Sebastián Arévalo Sánchez and Fundacion Pasos Libres

It started with six words. A student stayed behind after a workshop and told Sebastián Arévalo Sánchez something she'd never told anyone. That moment set him on a path that would become Fundación Pasos Libres — one of Colombia's innovative anti-trafficking organizations.In this episode, recorded on the ground in Colombia, Preston Goff sits down with Sebastián, co-founder and CEO of Pasos Libres, to talk about a radically different approach to fighting human trafficking: don't just warn young people they might become victims — invite them to become the solution. Through hackathons and "data jams" run in partnership with IBM and the Traffik Analysis Hub, Sebastián's teams have built real tools now used by banks, NGOs, and law enforcement to identify traffickers and protect the vulnerable.Together they dig into what trafficking actually looks like in Colombia, beyond the sexual exploitation that dominates the headlines, into forced criminality, forced recruitment, and the armed-group dynamics that blur the line between victim and perpetrator. They confront the double edge of artificial intelligence: how criminal networks are already using it to build fake companies, chatbots, and job offers that are nearly impossible to spot, and how the same technology, kept in human hands, can accelerate the fight against them.This is a conversation about grassroots courage, social innovation, and the stubborn hope that keeps this work alive. As Sebastián puts it, better tools mean nothing if we forget why we're using them.Follow Fundación Pasos Libres at fundacionpasoslibres.org and @fpasoslibres.Until All Are Free is a production of The Exodus Road. Learn more at theexodusroad.com.Follow the show and find all episodes at uaafpod.com.

Shyam Kamble has spent 26 years fighting human trafficking in India — the last eleven with The Exodus Road, where he's helped bring justice and freedom to some 2,300 survivors. In this conversation, recorded in Bangkok, Shyam walks Preston through how trafficking actually works in India: the recruitment routes running out of Bangladesh, Nepal, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan; the pull of a city like Mumbai for a girl who has been promised a job; the market forces inside a brothel that make a child more valuable than an adult. He explains why online recruitment hasn't taken hold there the way it has in the U.S. — and why that makes traffickers harder, not easier, to catch. He describes a 2025 case involving a fifteen-year-old Bangladeshi student that drew in her country's High Commission and ended with her going home.And he makes an argument you don't often hear from someone who has spent a career kicking down doors: that the real victory isn't the rescue. It's the education, in remote communities, that keeps a family from selling a daughter in the first place.Content note: this episode contains frank discussion of the sexual exploitation and abuse of children.

While the world is often warned about a surge of trafficking victims that never fully manifest at large sporting events, a different harm was already underway in plain sight — in the labor camps, construction sites, and cleared neighborhoods that have historically made the World Cup tournaments possible.In Qatar, migrant workers recruited under false promises built the stadiums for 2022. In Russia, the same pattern is visible behind different fencing. In Brazil, whole communities were displaced to clear the way. In each situation, a labor system was devleoped to make exploitation easy to overlook.In part two of The Cost of the Cup, host Preston Goff follows the thread Part One left hanging — from the myth that captured everyone's attention to the harm that never needed to hide, because few were actually looking. This episode traces that pattern across three World Cups, and asks what it means for the tournaments still to come.

Before every major sporting event, like the World Cup, the Super Bowl, the same warning comes back around: tens of thousands of women and girls may be trafficked in for the event. In 2006, Germany was told to brace for 40,000. When the tournament was over, investigators could only connect five cases to it. In part one of The Cost of the Cup, we follow that number from the moment it was invented, through every host city that inherited it, to the fact-checkers and researchers who kept finding nothing. And then we ask the harder question underneath the myth: if the flood never actually arrives, why do we keep aiming the light at the stadium? Because while we're looking there, we're looking away from where the crime may actually live en masse — who it targets, who does the recruiting, and how it really works.Until All Are Free is hosted by Preston Goff, and is a production of The Exodus Road, a global anti trafficking organization with a vision for a world where no human is bought, sold, or exploited. Find us online at uaafpod.com.

“It wasn’t the only alley I was going down, it was just the alley I couldn’t figure out how to get back to.” - Matt ParkerThis summer, the world is watching the World Cup. Soon, we’ll be releasing a two-part series called The Cost of the Cup, examining two very different stories tied to the tournament: the trafficking myth you’ve heard a thousand times, and the human cost you’ve heard almost nothing about.But first, we’re revisiting one of our favorite episodes, originally released in July 2020.Seven years before we recorded Pin Drop, co-founder Matt Parker was in a taxi speeding through Bangkok at midnight when he glimpsed an obscure back alley where young girls were being sold. By the time he understood what he’d seen, it was gone, and he couldn’t find his way back to it.Seven years later, a chance encounter on another taxi ride brought him back. Listen to hear the full story, and the operation that was underway to free these trafficked victims.The Cost of the Cup is coming soon.

