Serial - The Good Whale - Ep. 5

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

Keiko disappears in Icelandic waters, swimming east for four weeks. Unobserved, with no human contact. Since nobody knows what happened to Keiko during that mysterious time, we decided to recreate it — as a musical. From Keiko’s perspective, naturally. Watch the music video for "The Ballad of Keiko" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1k1TQ2Lh0o Our new podcast, “The Good Whale,” is out now. Follow it here, or search for it wherever you get your podcasts.To get full access to this show, and to other Serial Productions and New York Times podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, subscribe at nytimes.com/podcasts.To find out about new shows from Serial Productions, and get a look behind the scenes, sign up for our newsletter at nytimes.com/serialnewsletter.Have a story pitch, a tip, or feedback on our shows? Email us at [e-mail] 

From Serial Productions and The New York Times, this is The Good Whale. I'm Daniel Alarcón. And so it was, in a strange way, what everyone had always hoped for. The moviegoers, the children, the fans, the trainers, the activists, the hangers-on. Keiko out at sea, away from humans for the first time since he was a calf. A Hollywood ending, of sorts. Keiko was last seen with a pod of wild whales as a storm was rolling in, but when the weather cleared and his care team returned, he was gone.

And what happened next is a bit of a mystery. We know the broad outline, that for four weeks he traveled east until he resurfaced off the coast of Norway, swimming with kids. But why? What did this mean? Did he come back to us, humans, because he couldn't make it in the wild? Or was it something else, because he missed us?

We don't know. Was his journey based on a memory of a childhood migration, however dimly recalled, or something more banal like the ocean current? Was he a pilgrim on a mission, a kid lost at the mall, or a teenage runaway keen on adventure? We don't know. We don't know how long he stayed with that pod of whales he was seen with at the start of his journey, whether he swam with them for an hour or a day or a week, whether he chased after them or begged for their attention, was accepted or ignored.

Everything Keiko had gone through was leading to this, all the rehab and training in Oregon and Iceland. For this, four weeks of swimming east in an almost straight line. If only we knew what he experienced, we'd know if this long grand experiment to restore wildness to a captive orca had succeeded. We'd know whether it was possible for a whale that had been captive for so long to live like a wild whale does with other whales in a pod, even for a little while. But those four weeks are essentially a black box. Anything we say about this period of time is much closer to make-believe than to reporting. So to get inside those mysterious weeks, we're going to have to leave journalism behind. Just for a little bit, I promise. Just for this one short episode, we're going to do something

different. We're going to take what we do know and think through what might have happened, how those four weeks might have gone. how those four weeks might have gone. It's such an important chapter in our story and we wanted to do it justice and imagine it as vividly as possible. We talked about different ways we could do that. A radio play, a piece of fiction. But then we decided, you know what? Screw it.

Let's just do the most out there version of this. Like Keiko, let's just go as far as we can possibly go. We decided to imagine these four weeks as a musical. What if Keiko was a killer whale in some animated film and what if we could see his experiences and know his thoughts, his fears, his hopes. For this critical month of his life, let's try to imagine the story for the first time from the one perspective we've been missing through this whole series. Keiko's I know, I know, this sounds crazy. It sounded crazy to me when it was first floated. But

trust me, there's a logic to all this. We enlisted professionals, people who do this for a living. Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. They write musicals. Big fantastical stories for kids, but also stuff for adults. Dear Evan Hansen, La La Land. We asked them to take the little we know about where Keiko started and how he ended up. And for one song, imagine what might have happened to Keiko in that time in between. And how it felt to him. So here it is, and the song begins in the only place it can, in the dark, briny blue. Many have mused on the old mystery, Where went the whale that the world had set free?

Somewhere the answers are lost to the sea, In the dark, briny blue Weeks beneath waves as he turned, he'd along We'll tell you three tales, but the tales could be wrong For only a whale knows the words to his song and can sing what is true What did he do in the dark? Briny So much water, so much sky, Giant shadows pass me by, I join the pod, we're fin to fin, They circle round and take me in,

We're weaving through the waves, soaring through the space, They sing a set of songs that sound like mine, We roughhouse and we race, through herring that we chase, We slap ourhouse and we race through herring that we chase. We slap our tails and splash along the coastline. Now I'm part of a pack in a swar. White and black and we're flying free. Three and back, four and front. They help me to hunt like a family.

