Encore: Adrián and the Whale

This episode was originally published on March 21, 2025. There are moments that define each of our lives. Some we can predict: graduations, marriages, births, deaths. Others? Not so much. And in the year 2025, when the stars aligned just so, you may have found that moment explode online. That's what happened to 23-year-old Adrián Simancas. Last year in Feb. 2025, Adrián was paddling the Straight of Magellan, with his father Dell, when the unimaginable happened: a humpback whale emerged from the water and engulfed him in its open mouth — and his father captured it all on video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyN2cO9IbrQ Almost immediately, the video went viral. Simancas sat down with Endless Thread to discuss his whale tale, the deluge of attention that followed, and what he's learned from his intimate moment with nature. Show notes: Video of Adrián's whale encounter. https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/1io8jun/dad_films_as_his_son_is_swallowed_and_then_spit/?share_id=X3t5BiK0M2JOenc0Tunz0&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1 We originally saw it on the Reddit thread: r/ThatsInsane Adrián Simanca's Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@adriansimancas Dell Simanca's Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/dellSimancasma%C3%B1ocochaNel Did a whale swallow a kayaker? The truth behind the viral video https://www.npr.org/2025/02/14/nx-s1-5297762/whale-swallows-kayaker-video-explained (NPR)

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. A recent episode explores how AI is reshaping our schools. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's Fall Drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy-to-layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon Fall Lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on lululemon.com now.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  Ugh, I hate Mondays.

• 0:48Speaker 03

  King's Hawaiian Cinnamon Swirl Bite?

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Uh, Taylor Hansen? Sure, I'll try one.

• 0:53Speaker 03

  Mmm.

• 0:56Speaker 03

  Hey, let's get back to work, please.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  But Taylor Hansen's making my day way better with these new soft and swirly King's Hawaiian Cinnamon Bites.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  Taylor Hansen? Nice. Try one. Mmm.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  King's Hawaiian Cinnamon Bites. There's nothing like it.

• 1:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hey, Threadheads, it's your boy Benny. We're taking a little break this week with the holiday, and I hope you're taking a little break, too. Hope you're celebrating family, friends, and what this country could be with an informed populace that holds institutions to account and also believes in the power of institutions and collective work and collective action. So while we take this little break, we're going to play you a true, I think, summer jam, hopefully. We hope you like it. It's from the back catalog, from the stacks, as it were.

• 1:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's a story about somebody who came into contact with an amazing creature. Take a listen.

• 2:17Speaker 05

  Boston.

• 2:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Could you tell what was going to happen before it happened? Did you know that there was an animal underneath you?

• 2:38Speaker 05

  It was a complete surprise when something struck me from behind and there was something coming at me, like blue dark and white shadow, very fast in form of an animal.

• 2:58Speaker 05

  Then I was like laying down, spinning, and I realized that I was inside of the mouth of an animal. And I guessed that I would die.

• 3:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  There are moments that define each of our lives. Some we can predict: graduations, marriages, births, death.

• 3:27Speaker 05

  Others, not so much. We were going on to an island called Nassau, here at the south of Chile. And yeah, we were going to camp on the island. It would be my dad's birthday.

• 3:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  I assume being swallowed by a whale was not part of the planning for the trip.

• 3:54Speaker 05

  No, not at all.

• 3:55Speaker 06

  This may be the wildest story of the morning: a whale swallowing a kayaker, then immediately spitting him out.

• 4:02Amory Sivertson?

  23-year-old Adrian Simancas, swallowed and then spit out by a humpback whale while kayaking last weekend. Truly terrifying experience. You can only imagine.

• 4:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Today, we're taking you to the Strait of Magellan in Patagonia.

• 4:18Speaker 05

  It's very cold. It's very rocky. There are mountains. It's very peaceful. You know, you just kind of get to hear the wind.

• 4:30Amory Sivertson?

  We're 23-year-old Adrian Simankas.

• 4:34Speaker 05

  Hello. Nice to meet you.

• 4:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  And his father Dell.

• 4:40Amory Sivertson?

  Got the shock of their lives last month and got blowholed, blasted into internet.

• 4:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Who among us has not been blowholed?

• 4:51Amory Sivertson?

  Straight into internet virality as a result. There are tales about whales, and then there's this.

• 5:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm Ben Blowhole Johnson.

• 5:06Amory Sivertson?

  I'm Amory blasted above the sea, Vincent.

• 5:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  And from the dry, sea-creature-free confines of WBUR, Boston's NPR, this is Endless Thread. And this, this is the story of Adrian and the whale.

• 5:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  So yes, we talked to the guy from the video that traveled the world last month on the internet, the one where the guy gets swallowed by a whale.

