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 would be a great today, an animal story. And now one of the stories with the animals are some metaphor for human beings. And we see ourselves through their actions and earn some important as, no, no, no.

I'm thinking about an old fashion animal story. We hear about some amazing creature in some surprising situation, and that creature that does things that have such a personality and seem so specifically them. You know, I just gets to you, I am pleased to say we have a story like that few today.

And the creature is not a dog or cat or bunny or horse, any available, able creatures you usually find in this kind of story. It's an orca, A Q or whale that we humans captured from the wild, took from his mother and trained to be completely time and live alongside us. This killer role was so tame that denied when his trainers went home.

There was all alone. He would watch T, V from inside his tank. You like gold and graph for three runs and action movies.

And that continue for years until one day without the idea that maybe this killer whale didn't need to continue as giant domesticated pet, maybe it'll be possible from to eat a very different life in the wild. Again, today, story comes from my coworkers at cereal. There, of course, have done so many remarkable series that have changed everybody's expections of what you can do in the podcast.

I have been sitting in on reviews of of episodes of this new series for a year. And now on one of the people who gives editing notes. And whenever we do one of these listen sessions, I have to say it's always one of the best parts of my week.

I really love this story when my favorite things you've ever done, this new series, is called the good whale. Six episodes long, including, i'm not kidding, a musical episode may be, will tell you about that later. I once 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 zero, but a story that we made about animals and what we expect to them. When do we be easy? Chicago, to this american life, amErica glass, Danielle alkon, the number list and journalist and host of radio ambuLances, is up to this new show for cereal.

And with that, I would turn things over to Daniel. Here's episode of the show. Our story .

begins in the early nineties with orka named caky. He's just entering his teenagers living at an amusement park in mexico city called rain of duda, or adventure kingdom. He's not from there, but for the last seven years, a tank in this polluted band locked mega city more than seven thousand feet above sea level, has been his home. Before that, he was a marine park in canada, where he was bullied by the other orcus. Before that, he 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 the north lending, where he was captured and separated from his mom and the rest of his well pod, probably when he was around to, I don't think I really understood how traumatic this could have been until I learned that male killer whales are essentially mama's boys, and not just when they're Young, but basically their entire lives, even as adults. They might swim by their mothers side. They depend on her.

A mother worker might catch a fish bited in two and give half to our sun. This kind of close business is documented in mae orgues, well into their twenties or thirties, and cao was deprived with the chance to have that at h two. K, O would probably still have been swimming in his mothers slipstream, still mastering the language of his pod. He wouldn't yet learned how to hunt on his own despite way more than a thousand pounds in developmental terms. Coco would have been just a baby ripped from his mother, from everything he'd ever known and from a life that may have been largely spent by her side.

So of course, it's hard to talk about. A pool in the mexican amusing park is a substitute for any of that. But what I can say is that the people who work there, they truly, sincerely love kiko. They are, for all intensive purposes, his pod.

well, obviously my purpose in life, a dark time. He was kiko and cake only.

That's for another fernan's to work with KO at rain duda for .

having kids. He was my kid. He was my baby. He was, I mean, I had boyfriends back then, but there was not that important as K, O.

I had to break up with two boyfriends because I spent most of my time with him. I think IT was. I worked there for seven years, and I was the best seven years of my life.

We're not. That started at rain duda when he was twenty years old, SHE chopped frozen fish mop pool deck and eventually worked her way up to be one of cao's trainers. Working with a killer whale had long been a dream of hers. And even now, when he talks about cao SHE sounds the way a mother might when remembeh ing about her kid's child, od SHE remembers all of chaos favourite games, his favourite toys, his favourite player.

his best friend, was a dolphin named riche. And they would just play nonstop. And between shows, he would just have reached on top of him, just kind of giving him a ride.

If kiko had, his moods are played favorites. Well, another says that was just part of who he was.

I would choose who to play with. I mean, we had this very Young girl. He was sixteen or seventeen, and he would come into the water, and he was like a magnet for cao. He he would love her, love to be with her. And why nobody knows means, you know, like chemistry.

In the off season, when there were no weekday shows, that rain oven tuta rotta and the other trainer swam and played with caky for hours. Most of the people who work with cao were Young, none older than thirty, and they may cake o. The center of their lives, they fed in by hand gave him belly rubs all the time.

They've even set up a special hose just for him. He'd love to be sprayed. And as far as anyone could tell, tao genuinely .

seem to like IT. We had this little boat, and there was a rope, a tie to the, to the front, like a long rope. But we would put IT in the water.

And like three girls would get, you know, up in IT and he would pull us all over the pool, and then he would pull IT down just to make us fall from the from the boat. And that was over and over and obviously would laugh and then get on top of the little boat again, you know, give us ride again. So, and he would have a blast.

There's nothing about that last sense over not us. That could be not a word. We don't know if kiko was having a blast.

We can know maybe he was drag the trainers round because he was bored, or because he loved these friendly people who feed him every day. Maybe what is humans interpreted as? K, O, having fun was really just habit, or even defeat.

Like, why not lift? People ride. They like IT. We can't really know what animals are thinking, so we do our best with the information we have, making educated guesses about the inner lives of the creatures we love. And that's what the stories really about, an imperfect attempt to understand what might be best for an animal who can speak for himself, the intention to make things right for him, to make things Better.

