Keiko Part 2 with Brianna Bowman

Summary

---

You're Wrong About – Keiko Part 2 with Brianna Bowman

Host: Sarah Marshall
Guest: Brianna Bowman (orca and dolphin enthusiast)
Date: February 10, 2026

---

Overview

In this second chapter of the “Keiko” trilogy, Sarah Marshall and marine mammal expert Brianna Bowman continue to reconsider the story of Keiko— the orca made famous by Free Willy— and how the attempt to return him to the wild shaped public imagination, conservation strategies, and public fundraising efforts. They cover Keiko’s move from Mexico City to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, the challenges surrounding his rehabilitation, funding drama, the complicated intersection of capitalism and animal welfare, and the beginning of his journey back to Iceland. The conversation is rich with cultural, ethical, and personal observations, mixing humor and hard questions about what it means to “free” a whale.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Keiko Phenomenon: From Captivity to Celebrity

• Recap: Keiko, the killer whale from Free Willy, was captured near Iceland in the late '70s and ended up in a small, overheated tank in a Mexico City amusement park.
• Sarah: “He’s a lovely little killer whale. He certainly is killer. And he’s a sweet little guy.” (03:01)
• The film’s popularity brought attention to Keiko’s actual living conditions, sparking a global effort to improve his life and, eventually, reintroduce him to the ocean.

2. Animals in Human Stories & Public Imagination

• The American tradition of “child and animal” narratives, from My Side of the Mountain to Free Willy, shapes how people relate to animal welfare.
• Sarah: “There are so many narratives in American culture... about kid and animal who become friends and understand each other.” (06:03)

3. The Ethics and Practicality of Whale Release

• Brianna complicates the “success/failure” binary regarding Keiko’s story, focusing on what can be learned instead.
  • Brianna: “The more interesting question is about what we did learn... and how we can do things differently next time, and understanding the nuance involved and all the... shades of gray.” (08:24)
• The goals for Keiko’s release were frequently in tension—some saw only freedom as a true victory, often projecting human ideas onto orca welfare.
  • Sarah: “It’s also interesting to ask...whether that might inevitably be influenced by the very human perspective that values freedom as a value that possibly is a value that orcas might not have.” (18:56)
  • Brianna: “Yeah, no, I think you nailed it.” (19:12)

4. The Wild Plan: From Fundraising to Whale Transport

• The Oregon Coast Aquarium built an enormous custom tank for Keiko, funded through public donations (including Keiko Adoption Kits), Hollywood, and a crucial multimillion-dollar gift from billionaire Craig McCaw.
• Sarah: “If I’m Hollywood, I would just go to, like, a Dodgers game and just, like, ask the people in my row, just...will you pledge some money to the Free Willy thing?” (29:11)
• Key logistics: Keiko was transported by a chartered UPS cargo plane in a custom-built container, drawing crowds at every city.

5. The Role of Billionaires & Boardroom Control

• Philanthropy from Craig McCaw (likened to Jurassic Park’s John Hammond by Brianna) was transformative but also shifted project priorities and introduced new complications.
  • Brianna: “He’s definitely our John Hammond from Jurassic Park. He just has a lot of money and is very enthusiastic about this project.” (23:30)
• McCaw’s control led to staff tensions and skepticism:
  • Brianna: “There’s a lot of people that start to get involved with the leadership of this project that are not...scientists and...not animal behaviorists...it’s like, that in itself isn’t a bad thing. But sometimes the goals are not aligned.” (32:47)
  • Sarah: “It creates the potential for someone not being able to be overridden...in a way that’s always worrisome, regardless of who’s playing that role.” (35:01)

6. Keiko as Oregonian & Community Figure

• Keiko’s arrival in Newport, Oregon, was a major cultural moment in the region.
  • Schoolchildren lined up on field trips to visit him; he became an unofficial state mascot for a generation.
  • Sarah: “It was a huge deal. We got to school at seven and we got back at seven p.m...And I remember buying a book in the gift shop about bats.” (46:03)
  • Brianna: “He was so engaged with people...He would hang out at the window where you could see him and he would just watch you. So, like, kids would be, like, doing silly things...He was an extrovert.” (47:45)

7. Rehabilitation: Health, Behavioral Training, and Human Relationships

• Large investments helped return Keiko to health: cold, clean ocean water, veterinary care, and new behavioral training.
  • Brianna: “Keiko’s health really improves during his stay at the Oregon Coast Aquarium...his tank...just is really substantially larger...It has actual seawater pumped in from Yaquina Bay...” (36:11)
• Trainers worked on his stamina, diving, and ability to hunt live fish, with mixed success and plenty of human-centric optimism.
  • Sarah: “It is a little funny to think that...we thought we had the capability of teaching an apex predator, like a killer whale, how to hunt.” (52:20)

8. The Iceland Decision: Logistics and Luck

• Iceland—Keiko’s birthplace—became the chosen site for the next attempt at wild release, largely because billionaire Craig McCaw said so.
  • Brianna [quoting]: “Macaw broke in finally, ‘Keiko is from Iceland, and we’re thinking of bringing him somewhere else?’...‘No, no, no. We’re bringing him to Iceland.’” (57:56)
• The scouting trip to Iceland is recounted in a memorable scene with the saxophonist guide playing “Amazing Grace” in Keiko’s future home bay. (63:36)
• The move involved building a large sea pen in Klettsvik Bay, complex international permitting, and preparing for the next phase: limited-human-contact rewilding.

9. Theories, Training, and Team Friction

• Arrival in Iceland led to new protocols and power struggles, as SeaWorld-affiliated trainers like Mark Simmons pushed for stricter regimens aimed at getting Keiko to act like a wild orca and avoid human dependency.
  • Brianna: “When they arrived on the project...they felt like anyone in the vicinity...could just walk out to the platform and interact with Keiko, and that...was counterintuitive to what the end goal of the project was.” (89:59)
• Tensions between old caretakers (who loved Keiko’s friendliness with humans) and new trainers aiming to suppress it.
  • Sarah: “Logic and sentimentality are a little bit at war. And is that what they’re saying in terms of dependence on humans...?” (90:44)
  • Brianna: “They wanted him to learn how to seek out the attention of other wild whales and...lose interest in people.” (90:55)
• Details from Mark Simmons’ book (Killing Keiko) about “innovative behavior” exercises (i.e., rewarding Keiko for doing novel tricks) raise ethical and practical questions about animal training.
  • Sarah: “I can’t think of many dogs that I have known that wouldn’t hate that.” (96:36)

10. Larger Reflections and Ethical Dilemmas

• The episode repeatedly circles back to broader themes:
  • The tension between what humans want (redemption, a clean narrative, symbolic victory) and what may actually be best for an individual animal.
  • The ways in which animal intelligence is misunderstood or anthropomorphized.
  • Reflection on how reliance on philanthropy warps project priorities.
• Notable Quote, Brianna: “The more interesting question is about what we did learn and the parts where we did fail to reach the goal and how we can do things differently next time, and understanding the nuance involved and all the... shades of gray.” (08:24)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Sarah, on orcas’ social lives and billionaire yacht attacks:
  “You used to be really cute and people-pleasing and you would jump through hoops, and now you just want to attack billionaires’ yachts.” (01:54)

• Keiko as cultural outlier:
  “Keiko is really the President Zelensky of the ocean.” (12:28)

• On fundraising and corporate involvement:
  “Having a big building with your name on it won’t help you. Teenagers will put gum on it.” (23:57)

• A small town’s transformation:
  “Keiko had a huge procession that said farewell to him from Mexico City. And there was a sizable crowd here in Newport. But it is a small town...” (28:14)

• Mattel’s Barbie Fundraiser for Keiko, from archival video:
  “We created Ocean Friends Barbie and a portion of the proceeds...will go towards Keiko's recovery. So I am very happy today to present to you...this donation for $500,000...” (49:21)

• Human projections and animal behavior:
  “We want animals to include us and then we make them worse at surviving among their own.” (48:09)

• On limited animal release precedents:
  “I’ve come across some stories of releases, but...whether those were actually successful or not is unclear to me, because they weren’t tracking the whale afterwards.” (73:03)

• Mantis shrimp digression (color vision and cross-species intelligence):
  “What if that mantis shrimp is like the little girl in the Exorcist? And it’s like, ‘you’re gonna die up there.’” (78:02)

• On the absurdities of retraining an orca:
  “It's a little funny to think that... we thought we had the capability of teaching an apex predator, like a killer whale, how to hunt.” (52:20)

• Reminiscence and humor:
  “He was just a very affable, friendly golden retriever of a whale, even to the point of being passive and not showing a lot of motivation, I guess. And I'm not saying that's like a flaw.” (93:26)

• Choreographing an Icelandic training montage:
  “Just imagine, you know, people in, like, their wetsuits, splash suits out on the dock, and they got their whistles... Keiko's, you know, jumping out of the water, swimming in circles, whatever it is. So the song that Mark Simmons mentioned in his book was ‘Dancing Queen’ by ABBA.” (99:43)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:38] – Sarah’s in-episode recap of Keiko’s capture and early life
• [13:21] – How you transport a whale (sliding into air cargo logistics)
• [23:49] – Craig McCaw, billionaire philanthropist, enters the story
• [28:14] – Keiko arrives in Newport, Oregon: community impact
• [36:11] – Keiko’s health and happiness in Oregon
• [45:28] – Sarah & Brianna’s personal childhood memories visiting Keiko
• [52:20] – Attempts to teach Keiko to catch live fish
• [57:56] – Iceland chosen by billionaire fiat: “No, no, no. We’re bringing him to Iceland.”
• [63:36] – The “Amazing Grace” saxophone moment in Klettsvik Bay
• [79:09] – Arrival in Iceland: permittings, challenges, and philosophy
• [89:59] – Mark Simmons and Robin Friday impose stricter protocols
• [99:43] – Keiko’s training montage and “Dancing Queen”

---

Tone & Style Observations

• Witty, conversational, and peppered with digressions (puns, pop culture references, asides about animal trivia and the podcasting process itself).
• Anna and Brianna interweave warmth, deep research, and genuine melancholy/ambivalence about the meaning of “freedom” for animals.
• Frequent reminders of personal stakes: both hosts are former “dolphin girls” growing up in Oregon, which colors their empathy and sense of responsibility.

---

Conclusion & Next Steps

This episode covers Keiko's Oregon years and lays out the challenges and hopes (and sometimes comic misunderstandings) of trying to “rewild” an orca who had become deeply bonded to humans. As the episode closes, Sarah and Brianna prepare for the dramatic conclusion in Iceland, where competing priorities, technical hurdles, and ethical questions become inescapable.
Stay tuned for Part 3.

---

Transcript

[A]

What if that mantis shrimp is like the little girl in the Exorcist, and it's like, you're gonna die up there? Welcome to Ya Rangabout, the podcast where we tell you about your favorite Oregon celebrities. And of course, the best one of all is Keiko. And with me today to talk about Keiko is certified orca girl and also Dolphin girl, Brianna Bowman. Hi.

[B]

Yes, that is. I really should put that at my business card, I think.

[A]

Certified Dolphin girl. Dolphin girl.

[B]

Did I ever tell you, Sarah? Okay, this is kind of embarrassing.

[A]

Good. Great way to start.

[B]

This is how much of a dolphin girl I am. Do you know what my first email address was?

[A]

Dolphin Girl?

[B]

No. I was trying to be a little Squeak squeak. I was trying to be a little.

