From Serial: ‘The Good Whale’
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We might think of science as clinical, but as far as scientists are concerned, there is still beauty to be found in the patterns of explain our world. Hi, I M belah li. And in the latest episode of this is not a beauty podcast we hear from scientists and researchers about how beauty has spur innovation and discovery. Listen now on your favorite podcast platform.

Hey, it's my go today. We're gonna pause our usual sunday reads programing to bring you something really special. It's the first episode of the new show from our colleagues over at serial productions, and I don't want to spoil too much here.

What I can tell you is that this is a show about love, friendship, fear, hollywood and IT poses enormous questions for all of us as humans about our relationships with animals and with nature is stop provoking and it's moving. It's the story of the captive killer whale named kio, who start in the movie free Willy and is hosted by Danielle or our cn. And the show is called the good whale. To hear the whole six part series, you can search for the goods whale or ever you listen to podcast new episodes come out every thursday. Okay, here's episode one of the goodwill.

Our story begins in the early nineties with orka named kho. He's just entering his teenagers living at an amusement park in mexico city called rain duda, or adventure kingdom. He's not from there, but for the last seven years, a tank in this polluted, landlocked 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, I 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 too.

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 mother's side. They depend on her.

A mother worker might catch a fish bited in two and give half to her son. This kind of close business is documented in mae orcus. Well, 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 his mother's slip stream, still mastering the language of his pod. He wouldn't have yet learned how to hunt on his own despite way more than a thousand pounds in developmental terms. Kiko 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 amusement park is a substitute for any of that. But what I can say is that the people who work there, they truly, sincerely ly love cao. They are, for all intensive purposes, his pod.

well, obviously my purpose in life at that time, he was kiko and cake only.

That's another fernan's to work with K, O, A of duda for .

getting 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 I was. I worked there for seven years, and I was the best seven years of my life.

We're not to started a reduction a when he was twenty years old, SHE chopped frozen fish mop the 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 her. And even now, when he talks about cao SHE sounds the way a mother might when reminisce about her kid's childhood, SHE remembers to all of chaos s favorite games, his favorite toys.

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

if kiko had his moods or played favorites well. Another says that was just part of who he was.

who 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. I means, you know, like chemistry in .

the off season, when there were no weekday shows that rain off, and duda, ratti and the other trainer swam and played with cao for hours. Most of the people who work with cao were Young, none other than thirty, and they may caky the center of their lives. They fed in by hand, gave him belley 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, take go genuinely .

seem to like IT. We had this little boat, and there was a rope tied 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, hopping 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 obvious. Ly, we would laugh and then get on top of the little boat again, you know, give us a ride again. So I mean, he would have a blast.

There's nothing about that lesson. And over us that could be fact, not a word. We don't know if kiko was having a blast. We can know maybe he was dragged the trainers round because he was bored, or because he love these friendly people who feed him every day.

Maybe what is humans interpreted as? K, O, having fun was really just have IT or even defeat, like why not let people ride? They seem to 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't speak for himself, intention to make things right, for him to make things Better.

Everything i'm gona tell you, the next six episodes were set in motion by these good intentions, and by everything, I mean an unprecedented global campaign, a high profile, high stakes science experiment and a debate about what exactly we, humans of the natural world, at the center of at all, is cake o who would become, almost by accident, a symbol for all wales, for the health of the oceans, for the very concept of wildness. 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 dry, in fact, lots of well intention.

People would claim they knew exactly what was best for this wae, and they would be arguing and fighting over those interpretations for years. From serial productions and the new york times. This is the god whale and the near are not going.

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Hey, it's john chase .

and mario from wirecutters.

the product recommendation service from the new york times. Murray IT is gift giving time. What's like something fun that my dad is going to?

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IT wasn't just reattach and the other trainers who love cake o or even just the people in mexico city who want to see cak o at rain oin duda. IT seemed like pretty much every kid in mexico knew him. He was beloved, a kind of national mascot.

He was, he was like, their pet, mexico pet.

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 lots of people who grew up in mexico city in the eighties and nineties, and they said again and again that cao had an oral about him that seeing him at rain open 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 and to the commercials. Of course, there were pop songs dedicated to him.

He even started A.

And then there were the shows when visitors got to see their beloved pet, a close right. Do that doesn't exist anymore? Not under that name anyway.

IT since been acquired by six legs, but back in its hay day in the early nineties, cao was the star attraction. And these shows, they were legendary at the peek 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 as they filed in on weekends. There were three shows a day, more than three thousand seats, consistently packed. I had to another walk me through one of the routines. First IT was the sea lines, then the dolphins, including Richard.

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

There are so many people clAmbering to see. K, A close that his veteran, an told me they set up a kind of receiving line. He even compared the crowds to the evers who wait in line to see the verge on antil.