Everything i'm going to tell you, a set in motion by these good intentions, and by everything, I mean an unprecedented global campaign, a high profile, high stake science experiment and a debate about what exactly we humans of the natural world at the center of at all, is cao, who would become, almost by accident, a symbol for all wales, for the health of the oceans, for the very concept of willingness. But who is also an individual orca with a name and specific history and trauma and character, a character with fears and limitations that no human could ever hope to interpret with any certainty. Not that they wouldn't try, in fact, lots of well intention. People would claim they knew exactly what was best for this whale, and they would be arguing and fighting over those interpretations for years.

IT wasn't just for anta and the other trainers who love kiko, or even just the people in mexico city who want to see cao a rain of duta. IT seems like pretty much every kid in mexico knew him. He was beloved, a kind of national mascot.

He was, he was like, their pet mexicans pid.

One person I spoke to compare him to a mexican Mickey mouse. And in fact, a lot of people assume that cao was mexican, like actually from mexico. They never considered that he could have come from anywhere else. He was just theirs.

We talked to a lots of people who grew in mexico city in the eighties and nineties, and they said again and again that kiko had an oral about him that seeing him at rain oin duda was like hanging out with your seven thousand pound best friend, the killer whale. You told your secrets to what was happening at school, who your crush was IT was that kind of relationship. If you watch television in mexico in the late eighties or early nineties, chances were the sooner or later you'd see coco, he was in rain off into the commercials. Of course, there were pop songs dedicated to him.

He even started the like import. Market to. And then there were the shows when visitors got to see their beloved pet or close to that doesn't exist anymore, not under that name anyway.

IT since been acquired by six legs, but back in its heyday in the early nineties, cao was the star attraction. And these shows, they were legendary. At the peak of his fame, there might have been two hundred people lining up a couple of hours before the gates opened.

A pair of clowns marched around playing trumpets, entertaining cake o spans they filed in on weekends. There were three shows a day, more than three thousand seats, consistently packed. I had not to walk me through one of the routines. First IT was the sea lines, then the dolphins, including richer.

And then we would open the pennant. K would come out jumping. So the people who just go crazy other, so that was a show. And after to that, all the trainers would come out and go great people and take pictures with people.

There were so many people clAmbering to see k go a close that his veteran told me they set up a kind of receiving line. He even compared the crowds to the believer s who wait in line to see the versions of the that referential, that devoted. So that's co occasional TV star quai I saint telepathic, confident on invest friend to countless mexican children. And this was his life, constant attention from a trainers, games with his favorite dolphin buddies, performances for thousands of adoring fans. But IT was all about the change.

In one thousand nine hundred ninety two, red on duda was set to closed for some much needed renovations, which went cao head and free time six months with no shows and no crowds. So when a production company proposed to film a movie with KO, the parts director Oscar porter, the what the hell, why not? IT wasn't much money, but I might keep kiko entertained.

Once he said yes to the movie, porter didn't give IT much more thought. He was busy overseeing all the details of the parks upgrades, the installation of new rides, new contracts with vendors, more than six hundred employees. He told me he didn't even read the script.

But that script is why we're telling the story, why you probably already know cao is, even if it's by a different name. The studio behind this proposal was the american movie powerhouse Warner brothers. And cao was about to get the name you might know him by Willy, free Willy.

If you're my age mid is you've probably seen the movie, but if not, or it's been a minute, here's a quick refresher. Lawn suller donor, one of the producers told me the movie could be boiled down to this bad kid, bad whale. The bad kid is a moody twelve old name, Jessie.

The bad whale is Willy, captured and separated from his pod, stuck in a small pool in a ramshackle aquarium. The parks staff find him stubbing hard to train. Guess three black spots on the underside of his jaw.

His dorsal fin drops to one side, a killer whales version of an eo haircut. Jessie decides he has to save with his life, getting back to the ocean, back to his family, and somehow, against all kinds of obstacles, he does. You come on, really, I know into a boy. I know you do this world.

come on, I believe. And you really you can do IT.

You can be free tomorrow, you can. The movie poster is what most people remember. It's the image that was absorbed into the culture, are still from the film's climax.

Wally, amid flight against an orange sunset, jumping over a break water, the ocean beckons. Boy stands just below Willy, beneath an arc of sea spray, a triumphant ARM pointing to the sky. The tagline reads, how far would you go for a friend?

When IT came to who would play Willy, IT wasn't like Warner brothers had a ton of killer whales to choose from. A producer on the film told us her team approached a few different marine parks, but people weren't excited about the message of the movie and wanted changes to the script. Finally, they landed on radio, and duda, who signed off, as we mentioned, without you, been reading IT and cao IT, turns out, was perfect for the part.

See, for the film to work, the producers needed something very specific, a kind of sad looking whale living in less than ideal conditions. They needed a whale. Kids would feel sorry for a whale of children would want to save.

And the fact is, while cao might have been happy, he wasn't actually that healthy. He was a couple thousand pounds under weight, not because he was under fed, but probably because the warm water affected his appetite. He had a skin rash to something called paloma virus, which looked bad.

Even though the veteran at rain ova duda said IT wasn't that serious, but most striking of all was his tank. IT was small, disturbingly small, one of the film producers joke that was smaller than some swim pools in beverly hills. The water he swam in wasn't even sea water, just fresh water with salt added.