[A]

A little.

[B]

A little cooler than just Dolphin girl. It was dolphin chica4hotmail.

[A]

That's so beautiful, though. Okay, do you know what my first AOL username was? I bet I've told you this before.

[B]

No, I don't know.

[A]

Amore Dragon 88. Aren't those two both so on brand?

[B]

They really are. We haven't changed at all.

[A]

Yeah, you're still a dolphin chica, and.

[B]

I'm still an amore [e-mail].

[A]

And then I read in like, you know, 17, it was like, you should never put your birth year in your email. And I was like, oh, no.

[B]

Oh, what have I done? I have to say, though, I think I've. I was definitely a dolphin girl as a kid, and I think as a woman, I am orca woman.

[A]

That's interesting, because you used to be really cute and people pleasing and you would jump through hoops, and now you just want to attack billionaires, yachts.

[B]

Yes, Actually, that's a fair summary.

[A]

It's pretty accurate. I feel like we should do a bonus episode on my lingering question of what is the deal with the orcas allegedly attacking billionaires, yachts, and do they hate capitalism specifically? Because that would be very exciting.

[B]

Say that again, but in a Jerry Seinfeld voice.

[A]

What's the deal with these orcas?

[B]

Why do they keep attacking billionaires? What is the deal with these orcas?

[A]

So, okay, so this is part two of the Keiko story. If you don't know who Keiko is, we bring you up to speed in the last episode. But if I may, in classic, you're wrong about fashion. I'd like to attempt to summarize it, and you can correct me as needed.

[B]

Go for it.

[A]

Okay, so Keiko is a lovely little whale. Killer whale, orca. And he Certainly is killer. And he's a sweet little guy.

[B]

And he's very sweet.

[A]

Yeah. And he was born around Iceland, obviously not in ICELAND in the 70s, and was captured in 1979.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. 78 or 79. Good memory as usual, Sarah.

[A]

Thank you. At a time when random dick wheels were going around capturing killer whales for fun and profit and to exhibit them, make ridiculous movies about them, I realized after we recorded the other day that I actually have a poster for a different killer whale movie on my bathroom door. Let me go open the door and then I can read it to us. Are killer whales an apex predator?

[B]

Yes. Yeah, there's not really anything that is a threat to a killer whale besides people in the ocean.

[A]

Yeah. I was going to say killer whales are the cutest apex predator, but actually I think it's got to be polar bears.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Polar bears are pretty stinking cute, right?

[A]

Because kids love polar bears. They're in coke ads, they're drinking coke, they're looking at the sunset or the northern lights, I guess.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And yet, according to Blair Braverman, who certainly would know, in real life, polar bears see us much as I would see a delicious Taco Bell gordita.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Yes. No, polar bears are. I know. Like, you know, we're supposed to be wary of grizzly bears if we're out in the woods and.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I certainly don't want to force them to be friends with me.

[B]

No. And like, with a grizzly bear, it's mostly like you just don't want to surprise them because they might hurt you that way. A polar bear will, as far as I know, try to eat you. They do see you as a tasty snack. So not a good situation if you're. If you're near one.

[A]

So just say no.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So let me read you this Nammu poster. So it's got a lovely painting of Namu. Namu.

[B]

Namu, yeah, Namu, I think the killer.

[A]

Whale with some asshole holding onto his fin and riding him while he leaves. We love the idea of just like riding a beautiful animal.

[B]

Yeah. We really wanted to make orcas like the horses of the ocean for us, I think.

[A]

God, yeah. That's so depressing. And it's like.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, I guess if a horse could hold its own against a great white shark, I might think a little bit more about that. It's amazing that we got our way with horses. We should quit while we're not ahead. Exactly. But, you know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the text says, anybody want to make friends with a Very big, very wet, very playful killer whale. Question mark, Three exclamation points. He's the biggest hero in the whole wide world of adventure. And then it's got a little girl with pigtails saying, don't let them hurt Nabu, Mommy. I love him. So you can see that Free Willy is working on a precedent that maybe had not been perfected yet, but sort of existed as a. You know, because there's so many narratives in American culture, and I'm sure pretty much any culture about kid and animal.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Who become friends and understand each other.

[B]

Yeah. Those are my. They still are my favorite stories. They were my favorite stories when I was a kid. I definitely gravitated to any story where a protagonist that's a young child is making their best friend is some sort of animal. Like, what was it in My side of the Mountain? Didn't he.

[A]

He had a.

[B]

A hawk.

[A]

Peregrine Falcon.

[B]

A peregrine.

[A]

Frightful.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think about frightful more often than actual people I have known in my life or, like, family members, you know?

[B]

Yeah, I. Well, I don't know. I can't remember the plot of Julie of the Wolves if she actually had a connection.

[A]

She's married off, like, as a 13 year old. I think she's, like, married to a fellow kid.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think she's in, like, barrow or something and she. She runs away and, like, loses her bearing. And then she's adopted by a family of wolves and they. They go hunting and then they regurgitate meat for her, which is so gross and so great. Yeah, you gotta do what you gotta do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, I'm sure there's an influencer today who's thinking, you know, what we should all be eating is regurgitated wolf meat.

[B]

Oh, God, there probably is. Honestly.

[A]

That's the next thing billionaires are gonna pull, I swear to God. Oh, probably while they listen to the Eyes Wide Shut soundtrack. We're predicting some really big trends here, I think today are. But I mean, I also. I'll say that, like, the success of the show, which has been listened to by more people than I would ever imagine possible when we started out, is to me, like, further proof of my theory that, like, obviously people are different from each other, to quote Eve Sedgwick, but that there are a lot of basic human tendencies and drives. And one of them is that we're very curious and we love learning. If we didn't love learning, we wouldn't have landed on the moon with, like, computers that had less memory than probably what it takes to power one of those games where you have to save a king by sorting jewels.

[B]

Yeah. We wouldn't have landed on the moon, and we wouldn't have to bring it back. We wouldn't have tried to free Keiko, I think.

[A]

Exactly. And you wouldn't be listening to this, wanting to know how this happens, because this is also a way, I think, for you to tell us about kind of some of the concepts in science that are behind everything that is happening and that we're going to learn today.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It was an astronomical feat, and we learned a lot. And it also did not go perfectly. And that is part of the process of science and learning and trying new things. So I just want to say, like, you know, people try to talk about the Keiko's story in terms of whether was it a success or was it a failure? And I certainly used to think of it in those terms of, like, this very black and white. Did they achieve their goal or did they fail? And I think, like all stories and just real life in general, the more interesting question is about what we did learn and the parts where we did fail to reach the goal and how we can do things differently next time, and understanding the nuance involved and all the. All the shades of gray in between. And that's where the real interesting part of the story lies. It's not just a yes, no binary of whether we did what we set out to do.

[A]

Yeah, I guess. Like in the newsboy strike.

[B]

Yes, exactly.

[A]

Well, and I feel like one of the things that going to get into maybe is also when so many people are working on a project, there being conflicting ideas of what the goal is.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And so. Yeah. So to catch us up. So he's a lovely little killer whale. He's captured. He ends up in a theme park that is now a Six Flags in Mexico City. So he's a whale at altitude. Yes. Which is funny to think about, but also worrying. And he's in a tank that's like. And I remember this from when I was a kid, to be clear, because our chapter last time ended with Keiko on his way to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, which I remember, and which was, like, everyone was excited about in my memory, and it was huge, basically, certainly for children, but I think kind of for everybody, and especially in Oregon. And that became kind of part of our identity, certainly as millennials, that we had provided transitional housing for Keiko. Yes. But. So he was in a tank that I remember learning as a kid was like. And that you reiterated in this episode was, like, consistently just, like, too small and too warm for his. Based on his species. And then when they were making Free Willy, they were like, we need a whale, a whale that can act, that works well with people and that isn't owned by SeaWorld, who don't want us to work with their whales because for some reason, they don't want to help with a movie that's about freeing whales. And this theme park in Mexico was like, yeah, you can film with our whale. And so, of course, then we have our adolescent protagonist opening a door in Astoria, Oregon, and then going through it, and he's in a theme park in Mexico City with Lori Petty and Keiko. And so it's like a lovely movie where they free Keiko and he goes back to his pod and they're together again. And as we also talked about, killer whales are very social. Yes, very social, and would be fair to say don't thrive as loners, which might be foreshadowing.

[B]

Yes, there are some examples of loner killer whales, but I think it's sort of similar, again, to people in that it's not really the norm to have a completely isolated life. Right.

[A]

So we're telling the story of, like, human beings coming together, you know, kind of inadvertently making Keiko a symbol of what happens in the movie. He's the star of. Which, as you pointed out in the past, I cannot think of a single. You can't think. And I can't think of a single example of this happening in any other case where fact imitates fiction to this extent, unless you count things like Fantasia from American Idol playing herself in a movie, which I've also always found trippy.

[B]

Oh, yeah. The only. Well, and the other example I can think of President Zelensky when he. Of Ukraine, you know.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Wasn't he an actor in a show about becoming president?

[A]

Something like that. Keiko is really the President Zelensky of the ocean. So, okay, so our last installment ended with Keiko merrily on his way to Newport, Oregon. And the plan at the time, which I didn't realize as a little kid, because I'm sure no one explained this to me with enough nuance, or I just ignored it, possibly, was for him to be there for, like, a while, but then ultimately to be brought back to the waters outside Iceland where he was from. And my first question based on that, which I feel like we were about to. To get into, is, how do you transport a whale? Especially if you don't have the Enterprise, like in the Star Trek movie. I Made you watch.

[B]

Yeah. It's not easy, but you'd be surprised how much whale transport takes place. I mean, any.

[A]

Okay, say more about that.

[B]

Well, it primarily happens by air. Oh, I believe that the plane that transported.

[A]

I want an action movie about this.

[B]

I know, right?

[A]

The clock is ticking when you've got a whale on the cargo hold.

[B]

Yes. And speaking of a ticking clock, I think where we ended last time, I was saying that there was a budget shortfall at this point in the story. So Earth Island Institute, we had our protagonist, David Phillips.

[A]

What does David Phillips look like? Does he wear Tevas at all?

[B]

So I was thinking about this. I was thinking about who would I cast in my movie about Keiko.

[A]

Mark Ruffalo.

[B]

Ooh, that's a good one. Actually.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I was thinking Tom Hanks, actually.

[A]

Okay, Tom Hanks.

[B]

When recently, like, okay, nice. And with a. With a beard, like a, you know.

[A]

Grizzled looking, kind of fed up with everybody, but still very nice in the end.

[B]

Yeah, like. And like, I've spoken with David Phillips and he's. Yeah, he's very pleasant guy and really passionate about the work that he did. And he's very, like, strategic. He was involved in a lot of, like, media campaigns around Save the Dolphins in the 70s when it came to, like, tuna fisheries.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And yeah, I think he's very savvy and he understands how to make these big projects come together. Like, he's a project manager essentially in this story, which is real world talk.

[A]

For producer, from what I understand.

[B]

Oh, yeah, that's true. That is kind of. It is the same thing now that I'm like, getting more into this space. I'm like, oh, yeah, the. That is what a producer is.

[A]

There's an episode of the Dick Van Dyke show where they take Rickshy's class on a field trip backstage to the Alan Brady show, where the premise is that Dick Van Dyke is a comedy writer. And they try to introduce, I think, the kids to their producer who's walking by saying, don't talk to me. I got a big problem. And I was like, that's a great depiction of producers.