So that's cao, occasional TV star, quassia saint, telepathic confidant and best friend to countless mexican children. And this was his life, constant attention from the trainers games with his favorite dolphin buddies performances, or thousands of adding fans. But IT was all about to change.

In one thousand nine hundred ninety two, redon duda was set to closed for some much needed renovations, which mean 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 of reporter, what they help, why? IT was a much money, but I might keep caky 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 kiko was about to get the name you might know him by Willy, free Willy. If you're my age, mid forties, you've probably seen the movie.

But if not, or it's been a minute, here's a quick refresher. Laun 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 mood to all the old name, Jessie.

I guess .

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

His dorsal fin drops to one side, a killer wales version of an emo haircut. Jessie ety has to save with his life, getting back to the ocean, back to his family, and somehow, against all kinds of obstacles, he does come on. really.

I know you into a boy, I know you enjoy this. Come on, I believe. And you really, you can do IT you be free and you can stop IT.

The movie post is what most people remember. It's the image that was absorbed into the culture are still from the film's climax. Willy, in mid flight against the orange sunset, jumping over a break water, the ocean beckonings. The 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 want to changes to the script. Finally, they landed on rada, who signed off, as we mentioned, without you 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. 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, that is, appetite. He had a skin rush to something called paloma virus, which look bad, even though the veteran at rain ovando a 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, was salt added. But if that says they checked the sol levels frequently and they weren't under any illusions that cao's living conditions were ideal, SHE told me rainy 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 with the cameras kiko, a smaller than average killer whale with a drupes orso phin swim alone in a tiny, shallow pool. He was exactly what the movie required.

Freely was released unrealized sixteen and 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 khos sub power, living conditions and health began spreading. 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 and night that that will surely upset all those children who saw the movie freewheel this summer. The whale that start in the movie is sick and they die unless his living conditions are improved soon.

And of 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 the sledge to ask you to consider helping the killer.

Whe cao in mexico, we would like everybody to donate a dollar and we get lots of money. So we can try that help say this, well here, this wee that people have made millions off of, and now he's just sitting in the tank time. I don't think cao deserves today.

In mexico, real man dude in the staff were suddenly having to defend themselves in ways they had before, trying to convince crucem ding celebrities and animal rights activists that they did care about chaos 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 all wrong, that cao's water was, quote, clean and clear.

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

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It's molecular from new york times cooking and i'm in the kitchen with some of our team nica returns. And what are you making for thanksgiving this year from our .

recipes and making the chee hassle back potato grater Petering layers of finally cut potatoes very easy. It's a real show stopper.

Don reland give us, you take.

let me tell you that camel apple pie, it's so delicious. It's got this short bread like crust. So you want to roll out pio.

You can find the thankful for giving recipes. You need IT N Y T cooking. That comes flash thanksgiving.

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 from each kill we harvested at their blubb, their organs, their bain, 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 sixties. 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. Fishermen drawl 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 century.

By the early one 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 decline they were seeing in wild populations might be reversible in response to save the whale's movement. Was born with the goal of ending commercial wheeling worldwide. A bold, quick ii 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 cao 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 entres 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 wanted in. So he packed up his life, drove his turcos, walked swagger rabbit out to california, and soon join the movement to do his part.

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

So, yeah, he was kind of hippy. But he was a hippy with a degree biology who found he was too impatient to spend his adult life in a lab study the manual a 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 whales.

The slogan in itself becoming so ubiquity. IT was almost played as a punch line. They received whales, marches and rallies across the world and they was there for all of IT.

Most importantly, he was there in one hundred and eighty two a pivi al 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'd saved the whales from what many felt was 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 beat, at least people are hearing the message.

And two, wales are magic and fat, 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 is that one of these meetings in glasses 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 goodness this just stick donor calling from hollywood like what is in and and there's dick and he's like, all in a flutter. I haven't .

inner duced to dc donor yet, but I did mention his wife Loring A R. Together they were a legit hollywood power couple, producing or directing blockbusters like the goodness and superman. Tickets since passed away, but Lawrence told me that they both were self proclaimed animal linear s.

David actually worked with a couple before they asked him to consult on a few lines of rodolph's dialogue in the budget b movie leafe up in two. What did you eat there? I, my tuna face sandwich.

Dad, you can any tuna flipper? We're boycotting tuna honey because they killed the off and a good caught in the only albo. IT was small, barely a scene, but di felt good about IT.

And now he had something bigger in mind. Free Willy, a movie he and Lawrence we're putting together. And dick wanted daves help.

