Keiko Part 1 with Brianna Bowman

Can a killer whale really jump that high? For kids of the 90s, the adventure movie Free Willy introduced us to magic of the orca through its charismatic megafauna star, Keiko. In part one of our series, deep sea correspondent Brianna Bowman tells Sarah about his journey from free marine mammal to imprisoned entertainer to Hollywood royalty. Together they discuss what Keiko meant to them as kids, 1990s whale-related activism, and the follies of anthropomorphic projection. Digressions include the power of horse memoirs, the importance of cartoon eyebrows, and the uncommon honesty of the flea circus. Produced + edited by Miranda Zickler More Brianna Bowman: Brianna's Website Support Brianna's new podcast Rewilding Keiko on Patreon Submit a voicemail with your memories of Keiko at [email protected] (Brianna's Note: yes, Outlook! I’m a weirdo) Linkedin (Brianna's Note: yes I am a double weirdo) @rewildingkeiko on Instagram Buy her a coffee! More You're Wrong About: linktr.ee/ywapod Bonus Episodes on PatreonBuy cute merchYWA on Instagram Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Sarah Marshall?

  We are a tuna magnet and we are going to be here till 11 o'clock when our dads are picking us up.

• 0:16Sarah Marshall?

  Welcome to You Wrong About. It's a new year and we are talking about everyone's special little guy, Keiko the Killer Whale. If you don't know the story, don't worry, you will and you're going to learn it from our guest this week, science communicator and journalist Brianna Bowman. We also have a bonus episode coming at the end of the month about the famous flop, Ishtar, a movie that failed despite starring both Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. And I get to talk about it with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson of the Unspooled Podcast. And you can find it, as always, on Patreon and on Apple Plus. We had a really good time making it.

• 0:57Sarah Marshall?

  Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being here. Now let's go talk about Keiko.

• 1:10Sarah Marshall?

  Welcome to You Wrong About, the podcast where sometimes we just talk about everyone's favorite orca. And apologies if your favorite orca is a different orca. We're talking today about Keiko. And we're talking about him with my friend Brianna Bowman. Brianna, hello.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 1:32Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  I can't believe I'm here.

• 1:35Sarah Marshall?

  Come sit down in Sarah's playhouse.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  I've dreamed of this day of telling you about my true love of Keiko for so many years.

• 1:44Sarah Marshall?

  So have I, especially because for the past many months, you've been like, I'm not ready yet. There's still things that science is figuring out about Keiko.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:53Sarah Marshall?

  And I respect that so deeply because much as that guy in Jurassic Park said about Sam Neill, you're a digger.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  That was not the Jurassic Park line. I thought you were

• 2:07Sarah Marshall?

  Ooh, which one did you think it was gonna be?

• 2:08Speaker 01

  I don't know. I guess I was, I was just going for the, the low hanging fruit of life finds a way.

• 2:15Sarah Marshall?

  He stood on the shoulders of giants.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, there we go.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I've kind of agonized over this story for many months, many years.

• 2:28Sarah Marshall?

  Well, it's called journalism, babe, you know? Let's also, to get this out of the way, you and I have known each other since 2003.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Yes, that was gonna be the other way. I was gonna introduce myself and be, and say, I'm Brianna Bowman, and I am a journalist slash former fishery biologist, and most importantly, I was your lab partner in senior year of high school.

• 2:51Sarah Marshall?

  Yes.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  And here we are.

• 2:53Sarah Marshall?

  And here we are. And so we're gonna talk about Keiko, and I want to imagine for a second, somebody who has no idea who we're talking about, someone who said, as my dad famously once said, as I left the house very early in the morning in 1995 to go see Keiko at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, as my dad famously observed, "Keiko? You're going to see something called Keiko?" And I said, "No, Dad, his name's Keiko."

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Not Cake Hole.

• 3:22Sarah Marshall?

  Not Cake Hole. Keiko. But Brianna, who is Keiko? And also, why was I, a small child in Oregon, going off very excitedly to see Keiko on a very important field trip?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Well, I guess to start from the very beginning of how a child would encounter Keiko, Keiko was in the lead role of the movie Free Willy. He was the killer whale that played Willy in the movie Free Willy.

• 3:52Sarah Marshall?

  And do you prefer, because I use Oregon killer whale interchangeably, and tell me which you prefer?

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Scientists aren't that concerned about whether it's killer whale or orca. It is used pretty interchangeably. I haven't come across anyone saying, oh, you should use orca because killer whale is

• 4:15Sarah Marshall?

  Prejudicial.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, like giving them a bad rap.

• 4:20Sarah Marshall?

  And as we learned in Jaws, where Quinn's little boat is called the orca, or at least as I think I know, orcas are kind of like, I don't know, fairly unique for the fact that they are on the same level as big old sharks. And they can, they can, they can kill a big shark if they feel like it.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:38Sarah Marshall?

  That was a very scientifically accurate statement, I bet.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Very.

• 4:42Sarah Marshall?

  You know, if they feel like it. I mean, they don't have to, but they could.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  They could. They, they have the power to, but they choose not to use it.

• 4:49Sarah Marshall?

  And what does an orca or a killer whale look like?

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Well, I, you know, a description that I love. So in researching this story about Keiko, there are two main published books about him. I will get to one of them later on in the story. But the one that kind of sums up the story as a whole that's out there that you can read is a book called Freeing Keiko by Kenneth Brower. And he used a description in that book where he said something along the lines of orcas are the original art deco animal. They have this striking black and white markings. They're beautiful, large cetacean.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  They are related to dolphins. They're more closely related to dolphins than other whales. And they are a toothed whale. So they are then more closely related to like sperm whales and pilot whales and that sort of thing. But they get to around 30 feet long. I think females maybe are tend to be a little shorter than that. And they have these just beautiful black and white markings across their body. They have this big white eye patch above their eye and a white belly. And they have what's called a gray saddle patch, which is like this little wisp of gray behind their dorsal fin. And actually, scientists can use the pattern of their saddle patch to identify them to

• 6:22Speaker 01

  an individual. So the saddle patch can kind of vary from orca to orca. And I think in explaining how what orcas look like, I think something that is kind of special about Caico, the whale we're going to talk about today, is that it seemed almost serendipitous that the most famous killer whale in the world, who became this huge movie star and then the symbol of this conservation project, he was easily identifiable to the layperson, to the average member of the public, by his three chin spots. He had these three black spots on his chin. And that made him just immediately identifiable to an individual.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  So you could pick him out from other whales. I mean, besides the fact that he also had a curved dorsal fin.