But now that says they checked the salt levels frequently, and they weren't under any illusions that cao's living conditions were ideal. SHE told me, rain and do. I looked into building a larger pool, but just couldn't make IT work financially.

So strip away for a moment, almost everything I told you. Forget the love in the games and the trainers and the fans, and see instead what the cameras caky a smaller than average killer whale with a drupes dorso fin swimming one in a tiny, shallow pool. He was exactly what the movie required.

Free Willy was released unrealized six ninety three, and the reviews were positive, at least until journalists started asking what was up with the star of the movie. And news reports about chaos, subpar living conditions and health began spreading. The movie free Willy has a great ending, but real life didn't treat the real star of the box office hit the way he treated Willy in the movie. Not at all news .

tonight that that will surely upset all those children who saw the movie free Willy this summer. The whale that start in the movie is sick and they die unless his living conditions are improved.

Soon enough, cake would gone from mexico's beloved pet to mexico's dying orka and kids around the world. We're not happy i'm .

writing this sleep to ask you to consider helping the killer whale. Cao, in mexico. We would like everybody to dominate a dollar and me get lots of money so we can try to help see this well here, this whe that people have made millions off of and now he's just sitting in the tank time.

I don't think they go deserves today.

In mexico, redmon and dude in the staff were suddenly having to defend themselves in ways they hadn't before, trying to convince crucial celebrities and animal rights activists that they did indeed care about keku s well being when life magazine publishing article describing chaos tank as a cesspool and do as director of reporter send letter claiming the magazine had gotten IT all wrong, that cake's water was, quote, clean and clear.

Back in hollywood, Warner brothers was getting hammered. Two bags and bags of male from kids arrived at the offices, all demanding the same thing, free Willy, or rather, free KO. And so if the studio wanted to avoid A P. R. Nightmare and not break the hearts of millions of children and IT was clear, someone had to save him in real life.

Danny elle, a look on that after the break when our program continues.

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It's this american life. We pick up the story of cao where we were left off. Here's Daniel, our corn.

For centuries, we humans hunted and killed whales as if their numbers were infinite. And over time we ve got Better and Better at IT, more efficient, more ruthless, extracting more value for each kill. We harvested their blubb, their organs, their bAiling, their meat.

And IT was all transformed into everyday commercial products, from makeup to heating oil. More than seven hundred thousand wales were killed in the one thousand nine hundred and sixty. Whaling was a huge global industry with profits to match.

The killing of workers was a little different since they didn't have much to offer us, commercially speaking. But humans being humans, we killed them anyway for fear for sport, for bloodlust. Fisherman trowl ling for hiring, or salmon saw them as competitors, so they would shoot them on site.

The U. S. Navy would use archibalds for target practice. All told, is estimated that some three million individual whales were killed by humans in the twenty of the century.

By the early thousand nine hundred and seventy, scientists understood that whales were far more scarce than we'd all previously thought and began warning that the steep declines they were seeing in wild populations might be reversible. In response, the save the whales movement was born with the goal of ending commercial whaling worldwide. A bold, quick oic idea to convince the countries that still practice wiling to simply stop. I'm telling you all this because in a way, everything that happens, the K O, A couple of decades later, is a result of IT of this idea that these creatures were worth protecting. And it's also when this next significant person in chaos life features the story, a guy by the name of dave phillips.

I was pretty Young then. I was, like, two years out of college.

IT was the late seventies, the save the whales campaign was just starting to pick up steam, and dave IT in, so he packed up his life, drove his turcos walk, swagger rabbit out to california, and soon joined the movement to do his part.

I was Green there, other people there that were a lot more experience ed than I was. I I was more likely to be out there with hiking boots and long hair and and just getting dirty.

So yeah, he was kind of a happy, but he was a happy with a degree biology who found he was too impatient to spend his adult life in a lab studying the manual of wildlife without doing anything to save IT. Given the scale of the environmental crisis, he saw science moved too slowly. For him, the central message for the save the whales campaign was simple, whales are not commodities, their living beings.

This message was everywhere. There were bumper stickers and t shirts and blazing with the words saved the wales, the slogan itself becoming so ubiquitous, IT was almost cliche, played as a punch line. There were received.

Whales marches in rale across the world, and dave is there for all of IT most importantly, he was there in one hundred and eighty two a pivotal moment in his career when the international whaling commission cave to the pressure and voted to impose a worldwide mrta um on commercial wheeling they've done IT. They're saved the whales from what many felt was their almost certain extinction. So they've learn two things.

One, to succeed. Your message had to be everywhere. If your slogan becomes a joke, so be at at least people are hearing the message.

And two, wales are magic and that simple. They're just one of those species that people fall in love with. A decade later, in the nineties, dave still in the environmental movement, still advocating for wild whales and attending meetings.

And it's that one of these meetings and glass go when he gets a call. He's after dinner with a few colleagues. When somebody comes up to the table and says.

is mr. Phillips here we have a call for you. mr. Donor is is calling and i'm like, i'm my goods. This is stick donor calling from hollywood like, what is in and and there's dick and he's like, all in a flutter.