And he's like, you know, this movie is going to be big, is like, it's gonna a great movie. And I am doing this because I want to make a difference for whales. And and and I want to nore you in the whaling .

ban dave had fought for all those years ago, protected whales from commercial slaughter, but some species were still captured, killed on a smaller scale. The way dave saw IT dick Lawrence were offering him an opportunity to finish the job he started all those years ago, a chance to save the rest of the whales. David, the producers started with something simply and one 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's organization or finland 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 them 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 a year, and once the movie was released and word got out that the star freewill, I 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. They've remembers dick following them .

up again and saying, we're being crucial fight 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 cac, you've got to get involved in saving K.

O, rescuing caky 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 where 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 off, nothing quite this ambitious had ever been attempted. True, other captain marine memo had been released to the wild, but they hadn't been in captivity nearly as cao.

So saving cao would require an extraordinary effort. Dictor wanted dave to do IT, but this wasn't exactly they have. Specially his whole career had been focused on big, huge problems protecting the ocean and setting wild whales, plural, what dick was proposing in response to the public outcry around the movie was much narrower in scope.

Saving the whale, singular. They've 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 that 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 and 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 nine hundred eighty five, scientists announced that they discovered a hole in the ozone yer.

And by the nineties, an international treaty was in place to ban some of the chemical. Stato have created IT, and IT seems to work. The ozone layer began to heal itself, even I remember, and I was just a kid, those gears were my childhood.

The 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 the planet, that if people just knew what was happening, we do the right thing, and that the right thing would be cleared to all of us.

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

I'll fly down to mexico city in meat cao. He was, if not hopeful, intreat, until he 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.

They've 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. Cao was basically the equal equivalent of a couch potato.

First time I ever went to mexico to see cao, I was completely freak out. I was just, I was sitting up in the bleachers, looking down at this rail 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 seconds that would. That was very, very, uh, 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, as dave, to take through the reasons kiko was not an ideal candidate to real, and there were many before they could even think of releasing him back in to the ocean. co. Needed to get rid of his pupils oma virus, but also get stronger, healthier, put on weight and there was no way he could do that in his current tank at rain off and duda.

And where we exposed to bring him, 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 is 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 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 the'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 coming, 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'd 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 eat. IT and language.

Cao had stopped making most of the sounds in a wild whale repeat our years before, have different dialogue, and IT was unlikely. KO even remembered the dialect he spoke before his capture. This was crucially important to his survival, or very rarely live alone in the open ocean.

So if he was to make IT out there, dave new k. go. Would have to be integrated into a part, his original pod, preferably. But if he didn't speak their language, that was gonna difficult. And then there was a small detail that no one knew 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 waling nation, are you kidding me? What we're going to go over to iceland? And can do we want to bring back this whale? Because because the world wants to save him.

Did you do like a back of the envelope? Sort of like, what is gonna thing like on plane back?

Yeah, exactly before, even on the while, I was down there and and on the way back I was like, I landed out. I was way over ten million dollars and I was like at that point that pretty much just you back in my pack saying I don't know about this is just I don't were 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 entire aling 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. Those are the big, huge, unsolvable problems, global warming at sea, but there are so defuse. People can see acidification rising in the oceans.

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 no things to manifest what's 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 is 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 whale. It's like, yeah, he's one whee e but it's gonna the most famous, 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 aside his doubts and decided that, yes, as absurd that sounded, he was all in. One Steve committed to getting cake 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 work is not easy. One of the first things dave did was create a whole new organization.

The freewheel cao foundation, the U. S. Humane society chipped in a million dollars. Dave secured a couple million more from a billionaire cellphone 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 free Willy. And by this point, the sequel, freewheel 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 van tuta, wasn't opposed to the idea of giving him up.

He had a whole park 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 arranged private swims with cao. Porter told me he was spending three hours a day dealing with cao 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 of juda. So over the course of several months day, even Oscar porter made a deal. Rain ovando agreed to donate cao today's foundation for free.

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

In february in nine hundred and ninety five, IT was announce to the world that k go would be leaving rain oin duta for his new temporary home at a neque um on the origin coast in an enormous new tank with cold seawater. Dave laid out a vision for taos future, invoking the plot to freely, to which would hit theatres a few months later.

And in that film, wood is reunited with a main and and has a child and lives happily. This is our goal. We would love to see the situation in which cao could have a mate and could be able to eventually be released to the while.

Rescue rehab release, that was dave's ultimate plan. Even if the last part seemed improbable at best for kiko 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 them 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 they, they wish you could stay.

But letting him go was a sacrifice they were willing to make because they loved him and they wanted what was best for him, which is why I was so offensive to, and many others I talk to, to hear how the story was being told in the U. S. That cao was being saved from a terrible life in mexico. Do you feel like there was an element of like um mexico you know how things are done? There is no.

of course, is we have to always help the little brother because he does everything wrong. I'm not saying I don't anna say that this is the best place for an animal, obviously. 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 sent in return.