• 7:13Sarah Marshall?

  Yes, he had a lucky fin, as is depicted on the Caico plush that both of us own.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, mine's sitting behind me right now and it has the three dots on his chin. But I think that the markings, I just have thought about that in so much of this story is about people coming together for this astronomically huge project that is really on the scale of like the lunar landing when it comes to the amount of money and planning and time and orchestration and.

• 7:50Sarah Marshall?

  I guess like moving of a really large, not object in this case, but you know, a big trip.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, what was your TLDR of the Caico story? What did I tell you? I forget, you tell me. It was something like, the Caico story, where they moved a whale around a lot.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  And you know what? You're not wrong, Sarah. That is kind of the gist of it in one sense.

• 8:14Sarah Marshall?

  They're like, this whale should go here. No, we're moving this whale here. No, this whale needs to go to a third place. And America's children looked on.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:22Sarah Marshall?

  I also should point out that this is just, I don't know, to like, put this in a timeline of recent orca events, that this is in a pre-blackfish world, because something I remember us kind of learning. I remember this being about when we were in college, so the late 2000s, that orcas actually seemed to really, really not like doing shows for people generally at SeaWorlds. And of course, we had at least one famous orca incident where an orca killed his trainer, Telekom, I'm thinking of. And then there was this amazing article, and I want to say Outside.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:01Sarah Marshall?

  That was kind of like an incredible piece of almost true crime journalism. That's like, Telekom has done this unspeakable thing, but, but what happened to Telekom? What is Telekom's story? And then you're reading it and you're like, oh no, no wonder Telekom did that. You know, part of the concept here that I know, or I imagine we're going to get into is that orcas, from what I recall, and this is, you know, going to be me telling you what I remember, and you can give me the more nuanced version from your expertise, but that they're extremely social animals who live in like matriarchal pods, I guess.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:38Sarah Marshall?

  And that for them to live in isolation the way they do in places like SeaWorld is like basically psychological torture for them.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. What we know about orcas, and we've studied especially the orcas in the Pacific Northwest a lot, especially a group called the southern resident killer whales. We know.

• 10:01Sarah Marshall?

  Well, ha.

• 10:03Sarah Marshall?

  It's a southern resident killer whale.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  That has never occurred to me. Now I'm going to think of it. Southern bells.

• 10:13Sarah Marshall?

  It's like Dixie Carter.

• 10:17Sarah Marshall?

  And that, so you may know, and so your children may know, was the night the lights went out in Georgia.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  And now, now I'm also picturing like Real Housewives of Atlanta.

• 10:36Sarah Marshall?

  It's whatever you want it to be. That's what's great about it.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, who knows? Maybe, maybe the Southern resident killer whales are having their own little, you know, personal dramas with each other.

• 10:46Sarah Marshall?

  I feel like killer whales are like Real Housewives where you're like, wow, so beautiful, so majestic, so charismatic. Don't fuck with them, though. Do not fuck with them.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Yes, that's in a nutshell.

• 10:55Sarah Marshall?

  And of course, humans spent a lot of the 20th century being like, what if we fuck around with these whales?

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. They, so the, the Southern residents, they are made up of different families. There's the J pod, K pod, and L pod. Their family structures and each pod has a matriarch, uh, who's basically the person, or the person, the whale, making the decisions of like where they are gonna go to hunt and, you know, where they're gonna travel, or whether they're gonna just chill out and rest and.

• 11:26Sarah Marshall?

  Don whale.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they stay in these, these family units their entire lives. Young male orcas may kind of leave and form their own little kind of bachelor pods for a little while, but otherwise they'll kind of disband and the males will, as far as I know, also spend basically their whole lives in their mother's pod.

• 11:49Sarah Marshall?

  What's the thing about them putting fish on their heads? That's a thing, right?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  That's a thing. I don't think anyone really knows other, and, and the conclusion is just like, it's a behavior.

• 11:59Sarah Marshall?

  How do you get the fish to stay on your head? And how do they put it on their heads?

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Very talented orcas.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  It's like a kid, like, spinning a basketball on their finger.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. They, I mean, orcas and other like dolphins and other whales too. But I think especially orcas and dolphins have been observed. They'll take objects in the water and play around with them like that. So like another thing that orcas love to do and dolphins too is find a piece of kelp and like swim under it so that it gets caught on their dorsal fin or on their pectoral fin and then kind of like pass it around to each other in a little game. So I think the quote unquote, wearing the salmon on their head is maybe an extension of that. It's just like fun to balance something on their head and salmon happen to be around.

• 12:51Sarah Marshall?

  Right. It's not about fashion. It's maybe just sort of about play.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and that kind of gets into a topic that I think comes up very strongly throughout the story of Keiko is the risk of anthropomorphis- oh my gosh, anthropomorphosis, eh, I can't say it.

• 13:09Sarah Marshall?

  Anti-disestablishmentarianism.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, anthropomorphizing animals.

• 13:16Sarah Marshall?

  Which is?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Anthropomorphizing is projecting human behaviors, our feelings and our emotions and our, I think also just, it's really hard for humans to disentangle ourselves from these structures and systems that we're immersed in all the time. And we just think of it as a normal way to exist in the world. And it's hard to imagine ourselves in a place like an animal would be where they don't have like art and culture. And I think that's why I'm saying that story with the killer whale and the salmon on their head, like people are saying, oh, it's wearing it like a hat. And it's like, well, that's one idea, but that's also, to put it diplomatically.

• 14:03Sarah Marshall?

  Parentheses, you fucking idiot.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  But jumping the gun a little bit and assuming that orcas have such a thing as, yeah, that is like wearing an item, like we would wear an item.

• 14:17Sarah Marshall?

  When like, why would they, why would orcas have a concept of clothes?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Right. Like it would be hard for us to imagine or- Hard for us to like imagine that from the get go of existing in the world in that way. And so with the risk with anthropomorphizing in science especially is especially like animal based science where you're trying to describe animal behavior or even animal psychology is you have to be very, very careful about distancing yourself from the subject that you're studying. And only taking observations that you can make objectively and not trying to assign intent behind a behavior.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  And it's to the point that anthropomorphizing in science, it's almost like a, I've heard it referred to as like a cardinal sin. Like if you, if you're, if there's even a hint of any kind of anthropomorphizing going on in your, your study, your data, then it can be the end of your work, of your career. And that's understandable because that is a very real risk. I'm not saying that it's not a very, a real risk, like we don't want to assume we know what animals are thinking or in feeling. That being said, I do think that in reading about this story about CAKO and in talking and reading to people

• 15:46Speaker 01

  that are involved in this kind of work, there is also the risk of taking that idea of like avoiding anthropomorphizing at all costs. There is also the risk of like taking that a little too far as well. And ignoring information that is in front of you. For example, I have a book here from Carl Safina. He was working as an ecologist, he's a writer now, and he did a lot of work with reducing sea bird by catch in fisheries in the Atlantic.