I have an inner duced to dictor yet, but I did mention his wife, lorn suller daughter. Together, they were a legit holly's wood power couple producing or directing block kb sters like the gones and superman tickets since passed away. But laun told me that they both were self proclaimed animal lunatics. Dave actually worked with a couple before they asked him to consult on a few lines of pro dolphin dialogue in the bud cop .

movie lethal weapon to what did you eat there? I my tuna IT .

sandwich too, that you can tune. Er, we're boycotting tone honey because they killed the off and I get caught in the next only albo IT was small, barely a scene, but they felt good about IT and now he had something bigger in mind. Free Willy, a movie he and lawyer we're putting together and dick wanted daves .

help and he's like, you know, this movie is gonna be big, just like it's gonna a great movie. And I am doing this because that I want to make a difference for whales. And and, and I want to, nor you in the whaling .

band dave had fought for all those years ago, protected whales from commercial slaughter, but some species were still captured or killed on a smaller scale. The way dave saw IT dicon laun were offering him an opportunity to finish the job he started all those years ago, a chance to save the rest of the whales. Even the producers started with something simply and eight hundred number that would pop up on the screen at the end of the movie credits. The idea was that people would call, leave their address and dave organization, or that an institute would send them a packet of information about the plight of wales across the world, how they can help.

The kit was like, steps you can take, like, go watch whales in the wild instead of going to watch some captivity, and put pressure on the international wheeling commission to stop killing whales.

Nothing to elaborate. You call the number, you got a kit. But fast forward year, and once the movie was released and word got out that the star freewill ly was sick and still living in a tiny pool in mexico. Well, calling in eight hundred number and getting a kid just didn't feel like enough. Dave remembers dig, folding them up again and saying.

we're being crucified down here. You've got to help us now. Dick was .

proposing something far more ambitious, something that honestly sounded a little nuts.

He said, you got to get involved in saving K, O.

rescuing K, O, from his life in captivity and releasing him back into the ocean. Like in the movie, did you immediately say, like, this is something I can do? Or were you like.

this man is crazy. I was like, I was.

was just dizzy because .

i'm starting to think, waited. How does this even work?

What fans of the movie wanted was to see their favorite celebrity orka back in the ocean, but that wasn't so simple. First of nothing quite this ambitious had ever been attempted. True, other captain marine memory had been released to the wild, but they hadn't been in captivity nearly as long as cao.

So saving cao would require an extraordinary effort. Dictor wanted dave to do IT, but this wasn't exactly they. Specially his whole career has been focused on big, huge problems protecting the ocean and saving wild whales.

Plural, what dick was proposing in response to the public outcry around the movie was much narrower. Wr in scope, saving the whale. singular. Dyve remembers telling dictor essentially, thanks, but i'm not the right guy for this job. But IT seems they wouldn't take no for an answer.

He was like, nobody else can do this. You have to do this. You've got to do this.

The kids are depending on IT. Everybody's depending on IT. You've gotta do this.

what you try. And you know, there was something about this resonated. Think of IT this way. If you're dave or an environmentalists of his generation, crazy doesn't necessarily mean impossible.

Just a few years before one thousand nine hundred ninety, uneducated, two hundred million people took part in earth day celebrations, the most ever by far. This is the decade of the earth summit in rio, the kyoto protocol, big, coordinated global actions to combat climate change and environmental damage. In one thousand and eighty five, scientists announced that they discovered a hole in the ozone layer.

And by the nineties, an international treaty was in place to ban some of the chemical start to have created IT. And IT seems to work. The oil layer began to heal itself.

Even I remember, and I was just a kid, those years were my childhood time. I remember as fundamentally optimistic. We learned about separating our trash and school, reduce, reuse, recycle and printed on the brain. We learned about the amazon and the dangers of climate change, which still felt so far away. We didn't despair because we thought we could still work together to save planet, that if people just knew what was happening, we do the right thing, and that the right thing would be clear to all of us.

That's the moment we're in, the moment daves in. And so sure, saving kiko sounds a bit nutty, but maybe if you've seen what he's seen, that sort of thing doesn't scare you. So dave said, OK, i'll check IT out.

I'll fly down to mexico city in me, cao. He was, if not hopeful, intreat, until we got there, realized this is a terrible idea. By the time they visited, cao was a teenager and had been living in mexico city for about eight and half years.

Dave could see right away this captive whale was nowhere near ready to live in the ocean. A wild worker can swim over one hundred miles a day. Coco was basically the aquatic equivalent of .

a couch potato. First time I ever went to mexico to see cao, I was completely freak. Doubt I was just, I was sitting up at the bleachers, looking down at this vale in this tiny pool in mexico city.

And he didn't look good. He swam in very small circles, and he could make IT across his pool. And just a matter of second, that would.

That was very, very a bore facility. I I almost started crying, really, to tell you the truth, I was just hit by IT saying, this is just this. This just can't work. I ask dave to .

take through the reasons KO was not an ideal candidates to reward, and there were many before they could even think of releasing him back into the ocean. Kiko needed to get rid of his paloma virus, but also get stronger, healthier, put on weight, and there was no way he could do that in his current tank at rain oven. duda.

And where we exposed to bring in, we're not bringing him into like we couldn't bring him into the captive facilities. I'm thinking where we're gonna go, we're not going to take into some place where having to perform or be in in a captive environment by where they're making money off of these whales, we couldn't do that. So we're you have to build a place and that's just a step one.

