0:00

Hello, serial listeners. Sarah Koenig here,

0:02

recording this on Tuesday, Election Day,

0:04

with the good news that we

0:06

have a new show that has

0:08

nothing to do with the election

0:10

or politics. That's a relief to

0:12

me. Maybe it is to you too. The

0:15

show is called The Good Whale, and it's

0:17

about a captive orca named Keiko, who became

0:19

famous after starring in the kids' movie Free

0:21

Willy. Our story, The Good

0:23

Whale, is six beautiful episodes about what

0:25

happened to the real killer whale who

0:27

played the Hollywood killer whale. And

0:29

it's so good. It's emotional in the best

0:32

way, not sappy, but it gets you right

0:34

in the solar plexus. And you're

0:36

going to be newly fascinated by marine science.

0:39

And it's a little genre bending, which you'll see

0:41

as the story rolls out. Danielle

0:44

Eilarcon is the host. He's a New

0:46

Yorker writer and a novelist and the

0:48

host of the Spanish language podcast, Radio

0:50

Ambulante. The Good Whale comes

0:52

out next week on Thursday, November 14th. And

0:54

we've got a trailer here for you. But

0:57

first, I want to tell you about something else

0:59

new and good that's going on over here at

1:01

Serial, which is that if you

1:04

subscribe to The New York Times, either an

1:06

audio subscription or an all access subscription, either

1:08

way, if you subscribe, you can listen

1:10

to The Good Whale all at once. No waiting week

1:12

to week. And I don't think you're going to want

1:15

to wait on this one. To

1:17

be clear, you don't have to subscribe to hear

1:19

The Good Whale. You can still catch new episodes

1:21

every Thursday like always. But if

1:23

you do subscribe to The Times, you get

1:25

the whole show right away and you'll be

1:27

able to listen to Serial's entire archive. All

1:30

the past seasons of The Serial podcast, all

1:32

the other shows that Serial's produced. Plus

1:34

when you subscribe, you get the archive of all

1:36

The Times shows too. It's a pretty good

1:38

deal. You can subscribe through Spotify

1:41

or Apple podcasts. Or if you're already a

1:43

Time subscriber, just link your account and you're

1:45

done. You can also go

1:47

to nytimes.com/podcast and find everything there

1:49

or find the link in our

1:52

show notes. So please sign

1:54

up. The fact is we need

1:56

you. Your subscription makes our

1:58

work possible. stopped

4:00

it. This

4:04

is the story of a high profile,

4:06

high stakes science experiment whose goal seemed

4:08

almost impossible to teach a

4:11

captive orca to be wild. At

4:13

the center of it all was Keiko, an orca

4:15

with fears and limitations that no human could ever

4:18

hope to interpret with any certainty. Not

4:20

that they wouldn't try. We wanted to

4:22

see how far he could go. From

4:25

Serial Productions in The New York Times, I'm

4:28

Daniel Alarcon. And this is The

4:30

Good Whale, coming November 14th, wherever you get

4:32

your podcasts. Search

4:34

for The Good Whale on your podcast app,

4:36

follow the show, and you'll be notified the

4:38

minute new episodes come out.