• 16:21Sarah Marshall?

  I hate to leave you on a cul-de-sac, but what is by catch? We have to know. See, because you're like, everyone knows what by catch is. And would that were true, what's by catch, Brianna?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  No, that's fair. By catch is in commercial fishing and also I guess in sport fishing too. Let's say you're going out and you're trying to catch tuna because you know, that's what you have quota for as a fisherman. And it is the most valuable thing that you want to catch and sell. Basically, anything that you catch that isn't tuna. Is by catch. So there'll be other species of fish that you'll catch instead because you can't just, you know, catch tuna that precisely.

• 17:01Sarah Marshall?

  With a tuna magnet?

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:03Sarah Marshall?

  Now, that's a band name.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Tuna magnet.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  That's our ska band, Tuna Magnet.

• 17:09Sarah Marshall?

  We are a tuna magnet and we are going to be here till 11 o'clock when our dads are picking us up.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  But yeah, Carl Safina, he wrote this book called Beyond Words, What Animals Think and Feel. And it's basically addressing this topic of, yeah, we as scientists shouldn't anthropomorphize. We shouldn't assign any thoughts or feelings that are primarily human to an animal's experience. But at the same time, humans are animals. So we can't also say that we don't know what they're thinking or feeling all the time. Like, there is some sort of middle ground.

• 17:52Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Or at least we can't act as if we can't make an educated guess occasionally, especially if we've... Because there's also, I feel like, the distinction, like, to use dogs as an example, right? That, like, people will be like, oh, the dog loves the baby. She's wagging her tail. And I, you know, I know enough to know that you could also correctly say, well, tail wagging is really more of a sign of, like, excitement, which could be like, good excitement, or it could be like, bad excitement. Like, what the fuck is this thing?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:22Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, my god.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:23Sarah Marshall?

  You know, and so the, so there's a thing where, like, I think probably dog owners are a great case study because we do a lot of projecting of our emotions.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:31Sarah Marshall?

  Onto our pets.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  I do it every day.

• 18:33Sarah Marshall?

  Just pet owners in America generally. But then also, there's the fact that, like, it is possible to learn, to an extent, like, what your dog's, like, actual, sort of, baseline, consistent species, translated body language is telling you. And you can, like, learn, to a degree, their kind of, like, physical dialect, I would say. And also, they know what we're feeling. Like, they understand when we're nervous or scared most of the time. But they also don't understand, like, our taxes.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:01Sarah Marshall?

  Probably.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Probably. Who knows? Murphy's pretty smart. I would give Murphy full allowance to go and do my chores for me. I don't know if she'd want to, though.

• 19:13Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, she certainly wants the best for you. I think she wants the best for you in a general way, but maybe only some of the, you know, it depends.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:20Sarah Marshall?

  But I feel like this is kind of the bedrock of what we're talking about today, that there's this sort of story with Keiko. And I would love to get next into kind of the Free Willy part of this, if this is the right time.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:31Sarah Marshall?

  Of like, people coming together to try and do what's best for an animal, and also inevitably and frustratingly, projecting our emotions onto an animal en masse. The same way that we do arguably, I mean, what's interesting, too, is a comparison, is that I'm obsessed with Tanya Harding historically, and you're obsessed with Keiko. And these are both like majestic creatures of the Pacific Northwest who the media fixated on and ultimately meaningfully, you know, misunderstood in the 90s. And we should really take your course on that.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  We should. Yeah. I would love to teach a course on, on Keiko. I think at this point, I probably could.

• 20:11Sarah Marshall?

  It's time. Yeah. Okay. So we have, so that's the orca of it all. So who's Keiko?

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Keiko was a whale. When we all, as children, first encountered Keiko, it was in, as I mentioned, in the movie Free Willy.

• 20:26Sarah Marshall?

  Yep.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  So actually, Sarah, would you like to explain Free Willy in a nutshell?

• 20:32Sarah Marshall?

  God, I would love to. Yes. I mean, you know it much better than I do. So mine will be more general. But basically, and what's funny, too, is that even as an adult rewatching this, I was like, wow, they really moved that whale around. But it's all just like special effects and footage that's like cut together. The whale was like only ever in one place.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:53Sarah Marshall?

  So, okay, Free Willy is one of those 90s movies that's filmed in the Pacific Northwest. This one was like edited in such a way where a character catches the Max in Pioneer Square in downtown Portland and then gets off at an Astoria.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:08Sarah Marshall?

  A few stops later, which like, can you imagine? I would love that.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  This fictional town that they've created is like this peste of Portland and Astoria and Cannon Beach. And I'm like, yes, I want to live there.

• 21:21Sarah Marshall?

  So what's it about? That's the, I had to get the geography issue out of the way, just so you knew. Okay. But so Free Willy is about a troubled kid, which is like a staple, I feel like of 90s movies, like an approximately 11 year old boy who's like an orphan in some way. And it was like, adults have given up on me. If only I could have like an angel on a baseball team or a bond with an unusual animal to teach me the love and trust again.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Yep. It's a really standard 90s family film.

• 21:49Sarah Marshall?

  Yep. And I feel like he like gets busted for like shoplifting or stealing or something. And so he gets sent to live or what is it?

• 21:56Speaker 01

  He gets busted. I just rewatched Free Willy yesterday.

• 22:00Sarah Marshall?

  Okay.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  So I'm fresh. He gets busted. So he and his friends, famously, this movie opens, I mean, for me famously, after the beautiful documentary footage of Pacific Northwest, Wales, and they show Willy getting captured, then they go to immediately Pioneer Square in downtown Portland.

• 22:19Sarah Marshall?

  Yep.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  He has some other kids that I guess they're all runaways or something and they're begging for food and-

• 22:25Sarah Marshall?

  They're the Baker Street Irregulars.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And later on that day, they're at the Burnside Skate Park, um, hanging out, and the police get after him for stealing a cake or something. I don't know.

• 22:39Sarah Marshall?