In this special episode of Until All Are Free, host Preston Goff sits down with The Exodus Road’s co-founder and CEO, Laura Parker, for an exclusive "watch party" and behind-the-scenes breakdown of the major Newsmax documentary, Stolen Lives: America's Human Trafficking Crisis. What started nearly 15 years ago as late-night conversations at a kitchen table has morphed into a global movement , recently reaching a nationwide stage with a viewership of over 16 million people. Together, Preston and Laura revisit key moments from the film, unpacking the complex, rapidly evolving landscape of human trafficking and highlighting the critical voices fighting on the front lines. Defining the Crisis: Breaking down the realities of human trafficking—which affects an estimated 50 million potential victims globally and roughly 1.1 million individuals in the United States alone—and dismantling the myth that it only happens in foreign countries. The Digital Battlefield: Exploring how over 70% of The Exodus Road's cases now involve an online or social media component. Laura and Preston discuss how modern traffickers have traded physical recruitment for smartphones, utilizing apps to target, groom, and blackmail vulnerable youth. A Parent's Nightmare: Listening to the heartbreaking and powerful testimony of South Carolina State Representative Brandon Guffey, a parental survivor who lost his son, Gavin, to an online sextortion scam. Brandon shares his journey of turning immense grief into legislative action to protect children in digital spaces. The Triple Threat of Investigation: A look into how The Exodus Road marries human intelligence, open-source intelligence, and advanced digital forensics. Co-founder Matt Parker shares his insights on leveraging AI and technology from partners like Cellebrite to mine crucial electronic data, build ironclad target packages for overwhelmed law enforcement, and successfully prosecute trafficking networks. Stories of Triumph: Hearing directly from Brandy, a Colorado-based survivor and advocate, who bravely shares her harrowing escape from a trafficker and discusses how she now extends a hand backward to help other women heal and thrive. The "Influenced" Program: An overview of The Exodus Road’s federally funded prevention education program designed to equip students, families, and schools with the digital resiliency skills needed to combat online predation. Watch the Documentary: Stolen Lives: America's Human Trafficking Crisis is available for streaming on Newsmax+ (theexodusroad.com/stolenlives)Join the Community: Follow the podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at @UntilAllAreFree to vote on upcoming stories and see behind-the-scenes content.

What do human rights actually look like at street level? Not in a courtroom or a policy brief — but on a single block in one of America's most misunderstood neighborhoods?In this episode of Until All Are Free, Preston Goff sits down with Edwin Desamour, Executive Director of The Lighthouse — a Kensington institution serving North Philadelphia youth and families since 1893.Edwin grew up on these streets, survived the hardest version of them, and built his life's work around making sure the next generation gets a different story. We talk about what it means to defend the rights of kids the world has already written off, how a neighborhood becomes more than its headlines, and why the fight for safety, dignity, and childhood is won or lost block by block.A raw, hopeful conversation about community, resilience, and the people who refuse to leave.

The face of human trafficking is changing. Transnational criminal networks, scam compounds operating across borders, and the rise of "pig butchering" fraud have reshaped what exploitation looks like — and what it will take to disrupt it.On this episode of Until All Are Free, Preston sits down with TER Co-founder Matt Parker to talk about the organization's strategic pivot toward disrupting transnational trafficking. Drawing on nearly fifteen years on the front lines, Matt unpacks the architecture of trafficking in 2026, including operations where victims are trafficked into forced criminality and made to run cyber-enabled fraud schemes targeting people around the world. It's a form of trafficking that doesn't look like what most people picture, and it's growing fast.The conversation also gets specific about what it actually takes to make trafficking dangerous for traffickers — not just symbolically, but operationally. From evidence-gathering and law enforcement partnership to the technology now reshaping intervention work, Matt offers a clear-eyed look at the playbook TER is deploying to meet this moment.Bring Matt to your stage. Matt is a sought-after speaker translating fifteen years of front-line anti-trafficking work into talks on technology and modern slavery, leadership lessons from undercover operations, and the story of building a global movement. To book Matt for your event or learn more about his speaking, visit iammattparker.com.Until All Are Free is a podcast produced by The Exodus Road, a nonprofit dedicated to the strategic fight against human trafficking. The podcast is hosted and produced by Preston Goff.

In November 2022, 17-year-old James Woods came home from school and signed onto Instagram. Within hours, he was being extorted by someone he'd never met. By the next morning, he was gone.In this episode, Preston sits down with James's father, Tim Woods, co-founder of the Do It For James Foundation. Tim shares — with extraordinary courage — who James was as a son, a runner, a chess player, and a friend. He walks us through the night that changed everything. And he tells us what he and his wife Tamia have done with their grief in the years since: speaking to hundreds of thousands of students, partnering with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, receiving the FBI Director's Award, and most recently, watching the Senate Judiciary Committee advance the James T. Woods Act — a crucial piece of legislation named for James.This is one of the most important conversations we've had on the show. It is heavy. It is also deeply hopeful. And it is a clear-eyed look at one of the fastest-growing crimes targeting kids in America today.A note for listeners: This episode includes discussion of sextortion, child exploitation, and suicide. If you or someone you love is in crisis, you can call or text 988 anytime to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.Resources mentioned in this episode:​Do It For James Foundation: letsdoitfj.org​Follow @DoItForJamesFoundation on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok​Learn about The Exodus Road's prevention education program: influenced.org​988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (call or text)Until All Are Free is a production of The Exodus Road, a global anti-trafficking organization with a vision for a world where no human is ever bought, sold, or exploited. Learn more at uaafpod.com

Content Warning: Contains descriptions of sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Listener discretion advised. Not suitable for young listeners.A humid night in Southeast Asia. A tuk tuk driver, a laminated menu, and a corner of the world where exploitation hides in plain sight under neon light.In this episode, host Preston Goff takes listeners inside the red light districts of Thailand. Through the streets, the history that built them, the economics that sustain them, and the recruitment pipelines that pull vulnerable women and girls from rural Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos into a system designed to hold them there. Not everyone working in these spaces is a trafficking victim. But trafficking lives within the veneer of this industry, protected less by secrecy than by indifference. This episode is an invitation to bear witness and to believe that what can be understood can be dismantled.