[B]

Okay, so we have. We have David Phillips and he's like, crap, we need money, like now. And they had at this point secured that they're going to take him to Oregon. The facility in Oregon that was going to house Keiko the tank. It wasn't already in existence. They built that specifically for Keiko.

[A]

Just like making Titanic. They built a tank for that too.

[B]

Oh, really? I didn't know that.

[A]

Yeah, that's a little trivia.

[B]

So they built this tank for Keiko, and it was gonna. The deal was with Oregon Coast Aquarium that the Free Willie Caico foundation was going to pay for it. So Oregon Coast Aquarium just got this huge facility for free, essentially.

[A]

Oh, great. I'm sorry. I thought you were going to be like, I know. They refused to pay. I become so jaded.

[B]

Oh, no. But they were. They were behind on how much it would cost Warner Brothers. They chipped in some money. Well, they're from Hollywood.

[A]

They should have anticipated going over budget, but they never do.

[B]

Yeah. And Earth Island Institute, they started fundraising quite a bit. So this is when we started getting the. There's these, like, Keiko adoption kits that people. And mostly kids.

[A]

I remember this. Oh, my God. Yeah. Wow. Holy shit, dude.

[B]

So, like, a few dollars, you could, you know, get little updates about Keiko in the mail and get a picture of him, and you can get a little certificate saying, like, I'm helping free Keiko, or whatever it said. So they started that kind of fundraising. Keiko certainly had a personality that people felt like they knew and, you know, identified with.

[A]

Yeah. And it does feel like. Yeah, we're really. We're drawn to animals that possess what we see as kind of a humanoid intelligence. But interestingly, what that often means is that they're more likely to be dangerous to us, you know? And I'll also just say another story I heard recently, there is this woman, I think, in the Netherlands at a zoo, who kept visiting this gorilla. Maybe you've heard this story, this gorilla named Bokito, and was like, we have a bond. And part of that bond is sustained eye contact.

[B]

Oh, I vaguely remember this.

[A]

And I visit this gorilla all the time, and I love this gorilla. And then after this gorilla had a particularly stressful day, he somehow escaped his enclosure and attacked her and went on kind of a bit of a rampage. And it all, you know, ended up okay. But it turns out that that's, like, a sign of aggression for gorillas. But for a person, sustained eye contact is like what they make you do in acting class to, like, open up your emotional pores, you know, so it's just like a complete difference in how we process something. And, like, assuming that human body language is universal, especially with primates, you know, they have to, like, gun down Bokito, which is good.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But also that this woman kept visiting.

[B]

And kept looking at it.

[A]

Really? Yeah.

[B]

After she got attacked.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

She's just a girl who can't say no.

[B]

She was still convinced of their bond, even after. Oh, geez.

[A]

So there's just this. This theme here, I think, in all of our interactions with animals that you and I have already been talking about. And one question maybe that I want to bring to you that I think might be a thread here, is like, it feels like there were people throughout who were like, well, we must get Keiko back to the wild as he deserves. And that is the only possible course of action, it seems like maybe it would be fair to say.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And it's also interesting to ask the question, I think, of whether that might inevitably be influenced by the very human perspective that values freedom as a value that possibly is a value that orcas might not have.

[B]

Yeah, no, I think you can nailed it. Because, yeah, they're just kind of. Throughout the course of the Keiko story, and especially during what I consider kind of the second half of the story, there were these two main threads that persisted throughout the Keiko story. And one was that he's going to be released, he's going to be free, he's going to find his family. We're going to help him do that. That's what he wants.

[A]

He said it in therapy. He said it himself.

[B]

Because of course he wants it because maybe, you know, Bean deserves to be free. And we screwed up by, you know, putting him in captivity in the first place.

[A]

And what's the situation socially here? Because was there a hope that they could, like, were they, like, we have to get him back with his family, or was there the sense that there was, like, a fallback of, like, finding other orcas to make him be friends with? Because I feel like this part, because it's, like, hard enough to put a human child in middle school. So, like, the social aspect here seems difficult.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting talking to people that were involved with the project. And I will talk more about one person in particular who is pretty critical of how the end of the project went. But there was this sense that there would be this intuition or instinct from Keiko that he would just kind of find his family. Like, I don't know how else to put it. Like, he would just know, which is always worrying.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

There were attempts and plans to get information on the whales around Iceland to try to narrow it down. They were going to try to record vocalizations of Icelandic whales so they could maybe find his pod through identifying the dialects, which we explained last time. Killer whales have dialects amongst pods.

[A]

So all these whales sound like Bjork.

[B]

Yeah. So they could maybe identify them that way. But Then they were also going to look for genetic data and try to do that. But it was like, in hindsight, I think that was one of the things that people learned in the project that that was a key piece of information that they did not have enough data on.

[A]

Yeah, because how are you supposed to find someone's whale family from like the 70s? That's like having a kid get lost in the mall and you're like, well, it was in Illinois. I mean, look, I don't. That may. That might be a really silly comparison.

[B]

No, I've made this exact comparison.

[A]

Okay, listen, I'm no scientist, Brianna, but I've heard that the ocean is pretty large.

[B]

It's a big place.

[A]

It's famously not a pale green dot, it's a pale blue one.

[B]

Yeah, well, and then on top of that, there's not just like a handful of killer whales in the North Atlantic, there's like thousands of them. Like they're doing pretty well population wise. So narrowing it down to Keiko's specific family was going to be a bit of a needle in the haystack situation, especially at the time, I believe now there's a lot more data and there's a lot more researchers that are documenting the genetic lineage of killer whales in the North Atlantic and documenting their dialects and identifying them by individual and that sort of thing. But it's still like a much larger population. It's harder to keep tabs on than say, the Pacific Northwest Southern resident killer whales, which as I mentioned, there's only currently 75. Well, 74. Tentatively 75. But one key thing before we leave Mexico. So they didn't have enough money. And another really important character in the Keiko story enters here. His name is Craig McCaw. Craig McCaw was a tech billionaire from the early 90s. Yes.

[A]

Who would you cast to play him in our movie?

[B]

Well, I need some help with that one.

[A]

Can you send me a picture of him?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Craig McCaw.

[B]

He was like the one person I like, couldn't figure out.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Yeah, I gotta say.

[A]

Bill Paxton. Oh, right, With a sweater on.

[B]

Yes. We'll, we'll, we'll go with Bill Paxton.

[A]

Vertical Limit era Bill Paxton.

[B]

Yes, Bill Paxton with a comb over.

[A]

So we got Bill Paxton and Tom Hanks. It's a star studded spectacular.

[B]

It is. In terms of a character and what role he kind of serves in this story, he's definitely our John Hammond from Jurassic Park. He just has a lot of money and is very enthusiastic about this project.

[A]

And may I just say, if you have way too much money, as so many people do these days. Why not free a whale from. For God's sake.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Having a big building with your name on it won't help you. Teenagers will put gum on it.

[B]

Yeah. And so he got involved because literally, he and his wife saw Free Willy and they're like, oh.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

They were moved by the story. They were happy to chip in some money at this early stage, something in the order of like a million dollars or $2 million to help with the shortfall of specifically just this stage of getting Keiko out of Mexico. So one other, like, significant donation that happens at this point is David Phillips was able to get UPS to donate a plane to fly Keiko to Newport.

[A]

Because this is, like, a great PR thing to get in on. Right. Like, even if it's a stunt for some people, it's like, who cares? If you want to, like, look good by charming the kids of America by being the Keiko male place, then, like, it's a great idea. Like, I. Absolutely. I'm all for corporate manipulation if it's basically harmless and just kind of annoying if you, you know, try really hard to be cynical, which I obviously sometimes do.

[B]

Yeah. And. And many people will kind of use Keiko in this way. So then we're leaving Mexico, and it was supposed to be a secret. Like, Keiko was supposed to leave in the. In the wee hours of the morning of January 7, 1996. And it was supposed to be a secret. I don't know why they thought they could keep it a secret.

[A]

Keiko and Princess Diana are the two main characters of 1996. I realize now.

[B]

I know I've thought about Princess Diana so many times during this story, too.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But of course, people knew he was leaving. It wasn't a secret that he was leaving. I don't know why they thought that people wouldn't show up, but apparently the streets were just lined with people wishing, you know, keiko.

[A]

That's so beautiful. Yeah.

[B]

A good farewell.

[A]

And it's like the ending of 10 Poets Society. And it's so beautiful. At the same time. It's so funny to think of Keiko being like, I'm just a whale. I don't really understand what I know this is about.

[B]

To be honest, it didn't go as David Phillips had hoped it would go. He thought it would. He wanted it to go a lot more smoothly than it did. But they make it to the plane, which is like a C130, which is just the enormous plane, obviously you would need. He Makes it to Newport finally. They had to do a couple refuelings on the way there, but, well, this is where. Yeah, we can introduce the town of Newport in the story, which is where I currently live. And honestly, seeing Keiko here when I was a kid was probably what planted the seed in my brain of, hey, I would really love to live here one day.

[A]

Yeah, we would go there for like weekend trips when I was growing up. And it's like, I feel like for people in most states with a coastal part, there's like a place where you eat taffy and Newport is like the place where you eat taffy. Astoria is also very pretty, but it's on a river. It's not right on the coast.

[B]

Astoria is also home to the Fisher Poets Gathering, which I think is my favorite festival I've ever been to.

[A]

Yeah. Which I have to go with you two.

[B]

Yeah. But, yeah, Newport's wonderful. Like I said, I wanted to live here since I was a kid, and now I do. And I made the best possible decision for my life. Life moving here. I just love it.

[A]

What's something that to you exemplifies what Newport is like? Like, what's a Newport thing?

[B]

I think the thing that I love, I walk. I walk on the beach every day with my dogs. And I live close to the bay entrance, so the river bar is not too far from me. And I love when I am walking on the beach near sunset and I look down south towards the bar and I can see fishing boats coming in and I see like their big, bright glowing sodium lights and can see them making their way back into the harbor. And I don't know, Newport just encapsulates everything that really excites me. Like, I love the ocean. I love learning about the ocean. I love marine science. There's the Hatfield Marine Science center here. So there's world class research happening in this tiny town.

[A]

Yeah. What is it like when Keiko comes to town?

[B]

Well, you know, he had a huge procession that said farewell to him from Mexico City. And there was a sizable crowd here in Newport. But it is a small town and there's so it wasn't as many people. But I think that actually, like for David Phillips, I think he was a lot more comfortable with that. He wanted to keep things a little more low key.

[A]

Hell, yeah.

[B]

And he and Keiko are arrives. He goes from the airport to the aquarium. They put him in his brand new fancy tank, but there's still not enough money.

[A]

It's very stressful, I imagine, to be running out of budget because you have a whale, you have to keep feeding now. Yeah. And I bet he's eating a lot.

[B]

Yes. Specifically, the budget for the tank itself, that was gonna all be paid for by the Free Willy Caico Foundation. Again, they were short some money for that specifically.

[A]

I feel like if I'm Hollywood, I would just go to, like, a Dodgers game and just, like, ask the people in my row, just, like, pass down a memo pad and be like, will you pledge some money to the Free Willy thing? Write down how much? And, like. Right.

[B]

Like a congregation in a church. Like, passing down the offering plate. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's basically what David Phillips was doing. It was just.

[A]

They.