  That's right. He steals a cake. It's very Jean Valjean.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  He runs away from the police and he and his friend kind of like open a random door. And this is the part of the movie that I find really funny. They just kind of wander into a random door, no clue that it's actually the door into Keiko's underwater food area. Like they just sell the door to whales. They just accidentally were like, here, in this door, dive in here. And, and they're like, oh, cool. What's this place?

• 23:10Sarah Marshall?

  And as a kid, were you like, why does this never happen to me?

• 23:15Sarah Marshall?

  No matter how many random doors I open, there's never a whale. It's always mobs.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  I know. And how is there like, like, there's not an outer perimeter wall of security on this place? Maybe they hopped it and I forget.

• 23:27Sarah Marshall?

  Well, that's, I mean, that's why everyone's so scared of Portland, because the media taught us to believe that any door downtown, you could open and there'd be a killer whale.

• 23:37Sarah Marshall?

  He's actually just the cashier of a gentleman's hotel.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:42Sarah Marshall?

  But it's like a classic meet cute, I guess.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, and so they go and they're like, oh, weird. It's like this underwater pool. They're like, we'll just hang out here until the cops leave. And so they start graffitiing.

• 23:55Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, no, they're graffitiing.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, they graffiti it. And then Jesse is like, wait, what's that in the tank? And then Willie comes up to the tank and he opens his mouth and he's like, rawr. And there's like flashes of light, like there's lightning or something. And it's like a monster, even though it's like the least scary monster possible.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  It's like, sing.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the mashup we need. Fan of the opera and Free Willy.

• 24:30Sarah Marshall?

  I can't believe it hasn't been done, honestly.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Right. So anyway, the cops catch Jesse, they bring him to his caseworker.

• 24:38Sarah Marshall?

  Cake stealing, breaking, entering and harassing a whale.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they, well, and so like Jesse's been on the run, but you know, the cops catch him and he gets to his caseworker and his caseworker's like, like, what have you been doing? Oh, my God. Well, we got this nice couple that's going to take you in. And, and Jesse's like, I just want to be with my mom. And the guy's like, we haven't seen, heard from your mom in six years and we don't know where she's at and she doesn't want to be found. And so then they take Jesse to the foster family, um, which is Michael Madsen.

• 25:08Sarah Marshall?

  You live on the Astoria side of Portland, Doria.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. We've quickly gone to the upper hills of Astoria and they have this beautiful house that overlooks the Columbia River, which.

• 25:21Sarah Marshall?

  Kids in the eighties and nineties got really Astoria pill because we have The Goonies, Short Circuit and Free Willy.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know what? A fun fact about Free Willy?

• 25:29Sarah Marshall?

  What?

• 25:30Speaker 01

  The guy who played the father in The Goonies co-wrote the script of Free Willy.

• 25:38Sarah Marshall?

  What?

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Keith Walker, I think.

• 25:40Sarah Marshall?

  He was like, I was in this wonderful town and I thought, what if there was a whale?

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if like, I, I, I think maybe he was approached like around the same time.

• 25:50Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, and kindergarten crop.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, kindergarten crop. Gosh, I feel like there's others that I'm forgetting, but those are like the big four.

• 25:56Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, which makes sense because it's just like a town that photographs well. It has these big, steep hills leading down to water. You know, it's just like very photogenic, I think.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:06Sarah Marshall?

  And also very fun. And if you go there, you can go to Freet and Scoop.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 26:10Sarah Marshall?

  Anyway.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Or also the Oregon Film Museum where you can learn all about all these film sites from all these movies and.

• 26:18Sarah Marshall?

  All these movies that we are remembering and also not quite remembering.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Anyway, he is told that he has to clean up his mess at the aquarium. He has to clean up the graffiti. And then he bonds with Willie, who is also a grumpy, misanthropic whale who doesn't want to perform.

• 26:34Sarah Marshall?

  That's true.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  And that's how they connect with each other. He's like, I get Willie. I understand where he's coming from. And there's the evil aquarium owner played by Michael Ironside.

• 26:45Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, my God, I forgot it.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:47Sarah Marshall?

  Isn't there a line where Michael Ironside is like, I hate that whale?

• 26:51Speaker 01

  He says it at least twice in the movie. It's like his final line. He's like, God, I hate that whale.

• 26:59Sarah Marshall?

  Michael Ironside has had the most incredible career.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  He really has. But he's just a caricature of a capitalistic tycoon. Like, he just opened this aquarium purely to make money. He doesn't care about the joy of children. He's like, wants to get rid of Willie. And they're like, no, we'll like teach him new tricks and that we'll get more people to come to his show. So they like, put on a big show for the aquarium owner and he's like, cool, can you do that again? And like, we can sell tickets. And they're like, yeah, he can do it. And then it's the big day and Willie gets stage fright. But it's mostly because little kids are like banging on his window, you know, in the underwater viewing area. And he's getting like freaked out and scared. And, and they're like, Willie, what, what's going on? Why, why don't you want to perform? And he's just like.

• 27:44Sarah Marshall?

  He's a highly sensitive whale. Yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  And then Jesse's all upset because he feels like Willie let him down. And then as he's like, kind of having like a talking to with Willie. He hears out in the water beyond this fictional aquarium that doesn't exist, that is on like a hillside, it looks like near a coal estate park somewhere. There's a pod of whales that swim by and they call out and Willie calls back to them and he's like, and Jesse's like, oh my God, it's your family.

• 28:14Sarah Marshall?

  They're like, we looked you up on Find My Phone.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  But I forgot that when Willie freaks out because all the kids are banging on the glass underneath, Willie rushes the window and he like causes damage to it so it starts leaking. And then so the evil aquarium owner, Michael Ironside, is like, wow, I could collect insurance money on Keiko. And so they're just gonna let his they're just gonna let him die.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  They're just gonna let it leak and be like, oh whoops.

• 28:48Sarah Marshall?

  God.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  I guess, I guess the tank leaked and yep, we can collect our insurance money now.

• 28:54Sarah Marshall?

  God, 90's kids movies are amazing. They're like, you know how you have some issues with adults? Well, you're correct. Some of them are so needlessly evil that it, they're like Roman emperors. That's how extravagantly evil they are. They're killing whales for fun.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  I know. I feel like you go through a period in like, I don't know, young adulthood where you're like, people aren't that bad. That's just something in movies. And then I feel like, no, I feel like I've met people like this in my life.

• 29:19Sarah Marshall?

  Well, yeah, politically, we are being shown a lot of evidence like daily, which, you know, certainly.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:26Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, tips the scale a little bit.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  If a certain, certain president owned an aquarium, you can be sure he would be trying to collect insurance money on a whale.