A few days before cao was scheduled leave mexico. The rain over 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. And in the delphine, we made a big launching, and we all got into the water, and we all play with cao. And there was a lot of crying. And IT was, IT was fun, and kick was so happy. And you will play with all of them.

Wait a second. So you're telling me another, you'd like thirty people got in the pool with k go at the same time to play. yes.

yeah. I mean, you would never get this sea world or mainland or any other aqua in the world. If you tell this to a veteran, an from this, you know, huge aquarium, they will tell you that, I mean, that's not a good idea because he would, I mean, the animal get try. 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, nineteen ninety six, IT was time for k go to go. They decided to move him in the middle of night for a few reasons to avoid the heat and the traffic, but also the crowds that were sure to want to say they are goodbye.

Moving any object as big as a killer wheel e is an engineering problem, but when that object is a living thing, there is an added complication. Getting kiko out of rain, open duda and onto a plane would depend no small measure on the CoOperation of kiko himself, and that required training for months. State worked on IT with him, first swim into a small, shallow pool and then into a customer, made small swimming in and out of the week, spent just getting comfortable with this process.

He had to be comfortable because once he was in that sling, he'd stay wrap in IT for at least fourteen hours. The chAllenge would be to keep him calm. He had to trust as humans, not fight or flail 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, but after stayed close to cao, 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 we're 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 type rash.

you need his skin to be protected. So um 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's started you know like crying a little bit because he was nervous and and and everybody was so nervous. And you can you can transfer that to take, obviously. 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 place them in a shipping container filled with three thousand pounds of fresh water ice. The container SAT on the back of a tractor 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 convinced U. P. S. To deliver cake to organ for free. When the caribs finally left, there were crowds more than theyd expected.

Ordinary people who love 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, lining 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 of breast of the caribbean program. There are thousands of people minding the stress poison their pyjama as Carrying hand written signs and girls and pig tails, Carrying mexican flags, teens shouting and calling chaos name.

You have to wonder if the sale can hear them chanting, A, I, I. He should stay. He should stay.

Then, somewhere along the slow, ponderous route 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 the lyrics tossed by the wind with nowhere to hide.

Remember my homeland, believe the program. M and you 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 cacos container as they tried to climate the procession, just creeping along as best they can through the impossible, crowded late night streets, a city, a country, saying goodbye to its beloved IT.

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 and crying and screaming like goodbye. I was so, so emotional. I was sad and happy the same time, because we are all doing this, because we hope, because gonna be, he's gonna be OK.

But but he was for .

for mexicans to say goodbye to the only, obviously, or can I, 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 cayos veteran ans fly with him who are not the, and dave fly alongside in another aircraft close enough to Z, K, OS playing from their window. K, O no longer belonged in oenothera, 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 and with no happy .

ending assured. It's kind of funny 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 that, the know, getting him, raising up his ARM and thanks magic words, and having and having wally 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 on the next episode of the goodwill, the story we were telling was a beautiful story of things going right, a simple story.

But he was the absolute worst canada for a project that.

My comment was that's not a killer l, that's a gold retriever.

New york times, all access in audience subscribers can binge all episodes of the goods whale right now on apple podcast and spotify.

Just head to the link in our show notes and subscribe or if you're already subscribed to the times, link your account also sign up for our newsletter where each week call to sharing photos and behind the scenes and fo on the goodale this week we ve got photos and links to video from cao's life at rain oin duda, the place he called home for more than a decade you should definitely check IT out the link to sign up is also in our show notes or go to N Y times start com slash serial. And there is a spanish language version of this first episode that we produce for my other podcast, radio ambuLance te. You can look for that at radio and dot.

The goods whales written by me and yet a lot of gone and reported by me and Kitty mingle shows produced by kd and a lissa ship. Janua is our editor. Additional editing from Julie snider and irag lass sound design, music supervision and mixing by feb.

one. The original score for the goods whale comes from the chick a and osman artha music is by nc. Thorburn, and additional music from mat beginning. The song lagoon dinas in today's episode was performed by media cho n. yc.

He was produced an engineered by deposing brad Fisher and pat mouser research, in fact checking by jane acron with help from ben fAiling tracking direction by on the Baker Susan westling is our standards at a legal review from alee sumac and Simon procs a slope stra is a contributing editor on the series. The supervising producer for central productions is in A O mac Miller is the executive assistant for cereal, liz Davis more is the senior Operations manager. Special thanks to Lauren suller donor jane tug na lit back, rob freedman, who says a thrower, doukh public, public waves, and kd fuke, the goods whale is from serial productions and the new york times.