[B]

It just didn't happen fast enough, is my understanding. And. And the thing is, they were building it, and they knew they were short of the money, but there was so much pressure to finish it from the public and from kids that the contractor didn't want to be the bad guy in the situation. So they were like, okay, we'll finish this project, even though you owe us, like, literally, like, a few million dollars. Like, I can't imagine finishing a project where I'm owed that much money. Like, I think it was actually pretty generous of them.

[A]

Well, it's because the contract contractors are coming home to little Timmy every night, having to explain the whale situation, I hope.

[B]

Well. And also, if they didn't finish Keiko's tank. Keiko's health was deteriorating in Mexico City, and so they kept saying, like, he's not going to last much longer, and.

[A]

What'S the issue with his health? Because we haven't talked about that since the first episode, I don't think.

[B]

I mean, overall, he just wasn't thriving.

[A]

Doesn't he have HPV or whale pv? Whale papillomavirus.

[B]

He's got the papillomavirus. So it was a skin condition, and it was really bad in Mexico City. And part of that was to do with the temperature of the water in his tank. It just kind of allowed the virus to thrive and get out of control. And I believe it was having a negative effect on his immune system. So, anyway, they finished the project, but then David Phillips is like, oh, my God, I have so much money that we owe these people. And that's where Phillips approached Craig McCaw again. And Craig McCaw was like, all right, I will give more money to this project, but this is the deal I want to make. The Oregon Coast Aquarium will give a percentage of its sales to the Free Willy Caco Foundation. And he also pressured Warner Brothers to hold up an end of an agreement. Warner Brothers did say they were going to contribute some money, but at some point, they kind of backed out of the deal. And then.

[A]

God damn it.

[B]

So anyway, Macaw made sure that they were going to honor their end of the. Of an oral agreement. And then McCaw said, if I'm going to be, like, basically bankrolling this project from now on, I'm going to be the chair of the board of the Free Willie Keiko Foundation. And so therefore, he would have a lot more say and control over how the project was going to be executed. This was quite the big shift for the Free Willie Keiko Foundation. So David Phillips was the executive director of the board before. And so David Phillips was like, okay, I guess I'm going to hand over leadership of this conservation projects to a billionaire.

[A]

So Craig McCaw's like, It's my money, it's my show.

[B]

Yeah. He wanted to have a lot more.

[A]

Control, which is, like, to one degree understandable and to another degree stupid, because he's not a scientist.

[B]

Right. There's a lot of people that start to get involved with the leadership of this project that are not. They're not scientists and they're not animal behaviorists. They're not trainers. There's a lot of, like, documentary filmmakers and that sort of thing going into it. And it's like, that's. That in itself isn't a bad thing. But sometimes the goals are not aligned.

[A]

Yeah. Because, I mean, not to, like, even accuse anyone of shadiness, but if you're making a documentary or if you're trying to create media, you have some degree of interest in interesting things continuing to happen.

[B]

Yes, exactly.

[A]

That you might feel pressure to shape the story a certain way based on the needs of your industry.

[B]

Right, exactly.

[A]

You know, has led to some unfortunate outcomes in the past.

[B]

Yeah. The documentary filmmakers or the people with that kind of leaning, they wanted to make sure they documented the Hollywood story of Keiko.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Swimming off with his family. And so their priorities were not aligned with the priorities of the people that kind of understood more of how a reintroduction process would take place. And it's not a one and done kind of thing. And with that shift of the leadership of the board of the foundation from an environmentalist leaning to a more kind of capitalist perspective, other members of the board began to become a little uneasy of whether the foundation was going to remain true to its goals of the rehabilitation and release. Some of the people on the board felt like maybe Craig McCaw and his underlings were maybe secretly in cahoots with SeaWorld, and they were just going to try to get keiko back into SeaWorld somehow.

[A]

That's what would happen in the Ryan Murphy show, for sure.

[B]

Yeah. So people were like, why does this guy even want to help Keiko? And it might have been mostly his wife, Wendy McCaw. Even later on in the story, when Craig McCaw kind of ducks out, Wendy McCaw stayed involved with the project. So there was just some skepticism about what his motivations were.

[A]

Yeah. And to speak about skepticism, I guess it's just fair to say that when someone has enough money to exert control over a project, that kind of always puts everyone in a precarious position, even if they make great decisions the whole way through, because it still means that for someone to have more control than anyone else in a situation of this kind, especially coming in kind of later in the day, is just like. It creates the potential for someone not being able to be overridden, basically. And I think, in a way that's always worrisome, regardless of who's playing that role.

[B]

Yeah. Even though there's a board, and it's supposed to be this sort of democratic structure. Kenneth Brower, the author of Free and Caico, his analogy was that it operated a bit like the Roman Senate under Julius Caesar. It was like, yeah, we're all making this decision together, but everyone's kind of looking at Craig McCaw every time of like, but what do you want to do?

[A]

It's like whale succession.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Well, how is life for Keiko at the aquarium? What's this chapter like from his perspective?

[B]

Yeah, this is, I think, something really positive to focus on in this story is Keiko's help really improves during his stay at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. So he has this much, much, much larger tank where he can actually dive all the way down and, you know, completely submerge himself, do laps around the tank. It just is really substantially larger than his tank in Mexico. It has actual seawater pumped in from Yaquina Bay, and the temperature is a much more pleasant temper. A killer whale. The sea temperatures around here, I think, are, like, in the, like, 40s in the winter, and then maybe in the low 50s in the summer or something like that.

[A]

That's why we don't swim in the ocean.

[B]

Or you wear a wetsuit. That, too, but, yeah, it's. It's cold.

[A]

It's real cold. Even with a wetsuit, I imagine it's pretty freaking cold.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Because you still get your. Your poor little face and your hands are in contact with the ocean.

[B]

Yeah, you'd be surprised. I mean, I go surfing here. And I mean, I do wear gloves and booties, too, because, I mean, my hands and feet are just cold all the time anyway.

[A]

But perfect for a killer whale.

[B]

Yes, perfect for a killer whale because.

[A]

This is like, literally. I mean, are there ever killer whales off the actual Oregon coast historically? Is this, like, where he would like to normally be?

[B]

There are the southern resident killer whales, occasionally make their way down here.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

It's not super common, but during the winter, they take a little trip. Yeah, they take a little trip. Trip. There's also the biggest transient killer whales and then offshore whales, Some other groups that live further offshore. They're different, like, culturally than southern resident killer whales.

[A]

This is so good.

[B]

They are primarily marine mammal eaters. Like, they hunt other marine mammals, so they'll go after seals and sea lions, and they can be spotted off of Oregon.

[A]

Okay, so this is like, he's in something that, like, is at least much closer to his habitat while still being captivity.

[B]

It's way better than being at 7,200ft elevation in the middle of the desert, which is where he was in Mexico.

[A]

City in a small enclosure that gave him the curly fin.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And so, like, that virus that he had on his fins that is starting to clear up, like, the cold water, I guess, alone just kind of helps keep the virus at bay. And then, of course, he's getting, like, really good veterinary care at this point, too. So they're doing everything because part of his eventual conditions for release, those involved with the project are going to have to convince the government agencies that they have to, you know, apply for a permit from that Keiko is in good enough health to be released. They can't ethically release him if he's, like, really dependent on veterinary care, on medicine or whatever it is. So part of. Of this middle stage between Mexico and Iceland was bringing him back up to health.

[A]

Right. So he's in rehab, basically.

[B]

Essentially, yeah. Rehabilitation and release were two of the main concepts of this project. Rehabilitation was a big part of it, and I would say that they really did that successfully at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. And once his health started to return, they started to introduce a program to get him trained up to exhibit wild behaviors again.

[A]

So tell me more about that, because what was he like that told them that he wasn't showing wild behaviors? And what did those look like that they were trying to teach to him?

[B]

Well, I know one of them specifically was they were working on his diving time, like, he just wasn't. I mean. I mean, it was basically impossible for him to. Yeah, I know. He's, like, in a little swim class or whatever, swim team at school, improving his times. But he, of course, couldn't really dive hardly at all in Mexico.

[A]

See, and this is, again, we were doing the thing we're talking about where he's like an adult male predator. And we're like, he's our baby boy. I know.

[B]

We just. We want to see him do well. And we're like, oh, I think I know what you need. And it's. It's really hard to just not naturally do that, even just talking about him in hindsight. But, yeah, he couldn't hardly dive at all in Mexico, so that was one thing they need. He needs to be able to dive.

[A]

And, like, he's all out of practice.

[B]

Hold his breath for longer. They wanted to up his. I'm sorry.

[A]

It's just so cute. I know.

[B]

He's on, like, a little training program.

[A]

He's a minnow, is working his way up to tadpole, and then after a few more levels, he'll be at himself.

[B]

They wanted to improve his stamina because wild orcas swim a lot, you'll be surprised to know.

[A]

I guess they would have to, huh? Do they. Do they swim while they're sleeping? How's that work?

[B]

Yeah. So for cetaceans, for dolphins and whales, how they sleep, in a nutshell, is they sleep with half of their brain at a time. So they will. I was like, how do I say this? It is. It's so cool. I don't think enough people talk about it.

[A]

It.

[B]

Because it is really cool.

[A]

So you're learning to be a science communicator, and this is a great context because you're like, how do I explain this to somebody whose kids are yelling right now? Which is the condition under which perhaps you are listening to this right at this moment.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Maybe your kids are shouting at you because they want another waffle.

[B]

So, yeah, the whales and dolphins, they sleep with half of their brain at a time. Because this is the important thing. When a whale or dolphin needs to breathe, they have to think about it. Right?

[A]

Oh, right.

[B]

I mean, we can kind of switch between consciously controlling our breath, you know, like we do when we're meditating or whatever. Right. Or you can go the whole day without thinking about breathing.

[A]

Yes. You could go years, in fact.

[B]

Yeah. Or years. But a whale, as you can imagine, cannot. They have to think about every breath that they take. So if they sleep, they can't completely go unconscious because. Because, well, the way that their brain's wired to their lungs, they would actually just, I guess, stop breathing because there would be no part of the brain telling them to breathe. So they have to keep one half of their brain alert so that they can continue swimming to the surface.

[A]

And I've never understood why people think that God and evolution are such counterintuitive ideas. Because if you believe in God, surely you can believe in a God who invented whales. And it was like. And then half at a time, I don't know, I really painted myself into a corner with this one.

[B]

Yeah, he made the whale, and his angel assistant is like, oh, wow, beautiful, beautiful work. Just one thing.

[A]

And then he just throws his world's best God mug.

[B]

But honestly, what he came up with is pretty cool. Uni hemispheric sleeping is a pretty cool adaptation.

[A]

And then it's like, is that semi consciousness.

[B]

From what I understand, the half of their brain that's asleep is something called slow wave sleep, I believe. And I believe the half of their brain that's awake, I can't imagine that it's super alert. And when pods of dolphins and whales or like killer whales are sleeping, they'll, like, sleep together. It'll be like nap time, and they'll, you know, kind of swim close to each other. Their pectoral fins might be touching each other. So they're like, you know, they're keeping an eye out, but they're also collectively sleeping at the same time. Another thing that I think is interesting about uni hemispheric sleep, which I think that's the term that I read in a paper, is that dolphins and whales, cetaceans, they don't go into REM sleep ever. Like, the deep sleep. They just don't do it. Which to sleep scientists is interesting because it was thought that REM sleep is necessary for proper brain function. Like, you need that deep sleep, but apparently whales and dolphins don't, so it makes sense.

[A]

They are pretty different, you know, because humans also can't live in the ocean and eat fish the whole time.

