847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
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I don't know about you, but you know what? I think we'll do a great today, an animal story. And now one of the stories where the animals are some metaphor for human beings and we see ourselves through their actions and learn some important lesson. No, no, no, no, I'm talking about an old fashioned animal story where you hear about some amazing creature in some surprising situation and that creature then does things that have such personality and seem so specifically them. You know, it just gets to you. I'm pleased to say we have a story like that for you today. And the creature is not a dog or a cat or a bunny or a horse or any other lovable creatures you usually find in this kind of story. It's an orca, a killer whale that we humans captured from the wild took from his mother and trained to be completely tame and live alongside us. This killer whale was so tame that at night when his trainers went home and he was all alone, he would watch TV from inside his tank. He liked old Andy Griffith reruns and action movies and that continued for years until one day we got the idea that maybe this killer whale didn't need to continue as a giant domesticated pet. Maybe it'll be possible for him to lead a very different life in the wild. Again, today's story comes from our co-workers at Serial. They, of course, have done so many remarkable series that have changed everybody's expectations of what you can do in a podcast. I have been sitting in on read throughs of drafts of episodes of this new series for a year now, I'm one of the people who gives editing notes. And whenever we do one of these listening sessions, I have to say it's always one of the best parts of my week. I really love this story, one of my favorite things I've ever done. This new series is called The Good Whale, six episodes long, including, I'm not kidding, a musical episode, maybe I'll tell you about that later. They launched the first two episodes this week, and I'm going to play you episode one other show right now. And then after the break, we have another story, not from serial, but a story that we made about animals and what we expected them from W.B. East Chicago, it's this American life. I'm out of glass. Danielle Arricone, the novelist and journalist and host of radio on Belante, deserves to this new show for serial. And with that, I will turn things over to Danielle. Here's episode one of their show. Our story begins in the early 90s with an orca named Keiko. He's just entering his teenage years living at an amusement park in Mexico City called Rain O'Ventura, or Adventure Kingdom. He's not from there, but for the last seven years, a tank in this polluted, landlocked mega city more than 7,000 feet above sea level has been his home. Before that, it was a marine park in Canada, where he was bullied by the other orcas. Before that, it was a tank in a big concrete building in Iceland, where he was kept for about three years unable to see the sky. And even before that, it was in North Atlantic, where he was captured and separated from his mom and the rest of his whale pod, probably when he was around too. I don't think I really understood how traumatic this could have been until I learned that
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