The bill for that alone would probably be millions of dollars, and then they'd have to spend years and millions more teaching him the most basic ocean survival skills, and pray that some of those lessons to took cake o had lived in the care of humans and without his family, since he was around to missing out on years of life in a pod, years of company and hunting and language.

And what I can only think of his contrary, the kind of social environment that makes a killer whale, a killer whale. He had millions of human fans, but not a single orka friend. There were so many things he had never learned, not already did.

Cao not know how to hunt for food. He didn't know how to eat live fish. Think about that. If you put a live fish in his mouth, this killer whale wouldn't.

In language, cao had stopped making most of the sounds in a wild whe reparata years before pod have different dialects. E and he was unlikely. Cao even remembered the dialect he spoke before his capture.

This was crucially important to survival, or because very rarely live alone in the open, an ocean. So if he was to make IT out there, dave new k. go. Would have to be integrated into a pod, his original pod, preferably. But if you didn't speak their language, that was gona be difficult. And then there was a small detail that no one new for certain which pod that might be or where to find them somewhere in the north atlantic near iceland.

presumably how we're going to getting back to iceland. So whaling nation, are you kidding me? What we're going to go over to iceland and convent that we want to bring back this rail because because the world wants to save him.

Did you do like a back of envelope, sort of like going to cost thing, like on the plane back?

Yeah, exactly before even on while I was down there and and on the way back I was like, I lining IT out I was way over ten million dollars and I was like at that point I pretty much just dashed back in my pack saying, I don't know about this is just I don't we're not used to things with six figures behind IT. I could see about like ten impossible steps here.

So ten impossible steps, at least. But let's be real for dave, IT was also one giant opportunity. Up to this point. David been thinking about KO, the way everyone in the world was thinking about cao as one individual killer whale in need of saving.

But what if he allowed himself to see IT differently? He'd experienced first hand the hole that whales had over people that and timeline marches across the world. He seeing the power that media campaigns could wield with the save the whales movement.

This could be something much bigger. What if KO the individual could become KO the symbol? What if you could use K, O to tell a story about the ocean itself?

You're talk about trying to protect all the oceans, and that those are the big issues of the big, huge, unsolvable problems, global warming eeta. But there are so defuse people .

can see acidification .

rising in the ocean. They can't see the curies dying out most, most of the time they're not seeing IT. There's nothing it's too broad to say the oceans are dying um there are no grab points. There are no things to manifest what at risk, but wales are are one of the things that is just so other worldly, so majestic.

just incredibly.

amazingly intelligent, social, a powerful and and and that means something, it's IT IT hits people in a different way than talking about the threats to the ocean ecosystems. And that's what got me over my own view, that this is only one whe it's like, yeah, he's one whale, but it's gonna the most famous. We could be the most famous well in the world.

And dave knew you could do a lot with that kind of star power, with that kind of attention. So he set asset his doubts and decided that, yes, as absurd as IT sounded, he was all in. One step committed to getting kiko out of mexico.

The next step was logistics. And what am about to say is pretty obvious, but it's worth saying, anyway, moving in orka is not easy. One of the first things dave did was create a whole new organization, the freeway illy cao foundation, the U.

S. Humane society chipped in a million dollars. Dave secured a couple million more from a billionaire. Cl phone magnet. Water brothers also agreed to put in two million dollars, which sounds like a lot until you consider they made one hundred and fifty million on fruit illy. And by this point, the single three two was already in production.

Still, with that money, dave was able to convince a small marine park in organ to let the foundation build them a new, much bigger pool, just for kiko. And so now all dave needed was the whale, which you might assume would be the hard part, given that cao was the main attraction, rain a. But IT turned out that Oscar porter, the director of reno oven tuta, wasn't opposed to the idea of giving him up.

He had a whole part to run, and managing his most famous attraction had become an all consuming headache. There were journalists and activists to deal with mexican television stars and singers calling to arrange private swims with. Cao porter told me he was spending three hours a day dealing with kca related nonsense, which is a lot sure, but most worrying of all was what some of the outside veterans were saying. The kiko might die soon. Porter really didn't want that to happen at reno in duta, over the course of several months, dave, an Oscar porter, made a deal rain do agreed to donate coco today's foundation for free.

Today, we are proud to announce that we have reached agreement on a formal plan, a workable.

In february nineteen and ninety five, IT was announced to the world that k go would be leaving rain o and duda for his new temporary home at a neque um on the organ coast in an enormous new tank with cold seawater, dave laid out a vision for chaos future, invoking the plot to freely to which would hit theatres a few months later. And in .

that go will is reunited with a mate and and has a child and lives happily. This is our door. We would love to see the situation in which cco could have a mate and could be able to eventually be released to the child.

Rescue rehab release that was dave's ultimate plan even if the last part seemed improbable at best for kaos trainer and not many of the staff that were closely with kiko. The decision to let him leave was heartbreaking, even if they knew IT was the right one. Giving him up was a kind of noble, even maternal, sacrifice.

That's how we're not to saw IT, which of course, didn't make IT hurt any less. Goodbye are like that, especially when you can't explain what the future holds. You feel guilty like you're betrayed a friend. And across mexico, a lot of people were feeling this way. They wanted stay.