• 29:35Sarah Marshall?

  Oh my God, there would be so many clam assassinations and so forth.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So anyway, they're just gonna let him die. So Jesse is like, we have to save Willie. So he gets.

• 29:45Sarah Marshall?

  The clock is literally ticking.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  It is. It's literally ticking. And so he and his friends, the trainer and.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Lori Petty, I think is her name.

• 29:57Sarah Marshall?

  Yep, Tank Girl herself.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:00Sarah Marshall?

  Which when I think of this movie, I think mainly of Lori Petty going, salmon is like his chocolate.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Yes, that is like one of, that's a great line. They bring it back in Free Willy too. Also, they're like, oh, salmon's his chocolate. And it's true. The Pacific Northwest whales do love their salmon. But he and Lori Petty and August Schellenberg, who's the handyman at the aquarium. Also like the, I don't know, stereotypical mystical Native American kind of character.

• 30:31Sarah Marshall?

  Who lives in Breeze to help annoying white children.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, exactly. Anyway, they band together. They're like, okay, we gotta get Willy out of here. So they, they steal Jesse's foster dance truck. And they somehow managed between the three of them to get him on the back of the trailer of this truck. One of my favorite details about this part of the movie where they're like, they were gonna take a forest road to a beach to release him, but then it's blocked because a tree fell down. That road apparently is a section of the road up to the Astoria column. They just like filled it in with dirt to make it look like a forest road. But anyway, so that's where they filmed that scene.

• 31:11Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, I love movie magic, especially when it involves people moving around large quantities of dirt and snow and stuff. In the olden times.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, when we actually used to do that sort of thing, make it look real.

• 31:24Sarah Marshall?

  And you know what? Some people still are.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you can tell when they do.

• 31:28Sarah Marshall?

  Fun to create an illusion.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:29Sarah Marshall?

  Yes, they have to drop a whale off real quick at the ocean, which is hard to do.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Yes, they're like, plan B, take him to what is the.

• 31:39Sarah Marshall?

  It's like the end of Notting Hill. They're like.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly.

• 31:48Sarah Marshall?

  Let's give me some lovin', everyone. Thank you.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they take him to a marina, which is the Hammond Marina near Warrenton.

• 31:58Sarah Marshall?

  Yep, near the wreck of the Peter Iredale, my favorite Pacific Northwest shipwreck.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Well, and also, I love this scene because, you know, I hadn't watched Free Willy for years, like, most of, I don't know, it must have been at least like, over a decade. And then when I rewatched it, like, three or four years ago, and seeing this scene, I was like, what? I had a job as a port sampler for Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and I was standing in this marina almost every day for a summer. And I had no idea this was the marina where Keiko famously jumps over the wall to freedom, to his family. And anyway, I just, it just really felt like some sort of full circle moment.

• 32:43Sarah Marshall?

  I think the weirdest thing about movie locations is that they don't even announce themselves as special unless you know what you're looking for a lot of the time.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:51Sarah Marshall?

  Or you know they're special, but you don't know that they were, like, immortalized in some way.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, I know. I had no clue. There was nothing, there's no, like, sign or plaque being like, hey, there is this fun scene.

• 33:04Sarah Marshall?

  That's why I have a plaque in my home saying that Jamie Loftus wrote a chapter of Raw Dog here. It's made out of paper, and I taped it to the wall, but it's still a plaque.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  It still counts.

• 33:13Sarah Marshall?

  Make plaques in your home. Commemorate events.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll have a, I'll have a plaque of this recording up in here somewhere.

• 33:22Sarah Marshall?

  So, yeah, and I also, just, I, okay, this is, I feel silly asking this, just to be clear, because there's so many questions I have in my life that are like-

• 33:31Speaker 01

  There's no silly questions.

• 33:32Sarah Marshall?

  Thank you. Because I feel like a lot of people, when you ask a question, do you ever feel like you ask a question and someone's like, you should never do that? Or like, you should always do that? And you just have no idea whether it's gonna be one of the two.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:46Sarah Marshall?

  And so my question is like, in Oregon, you couldn't really do that, right?

• 33:53Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny. When I was rewatching this, I had a thought like, I wonder if Sarah's gonna ask me if that's possible.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  And I'm gonna say, no, it's not.

• 34:04Sarah Marshall?

  Okay, tell, tell us, what, what could an orca do? What would be a realistic version of that?

• 34:10Speaker 01

  I mean, I think an orca could jump over a, like, a net hanging in the water. I just don't, they can't get that much clearance.

• 34:18Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Okay. So when does Free Willy come out? Like 1993?

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Yes, July 16th, 1993, a month after another wonderful movie came out, Jurassic Park.

• 34:29Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, my God.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  So what a summer for movies, honestly.

• 34:31Sarah Marshall?

  What a summer for giant creature features.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:35Sarah Marshall?

  Willy goes out to sea and finds his pod and then we hear, "Hold me like the river Jordan. I'm insanely true, my friend."

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:50Sarah Marshall?

  I remember watching the Planet Earth episode about the whales that ends with, what is it? David Attenborough? I can never remember which Attenborough, speaking of Jurassic Park, saying, you know, something like, "Soon these whales will be extinct if we don't take our thumbs out of our butts." And you were like, "Let's not listen to that. Let's listen to the song from the end of Free Willy instead."

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, we just turned off the narration and listened to, listened to the Free Willy soundtrack. Yeah.

• 35:18Sarah Marshall?

  And, you know, we learned a lot. And, um, okay. So my question to you, because I was, we were both like five when this was all going on.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:27Sarah Marshall?

  Great time to be a five-year-old. Incredible toddler clothes.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 35:31Sarah Marshall?

  And so I remember vaguely just like seeing this movie and liking it and then hearing about Keiko, you know, more as a actual whale and the, the story that unfolded from there. But like, what was the response to this movie? And did it, as I kind of imagined from my adult perspective, involve people being like, Wow, we'd love to know more about this wonderful whale who is in the movie about his needs and rights and him being freed. Like, what's his living situation like? Is it good?

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's basically, in a nutshell. So I don't know if you remember, at the end of Free Willy.

• 36:10Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  There was a phone number.

• 36:12Sarah Marshall?

  I do know that you're saying this. Yeah.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  There was a phone number, 1-800-4-WILLS. And it says something to the effect of, like, if you would like to learn how you can help the plight of whales around the world, call this number. And do you want to try calling it?

• 36:33Sarah Marshall?