• 5:46Amory Sivertson?

  Engulfed by a whale, we should say. Whales can't swallow humans. They just can't. Their throats are too tiny. But this unsuspecting paddler in Patagonia did get accidentally taste-tested by a whale who was probably just after some fish.

• 6:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  But a normal day in the life of this guy is much more, well, normal.

• 6:09Speaker 05

  I am Adrian Simankas, and I work at a school here in Punta Arenas, where I live. I'm the technology manager.

• 6:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  Do you get to hang out with kids and help them use the internet? Or are you mostly just fixing things when things go wrong?

• 6:28Speaker 05

  A little bit of both. And sometimes I help with the setup for events and all the multimedia, you know?

• 6:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, the tech guy. You're the tech guy.

• 6:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  It seems like you're kind of an outdoors person. Is that true? You and your dad spend a lot of time in the outdoors together?

• 6:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, since I was a kid, we hung out and were to climb mountains, you know, or go into rivers. And my mom also loves nature, you know? It's something that a lot of people have that love in common, you know? To plant flowers, to go outside. I think it's something that I have in my blood.

• 7:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  The Simoncas family is originally from Venezuela, and they now call the city of Punta Arenas home. It's a place at the very southern tip of Chile, known as a gateway to some of Patagonia's most spectacular natural wonders. Kind of a ground zero for outdoor adventuring.

• 7:41Amory Sivertson?

  And they don't just hike and summit mountains. They rock climb, they bike, and they record a lot of these adventures and post them for the 700-plus followers of Dell's YouTube channel. They also packraft.

• 7:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which, as everyone knows, is... What is packrafting? We did not know.

• 8:01Amory Sivertson?

  We do now. A packraft is this type of lightweight inflatable boat specifically designed for people who are backpacking and hiking into the places they want to paddle. When they're unfolded and filled with air, packrafts look a lot like the inflatable kayaks you might be more familiar with.

• 8:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  And Adrian and his dad love to packraft.

• 8:22Speaker 05

  It's like the bicycle for me. It's like part of my body. I really enjoy traveling in different ways. It's a sport that can help you to have adventures in places you wouldn't imagine.

• 8:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  So it's February and it's Adrian's dad's birthday. Like any good father-son outdoorsy duo, they decide to celebrate with a multi-day hiking and pack rafting trip. They spend Friday camping and then for the weekend, they plan to pack raft out to an island called Nassau. So they pick up their rafts, set out, it's around noon, and they hope to get to the island by sunset. But to get there, you have to paddle through one of the world's most famous or infamous sea routes, a stretch that separates the two largest oceans in the world, the Strait of Magellan.

• 9:21Amory Sivertson?

  Dell has paddled this area before, but it's Adrian's first time and he's pumped. At first, the water's calm, but as they paddle towards the island, the weather begins to shift in a sinister direction.

• 9:36Speaker 05

  Suddenly, it started to rain and it started to form a little waves. I was thinking that we should hurry up and maybe curve our route a little bit.

• 9:52Amory Sivertson?

  Adrian and his dad aren't too worried. They know what they're doing. But Adrian also notices something off in the distance, something very whale-like.

• 10:05Speaker 05

  I had seen a stream of water coming out to the surface, but far away, you know, so I didn't thought that we would meet another whale so close.

• 10:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Adrian's never come across a whale before, but it's a bit far away, so he's not too worried about it. Meanwhile, Adrian's dad Dell is a few yards ahead of him and he's starting to set up shop. Remember Dell likes to post YouTube videos and like any good YouTuber, rain or shine, you gotta get that content.

• 10:39Amory Sivertson?

  So Dell sets up his fancy 360-degree camera, as he's done many times before, and just as he turns it on, something unimaginable happens.

• 10:51Speaker 05

  That's precisely when the whale came out.

• 10:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  More in a minute.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. How should employers measure real skills in the age of AI?

• 11:32Speaker 06

  Instead of observing the final artifact, instead of observing the final essay or the final program, observe the entire process of creation.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode on rethinking academic and job assessment when AI can do the work.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's Fall Drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy-to-layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon Fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on lululemon.com now.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Ugh, I hate Mondays.

• 12:31Speaker 06

  King's Hawaiian cinnamon swirl bite?

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Uh, Taylor Hansen? Sure, I'll try one.

• 12:35Speaker 06

  Mmm.

• 12:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hey, let's get back to work, please.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  But Taylor Hansen's making my day way better with these new soft and swirly King's Hawaiian cinnamon bites.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  Taylor Hansen? Nice. Try one. Mmm.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  King's Hawaiian cinnamon bites. There's nothing like it.