They wish tickets stay, but letting him go with a sacrifice they were willing to make because they loved and they wanted what was best for him, which is why I was so offensive to run out, and many others I talk to, to hear how the story was being told in the us. The cake was being saved from a terrible life in mexico. Do you feel like there was an element of, like mexico? You know how things are done there? course. Yes.

of course, is we have to always help the little brother because he everything wrong. I'm not saying I don't anna say that this is the best place for an animal, obviously. And but but i'm trying to say that when he was there, he got a lot of attention.

I mean, he got all the attention we would all the time play, and, you know, and he would love that, absolutely love that. We did the best we could. We hire the best people. We we wanted the best for cao. And we donated cao without receiving, but nothing, not not one sending return.

A few days before cao was scheduled to leave mexico, the rain into the staff through him. One last party, a kind of final spring break bash, everyone was invited, current trainers, former staff, all of chaos friends, his extended human pod.

So we were like, thirty people in this place in the denim. We made a big launching, and we all got into the water, and we all play with kiko. And there was a lot of crying. And he was, he was fun, and cao was so happy. And you will play with all of them.

Wait a second. So you're telling me and that they d like thirty people got in the pool with you, go the same time to play.

yes. yeah. I mean, you would never get this in the world or mainland or any other aquarium in the world if you tell this to a vanion from this, you know, huge aquarium, they would tell you that, I mean, that's not a good idea because he would, I mean, the animal get dress.

So I, I mean, I don't know what would they say. But, but he was so happy. He was so happy.

On january six, one thousand nine hundred ninety six, IT was time for cco ago. They decided to move him in the middle night for a few reasons to avoid the heat and the traffic, but also the crowds that were sure to want to say their goodbye. Moving any object as big as a killer whale is an engineering problem, but when that object is a living thing, there is an added complication.

Getting cao out of a rain of endued a and onto a plane would depend no small measure on the CoOperation of cao himself, and that required training for months. Theyd worked on IT with him, first swiming into a small, shallow pool and then into a custom made small swimming. In and out of IT week spent just getting comfortable with this process.

He had to be comfortable because once he was in that sling, he'd stay wrapped in IT for at least fourteen hours. The chAllenge would be to keep him calm. He had to trust as humans, not fight or fill trust.

The night of the move, it's noisy and chaotic. I've seen the videos and it's just manic. IT doesn't look like an aquarium or even an amusement park. IT looks like a construction site.

All this movement and worrying of motors and beams and shouting and lights after the stayed close to cake o touching him close to his eyes so he could see her. But when I was time from to swim into the shallow pool where the sling awaited him, he refused, and there was nothing they could do to persuade him. Finally, a dozen people in wet suits and circled him with a net and pulled him into place in the shallow pool or not. The and the other trainer dried him off before applying moisty zer all over his body. Actually, the same stuff you might put on a baby to protect from die rash.

You need his skin to be protected. So we were, we were rubbing hard, like fake thick cream and all over his body. And we would be talking to him the whole time, the whole time.

But but I was like just thinking about him and how nervous he was getting. So he started, you know, like crying a little bit because he was nervous and and and everybody was so nervous in and you can you can transfer that to k obvious. So there are you know, moments where you just hope that he just relax.

Once kiko was in the sling, IT was attached to a crane that lifted him out of the pool and placed in a shipping container filled with three thousand pounds of fresh water ice. The container SAT on the back of attractive trailer ready for the hour, so drive across the city to the airport. Once there, IT would be loaded onto a giant cargo plane.

David convince ed, U. P, S, to deliver cake o, to organ for free. When the caribs finally left, there were crowds more than theyd expected.

Ordinary people who loved this killer whale, whole families children who dragged their parents out in the middle of the night to say goodbye, all gathered just outside the gates of the rain off into the parking lot. So many that police had to move them just so the car van could pass. And they soon discovered he wasn't just at the gates of the crowd had gathered.

IT was everywhere. I've talked to a lot of people who were there that night, lighting the streets, desperate to say their farewells. One person told me the only thing he could compare IT to was the time the pope visited mexico city throughout to the airport was supposed to be secret.

But that's not how IT worked out. Reporters kept the city a breast of the caribiner progress. Two thousands of people s always their pyjamas, Carrying hand written signs and girls and pick tales Carrying mexican flags, teens shouting and calling cao's name. You have to wonder if the whale can hear them chanting, si si, he should stay. He should stay.

Then somewhere along the slow, ponderous out to the airport, there was a mariachi band playing an old song about a loved ones. Goodbye last go on the us. Where can the tired swallow go? Say lyrics tossed by the wind with nowhere to hide.

Remember my homeland beloved the pilots and cry. Cars and mopeds follow the procession, drivers waving, honking their horns. Honestly, it's a little bit mad. The emotion on people's faces, the palpable sense of loss. Dave says some people had to be peeled off chaos container as they tried to climb IT. The procession just creeps along as best they can through the impossibly crowded late night streets, a city, a country, saying goodbye to its beloved well.

了 来看， because that.

We would see all these people under you on the street with science, then just want to try just to remember about IT and people waving in, crying and screaming like goodbye. IT was so, so emotional. I was sad and happy the same time, because we are all doing this, because we hope because onna be, he's going to be OK.

But but he was .

for for mexicans to say goodbye to the only obviously, or can that they would ever have.