[B]

Yeah, Whales and dolphins are just multitasking all the time, and they're doing a great job.

[A]

Okay, so Keiko is at the aquarium, the Quarium, as Sandra Lee would say. And I would love for us to talk about the chapter where he is delighting the school children of Oregon and about your memories of going to see him and what that was like for you personally as a dolphin girl.

[B]

Yeah. So if you as a listener, go to my patreon page for the podcast that I'm making about this story. I have posted a couple pictures of me and my mom and my sister. And we're standing in front of the tank and Keiko is right there. He looks like he's photoshopped in. He's just posing perfectly for this photo.

[A]

He's like, yeah, that'll be five bucks.

[B]

And. And I remember this from visiting Keiko. He was so engaged with people.

[A]

I will get my story out of the way, which is that I went on a class field trip to see Keiko in second grade. It was a huge deal. We got to school at seven and we got back at seven p.m. or something like that, because it's like two and a half hour drive from Portland, I would say, or at least two hours. And I remember buying a book in the gift shop about bats. And I remember the gift shop having that very 90s thing where there was a bunch of tiny TVs all arranged in like a grid on a wall in a store and they each had a part of the same picture. So they all became like a giant screen, but like one that was made.

[B]

Out of little TVs.

[A]

Do you remember that?

[B]

Oh, I think I do. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

And I remember this is so silly, but it's also so cute. I was like, everyone's gaga for Keiko. I'm going to show I'm not like other girls by ignoring Keiko. And I think truly I felt that I was going to be like Bella Swan for Keiko. You know, I was like, I must distinguish myself to bewitch Keiko because secretly I loved Keiko so much, I didn't know what to do. And now I realize that, like, whales and men are simple creatures and you really just have to, you know, just be direct as you were. And so I know that he was interactive. And that's. I don't know. That's so cool.

[B]

Yeah, no, this was something that came up for many people as well, that I talked to. Just how much Keiko was engaged with people at the Aquarius in this, like, underwater viewing area, and how much he, like, preferentially liked to engage with the kids that visited him.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

How could you even imagine a better whale to cast in this role?

[A]

And what was that engagement like for him?

[B]

I mean, from what I understand, he just. He would hang out at the window where you could see him and he would just watch you. So, like, kids would be like, doing silly things.

[A]

He's just an extrovert.

[B]

He was. I mean, it's funny he's an extrovert in that way in terms of, like, the skills he needed to be a wild whale and engage with other whales. He was much more introverted.

[A]

It's that. That classic thing where humans, I think we feel deficient in how far we've gotten away from animals in the way we live, and we want animals to include us and then we make them worse at surviving among their own.

[B]

Yeah. And, like, kids loved him. The public loved him. I have a video that would love to share with you.

[A]

Yeah, please do. Let's do it.

[B]

It'll bring you back to this time of visiting Keiko at the aquarium.

[A]

Yeah. God, I remember that viewing area.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's like, you know, where you would see seals, I think normally where you kind of go into this almost theater type environment. Yeah.

[B]

There he is.

[A]

He's hanging out by the glass and the kids are touching the glass and he's. They're holding up little toys of him. To the class for coming to ko's get well party. Today is having a ko's get well party.

[B]

So there's this lady with a big check, and I think it's a donation from Mattel. So Mattel made a Barbie.

[A]

Oh, my God. Yeah.

[B]

Mattel knows what's good.

[A]

We really wanted to help too, so we created Ocean Friends Barbie. And a portion of the proceeds from Ocean Friends Barbie will go towards Keiko's recovery. So I am very happy today to present to you, Beverly, on behalf of Ocean Friends Barbie and everyone at Mattel, this donation for $500,000 for the continuation of Keiko's rehabilitation. Very, very generous.

[B]

Thank you very much. Yeah, but Keiko's just hanging out. Yeah, he's watching. He's like, what are you guys up to? Yeah, I talked to someone here. The Oregon Coast Aquarium is down by Yokuna. And you can see Keiko's tank was not in the ground. It was all above ground. So it was like, you know, like the biggest above ground pool you can imagine. And if you walked along the bay, you could, like, look towards the aquarium and you could possibly see him, like, jumping out of his tank. And I'm like, what? That would be amazing. I mean, I'm glad that we made the attempt to. To put him back in the wild, but it would be pretty cool if I could still see that.

[A]

But yeah.

[B]

So I just love that video because I feel like it captures that moment in time of visiting him at the aquarium. And another fun story that someone told me about why Keiko was so engaged with people in the underwater viewing area. Is that so? In Free Willy with Movie Magic, they made it look like there is an underwater viewing area where they filmed it in Mexico City, but that didn't exist in Mexico City. They didn't have that, actually. So when Keigo came to Oregon Coast Aquarium, that was the first time that he had been in a place like that where he could, like, look at people. And I'm sure he was like, whoa, this is different. All you guys are underwater. Like, you're not usually underwater. And, yeah, the person that mentioned that, they think that that was part of his curiosity and where that interest came from was. It was just new. It was novel to him.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He was gaining weight. He was. His health was improving. And then, like, they mentioned, he was eating fish. And one of the biggest points of contention in the Keiko project was whether Keiko was successfully eating live fish or not. So they started this process at the Oregon Coast Aquarium of teaching Keiko to eat live fish. So this was something that they were. This is one of the criteria for release to the wild, that he could. They could demonstrate that he could hunt live fish and eat live fish and be able to sustain himself that way, which makes a lot of sense. Like, of course, like, you need to be. If you're going to be wild again, you're going to have to be able to feed yourself. It is a little funny to think that. That we thought we had the capability of teaching an apex predator, like a killer whale.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How to hunt.

[A]

Hubris. We're like, we're gonna find your family. We put an ad up. So it's an only. It's only a matter of time until they see it in the paper.

[B]

Right. And it's not to say that I think it was wrong to try. I just.

[A]

No. Yeah.

[B]

You know, like, I'm glad we did. I'm glad we tried, but. Yeah, we might have been a little aspirational.

[A]

Well, it's like people are nostalgic about the kind of optimism of the 90s or the way we see that now. And one of the counterpoints to that is that just because you're optimistic doesn't mean you're right.

[B]

Yeah. And we need that optimism. But it's complicated, as we've mentioned many times.

[A]

Yes. And we're gonna keep getting into that. So how long is he at the Oregon Coast Aquarium? I'm gonna guess. Is it like, three years?

[B]

Yeah, about three years. So he arrived in 1996, and then Keigo's making improvements over the next few years, and the Next big step is like, okay, we got to figure out where he's going to go next. Right. And you would think, oh, he's. He went to Iceland. They always thought he was going to go to Iceland. That's not true. They actually had a couple of other places in mind, too, which I won't go into too much detail on, but they were looking at Ireland and they were looking at Scotland at one point. Iceland was actually the last place they wanted to go for a few different. Just logistical reasons. And also the fact that Iceland, culturally, especially at that time, was a pro whaling nation. And so they just thought that Iceland was not going to be cool with the idea of this whole project in general. Iceland also had some history with environmental activists, specifically Greenpeace activists. There's this really wild story of some Greenpeace activists sinking a couple of boats in a harbor that were commercial whaling boats back in the 70s or 80s.

[A]

Yeah, Greenpeace will fuck up your boat.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

From what I understand.

[B]

Yeah. And so David Phillips and a couple other people, they went to Iceland to schmooze the right people. They talked to the Prime Minister, they talked to the Minister of Fisheries, and they got a few different mixed messages you can imagine. Like the Minister of Fisheries, which I believe that encapsulated the whaling industry at the time, he was not a fan and made it very clear that, if anything, people in his kind of world and personality, he was inclined to say things like, you should just butcher Keiko.

[A]

That's the kind of humor that sometimes doesn't translate very well.

[B]

No, it doesn't. Well. And I don't even think he was making a joke. I think he. He was actually fairly serious.

[A]

Come on.

[B]

Yeah, so there is. Yeah, there was some conflicting sentiments about Keigo, but then David Phillips spoke to the Prime Minister, and Prime Minister was really on board. There was this shift in Iceland as well at the time of people recognizing like, hey, we can still, like, make money on whales. We just take people to go watch them.

[A]

Yeah, It's. It's the inevitable outcome of any American industry. We're teaching them of our way. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. That saga is. I do find pretty interesting, an Icelandic.

[A]

Saga, if you will. Sometimes people in comments are like, sarah, you missed this pun you could have made. And I'm like, I know, I know.

[B]

I know, I know. And you're. You're really good at it, Sarah.

[A]

But there's still so many that you miss, you know? Yeah, I know.

[B]

We can't get them all, unfortunately.

[A]

Moment of silence for the puns we didn't do. Yeah.

[B]

Pour one out for the puns. The other thing about Iceland, of course, is that the narrative of this whole endeavor, the most satisfying ending is for Keiko to go back to Iceland. Like, it would have been a little weird to be like, and now he lives in Ireland. He's not from there, but he's learning.

[A]

To love fish and ships.

[B]

Yeah. And Guinness. He's now. Now loves the Irish. But even though there's all these things, also, Iceland was like, the weather is just really difficult to deal with. There's a language barrier. So just logistically, it was going to be challenging. There was just, like, a lot of logistical things that were. It was not appealing to people.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And so Phillips putting on his media campaign hat from back in the day of like, oh, this could be an opportunity to shift hearts and minds in Iceland, too.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

Of one of the few remaining whaling nations in the world.

[A]

This is our Tom Hanks character, and he can't be stopped, as we know.

[B]

He can't. No. He's very, very persistent. So David Phillips and his colleague Katherine Hanley, they were the pro Iceland team. And then there was another team with Jeff Foster, who was another trainer. He was a former SeaWorld trainer that got involved with the project, and he went and scouted out Scotland and Ireland, and he was very poor crow. Scotland and Ireland. And what happened is that they presented their cases to the board. And remember, Craig McCaw is the executive director of the board.

[A]

Sorry, Bill Paxton. Yeah.

[B]

And David Phillips is making his case for Iceland. Jeff Foster is making his case for Scotland in Ireland. And I'll just read this from Kenneth Brower's book. David Phillips had noticed that when Macau came out in favor of something, suddenly all his corporate people were enthusiastically for it.

[A]

Oh, no.

[B]

As the meeting progressed, Phillips glanced at Macaw occasionally, trying to gauge the billionaire's mood. I don't understand. Macaw broke in finally, Keiko is from Iceland, and we're thinking of bringing him somewhere else. When Jeff Foster started to explain the logistical difficulties, Macaw broke in again. No, no, no. We're bringing him to Iceland.

[A]

This is why I don't do group projects. Right.

[B]

Philip's Hanley and Dr. Cornell, who's the veterinarian, tried to not look at one another, and they fought to stifle grins. They had expected to have to battle fiercely for Iceland, but the. Before it began. So it was just funny because there was so.

[A]

Because Summer sky had a swim.

[B]

Scouting. Yeah. Of locations.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. And then. And then a guy is like, hey, what if we send him to Iceland. I like the sound of that.

[B]

Basically.

[A]

Yeah. And that's the world we, we live in in a big way now, right. Where it's like we're kind of at the mercy of the whims of billionaires. And even when they happen to be right, maybe it's still like. Well, it's just uncomfortable how we got here.

[B]

Yeah, I've noticed that. You know, I've been working with, with a few nonprofits and then, you know, I work for a public radio station. And it does feel like there's this shift of. Okay, all the grants are kind of drying up, so now we gotta figure out where all the rich people are. And to be fair, you had to know that before, but now it's just like you have to rely on that even more. You have to rely on the whims.

