Danielle Alarcon
Appearances
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
I don't know about you, but you know what I think would feel great today? An animal story. And not one of the stories where the animals are some metaphor for human beings and we see ourselves through their actions and learn some important lesson. No, no, no, no.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
We pick up the story of Keiko, where we left off. Here's Danielle Alarcon.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
They launched their first two episodes this week. And we're going to play you episode one of their show right now. And then after the break, we have another story, not from Serial, but a story that we made about animals and what we expect of them. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
Danielle Alarcon, the novelist and journalist and host of Radio Ambulante, is the host of this new show for Serial. And with that, I will turn things over to Danielle. Here's episode one of their show.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
I'm talking about an old-fashioned animal story where you hear about some amazing creature in some surprising situation and that creature then does things that have such personality and seem so specifically them, you know, it just gets to you. I am pleased to say we have a story like that for you today.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
Danielle Ellicott, the host of the new podcast series, The Good Whale. Of course, as the story unfolds, we hear exactly how far they go to help Keiko. The series is produced by Serial Productions and The New York Times. You can hear episode two right now, wherever you get your podcasts.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
The New York Times 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 Keiko's point of view. Created by the songwriters who did La La Land and Dear Evan Hansen, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Sung by Jordan Fisher and other actual Broadway stars.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
Danielle also did a Spanish language version of episode one that you can hear on Radio Ambulante. Coming up, some other animals get thrown into show business and they don't seem to be so crazy about it.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
Today's program, the truly incredible story of Keiko the killer whale. We have arrived at Act 2 of our program, Act 2, America's Next Top Gobble. So thinking about what kind of story we'd go with Keiko today, we found this one, also about our dominion over animals' fates.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
In this case, it's a bunch of birds who are going through months of training for an extremely specific task that is very different from anything they naturally do on their own. Diane Wu has the story.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
And the creature is not a dog or a cat or a bunny or a horse or any other lovable creatures you usually find in this kind of story. It's an orca, a killer whale, that we humans captured from the wild, took from his mother and trained to be completely tame and live alongside us.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
Diane Wu is one of the producers of our show. Our program is produced today by Sean Cole. People who put together today's show include Fia Benning, Jendayi Bonds, Michael Kamate, Henry Larson, Miki Meek, Catherine Raimondo, Stone Nelson, Ryan Rumery, Lily Sullivan, Francis Swanson, Christopher Sotala, Matt Tierney, and Julie Whitaker. Our managing editors, Sara Abdurrahman.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
Our senior editors, David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry. Special thanks today to Jessica Lussenhop, Michael Krom, Peter Gruhl, Marissa Erasmus, and Jason Fields. Serial's new series about Keiko, The Good Whale, It was co-reported by Danielle Alicone and Katie Mingle, produced by Katie and Alyssa Shipp.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
It was edited by Jen Guerra, with help from Julie Snyder, Carlos Lopez Estrada, and myself. Sound design, music supervision, and mixing by Phoebe Wang. Original score from La Chica and Osman. The song Las Golondrinas was performed by Mariachi Hidalgo, NYC. Research and fact-checking by Jane Ackerman, with help from Ben Phelan.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
Other people who put together The Good Whale include Ndeye Chubu, Mac Miller, Liz Davis-Morer, Susan Wessling, Alamin Sumar, and Simone Prokis. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. A note to our This American Life partners. We just released a bonus episode that is a conversation about some very fun, very old stories with producer Zoe Chase.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
So check your feeds for that. To everybody else, to become a life partner and get bonus content, ad-free listening, AMAs and other stuff, go to thisamericanlife.org slash lifepartners. The link is also in the show notes of this episode. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torrey Malatia. You know, he knows his name. Pops up in my cell phone every time he calls. But still.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
He opens every single conversation the same way, every single time.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
All right, guys. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. Next week on the podcast of This American Life. After four years of living here in our country, where something like a third of the population thinks the 2020 election was stolen, I was fascinated to learn about how another country put a system in place so there could be no mistaking who got the most votes.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
The results for every voting machine posted for anybody to examine, which was great until this perfect system got its ultimate test. That's next week on the podcast on your local public radio station.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
This killer whale was so tame that at night, when his trainers went home and he was all alone, he would watch TV from inside his tank, He liked old Andy Griffith reruns and action movies. And that continued for years until one day we got the idea that maybe this killer whale didn't need to continue as a giant domesticated pet.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
Maybe it would be possible for him to lead a very different life in the wild again. Today's story comes from our co-workers at Serial. They, of course, have done so many remarkable series that have changed everybody's expectations of what you can do in a podcast. I have been sitting in on read-throughs of drafts of episodes of this new series for a year now.
This American Life
847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
I'm one of the people who gives editing notes. And whenever we do one of these listening sessions, I have to say it's always one of the best parts of my week. I really love this story. One of my favorite things they've ever done. This new series is called The Good Whale. Six episodes long, including, I'm not kidding, a musical episode. Maybe I'll tell you about that later.