The U. P, S, plane Carrying kiko to his new home leaves at around five in the morning, more than three hours behind schedule, just before a beautiful mexican sunrise. Only cake o's veteran ans fly with him or not that in dave fly alongside in another aircraft close enough to Z, K, os's playing from the window. O no longer belong to the inuendo, a much less to mexico. He belonged to the story being told about him, the uncertain real life equal to the movie that had made him a star only more far a fetched and with no happy ending assured.

It's kind of funning. Because IT was part of of the movie narrative. They were like, how far would you go for a wae? He went as far as getting him, raising up his ARM and saying to magical words, and having having really jump over the break water into freedom. I mean, simpler stic, yes, but that's what our narrative was to how far could take. Go, go.

For the moment, no one knew.

That look on post to the new podcast series, the good wae, of course, as a story and folds, we hear exactly how far they go to help co. The series is produced by serial productions in the new york times. You can hear episode two right now, wherever you get your podcast.

The new york subscribers can hear the entire series right now, including episode five, which is the episode that is a musical like an old school musical from chaos point of view by the song readers who did la la land and deer of a handsome bench panache, and just in paul, sung by Jordan Fisher and other actual broadway stars. Then you will also did a spanish al language version of episode one that you can hear on right to your on your long day coming up. Some other animals get thrown in to show business and they don't seem to be so crazy about IT. That's in a minute you got a pop radio when our program continues.

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American life, ma glass, today's program, the truly incredible story of cao, the killer whale we have arrived at, at two of our program, at two america's next top gobble. So thinking about what kind of story we go with K O today, we found this one also about our Daniel over animals fate. In this case is one of birds.

You're going through months of training for an extremely specific task that is very different for anything they naturally do on their own. I am. Well, as the story.

there's a barne in southeastern minnesota, A I wanted tell you about on the outside, it's very plane to White. Next to field smells a little like gunk. But inside there's this whole project that's been going on for months now.

So I shot this story OK. Oh, here they are. They are turkeys, not just any turkeys.

yes. So this this is what we're raising, the president of flock.

This is the group of birds contending to be the special thankful to giving turkeys at the White house. Two of them will be selected to go to washington and be officially pardoned by the president. It's an annual tradition going back decades, organized by the turkey lobby. Person showing me around today is john zimmerman is raising these birds the help of a shy nine year old son.

grant grant.

say, hi, hello, hi. To decide .

which turkeys make IT to the White house. John is basically selecting for the ones that at least like a turkey he needs to, that can stand politely on a special stage, while voices boom out over loudspeakers, all in front of hundreds of people, school children, photographers, military band. Most commercial turkeys would freak out in this noisy, unfamiliar, unbarred like environment.

Well, I mean, turkeys are prey animal, you know. There are natural instinct to be afraid of us humans, you know, any other animal, because they would. Johnson and .

industry life. He grew up on a turkey farm and took over the family business twenty five years ago when his dad passed away. Each year, john raises around one hundred and forty thousand birds in many giant barns.

These presidential turkey's are a brand new thing for him, though he's the chairman of the national turkey federation. In the way that works is that every year, that's the person who's in charge of raising these presidential turkeys and taking him to the White house day, but being terminals, only a one year gig. So every chairman is in the situation of being a total novice at training turky ish to be on television, something turkeys have no interest in or talent for at all. And they get exactly one shot to get IT right, right in front of the president in the united states.

I don't want to go down in history as the turkey farmer who had a turkey, you know, fly in the president's face or get away or you know, act in A A uncontrollable manner. So I just don't want to have A A flappy turkey up there.

He's been watching lots of youtube videos of previous White house turkey partners trying to anticipate everything that can go wrong. The birds that don't get taken to the White house get put back in with a regular turkeys and then slaughter and avian and hunger games in here. And whoever wins will be basically the only two commercial turkeys in america.

Out of over two hundred million raised each year. You get to live. So this is, there is, like you said.

like twenty birds.

twenty nine left OK out of how many you started?

Started about forty.

And how did you choose to the eleven? So far that I have been, I just deselected.

Yes, one had to scratch on its head. One was kind of flood. L say, when we tried to pick IT up and just didn't one having to do with IT.

So I mean, if if they were as dos as others, we took some out that cup. One was a hand. So when we got them from the hatch, we wanted all males. Obviously, they missed one, so one was a hand. So obviously he .

wasn't gna aren't female. Turkey are the same problem. Female, woman, in this getting to the White house, the males are the only ones anyone considers because they struck, which in a turkey means they puff up their tests, their snoozes and models turn bright red, and their tail fathers spread out like a peacock.

By the way, I was surprised to see that all of these turkeys are White, not Brown. John tells me it's because Brown father's left dark spots on the skin, which people didn't like. He points a, read a turkey with .

big snowed energy. He's very dark red on his neck. Is that he's the picture of thanksgiving .

bird rather? How do you read his like energy like as he like feeling aggressive? Is he feeling calm?

A lot of its philological looking for mate. So he's both gLance .

at the nine year old you recording.

you know I know he's he's warning, I mean, that are they are males, they are they're looking for a mate. They are trying to be the big guy in the beach. That's what they're doing is .

exactly what john is hoping two exceptional turkeys can bring to the White house. So he's outfitted the barn into the sort of south book camp. He and grant give me a tour first to get the turkey used to noise and random human voices. Don plays the radio for them every day from dawn to dusk. This is a tippy got from .

previous chairman play power .

ninety six grant, correct as dead power in twenty six radio, he's saying.