  I would love to.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Okay, 4-WILLS, 494-2537, I guess is how you do that. Okay. Oh, it said, "Call failed," so I'm gonna...

• 36:48Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, man.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:49Sarah Marshall?

  What are we, how are, but then who do we call about the whales?

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Hold on.

• 36:52Sarah Marshall?

  Who are we gonna call?

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Who are we gonna call?

• 36:56Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna try it one more time, and then I'll give up, because I really think that was just because I have terrible phone service at my place.

• 37:04Sarah Marshall?

  We can also do this, like, kind of in post.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 37:09Sarah Marshall?

  And you can try it later, and we can kind of patch that in at the end or something.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay. Shoot. Well, that's lame.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  You have reached the 1-800-4-WILLS line, maintained by the Free Willy Keiko Foundation and the International Re-Animal Project of Earth Island Institute. Our group's led the successful rescue, rehabilitation, and release of Keiko, orca star of the movie Free Willy. To learn more about Keiko, his remarkable journey, and our efforts to protect orcas around the globe, visit our website, keiko.com. That's K-E-I-K-O dot com. You can also order our all-new Free Willy Keiko Discovery Kit for yourself, or as a gift for a budding orca enthusiast. Check it out at keiko.com. Thanks for your interest. You

• 38:00Speaker 02

  are welcome to leave a message after the beep.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Do you want to leave a message, Sarah?

• 38:04Speaker 03

  Please leave your message after the beep.

• 38:05Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, you should leave one.

• 38:06Speaker 03

  When done, hang up or press the pound key.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Hi, this is Brianna Foman and Sarah Marshall, and we're recording a podcast about CAKO because I love the story of CAKO so much and I admire all the work that you guys did to try to release him back to the wild. And I will be sure to check out CAKO.com, though I'm fairly certain it's not an operating website anymore.

• 38:36Sarah Marshall?

  I don't know, the phone number's still up.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 38:40Sarah Marshall?

  We love CAKO. We will never forget CAKO.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll never forget CAKO. Thank you so much, and send my love to all the whales around the world. Okay, bye.

• 38:54Sarah Marshall?

  And all the ships at sea. That was so nice.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  That was nice. Wait, I'm just gonna quickly look up CAKO.com.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Because I swear I looked this up and I thought it wasn't operating, but maybe that was a different website.

• 39:09Sarah Marshall?

  Oh.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Oh, it is something.

• 39:10Sarah Marshall?

  CAKO.com. It's the International Marine Mammal Project.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:15Sarah Marshall?

  And now it redirects to savedolphins.eii.org.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:19Sarah Marshall?

  Ending the failed experiment of orca captivity. That's a charitable way to put it.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. All right. They're keeping the lines open.

• 39:27Sarah Marshall?

  God bless.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  So yeah, this is the organization that was in charge of this CAKO release project. So at the end of Free Willy, there was that phone number, people called it, and the person that came up with the idea for the phone number, there's a little story behind that, and it really gets into like why the movie Free Willy was made in the first place. So it all kind of started with what people, and especially the author Kenneth Brower, brings up in his book, it started with potentially the movie Lethal Weapon 2. You'll be surprised to know.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Um, logically, right?

• 40:10Sarah Marshall?

  You know, I've never seen A Lethal Weapon, which is very out of character. Yeah, I mean, there is like a certain kind of sense to it where you do feel like the backstory of a lot of Hollywood stuff is like, well, this guy had the same dry cleaner as this other guy, and that's why we have Tootsie or something.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Honestly, that's, that is kind of the feel behind this.

• 40:29Sarah Marshall?

  But it's like buddy cops, right? It's Mel, uh,

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Mel Gibson and,

• 40:33Sarah Marshall?

  Mel Gibson and Danny Glover.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  And Danny Glover, yeah.

• 40:36Sarah Marshall?

  Mel Robbins and Danny Glover. Mel Robbins is like, when someone's trying to arrest you, let them.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Buddy Cop movie, we never knew we needed.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  But in that movie, there's a scene where Murta, Danny Glover's daughter, is wearing a Save the Dolphins t-shirt.

• 41:01Sarah Marshall?

  Okay.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  And he's about to eat a tuna sandwich and his daughter's like, don't eat the tuna, because there's dolphin bite catch. Oh, hey, we learned all about bite catch. That was, that was handy.

• 41:11Sarah Marshall?

  Look at, see?

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, right?

• 41:12Sarah Marshall?

  I remember this being such a major issue in the early 90s and the idea of dolphin safe tuna and like, you know, there's no such thing as dolphin safe tuna. But I think we didn't figure that out until later. And it was like, I feel like it was a thing in rom coms of like, oh, I would never date a man who doesn't care about dolphin safe tuna. I feel like that was in The Truth About Cats and Dogs.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Oh, really? Was it? I don't think I've seen that before either.

• 41:34Sarah Marshall?

  Something like that. Dolphin safe tuna like comes up.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  That's so funny. So the moment in Lethal Weapon 2 was suggested by an actress or model and also dolphin activist Ann Moss, who was friends with Richard Donner, who was the producer of Lethal Weapon 2. And Richard Donner and his wife, Maureen Schuler Donner, they wanted to use Hollywood as a tool for activism and I think specifically like environmental activism. And like I said, they were friends with Ann Moss and her husband Jerry Moss. And Ann was the one who was like, hey, you should put this little scene in your movie. And that did well. And the Save the Dolphins t-shirt that the daughter was wearing. Was made by an organization called the Earth Island Institute.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  So that movie was successful. And then after that, Richard Donner wanted to do another movie that kind of leaned into this environmental activism and specifically like Save the Whales kind of story even more. So he started toying around with the idea of a story about an orca being released from captivity. And he started putting together a script. And that's when he brought in Keith Walker, who was the, like I said, the dad in The Goonies, and also Corey Blackman. And when they were getting close to this movie being finished, Richard Donner thought to reach out to the Earth Island Institute, the people that made that Save the Dolphins

• 43:04Speaker 01

  t-shirt. He thought to reach out to them and ask, like, what kind of particular message can we put in this movie? Like, what kind of call to action can we do? Like, something similar to that, you know, tuna sandwich scene? And so Richard Donner calls a very important character, very important person in the Keiko story, David Phillips. He was the leader of the Earth Island Institute. It was led by David Brower, who was a really famous environmentalist. He was the executive director of the Sierra Club. And just like a side note, you know, I mentioned that one

• 43:45Speaker 01

  of the main texts that's available out there to read about the Free Willy Keiko story is written by a man named Kenneth Brower. His father was David Brower. So that's how Kenneth Brower was kind of connected to all these people and had, you know, those contacts when he was writing the book. So Richard Donner calls David Phillips, who's the executive director of the Earth Island Institute at the time. And David Phillips is, he's had a career in campaigns for whale conservation, dolphin conservation. He was instrumental in leading the campaign on Dolphin Safe Tuna. So that was a lot of his work. I mean, of course, the work of many people, but he was

• 44:29Speaker 01

  the leader of those campaigns. And he was the, also the director of this International Marine Mammal Project, which was kind of housed within the Earth Island Institute, which if you're looking, if you happen to still be looking at keiko.com, that's exactly what you see. It's the International Marine Mammal Project, and it's a project of the Earth Island Institute.