• 13:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, we're in Chilean Patagonia, in the Strait of Magellan, with Adrian and Dell Simoncas. Dell has just set up a 360-degree camera to capture footage for his YouTube channel when something extraordinary happens.

• 13:22Amory Sivertson?

  Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a humpback whale emerges from the water and engulfs Adrian and his packraft in its open mouth.

• 13:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  I've watched this video at least a dozen times at this point, and every single time, it's just absolutely insane.

• 13:43Amory Sivertson?

  It is because the mouth is so big. You're not expecting a whale's mouth, or you can't fathom how big a whale's mouth is. And so the mouth, you know what I mean?

• 13:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Good use of the word fathom, because part of the reason is that the entire thing is underwater. It's like a giant creature that's underwater. And then all of a sudden, its mouth comes out of the water. And you're like, oh, my God, that thing's huge.

• 14:08Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. And Adrian says, in that moment, pulled into this giant mouth of a whale, he thought he was about to die.

• 14:19Speaker 05

  I just felt like when you're swimming and you get to a wave and the wave is too big and it spins you down in the water.

• 14:31Speaker 05

  That was kind of what I felt. I was holding my breath.

• 14:38Speaker 05

  At first, I thought that, well, I guess it was the only thing that I could do right now, no?

• 14:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  But then, just seconds later, Adrian and his boat reappear.

• 14:55Speaker 05

  I was outside and the boat came out of the water too.

• 15:00Speaker 05

  I was calling for my dad to warn him because I thought that something was swimming below us. And of course, there was a whale swimming, like looking at me, trying to understand what happened.

• 15:20Speaker 05

  And it was a group of whales. So I was very scared and paranoid.

• 15:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  The whale dives again, and then it disappears.

• 15:34Amory Sivertson?

  On the video, you can hear Dell calling to Adrian.

• 15:44Amory Sivertson?

  He's saying, basically, "Don't worry, don't worry, stay calm, grab onto my rope." And his tone, at least to us as viewers and to many, many people on the internet, is surprisingly chill, at least for the circumstances.

• 15:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  The experience I had in watching the video was I was like, "Why is his dad so relaxed? I don't understand."

• 16:09Speaker 05

  Well, he didn't really see the moment when the whale came out. He was starting the camera, I was behind him. And when he heard the splash of water, he turned back. And I was not there, neither was the boat. And he was kind of confused, you know?

• 16:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  That would be confusing.

• 16:36Speaker 05

  And then, when I got up, he was relaxed about me being fine, you know, being awake and floating. Because that's better than any other possible situation when I had just disappeared in the water. I think that's why he was very positive about it.

• 17:12Speaker 05

  It is the protocol when you need to rescue someone. Because I would have lost a lot of energy just trying to fight, to get out of the water. And the only thing to do was to wait.

• 17:34Amory Sivertson?

  In the video, you can see Adrian holding on to his packraft as he swims over to his dad, grabs onto his boat.

• 17:43Amory Sivertson?

  And Dell paddles them both to safety. End scene.

• 17:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, believe it or not, Adrian told me he actually wanted to continue on to the island, but he'd lost his paddle when he went under.

• 18:01Amory Sivertson?

  I hate it when that happens.

• 18:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  The sea monkeys make it safely back to land, and despite literally being in the mouth of a whale, Adrian says, he's totally fine.

• 18:15Speaker 05

  My dad is a doctor, so he, he just made sure that I was okay. He's also like a sports trainer. So I was like with the most capable person to be around when I got eaten by a whale.

• 18:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  Dell posted the video online, and it's since ended up everywhere. We first saw it on Reddit, but it's been featured by CNN, The New York Times, the BBC, you name it, they've posted it. What has it felt like to go so viral and to be so immediately popular?

• 19:02Speaker 05

  It's funny. I didn't really thought that it would have so much reach. I think it is nice that because of this, I get to promote the music I make, maybe in the near future. And I also like to write, not only songs, but poetry and short stories. I share a bit of the things I do with YouTube. There is the music like trova rock, like folk punk.

• 19:51Speaker 05

  My dad also has a YouTube channel. And that's where we've been posting videos of excursion since like 12 years ago. And yeah, this has kind of been an inspiration and motivation to keep on doing all this. And get to do something good with all the repercussions of this being so public, you know?

• 20:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Since his whale encounter last month, Adrian has done countless interviews. Many appear to be quick hits, but he told us about one of his more in-depth interviews. He did it the day before he talked to us.

• 20:41Speaker 05

  I think they wanted to know about the spiritual implications about something like this happening.

• 20:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Are you religious?

