The Good Whale

About The Good Whale

Fans of the movie “Free Willy” are outraged to learn that the real whale who played Willy lives in a tiny pool at an amusement park in Mexico City. So well-intentioned experts embark on an epic science experiment to try to teach one celebrity orca how to be free — while the world watches. Sign up for our newsletter to see photos and videos of Keiko, and get a behind the scenes look at the making of The Good Whale. Sign up at nytimes.com/serialnewsletter Subscribers to the New York Times can listen to all episodes of The Good Whale, and access the full archive of other Serial Productions and New York Times podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Subscribe at nytimes.com/podcasts Have a story pitch, a tip, or feedback on The Good Whale or other shows from Serial Productions? Email us at serialshows@nytimes.com

Publisher

Serial Productions and the New York Times

Category

news · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

6 Nov 2024

Latest episode

21 Nov 2024

Latest episodes

7 of 7 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   21 Nov 2024TRANSCRIPT

   Episode 3: Homecoming

   Keiko's homecoming to Iceland puts years of preparation to the test as he interacts with orcas in the wild for the first time in decades, but it doesn't go as planned.

2. 

   14 Nov 2024TRANSCRIPT

   Episode 6: The Last Winter

   Keiko's caretakers struggle to decide whether to wait for spring or intervene as the orca's unpredictable behavior raises concerns about its future in captivity.

3. 

   14 Nov 2024TRANSCRIPT

   Episode 5: At Sea

   Musical theater creators recreate Keiko's mysterious four-week swim in Icelandic waters, exploring what could have happened from her perspective through an immersive musical experience.

4. 

   14 Nov 2024TRANSCRIPT

   Episode 4: Please (Don’t) Go

   A fresh training team's hard-line approach to breaking Keiko's bond with humans unexpectedly backfires when Keiko swims away, sparking a pivotal moment in her rehabilitation.

5. 

   14 Nov 2024TRANSCRIPT

   Episode 2: Can Good Boys Be Wild?

   Keiko has a new tank in Oregon and a dream team of experts that gets him into shape. But soon they start fighting over what a realistic future looks like for this golden retriever of an orca.

6. 

   14 Nov 2024TRANSCRIPT

   Episode 1: Save The Whale

   When the movie “Free Willy” is released, word gets out that the star, a killer whale named Keiko, is sick and living in a tiny pool at a Mexican amusement park. An environmentalist sets out to give the fans what they want: their favorite celebrity orca back in the sea.

7. 

   6 Nov 2024TRANSCRIPT

   Trailer

   After the movie “Free Willy” became a hit, word got out that the star of the film, a killer whale named Keiko, was sick and living in a tiny pool at a Mexican amusement park. Fans were outraged and pleaded for his release. “The Good Whale” tells the story of the wildly ambitious science experiment to return Keiko to the ocean — while the world watched. An epic tale that starts in Mexico and ends in Norway, the six-episode series follows Keiko as he’s transported from country to country, each time landing in the hands of well-intentioned people who believe they know what’s best for him – people who still disagree, decades later, about whether they did the right thing.

Inside a recent episode

Episode 3: Homecoming

Published 21 Nov 2024 · Transcript excerpt

[…] Jen Shore and some of the other trainers suspected that if they lifted the gates of Kiko's pen and invited him to explore the wider ocean, he'd politely decline the invitation. This was the immediate problem they needed to solve. How to get a whale who was uninterested in freedom to be more interested in it. You can't really make a killer whale do anything. I mean, I think the original view was just kind of we're going to see how this goes and how he does and we'll be guided by that. But about six months later, in the spring of 1999, Kiko was still in his see pen, swimming circles in his little gated subdivision of the ocean, not much closer to being wild than he had been in Oregon. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.7 / 5

1,137 ratings

Spotify

4.9 / 5

724 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 6 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

0

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

27

Pitching The Good Whale

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting pitches.

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