• 44:54Sarah Marshall?

  Well, I really want to know at this point, like, when they, when they made this movie, like, how did they cast the whale? How did they find Keiko? And maybe this is a good point to get into, like, what was his story? And why was this call to action necessary?

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this is something that I'm a little, still a little unclear of whether the producers on this movie, so Richard Donner's wife, Lauren Schuler Donner, and Jenny Luttugendt, I think is how you say her last name. I found some interview where they kind of, it seemed like they had Keiko on their radar even before they cast him.

• 45:36Sarah Marshall?

  Okay, so it's like Air Bud, where they're like, aware of this dog that can

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:41Sarah Marshall?

  play basketball, and they're like, we can write a movie around this dog.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, possibly. But then also, I also read in, I think, Brower's book, that Warner Brothers, it was the responsibility of the Warner Brothers props department to find a whale to star in this movie. And they initially, of course, reached out to places like SeaWorld in the US, which would have, you know, just logistically made a lot more sense. But as you can imagine, when they were like, hey, SeaWorld, we want to do a movie about a whale that's in captivity, and then we release it because it's unhappy and it wants to be free.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  And SeaWorld was sort of like, um, what if instead of him going free in the end, we build him a nicer, better tank?

• 46:32Sarah Marshall?

  Learn to love doing shows for tourists.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So as you can imagine, SeaWorld was just not interested.

• 46:41Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  So they had to look elsewhere.

• 46:43Sarah Marshall?

  Prophetic.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:45Sarah Marshall?

  When did we start putting orcas and tanks for our own amusement, anyway?

• 46:49Speaker 01

  The first orca was caught and put in a sea pen in the early 1960s. It was a whale named, that was named Moby Doll. This is a little upsetting, but he was harpooned because he was going to be, the skeleton was going to be on display at the aquarium. Like, that's why they were harpooning this whale. And then he didn't die. So they were like-

• 47:12Sarah Marshall?

  That's quite evil.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they were like, hey, he didn't die. Let's see how long we can keep him for.

• 47:18Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  And he lived for 87 days in a temporary sea pen made by the aquarium. And then there was another one caught, I think, like the following year, off of a location called Namu or Namu, British Columbia. And that whale survived for about 11 months. And so then that just kind of planted the seed of like, huh, maybe we could, we could catch these whales and people think they're cool and like, want to come see them. So it really was just purely a money-making venture.

• 47:52Sarah Marshall?

  Right. And it's like having like a dancing bear in the Middle Ages or something, right? Where you're like, everybody come see the bear. Don't worry about it.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. And so in the seventies, the business of capturing and selling whales for like tens of thousands of dollars, maybe even more than that, like tens of thousands of dollars in 1970s money, you know? So it was, it was a very lucrative venture.

• 48:18Sarah Marshall?

  Why your evil deadbeat dad could be set for life with one lucrative whale sale.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:24Sarah Marshall?

  Or even a seal deal.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was, uh, it was just a little too tempting for a lot of people.

• 48:30Sarah Marshall?

  And kind of like the waters outside British Columbia were like a big center of this.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this is the thing with the southern resident killer whales was that this time period is acknowledged as like a really traumatic event to their population and that in some ways you could say they're still recovering from that.

• 48:52Sarah Marshall?

  God, I never thought about that.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  There was a story like six months ago or so. So there was a particular, I think there was a few different events where whales were captured in Puget Sound, but there was one, there was a cove where one of these capture events took place. And I forget which pod it was that was targeted. But anyway, that pod, whether it was JK or L pod, hadn't returned to that particular cove like since the seventies and they had only returned to it for like the first time last summer. So it's like, again, not to anthropomorphize, but I think we could say that this is some almost like generational trauma.

• 49:35Sarah Marshall?

  They learned something from it. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think it's too anthropomorphizing to call something trauma, but you could also just say like, well, they figured out that they can't go there anymore. And it seems like that's become generational knowledge, which is interesting.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:52Sarah Marshall?

  You know, to speculate.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was like, it wasn't just like a handful of whales. There was maybe 50. And just to give perspective for the southern resident killer whales now, there are 74 individuals. Yeah, their, their population has struggled over the years and part of that was this initial, these initial capture events in the seventies. And then recently in the last like 20, 30 years, it has more to do with prey availability with fish, availability of salmon. But yeah, so that took place in the seventies in the US. But then there's, you know, the save the whales movement.

• 50:29Sarah Marshall?

  We had to go get our whales elsewhere.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Basically. So we passed a piece of legislation in the US called the Marine Mammal Protection Act. And I believe that was passed in, oh, something.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Like 1973 or 76 or something like that. Anyway, it stipulated that we can no longer do live captures of whales in US waters. So basically what happens is that the

• 50:56Sarah Marshall?

  Demand for that Nixon and Ford, those hippies.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  But the demand for that just essentially shifts elsewhere.

• 51:04Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  And one of the places that it shifted to was Iceland. So there are really robust populations of killer whales around Iceland even to this day. Like the southern resident killer whales, I think for those of us living in the Pacific Northwest, we're like, we're we're aware that they're maybe as a population not doing so well. And we're very concerned and their their population is listed as endangered. But elsewhere in the world, orcas are actually doing okay. And one of those populations of orcas that are doing okay is are ones in the North Atlantic around Iceland. So captures started happening there. And that's where

• 51:47Speaker 01

  our friend Keiko was captured in roughly around 1979 ish, maybe 78.

• 51:57Sarah Marshall?

  Wow, he's a Gen Xer.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, he is. He was about two to three years old, which was kind of the ideal age to capture a whale. You wanted to capture them when they were younger so that they would adapt to captivity better.

• 52:13Sarah Marshall?

  What kind of lifespan do killer whales have in the wild approximately?