[A]

And interests of rich people and then let them transfuse the blood of our firstborn children into their desiccating bodies.

[B]

Or whatever. Yeah, yeah. It's not a great system for getting things done unless you have really binding contracts, I guess.

[A]

I mean, when people call something medieval, which of course is like a very oversimplified term. And really we should do more episodes of the show about like what the Middle Ages were actually like and what we're wrong about, which I'm sure most of it. But what we're really referring to is this, I think, idea that we have of how the Middle Ages function, which is of course true to an extent. Extent, just not in every way and without nuance. Where I think one of the things we're describing is the concept of might making Right. Right. And this idea that, I think the way that a lot of people have distinguished today from what we feel to be kind of the darker intellectually ages of various periods of history is that you can no longer theoretically use the elect, God given power of the monarchy to try to stop science from proving what it absolutely does. Right. Like the enlightenment that we're living in, such as it is. That isn't a gift granted to us by the fact that time has progressed. It only happens if we continue to protect actual scientific findings from being changed by people who have amassed a lot of power and don't like it.

[B]

Yeah, we live in very weird times, but it's not actually something that we haven't seen before. And I think that we've been unfortunately, perhaps lulled into a false sense of security that those days were behind us and now we have like all these institutions.

[A]

Well, that's the thing about growing in the 90s. People are moving whales around. You're like, well, God, I guess things are kind of figured out, and then you grow up and you're like, life's great. No, we got to keep an eye on everybody.

[B]

Yeah, we sure do.

[A]

But we get to do it together. Together.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. So. So we have, I guess, a random rich guy whim that happens to go with what the kind of. Some of the experts on this team are wanting to do anyway, which is always nice when that happens.

[B]

Yeah, it. It. It aligned well at the time, so it was fine. And they were like, cool. We're going to Iceland. We're taking Keiko to Iceland. And I just love this little story where two of the board members went to Iceland to scout out locations. Like, of course they knew Iceland, but, like, where in they going to put him? Yeah, they had a couple of different ideas. David Phillips and Katherine Hanley had a couple of different places they had in mind. But a couple of board members went, and they ended up in the Westman Islands, which is a little island off the southern coast of Iceland, or a few islands off the southern coast of Iceland famous for a volcanic eruption that happened in the early 80s, I believe. But they were like, okay, well, this place has a harbor, and, you know, they have an airport so we can get Keiko here. And they have facilities and all that, so it seems like it'd be a good, good location. And they go out with a guide in the bay in what's called Kletsvik Bay, which is where Keiko will end up eventually. And they go out in the. The. On the boat. And I'm just imagining them in their suits, even though I'm sure they didn't. I just imagine board members and, like.

[A]

The lawyer in Jurassic Park.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And. And the guy takes him out. And so this bay has this. I've seen pictures. It's got this amazing rock wall feature from the, you know, many volcanic eruptions that have happened over the millennia. And it's just like this really high, flat, kind of enclosed space or concave space at the north end of this bay. And so they're kind of scouting out the bay, and the guide takes them over there, and the guy's like. Like, hey, check this out. And he opens up a case on the boat, and the board members are like, what's he gonna do? He opens it up, and there's a saxophone inside. And he proceeds to play Amazing Grace on his saxophone.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And it's like echoing off the rock walls. And that's when These two board members look at each other and they're like, yep, this is the place. This is a story from Kenneth Broward's book. And I don't know, it's hard for me to confirm whether that actually happened, but I just love it so much.

[A]

Why would anyone make that up?

[B]

Exactly why. But anyway, so we're about to bring Keiko to Iceland. They sort of scouted it out and thought, oh, this looks like a nice. This could suit our needs. There's. It's a big bay. It's pretty protected. There's a spot, small harbor, but a really small town nearby. So there's services and places for staff to stay and all that sort of thing. Right.

[A]

And what are their needs? And like, how, like what level of staff are we talking about here? Like, maybe this is a good time to talk about what their goals are. Exactly.

[B]

So there's going to be the large sea pen where Keiko's going to stay inside the bay. In Kletswick Bay. You're going to need food for Keiko, so there's going to need to be be a warehouse with like hundreds of pounds of frozen fish accessible daily for him. Staff were rotated in and out of Iceland. They were staying within whatever the labor immigration laws were for Iceland at the time. So staff were on a three month rotation. As you can imagine, there's not many people in Iceland that know how to train a killer whale or have done any kind of killer whale husbandry. There's probably been a handful, but not many.

[A]

There's probably not that many in any country, to be honest. And that's the whole problem.

[B]

Yes, I think actually, yeah, the US kind of had that market at the.

[A]

Time because we were the ones who decided to abuse killer whales to begin with. And they were like, well, crap, we got to learn how to keep these guys alive a little bit longer.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And you know, I mean, it was once killer whales started to be in captivity, once we started to put them in captivity, it was a new job in animal husbandry and training that was appealing to people.

[A]

Well, this is like a question I always have about Jurassic park, right? Where like, how many times have you seen Jurassic Park?

[B]

A few.

[A]

Okay. I've probably seen it like between 30 and 50 times.

[B]

Okay. Not that many times for me.

[A]

I'm not bragging or anything.

[B]

You should.

[A]

I'm ashamed. And I'm not proud to quote Arlo Guthrie, but there's a part, because, you know, the premise is that they're calling in Sam Neill and Laura Dern as Like the preeminent paleontologists and paleobotanists in their field. Or possibly Sam Neill is the preeminent paleontologist and Laura Dern is his girlfriend. But she seems good at what she does. And, I mean, not to insult her abilities. We just don't get any sense of her having a reputation. It would have actually been nice, but there's that sick Triceratops that they're treating like a dog who got into the garbage. Right. Because she ate something she shouldn't have, and her pupils are dilated. And they have a vet on staff at Jurassic park, which hasn't opened yet, being like, no, the Triceratops don't eat the African lilac berries. They're toxic. But that's all right. And my first question, honestly is, where did they hire this guy? They didn't bring in the preeminent paleontologist to consult on dinosaur health, but they did find someone else. Do you see what I'm saying? Saying where it's just, if you're going to start a dinosaur theme park, how do you find people to take care of the dinosaurs?

[B]

Right, exactly.

[A]

Because people can't even find vets for their chameleons half the time right now, and that's a lot more modest of a need. So I feel like that has bearing with the Keiko thing, where it's like. Yeah, it's worth remembering, as you're saying, that this is a field that didn't basically exist maybe 30 years before this was happening, it seems like.

[B]

Right. And of course, there's been large animal veterinarians for a long time, but a whale is on a different scale. And then every species has their own physiological needs.

[A]

Yeah. Because horses aren't giant and aquatic, and they couldn't eat a great white shark, probably most horses. Okay, so they've decided on Iceland for good and random reasons.

[B]

Right. Yeah.

[A]

How does this go for Keiko?

[B]

Well, okay, so obviously the next step in this huge project is to now bring Keiko to Iceland, which they did, once again, with a plane. And once again, Keiko had a farewell procession from Newport and a welcoming procession in Iceland. He's like the royal family. He just as a.

[A]

He's our special little guy.

[B]

Yeah. He has a welcoming committee everywhere he goes. As you can imagine, when he gets to Iceland, I mean, there's a huge amount of media presence in the. The community is, like, in a lot of places, kind of divided between the older generation and the younger generation. So the kids are just stoked to have Keiko there. And of Course, the older generation is more like, what are these Americans doing? This is. I think Kenneth Brower said that the Icelanders found the Americans enthusiasm off putting.

[A]

Well, you know, which I get. Americans are the most enthusiastic people in the world. We are, you know.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah. Well, okay, so two questions. What is the goal here?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Because we're bringing him to Iceland. Yeah, but what do people want to do? And are. Is there kind of disagreement already about how. How this is supposed to play out? And is, like, one person in charge of this, or is it like a group effort where people are. You know, it's. Where it's not necessarily clear if there's a leader or something? Something.

[B]

Yeah. So what I have gleaned from the reading and the research that I've done is that so far, up until Iceland, there's been this very clear, almost like a narrative arc to this project of moving forward. And, yeah, there's little challenges along the way, but we still managed to make forward progress. And then Iceland, there's still forward progress, but. But it gets a whole lot messier. And that is because there's just differing opinions on the way to go about this next stage of the project where the goal is to release Keiko back to the wild. And in essence, that seems like, oh, yeah, we know what that means. But when you start to really tease that apart of, like, okay, well, what does that look like? Like, for Keiko.

[A]

Right. And this idea of finding his family, which it's not clear, or his pot, I guess, which it seems like no one can really say how they're gonna do it. Exactly.

[B]

Yeah. So, like, actually, I have a question for you, Cerrit.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

If you were in charge of this project.

[A]

Oh, my God, this is too much pressure.

[B]

Do you resign already?

[A]

Yes. Shortest tenure ever. Like the guy who was king of Spain for 15 minutes. Right.

[B]

Well, I guess my question is, if you were going to try to define what successful release for Keiko would look like, what comes to mind for you?

[A]

Well, it's tricky because I do feel like. I mean, I don't know, because I'm not in this field at all. Some trivia. Me neither. But I've dealt mostly. And in pop culture, we're very much.

[B]

Armchair quarterbacks for this.

[A]

Yeah. But it feels like having an animal who has lived captive for perhaps basically his whole adult life, that maybe there is an open question still at this point of whether being in the wild is what's best for him, because it does also seem like he's become extremely social with humans and acclimated extremely well with them. And also, it also seems like he hasn't had that many opportunities to socialize with other killer whales. No. And so I feel like if I were in charge of this, I would maybe kind of see the first, perhaps 12 months as a research period where we're going to attempt to gather whatever data we feel is potentially relevant to the question of whether his best quality of life is being released and living without humans, or whether he knows how to live that way or would thrive that way anymore. And, of course, obviously, I can kind of. I have a feeling, based on what I think I remember that I wish Keiko had been around for longer because he's not with us anymore. Not that he would be listening to a podcast if he was. But. Yeah. And I guess we're gonna get at the end to kind of maybe what you think about all this. But that would be my concern because I do feel like perhaps we haven't really tried to do this before. I mean, have we released other killer whales to the wild in the past at this point in time?

[B]

I've come across some stories of releases, but I think one of the main points and whether those were actually successful or not is unclear to me, because.

[A]

They weren't tracking the whale afterwards. So. Yeah, that's not really informative, I don't think. Really? Yeah.

[B]

And I could be wrong if someone is out there, like, well, you didn't know about this. Yeah. There could be one that I'm not aware of. You forget Trixie.

[A]

We released Trixie and she lived for 13 years and became a mother. That would be nice to hear.

[B]

I am aware of a release project that happened after Keiko that actually involved some of the same people involved with this project, and it was successful. But there was a couple of really key differences. One, this young whale who was named Springer, she was, or he, I believe, was a part of the Southern resident killer whale population. He was only in human care for, like, a couple of months, I believe.

[A]

Oh, yeah. That's like how my parents took care of a pigeon for a month one time.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Like, I don't think that pigeon had time to forget how to be a pigeon.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Not that I know anything about pigeons.

[B]

Right.

[A]

If someone is an expert on pigeons, like, please let us know about pigeon memory, I assume it's gotta actually be pretty good. Good. Because if you think about homing pigeons, they never forget how to get back to where they're from.