• 20:54Speaker 05

  Not especially. My family is mostly Catholic, like the most of the people in Venezuela. But I always wanted to get a little further in what the teachings of the life could be in different cultures. And yeah, I believe there is a God that lives inside all that is nature. And that's the same love from God that we have to learn to make a good impact on this world.

• 21:35Speaker 05

  I think that's what was the meaning of the message that I can perceive from this.

• 21:45Amory Sivertson?

  And since his meeting with a whale, Adrian is only more grateful for that message.

• 21:51Speaker 05

  I think, well, life is a gift. When we go through this kind of experience, it's like you have more reasons now to be grateful for the life you have.

• 22:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Have your brother and your sister and your mother and your father all hugged you a little bit tighter since this happened?

• 22:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, a little bit. I mean, it was very shocking at first. But I think besides the shocking and the fear, yeah, it has a lot of art to it. You know, my mom is working on an illustrated children book right now.

• 22:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  About the whale experience? Is she making it about your experience?

• 22:53Speaker 05

  Yes, and it will be very emotional, I guess. And very beautiful because she's a great painter. And my brother is also a musician. My daughter also likes to draw and write. It is very, very inspiring to them, I guess, because it's something special like you would see in some Garcia Marquez novel.

• 23:33Amory Sivertson?

  Temperatures have dropped in Patagonia. But despite his experience, Adrian vows to get back on the water, back in his pack raft, when the weather turns. And this time, he's set on making it to the island.

• 23:46Speaker 05

  It feels kind of scary, but I will do it next year.

• 23:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  We've not been able to reach the whale to ask it for an interview.

• 24:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  If you could give a message to the whale, what would the message be?

• 24:08Speaker 05

  Thank you for saying hi that day because you made it a lot more meaningful. And even though you ruined our birthday plans, they turned up being a double birthday. And I hope we maybe can get to see us again from a bigger distance.

• 24:47Amory Sivertson?

  And just in case the whale only understands Spanish, I mean, in addition to whale, obviously.

• 24:53Speaker 05

  Bueno, sería lo mismo más o menos. Ballena, nos dañaste el plan de cumpleaños, pero se convirtió en un cumpleaños doble. Y existe que la previa fuera incluso más interesante. Y si nos volvemos a veros a la sea desde más lejos, espero que tengas una larga vida.

• 25:22Speaker 05

  Have a long life.

• 25:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  You can find footage from this trip and other trips Dell and Adrian have taken on Dell's YouTube channel. He's Dell Simonkas. And you can find out more of what Adrian is up to, including his previously mentioned music, on his channel, Adrian Simonkas. We've put links to both in our show notes.

• 26:02Amory Sivertson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was written and produced by Caitlin Harrop. It was co-hosted by me, Amory Sivertson, and...

• 26:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  Me, Ben Brock Johnson. Sound design by Emily Jankowski.

• 26:15Amory Sivertson?

  The rest of our team is Franny Monahan, Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, and Meg Kramer. Our managing producer is Suma Tijoshi, and our production manager is Paul Vikes.

• 26:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and the inside of a whale's mouth, which is very watery, turns out.

• 26:34Amory Sivertson?

  Yes, and by the way, this has nothing to do with a whale's mouth, but it does have to do with our show and future episodes. We're working on an upcoming episode about how people are using AI in their relationships. So not just like, I made myself an AI girlfriend, because we already made that episode and you should listen to it, but we're thinking more like, you know, your work, your friends, your parents, other people in your life. What role is AI playing in those relationships? We want to hear it. Send us a voice memo or a written message to [email protected].

• 27:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or other wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up, [email protected].

• 27:29Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Janet Kang, Executive Director of the Just Horizons Alliance, on who stands to benefit from AI in education. I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context.

• 27:57Speaker 06

  And just to explain why you're excited about it.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh, individualized support, right? Personalization and to be able to scale quality education in places where it was historically impossible. So for certain kinds of learners with different kinds of learning styles and disabilities, for example, speakers of different languages. There are amazing ways AI can boost learning. It just has to be with the right context. And age appropriateness is something we do a lot of work in because it is very different depending on where in that maturity cycle you are in terms of how your brain develops. Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business, Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon Fall Drop, because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's Fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new Fall Arrivals in-store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Ugh, I hate Mondays.

• 29:19Speaker 06

  King's Hawaiian Cinnamon Swirl Bite?

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Uh, Taylor Hansen? Sure, I'll try one. Mmm.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Hey, let's get back to work, please.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  But Taylor Hansen's making my day way better with these new soft and swirly King's Hawaiian Cinnamon Bites.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  Taylor Hansen? Nice.

• 29:35Speaker 06

  Try one.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  Mmm.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  King's Hawaiian Cinnamon Bites. There's nothing like it.