I likes that off. They don't like the station. And then alexa .

off alexa.

play power ninety six radio.

How many?

Plastic rock.

they're not yelling at this one.

Next, john n got this special .

light off of amazon, the kind that projects collared patterns on deer house at Christmas.

IT bothers them a little bit, but that's good. They need to get used to flash lights from camera flashes and what not .

grant marches and with a kid size picnic chair plops IT down in the middle of flock.

So think we will bring a chair in here.

and we'll just sit. This is to get them used .

to being around people.

John also enlisted the neighbor kids to combine regularly to sit with the birds and pick them up a lot. At this point, a few weeks out from thanksgiving, IT all comes down to whose hot the next calling will be for beauty. Obviously.

here we want him to have perfect fathers. So we're really watching their tail feathers .

and how they fan out really full circle.

See details right here in .

the front.

My problem has been talking with other chairman have gone through this process. They say, oh, you'll be able to pick the best two and no problem that you will be very easy to pick the final two. Now, maybe the next week or two, the cream or rise to the top and will find the two that are the best.

But none of them are jumping out to him yet. There's a test. Johns gna run on the bird soon. He in grant have built a box to mix the ones at the turkey stand on at the south lawn.

And he plans to put each of these birds on the box and see who stays on IT the longest. He wants them to have at least a minute. They did a trial run back in september. He shows me the notes.

This is the theme test. This is how many seconds they were standing on top of the box.

So they ranges .

like seven seconds, but then there's a couple two.

two minutes. Could you do like a little demo of that try? John goes to get a turkey, and grant explains, how is dad picks IT up. So you grab the legs, put its belly on the ground and then put your other hand under its belly.

That when slapping IT swinging.

but I did not want to get picked up, he's getting the tour grade.

give OK. He set IT down. And now the .

hope would be that he would just .

stand and do nothing, just high people. What doing? He's behaving pretty well.

I mean, he's not comfortable. IT would be nice if he would just stand here and struck, but he's obviously a little concerned. We watched .

the bird hunch .

kind of nerve sly for forty eight seconds. He doesn't .

try .

the perfect bird.

Want to stand here the whole time i'm talking to on grant is quietly running around us mending chores for himself. He brings in a pumpkin visit to the turkeys, tries to turn on the Christmas lights, keeps picking up different birds, gets a random metal and puts IT on one of them climes up onto the makeshift stage and squats down, posing as a turkey. I get the feeling that he really wants to show me all of this. He's excited to share his turkey project, but is too shy to say much or directly get my attention. John's gna be bringing grant to the White house two later this month .

my son is nine going on ten um at a shy age and I expect him to be standing up there with me in front of the cameras and IT is a little bit um this concern are overwhelming to him. I don't think he's quite aware of what this experience is gonna. So know what, we're training the turkeys, but we're also, in a way, educating and training my son to be part of this event.

Part of that training is watching past pardoning ceremonies on youtube together. Part of IT is getting him to talk to strangers like me.

just getting them used to interacting with adults because he's that he's a nine year old boy and that's not their favorite thing to do. Always, though.

have you ve been practicing at all grants for the White house ceremony or thinking about how he'll go for you?

Not really.

I'm just shy. Do you think our turkey shy too? Sort of depends on what you do to them. For the most part, I think they are not very shy. If you to stand there, they want to go see who is this, who is this. They are only shy if probably if you're trying to catch one, usually they're kind of curious and will eventually come up yeah you like that you think?

So all about getting an acclimated.

john, hoping that at the big press conference, when it's time to announce the turkey's names, grant will see them. Do we get thanksgiving when I watch all of this? That's the part i'm gonna leaning in for, not to see whether not the turkey flips on the box, but grants moment to take the stage and treat everyday ones.

That and will one .

of the produces of our show.

Let me, we will go far into the sea until by never. Well, to tell me. The things.

By some coal people put together today show and could fear and and die bond, Michael committee and regards and milk, milk, cathartic stone, Nelson, ryan, romney, solvin, france, swan, Christene. And in our senior editors, they would bomb. Our executive edit is a manual, very special that just a lesson. Hot Michael chrome, Peter grow amErica aromas and Jason fields.

Syria's new series about cao the good dwel is reported by Danielle a con and Kitty mingle produce Kitty in the last ship resented by janua without Julie snider, cargo slow as sistra and myself, sound design, music supervision and mixing by fb wang original score from a chick and osman the song last goon genus was performed by mariani dogo N Y C reo in fact checking by gene action with help them fAiling other people put together goodale include in day turbo mac Miller with Davis moral, Susan westling, ala. Ian summer and Simon progres. This american life is to give the public radio stations by P, R, X, the public radio exchange note to our this american life partners.

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Next week in the podcast to this american life, after four years of living here in our country, we're something like a third of the population thinks the twenty twenty election was stolen. I was fascinated to learn about how another country put system in plays, so there could be no mistaking who got the most votes. The results for every voting machine posted for anybody to examine, which was great, until this perfect system got its ultimate test. This next week, the podcast, when you walk a public radio station.

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