[B]

Yeah. I'm sure pigeons are, like. It's one of those species where we kind of dismiss their intelligence, but I'm sure they do things all the time that would.

[A]

Not that that means they can do wordle or anything, but, you know.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Because also, speaking of anthropomorphizing, I feel like we want animal intelligence to manifest the same way human intelligence does. And it's like, no, they're intelligent in so many different and frankly better ways than us, you know?

[B]

Yeah. I think it's hard for us to comprehend that something. We're always thinking of intelligence as this hierarchical thing and we're at the top.

[A]

Right. Because that's comforting for us because we're so crispity, crunchity, peanut buttery, nougaty delicious to all the other big animals.

[B]

Yeah. But it's probably just more of a difference in types of intelligence more than. Right.

[A]

Or, you know, adaptation to your environment.

[B]

Yeah. As a species, you adapt specifically to your environment and there's things that we probably just can't even understand.

[A]

Yeah. And I feel like it's probably like, you know, when you're like learning animal trivia as a kid, or at least when you and I were kids. Not every kid does this, but it's. I think probably most. It's just fun where you learn because like the trivia about animals like who can leap the farthest proportional to their size and it's actually a flea and who has the biggest penis and it's a barnacle because he has to reach the other barnacles. I'm sure. Have you seen that video? I saw that video.

[B]

I am pretty sure I have.

[A]

They showed it to us in eighth grade and it's like, look, you asked for this. And so I feel like maybe you could also measure intelligence in terms of like, who is best adapted to their circumstances. And it would not be humans. It would probably be like razor clams or something like that.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, when I think of, of the notion of animals with different types of intelligence, I always think of. Are you familiar with mantis shrimp?

[A]

Yes, a little bit. But tell us about mantis shrimp.

[B]

Like the peacock. I think it's peacock. Mantis shrimp is one of the species. But they're this shrimp. I mean, they almost. They're large. I'd say they're like, I don't know, almost like the size of like a rodent. Like a rat or something.

[A]

Gross.

[B]

I know. Well, they're. I think rats are cute, so.

[A]

No, I like rats too, because the, the, the. The idea of a shrimp the size of a rat just like trips.

[B]

That's gross. That's Fair. That's fair. But they're incredibly colorful, and they've done a few different experiments measuring their quote, unquote intelligence. And they are, like, very smart. I just remember at my college where I did my UN Undergrad, there's actually a mantis shrimp in the zoology lab. And you just always got the eerie sense, like, you know, there's animals that'll kind of, like, look at you as you walk by. But it really felt like the mantis shrimp was really looking at you and, like, really observing what you were doing. It was kind of spooky, but also very cool. And also another thing with mantis shrimp is that the spectrum of colors that they can see is way beyond what we can see. I think they can see in, like, infrared and ultraviolet and all these other spectrums of the light wavelengths.

[A]

See, we're missing out on so much.

[B]

Yeah. And how would that affect how you move through the world and how you.

[A]

Interact with the world and whether you stare at Brianna? Yeah.

[B]

Like, what if I'm giving off some crazy ultraviolet light and I'm just not even aware of it?

[A]

I don't know. What if that mantis shrimp is like the little girl in the Exorcist. Exorcist. And it's like, you're gonna die up there.

[B]

That is kind of the vibe I got from it, honestly. It just kind of felt like that mantis shrimp knew things. Like, I love thinking about you having.

[A]

This kind of, like, ongoing, like, nemesis relationship with a shrimp.

[B]

I spent a lot of time in that zoology lab. I had to. I was the TA for. For zoology, and I would be grading, like, papers and quizzes, and that mantis shrimp was just always watching me.

[A]

Just always. Just never, you know, just like what happened with that Dutch woman in Bokito.

[B]

Except with the mantis shrimp, I felt like I was trying to avoid eye contact. It's like someone staring at you really intensely.

[A]

Right? No. Like, you're Bokito in this situation, and the mantis shrimp is the tech schwan. Okay. Okay. Anyway, all right, back to Keiko. Back to Keiko. Okay. So we have kind of precedent for, like, or I guess after the fact, where humans have released a couple of orcas back to the wild, but perhaps not one who's, at this point, spent close to 20 years in captivity, it seems like, right? Yeah, yeah.

[B]

I mean, what year is it? So when we go to Iceland, it's 1998. And he was. Yeah, he was born in 78 and. And then caught a couple years after that. So.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He's been in captivity for about 20 years. That's a very, very long time for an animal or a human to be institutionalized in some way. And. Yeah, and so there was. Amongst the people involved and the staff involved, there were a lot of different ideas and feelings about how to approach this next stage of the project. And I will say that when they first got to Iceland, it was acknowledged fairly quickly, like, hey, we don't have. We don't really have the expertise to do this. We don't have a lot of people that have worked extensively with killer whales. On our staff, we have a couple of people, but they wanted to have additional staff that had had that specialized experience, because some of the people that were involved in training with Keiko at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, they had never had any experience with a cetacean, whether it was a dolphin or a killer whale.

[A]

Because contrary To Star Trek 4, there aren't many captive cetaceans bigger than dolphins in human history.

[B]

Yeah, no, I'd say killer whales are the largest, just ones that we've been able to, quote, unquote, successfully have in captivity, though, you know, their survival rates are, on average, lower in captivity than they are in the wild. So whether or not you could say that's successful or not is. I don't know. I wouldn't say it was.

[A]

I could hear you saying successful in quotes.

[B]

Yeah. Okay.

[A]

Okay. So, yeah, so there's just kind of not really enough people. People with much experience, it seems like.

[B]

Right. And this is a very unique project. There wouldn't be a lot of people on the planet that could really pull this off.

[A]

Well, it's like starting a space program. It's like you don't start the first space program and then try and hire people who work in previous space programs, because there isn't any of that. So it seems like you kind of have to cobble something together based on existing fields. Partly.

[B]

Yeah. And that's a good point, because there are people that have worked with killer whales at this point, but they are a part of an industry that people involved with this project are very uncomfortable with. People are really uncomfortable with SeaWorld and their motivations.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And so I totally. I understand. Like, I don't think it was necessarily a bad gut feeling to have for people involved with the project, but they did recognize that they needed some people who really understood how to train killer whales, because that's essentially what they were going to have to do with Keiko, which is kind of funny.

[A]

What were they training him to do? And what was the kind of. Because it's like if you break it down into steps. So he's in the sea pen, which is like. Does that have, like, netting underwater to keep him in or what does that look like?

[B]

Yeah. So on the island where there was Klutsvik Bay, where they ended up setting up shop, they installed a sea pen, which you could. I don't know if you're familiar with salmon farms, but I believe the contract.

[A]

Surprisingly, not very much. I bet there are people listening who even don't. Can't even visualize a salmon farm.

[B]

Essentially you have a platform or a dock out on the water and then, yeah, basically a net hanging down. And the net would hang down to the sea floor. And it was a large area, but believe it was larger than his tank at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. And there's the platforms where the trainers could interact with Keiko, do any, you know, veterinary care, that sort of thing. So that was going to be where he started. And there was a key point of that, too, is that when Keiko arrived in Iceland, there were permits that the project had to apply for with the National Marine Fisheries Service in the United States.

[A]

I guess because he was American whale.

[B]

Yeah, I guess he had.

[A]

I guess maybe he became a naturalized US citizen, like Johnny Five.

[B]

I guess. Yeah, maybe Keiko had a few passports at this point, I don't know. But there was a permit that had to be filed with the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is the service that manages marine mammals in the US And I believe because even though he was going to Icelandic waters, he was leaving U.S. jurisdiction and it was a U.S. project. And then part of that, though, was that Keiko had to meet some criteria before he was released. Released. So he couldn't just. They couldn't just put him into the bay without any kind of barrier. It wasn't. It was a next step. But there were some things with some of his training and showing that he was feeding himself and showing that he was continuing to improve in health and not rely on veterinary care, and that he was demonstrating that he was not relying on people nearly as much. And there's a few other criteria as well. But all of these things needed to be met in order for Keiko to then actually be released to the wide open ocean. So that's why they couldn't just plop him in the bay and see how he does. Oh, and with the veterinary care, an important point with that important point is say that three times fast.

[A]

Most importantly, they headline, sell papers, newsies sell papes. All right? Go on. I'm so sorry. I love you, my oldest.

[B]

I love you, too.

[A]

I.

[B]

But they wanted to make sure he was healthy also. Not just to show that he wasn't reliant on people for health care, but that he wouldn't pass anything on to wild whales. That was a concern, and that was like a concern with that papillomavirus that he had. According to the veterinarian, Dr. Lanny Cornell, he said that that virus has been shown in other populations of wild whales. It's just kind of present, kind of like HPV is in humans, I guess. And how extreme it got was mostly dependent on Keiko's living conditions in Mexico. That's why it got so bad. So that was shown that, like, that wasn't necessarily going to be a concern, but there were concerns. They wanted to make sure he was going to be healthy and not introduce some weird pat to the wild population of whales. So that's the first stage of Iceland, is he's in his sea pen. They bring in some new staff that have been involved with killer whale training at SeaWorld, notably a pair named Robin Friday and Mark Simmons. And there's two main books you can buy about Keiko. One was called Freeing Keiko by Kenneth Brower, and I've been citing his beautiful book a lot during these episodes. And then the other other book was written by Mark Simmons, and it is called Killing Keiko. So you can imagine that Mark Simmons was not pleased with how the end of the project went, and he decided to write a whole book about it.

[A]

Mark Simmons is not going to make you wait until the epilogue to let you know what he thinks. And I appreciate that in an author. Yeah.

[B]

And, you know, like, Mark Simmons has his very particular point of view and his role in the project. And his book is also really well written, and he obviously has a lot of experience. He started working with orcas at SeaWorld, I believe, when he was 18. Like, he just went straight into it out of high school, apparently. And he really values the science of animal behavior and understanding animal training from that perspective and as, like, a particular skill set and field that has its own body of literature and, you know, best practices. And that was the attitude that he and his colleague Robin Friday brought to the project. They actually had recently left SeaWorld, and they were starting a consulting business, probably the most niche consulting business you could think of, where they're providing their services to other zoos and aquariums on animal training and I suspect also, like, specifically for killer whale training. So they were brought onto the project. And because they were former SeaWorld trainers, there was some skepticism among some of the staff of, like, what their motivations were. But from what I can gather from Mark Simmons book and also from interviewing him, like, they very much believed in this endeavor of releasing Keiko to the wild. They just had a very particular approach that they wanted to use. And from what I understand, they were very systematic. It was like, if Spock and I believe Mark Simmons used that comparison in his book, if Spock were to run this project, like, what he and Robin Friday noticed when they arrived on the project was that the impression I get from how he describes it is that there just didn't seem to be many systems in place in terms of, like, how we're going to interact with Keiko. What kind of reinforcement and animal training strategies are we going to use, having it very clear, like, who's interacting with him and who's not. He wrote in the book that when they arrived on the project, that they felt like anyone in the vicinity that was involved with the project could just walk out to the platform and interact with Keiko, and that that was counterintuitive to what the end goal of the project was. If they're going to try to limit Keiko's dependency on humans and seek out human attention, you're going to need to limit the amount of interaction that he has with people. And I totally understand, too, that that would feel really hard. Like, I would have a hard time with it.

[A]

I don't know. I ignored Keiko. I would have been great at this.

[B]

They should have hired you, Sarah.

