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.
Hello, Serial listeners.
Sarah Koenig here recording this on Tuesday, election day with the good news that we have a new show that has nothing to do with the election or politics.
That's a relief to me.
Maybe it is to you too.
The show is called the Good Whale and it's about a captive orca named Keiko who became famous after starring in the kids movie Free Willy.
Our story, the Good Whale, is six beautiful episodes about what happened to the real killer whale who played the Hollywood killer whale.
And it's so good, it's emotional in the best way.
Not sappy, but it gets you right in the solar plexus.
And you're going to be newly fascinated by marine science.
And it's a little genre bending, which you'll see as the story rolls out.
Daniel L.R.
cohn is the host.
He's a New Yorker writer and a novelist and the host of the Spanish language podcast Radio Ambulante.
The Good Whale comes out next week on Thursday, November 14th.
And we've got a trailer here for you.
But first I wanna tell you about something else new and good that's going on over here at Serial, which is that if you subscribe to the New York Times, either an audio subscription or an all access subscription.
Either way, if you subscribe, you can listen to the Goodwill all at once, no waiting week to week.
And I don't think you're gonna wanna wait on this one.
To be clear, you don't have to subscribe to hear the Good Whale.
You can still catch new episodes every Thursday like always.