actually interviewed all the jurors himself for his own research.

• 35:26Speaker 14

  I mean, I think there were some moral pulls there, but they were still looking for a legalistic, you know, kind of hook to, to, to land on.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Both these ways of thinking were in the room, like they both played a part.

• 35:39Speaker 03

  Okay. So, okay, now just zooming out, what did this case change after everything?

• 35:47Speaker 05

  Well, in, in a legal sense, not much, really.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  Wow, that's not the answer I expected you were gonna say.

• 35:55Speaker 05

  So, yeah, I mean, so the best they could have hoped for was that actually there would be a guilty verdict and they could bring it to an appeals court. And within an appeals court, you know, it could change case law. But this.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Oh, funny, he was too successful too early.

• 36:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, and what actually ended up happening is that state legislators, after this case, passed this law that said, you know, you can't use the animals being sick and therefore worthless as a defense.

• 36:24Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 36:25Speaker 05

  For taking them.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  So that actually backfired. God.

• 36:28Speaker 05

  Legally, in Utah, it does sort of seem that way.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and like, the other thing that seems to have come out of this is that companies and prosecutors are, they're like, okay, well, that was a disaster. They don't want to go through that again. Let's stop charging these activists with theft and, you know, maybe just charge them with trespass so that we don't get into this whole like, value debate.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Right, because otherwise, we're drawing attention to the thing that we don't want to draw attention to. Like, it's like they're just avoiding, they're ducking the fight.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Totally. Like, there was this whole other case in Wisconsin where, two weeks before the trial was supposed to start, they dropped the charges. And he and his team actually wrote it and they're like, no, we still want this trial.

• 37:07Speaker 03

  Everything about this guy's story in these legal cases feels upside down, you know?

• 37:12Speaker 05

  But if you think about it, it makes sense. Wayne actually needs the courts. He needs this platform to force people to really sit in the confusion and grapple with these questions.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  You know, like, one of the things Justin told us is-

• 37:28Speaker 14

  Often, people can just turn away. If you're uncomfortable with something, you just look away or you have an explanation. But these cases don't allow that, right? You're on the jury, forced to confront it.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  And that's exactly what happened to the jurors in this case. And going through that, it bonded them.

• 37:46Speaker 11

  We all had each other's phone numbers. And we thought, man, it would be nice just to get together and talk outside of here.

• 37:53Speaker 09

  So I invited everybody over to the house.

• 37:55Speaker 05

  You know, they would get together over dinners.

• 37:57Speaker 09

  One of the jurors brought over his pizza oven. We've actually got to be pretty good friends.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  I'm curious, have you guys talked at all about like,

• 38:12Speaker 01

  like eating pork or like the sort of like the pigs, like that that element of it? Has that come up?

• 38:20Speaker 11

  Initially, like when we very first kind of got together, we talked about it. And I think most people still do eat meat.

• 38:27Speaker 09

  You know, I used to have a habit of I jog on Saturdays and kind of my thing was I'd come home, cook up some bacon. My, my daughter said, well, you can't do that anymore. You can't eat bacon anymore. I was like, all right, that's true. And so it did, it kind of changed. But you do, it's, it's hard after years and years of being in a certain way to completely change. The fact of the matter is, no matter what all these activists do and everything, protein, meat from animals is going to be used by a good portion of the public. But can it be done in a way that's humane? They were on a farm. They're not in these processed facilities where they're in a cage. Where can we find that? We actually found a place north of us here up in Parawan.

• 39:09Speaker 10

  I'm not going to lie, if I, if I see like a nice dollar slice of pepperoni or something, it's still, it still is appealing to me, but it's just not something that I've gone back to.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Maybe despite the fact that like there's not really legal precedents in this case and there's law from Utah, Justin, he told us like this case points at this shift in the way we see and therefore like the law will see animals.

• 39:47Speaker 14

  Increasingly, science and sort of our own human understanding of animals is making it clear that animals, you know, are not property. And, you know, that's, that's part of the reason that I enjoy talking to these jurors and have spent so many hours doing so from different cases is people who have never thought about animals and the law and their status, when they are confronted with these issues, they do overwhelmingly say, huh. That's interesting. And whether they acquit or convict, it wasn't easy for them and it wasn't obvious. And that's sort of how I see animal law going. It's going to be this incremental process that's going to be hard. Sometimes, just like with the jurors, it's going to be tearful.

• 40:28Speaker 14

  But fundamentally, all of the field of animal law is about asking people to answer this question for themselves.

• 40:50Speaker 03

  This episode was reported by Sindhu Yanisammanen and Jay Menard and produced by Sindhu Yanisammanen with help from Pat Walters. It was edited by Alex Neeson and Pat Walters and fact-checked by Diane A. Kelly. Special thanks to Kim Naderfain Pieterse, Nathan Peereboom, Joe Eidman, Sam Kozloff, Rachel Gross, and Alex Io.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What happened to the piglets, Lily and Lizzie?

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so after Wayne took them from the farm, he brought them to this sanctuary where they were nursed back to health. And kind of bizarrely, some months after the trial, the jurors, they actually went to go visit them. Like, Justin invited them to do that.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 41:31Speaker 10

  Last time we had seen them, I mean, you know, teeny tiny little piglets, like a mango.

• 41:36Speaker 09

  Little teeny thing. We were just amazed to see these.

• 41:39Speaker 11

  Massive animals.

• 41:41Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Anyway, the thing that really stood out that they said was this one little detail about how they looked.

• 41:48Speaker 09

  Their skin is so white.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  They're white. It's just this feature of this breed that's really common in big farms. But what that meant for them is that they basically couldn't go in the sun without getting sunburned.

• 42:00Speaker 03

  Huh.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I just have this image stuck in my head of Lily and Lizzie, these like two giant pigs with like paper white skin laying in the shade of a tree on this farm so they don't get sunburned.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Gabby. I'm from the Bay Area, California. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. Sauron Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sandback is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Jeremy Blum, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gabel, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Keelty, Mona Murgauker, Alex Neeson, Sarah Kari, Natalia Ramirez, Rebecca Rand, Anissa Vitza, Arianne Wack, Molly Webster, and Jessica Young, with help from Gabby Santos.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Natalie Middleton, Angeli Mercado, and Sophie Samai.

• 43:18Speaker 17

  Hey, Radiolab. Michael Tacoma-Washington. Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.