[A]

Why? I know. Why didn't they? I can't believe I didn't. Like, they should have been, like, you should have applied adolescent girl with no experience who have ignored Keiko previously. I would have been off like a shot.

[B]

Right. And I would have been the worst candidate because I. I probably wouldn't leave Keiko alone.

[A]

I mean, I saw three coyotes in my neighborhood the other night while on a walk, and it's very hard when you see a coyote to not go, here, kitty. I know. Yeah.

[B]

I mean, and especially if it's an animal that you have a relationship with. Like, and Keiko was a very friendly whale. And, like, this is one of those.

[A]

Things where it feels like logic and sentimentality are a little bit at war. Where. And is that what they're saying in terms of dependence on humans, that it's mainly dependence for attention and relationships?

[B]

Yeah, I believe so. Because, of course, there's the issue of food, too. Like, Keiko at this Point has been relying on humans for food for his entire life. And part of it was just the relationship aspect of it. They wanted him to learn how to seek out the attention of other wild whales and somehow essentially lose interest in people. Which I understand that that's like, yeah, that's exactly what needed to happen for this project to succeed. I think hindsight is 20 20, and it's easy to be critical from 2026, looking back on this project, but that does seem like it was always going to be near nearly impossible. And also, I'll say that it would have depended on the whale. I think that's something that I've come across, like, reading a little bit about animal training and animal behavior. And this is true for people, too, that you can say, like, okay, this is how the project's going to go. We're going to limit our interaction with Keiko, and then he's just going to slowly lose interest in us, and then he's going to move on or whatever, Whatever. And I'm grossly oversimplifying, but I would say that when you're asking an animal trainer, like a dog trainer, like, hey, does this approach, Would that work for training my dog? How to, you know, for better recall or something? And I think the sign of a good animal trainer is they'll say, well, depends on the dog, depends on the individual. You know, for some. Some individuals, positive reinforcement is all you need. Like my dog Murphy, I barely have to raise my voice, and she is cowering in a corner, and I have to be so careful because she's just such a sensitive little soul. And I know. And she just needs positive reinforcement because otherwise it just any kind of negative reinforcement. And I know there's really strong feelings on both sides. Like, I know there's a whole camp of people that really believe in only positive reinforcement. And I'm not here to argue for or against it, but I'm saying that it just depends on the individual. And so for Keiko, I think, like, some of the attitudes about how the release side of things was going to go could have worked for a different whale.

[A]

Right.

[B]

For Keiko, what everyone talked about from day one was just like, he was just a very affable, friendly golden retriever of a whale, even to the point of being passive and not showing a lot of motivation, I guess. And I'm not saying that's like a flaw. If you're looking at Keiko as a whole and whether the approaches they were flinging at him or trying to see what would work, it probably Just. I don't know. I just think it was maybe not going to work for him. Could have worked for somebody else, but maybe not for Keiko. And I think, like, a lot of people involved with the project and certainly a few of the trainers, definitely Mark Simmons, they all expressed their doubts about whether Keiko was going to be able to be successfully introduced to the wild. And so when Simmons and Friday first arrive, they kind of shake things. Things up and say, all right, we're gonna, you know, whip this team into shape and we're going to.

[A]

There's a new sheriff in town.

[B]

Yeah. Which kind of also, according to Mark, didn't make for the best camaraderie at times. Like, some of the other people that were involved with the project didn't really love their new approach, but part of it was having much stricter protocols about, like, who's interacting with Keiko and when and what kind of behaviors they're going to work on and reinforce. One behavior that Mark said he had a problem with is something that they started at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. And I remember hearing about this as a kid. And as a kid, I was like, oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense. And now as an adult, I'm like, oh, I kind of see Mark's point. So they introduced this thing at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, which they called the innovative behavior. And it was basically. They just.

[A]

They made him do Odyssey of the Mind.

[B]

No, no. They wanted him to just do something new, and he couldn't repeat it. So he could go, I don't know, breach in the corner. He could slap his tail. He could do a barrel roll or something, but he just, like, couldn't do the same thing twice. And the idea, like, when I heard about it as a kid was, well, if he's gonna be a wild whale, he's gonna have to be creative. He's gonna have to imagination. And so we want to encourage that. And Mark Simmons, in reading his book, he was like, really? All it really does is just confuse Keiko, because Keiko's like, what do you want?

[A]

It does make you think about. Right. Because again, dogs are very different. I know, but even a dog. And I think of dogs as being kind of like the animal that understands humans the most or at least has had the most time to understand. You know, I think dogs and humans very much kind of evolved together. I can't think of many dogs that I have known that wouldn't hate that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I don't know if that's even a meaningful thing to bring up, but that is what that makes me think of.

[B]

Right. And so you bring up a good point that, okay, if a reaction from a dog or a whale is that like, oh, God, I. I hate it when they tell me to do this.

[A]

Or just, like, I don't know what's happening. I don't know. Because, again, it's like training is about repetition.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I don't know. I feel like training was a concept that made me a little bit uncomfortable in that sort of, like, born free, free as the wind blows, kind of sentimental child brain kind of a way. And now as an adult woman, I'm like, everyone needs to be trained, especially me, you know? And I, like, woke up this morning and immediately made my bed, and I was like, that was some good training I did on myself. Like, I had to teach myself how to do that over a very long period. And it feels much better to wake up and have, like, automatic things that your brain does than to be like, what do I do right in the morning?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Do I breach? Do I swim in a circle?

[B]

Do I eat a salmon? Yeah. That's funny, because I feel like that's my New Year's resolution this year is, you know, quote unquote, developing, you know, healthy habits. But it's really training myself.

[A]

Yeah, you're just behaviorizing yourself.

[B]

You're.

[A]

You are Skinner and the pigeon all in one.

[B]

Right. But as you mentioned, so, like, if a dog or a whale hates it when they say, hey, go do something new, and you're like, I don't know what you want. You can see how that would start to incite frustration.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Keiko actually was starting to demonstrate, according to Mark Simmons, some behaviors that would say that he was frustrated and he was developing this thing called a thrashing behavior, where basically he kind of tossed his head. And I think he actually started doing that maybe at the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

[A]

I'm sorry. It's making me picture him with, like, emo bangs. You're all butcher conformists.

[B]

I mean, I think Keiko was a little emo. He's just a sensitive, sensitive little emo kid.

[A]

He's a sensitive boy.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Are you? And I'm so sorry. He's listening to his Walkman and his pen.

[B]

Oh, little emo Keiko. And he's already got the right outfit for it, too.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But, yeah, he started doing this thrashing behavior, which Mark said was a. A sign of frustration. And so Mark and Frank sort of tried to get the team a little bit more in sync, a little more cohesive about what their approach with Keiko was going to be, and one little moment that I loved in his book. There's lots of little scenes, as I mentioned before, if I was writing a movie about this, this is a scene I would include. But there's literally a training montage.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

Where Simmons is describing all the things.

[A]

Okay, wait, what are you setting? Okay, what song is a set to in your movie? And then. Yeah, tell me what he's doing.

[B]

Okay, Mark Simmons already told us what the song is. What? So, okay.

[A]

God, I didn't know you were being so literal. I know.

[B]

Okay, just imagine, you know, people in, like, their wetsuits, splash suits out on the dock, and they got their whistles, you know, to do the bridge when Keiko does it, the correct behavior. Keiko's, you know, jumping out of the water, swimming in circles, whatever it is. So the song that Mark Simmons mentioned in his book was Dancing Queen by abba.

[A]

Oh, no. Yes. Dancing Queen. Yeah. And so he can dance, he can jive. He's having the time of his life. See that whale? Dig that seed. Dig that in the dance.

[B]

Dancing Queen.

[A]

Oh. Oh, my God.

[B]

I know. It's so perfect. But, yeah, I guess they would actually play that song to, like, hype up people when they're about to go out on the. On the water with Keiko. Because, I mean, I remember this from watching SeaWorld trainers. Like, it's a very. You have to be very expressive, and you have to be. You're, like, running across, you know, platforms and trying to keep. It's a very physical thing. You're not just standing in one place. And, you know, you have to get the energy up, get people excited. And also on top of that, Iceland. This came up many times in both Brower's book and Mark Simmons books, that Iceland is a difficult environment to work in. Outside, as you might be able to imagine, it is very, very exposed to the harsh North Atlantic. Atlantic winds and storms. And they had to be out there every day, rain or shine or snow or sleet.

[A]

God, that would have been a good chapstick ad.

[B]

Oh, my God, that would have been amazing.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Oh, my gosh. I can picture it.

[A]

We should go back in time and pitch this idea. I think we could make this happen. And then perhaps it would have a butterfly effect. Yes. This is such a size note, and it probably makes me sound like Andy Rooney, but I really was annoyed by that TikTok trend that turned into. Because everything devolves in meaning and gets squishier. But where it was like, the butterfly effect is crazy because if I hadn't gone to Tulane, then I wouldn't have met my roommate and be in her wedding now. And it's like the butterfly effect isn't what colleagues you choose. It's like a butterfly flapping its wings in Indonesia, causes a hurricane in Houston. It's like, wow, the butterfly effect is crazy because if I hadn't left my chapstick on the subway, then I wouldn't have ended up playing Mimi in Rent. That's the butterfly effect.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There has guys, that kind has been over for months now.

[B]

No, I see what you mean, though. It's not. Yeah, just listen. In a sequence of events. It's. It's not like Back to the Future, I don't think was like a Butterfly effect movie because, like, when you make.

[A]

A massive choice in your life, it actually is kind of predictable that other large changes will happen because of it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or the thing of, you know, the butter there. I guess this is like a separate butterfly metaphor, but like the time traveler butterfly, where, like, you step on a butterfly in, you know, the Cetaceous period. Period, and it changes the entirety of the future, which is a Treehouse of horror premise, which I know is a parody of something, but I don't know what the original is. I guess know it because of the Treehouse of Horror, because that's how people got their cultural education in the 90s. So if we had picked this chapstick ad. Yeah. We might be living in a democracy right now. It's hard to know.

[B]

We might. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. But you know what? We're gonna. We're gonna. We're gonna have one again.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, we are. It's.

[A]

It's.

[B]

We're working on it. Everyone's, you know, doing their best right now, and we're fighting for it.

[A]

I saw a high school production of Newsies last night, and.

[B]

Of course you did.

[A]

The kids are. The kids are okay. The kids are going to be all right. They were singing and dancing about soaking scabs. It was incredible.

[B]

Wait, Sarah, you did that? Which is quintessentially you. And then I went to a marine science film festival, and I watched movies about whales yesterday, so.

[A]

Which is quintessentially. Boo.

[B]

So we all just. We both just had a great Saturday night last night.

[A]

We really did. Yeah. Do a Saturday night that if you tell your friend about it later, they'll be like, yeah, of course, you.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. You'll have a great time.

[A]

And that is our episode. Thank you so much for listening. And we are going to have the thrilling conclusion to our trilogy out in one week. We can't wait to share it with you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you to Brianna Bowman for being our guest and orca lady. Thank you to the people who helped make this show. Thank you to Miranda Zickler who is our producer and editor and the client Paul Ortiz who is our administrative assistant. Please make sure to check out Brianna's website. You can find it in the show notes and you can find our bonus episodes on Patreon and Apple Plus. And right now you can listen to our January bonus with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson of the Unspooled podcast who came on to tell me about Ishtar, the worst movie ever made. Or is it? We'll find out. Thank you again for joining us and continuing to share this experience of just caring a whole lot about things. Keep on doing it. We'll see you in one week.