The Good Whale: A New Podcast from Serial Productions and the New York Times

The Good Whale This is the story of a wildly ambitious science experiment to return a captive orca to the ocean — while the world watched. A new limited podcast series from Serial Productions and the New York Times. Listen to the trailer for The Good Whale. Episodes 1 and 2 launch on Nov. 14.

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00:00 / 02:26 Fans of the movie "Free Willy" are outraged to learn that the real whale who played Willy lives in a tiny pool at an amusement park in Mexico City. So well-intentioned experts embark on an epic science experiment to try to teach one celebrity orca how to be free — while the world watches.

New York Times All Access and Audio subscribers have early access to the entire show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, as soon as it launches on Nov. 14. Learn more at nytimes.com/podcasts .

About The Good Whale In the summer of 1993, the movie "Free Willy" — about a captive killer whale that's heroically set free — was an unexpected hit. But when word got out that the real whale who played Willy, an orca named Keiko, was dangerously sick and stuck in a tiny pool at an amusement park in Mexico City, the public was outraged. If Warner Bros. wanted to avoid a P.R. nightmare and not break the hearts of children everywhere, then it was clear: Someone had to free Keiko — or at least try.

Keiko was hardly an ideal candidate for release. He'd lived in the care of humans for more than a decade, since he was a calf. He had millions of human fans but not a single orca friend. And he had missed out on uncountable lessons about how to live in the ocean — skills no trainer in the world knew how to teach.

"The Good Whale" tells the story of the wildly ambitious science experiment to return Keiko to the ocean — while the world watched. An epic tale that starts in Mexico and ends in Norway, the six-episode series follows Keiko as he's transported from country to country, each time landing in the hands of well-intentioned people who believe they know what's best for him — people who still disagree, decades later, about whether they did the right thing.

Daniel Alarcón is an award-winning novelist, as well as host and Executive Producer of the Spanish-language podcast Radio Ambulante. He has written fiction for The New Yorker since 2003, and more recently reported from Latin America for the magazine. In 2021, he was named a MacArthur Fellow. He teaches journalism at Columbia University. Host Daniel Alarcón Reporting Daniel Alarcón and Katie Mingle Producers Katie Mingle and Alissa Shipp Editor Jen Guerra Additional Editing Julie Snyder and Ira Glass Fact Checking Jane Ackermann Additional Fact Checking Ben Phelan Tracking direction Elna Baker Music supervision, sound design, and mixing Phoebe Wang Original score La Chica and Hausmane Theme music Nick Thornburn Additional music Matt McGinley Contributing Editor Carlos López Estrada Art Direction Pablo Delcan Art Denise Nestor Standards Editors Susan Wessling and Aisha Khan Legal Review Al-Amyn Sumar and Simone Procas Executive Assistant Mack Miller Supervising Producer Ndeye Thioubou Senior Operations Manager Liz Davis-Moore Deputy Managing Editor Sam Dolnick About the Music La Chica and Hausmane began collaborating on La Chica's 2020 album La Loba. Since then they've continued to compose music together for film, podcasts, and dance. La Chica is French-Venezuelan, Hausmane is French-Lebanese, and they both live in Paris. At the New York Times, thanks to Nina Lassam, Brian Rideout, Susan Beachy, Kitty Bennett, Elizabeth Bristow, Danny DeBelius, Alain Delaquérière, Tara Godvin, Sheelagh McNeill, Jack Begg, Jeffrey Miranda, Peter Rentz, John-Michael Murphy, Jordan Cohen, Mahima Chablani, Jessica Anderson, Karl Delossantos, Kelly Doe, Shu Chun Xie, Kimmy Tsai, Victoria Kim, Brad Fisher, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, Nell Gallogly, Reyna Desai, Christine Ngyuen, Sophie Shay, Zoe Murphy, Pierre Antoine-Louis, and Tug Wilson. Special thanks Anita Badejo, Daniel Guillemette, Sarah Koenig, Alvin Melathe, Jenelle Pifer, Jessica Weisberg, Katie Fuchs, Julie Whitaker, Michael Weiss, Anna Marsibil Clausen, Pablo Argüelles, Camila Segura, Luis Fernando Vargas, Natalia Sánchez Loayza and Sara Selva Serial Productions makes narrative podcasts that have transformed the medium. From the powerful forces shaping our public schools to a mystery at the heart of a scandal that rocked Britain, Serial expands the boundaries of audio investigative storytelling. Learn more