And I spend days upon days upon days upon days growing strong here I spend days upon days upon days upon days I belong here But then one day I get distracted, a familiar sort of sound An engine hums, I go to chase it, but I get turned around And when I try to circle back, can't find the swirl of white and black And now my pack is nowhere to be found So much water, so much sky So much sky, goodbye

Just for a bit did he finally belong We told you a tale, but the tale could be wrong For only a whale knows the words to his song And can sing what is true One tale was told, let a second unfold There's more to behold in the dark Briny blue So much water, so much sky, Giant shadows pass me by, Black and white, they're big and broad, Just like me, is this my pod? I'm swimming to the side, hoping I can stay, I try to find a song that they might know, But I can't get it right, I've never sung their way,

I fumble and I never find the flow and there's hair in despair but they don't want to share they refuse to play and they're rowdy and rough and I'm not quick enough when they swim away and I try to stun a fish but I stumble I'm hungry and my stomach starts to rumble And for days upon days upon days upon days Isolation And for days upon days upon days I have no destination And my mind goes blank And I miss my tank So much water, so much sky

Two different tales of our whale's diamond sea Was he embraced or exiled? How did he cope free from captivity? How did he fare in the wild? Two different tales have washed up on the shore And if you listen The dark, bright blue holds one more So much water, so much sky Now I'm here, I'm not sure why. Such an endless blue abyss, they fought to set me free for this.

I'm swimming with a pod, they're nice enough I guess, and every day we keep the same routine. We swim and sleep and hunt, It's pleasant, more or less. But there's another world they've never seen. Cause they don't know the thrill when you show off a brilliant, daring dive. And the kids clap their hands as they scream from the stands and you feel alive Cause for days upon days upon days upon days I was famous Now it's days upon days upon days upon days and I'm nameless, aimless. I miss the children who would play. I miss belly rubs all day. Packs of people swimming at my side. They hold onto my fin and we would Ride and ride

Gave the wild a real try It's too much water Too much sky Goodbye Goodbye Many have mused on the old mystery So much unknown, but on this we agree He journeyed those long thousand miles Across the sea till he reached

Somewhere new That much is true, but what did he do? What did he do in the dark bright blue For four weeks he traveled until he bumped his nose on the edge of this giant pool called the ocean. That's on the next and final episode of The Good Whale. He was out in these little islands off the coast, just rubbing himself in the kelp fronds.

It was surprisingly good how good he was looking also the way he was swimming. And somebody called us and says, are you, you better turn on the TV. People were trying to go and swim with him, trying to pat him. I was, I mean, I was beyond pissed off. Okay, so we have one more really cool thing to share with you. We made a music video for this incredible song you just heard, and it has puppets and features Broadway star Jordan Fisher. The video was directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada, who happens not just to be a contributing editor on the series, but also a real-life

Hollywood director. Carlos has done music videos for people like Billie Eilish and the Thundercats and the rap group Clipping and now us. So go to our Instagram, serial podcast or sign up to our newsletter at nytimes.com slash serial newsletter. You don't want to miss it. The Good Whale is written by me, Daniel Alarcon, and reported by me and Katie Mingle. The show is produced by Katie and Alyssa Shipp.

Jen Guerra is our editor, additional editing from Julie Snyder and Ira Glass. Sound design, music supervision, and mixing by Phoebe Wang. Research and fact checking by Jane Ackerman, with help from Ben Phelan. A truly talented team of people helped us put together this specific episode today. The song, The Ballad of Keiko, was written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and Mark Sonnenblick. Produced by Pasek and Paul, Ian Eisendrath and August Ericsman with help from me, Ira Glass and Jen Guerra. It was engineered and mixed by Derek Lee, mastering by Oscar Zambrano. The song features Jordan Fisher as Keiko, Quentin Earl Darrington, Brian Darcy James,

and Paul Alexander Nolan as the fisherman, with Adam Rothenberg on piano. Our music video, which again you must check out on our Instagram page, at Serial Podcast, was directed by Carlos López Estrada and Anna Moskowitz. Produced by Ali Keasley with help from Alyssa Ship, Ndeye Chubu and Mac Miller. Additional cinematography by Joshua Echevarria, puppets by Viva La Puppet and Puppet Captain Michelle Zamora. Edited by Maykee Rupert, VFX by Justin Nguyen. Special thanks on this episode to Joshua Freed, Anna Speer, Danielle Perlman, Matthew Sullivan, and Frances Swanson. The Good Whale is from Serial Productions and The New York Times.

For a limited time, you can listen to all episodes of The Goodwill right here, right now. But it won't be free forever. So if you want full access to this show and to all serial shows, you've got to be a New York Times subscriber. Learn more about the New York Times audio subscription at nytimes.com slash podcasts.