• 52:18Speaker 01

  The average that I found was that females live a little longer and the average is around like 50. The max for females can be up to like 80 years old. And then the average for males is around 30. And then their max can be around like 50 or 60 years old. And then there's many accounts of whales in captivity not living nearly that long. Though I will say Keiko did live to about 27 years old. And, you know, part of that might have been all this effort that was put in to get him back to health and, you know, to his wild home.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  So he was caught off of Iceland and he was caught by a vessel called the Gudrun. If anybody's Icelandic and listening to this, I apologize.

• 53:10Sarah Marshall?

  Yep, somebody is. Please let us know. We would love to hear it if you hear it the way you say it.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  I listened to a video.

• 53:17Sarah Marshall?

  You did our best. Yeah, you did your best.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  I'm very aware of it now, like hosting on KLCC.

• 53:24Sarah Marshall?

  We'll never be Icelandic. It's just, this is just the situation.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's got, there's gonna be many more Icelandic words that I'm definitely not gonna get right.

• 53:33Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, it's kind of a blanket disclaimer.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:36Sarah Marshall?

  We're, we're trying.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  We're trying.

• 53:38Sarah Marshall?

  It's the mark of a really quality language that

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:40Sarah Marshall?

  foreigners sound like idiots when we try and speak it.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I've, I've been listening. I've been streaming Icelandic radio recently just to get like my head and the

• 53:52Sarah Marshall?

  How is that?

• 53:53Speaker 01

  I just love the sound of Icelandic language. It's really, I don't know, it's just very pleasing to me. And then like, of course Iceland has incredible, you know, musicians. And anyway, I've just, I've enjoyed listening to that. But Keiko was caught by the Gudrun, which was a herring purse seiner, which is type, type of fishing boat.

• 54:14Sarah Marshall?

  Was he caught on purpose?

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:17Sarah Marshall?

  Okay. They weren't just like, oh, boy, that's a big herring.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  No. So at first, when whales were caught in Iceland, like the first couple of times, it was an accident. Orcas would end up in the nets. So this is a behavior known as depredation. It's when a wild predator is targeting a resource that humans are also trying to harvest or extract.

• 54:45Sarah Marshall?

  Ah, yes. Cause we got the thing that they like all kind of in a big pile.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we make it easy for them. You know, and this is, this term is used when talking about orcas that are targeting fish that are being caught by a commercial fishing boat. Sperm whales do it too. This happens in, in Alaska and in other parts of the world.

• 55:07Sarah Marshall?

  What do sperm whales eat?

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Well, sperm whales love to follow black cod longliners in Alaska. I've seen it myself.

• 55:15Sarah Marshall?

  I don't like cod.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  No, black cod, which is not technically a cod, actually.

• 55:21Sarah Marshall?

  Okay, that's right. Well, why do we have to keep naming all these fish, all this made up stuff, you know, like Chilean sea bass? That was a whole PR thing.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  It is an issue. It is actually something that some people are working on because there's kind of, it's actually like a consumer fraud issue of like labeling something, something as halibut when it's not actually halibut and charging someone like it's halibut.

• 55:43Sarah Marshall?

  It's like when they have like balsamic vinegar and the ingredients are like balsamic vinegar and three other things. And you're like, oh, so, okay, how did they get Caico? And who captures him?

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he, he's captured by this boat that was kind of retrofitted, I guess, to capture whales. So it was primarily a fishing boat. And then they were like, hey, we can actually make more money in one go capturing some whales.

• 56:06Sarah Marshall?

  Right. I'm just imagining like a thousand like dads and uncles simultaneously that it's like, this is, you know, like every few years, there's new stupid things for people to try and make money on as a side hustle. And it's this for a little while, you know, which is just, you know, seems, I don't know, like, I don't want to, in a way, I don't want to make fun of it too much because I think it is like genuinely horrific what we did to these animals. But it also is very dumb, you know, just to think about these random guys, apparently like who had been in herring being like, you know what, let's get, let's just, let's, let's get a whale and flip it. Like the hubris of that is just so over the top, I guess, it becomes absurd.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. I mean, this whole time period of, hey, you know, those beautiful, majestic animals that are top predators in the ocean? Like, what if we caught them and put them in essentially a fishbowl and taught them tricks and charged people money?

• 57:11Sarah Marshall?

  Tracy is not calling me back, but when I'm making a whale jump through a little hoop, I don't think about it so much. I don't think they can jump through hoops. It's just kind of, you know, it's a good image though.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  They need a pretty big hoop.

• 57:23Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  And like I said, they'd have to be loaded, loaded the surface of water.

• 57:28Sarah Marshall?

  It's not their best trick.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  No, but yeah, I, it actually reminds me of, um, so yeah, I've, I've been to SeaWorld.

• 57:36Sarah Marshall?

  Flea circuses are so great because it's the only, you know, animals doing trick exhibit that I can think of where part of the appeal is that the animal doesn't exist and isn't there.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Right. Or like Cirque du Soleil, you know, it's a, it's a circus.

• 57:50Sarah Marshall?

  Well, those are real French Canadians. And they fall.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  But there's, but there's no animals involved. That's my point.

• 57:57Sarah Marshall?

  We only torture humans in Cirque du Soleil.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  There's only human animals involved, but, um, it just reminds me of the last time that I went to SeaWorld, which was, um, back in, I don't know, 2012 or something like that, um, or 2010. And I remember at the time feeling like, okay, this could be like my last time going. Cause I don't know how I feel about this and I'll just speak specifically about the killer whale show that we went to. I was so upset. I remember being like tearful because I thought, well, okay, here's these like incredible, beautiful, really fascinating, really interesting animals.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  And there was not a goddamn thing in that show about their life history, about their biology, not a single fact about like, what, what's it like to be a killer whale? What are they like in the wild? You know, and nothing about their social structures, nothing about like echolocation or something, you know, just anything.

• 59:00Sarah Marshall?

  Nothing about who they are.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  You know what they had was a guy playing an electric guitar and a Jumbotron. And it said words like believe and magic, you know? That was the gist of the killer whale show.

• 59:16Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Where it's like, the point of this giant animal is the stupid things that we believe that we get to feel in his presence and that are all sort of about our most commercialized emotions, I guess. The idea of like a guy playing electric guitar. Being like, believe magic. It's just like, I cannot think of something more brain dead. It's like, believe what, you guys?

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like, it's like they're commandeering the feeling of awe that you see when you're like in the presence of a large animal like that. And especially like,

• 59:51Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Such a charismatic animal like that.

• 59:54Sarah Marshall?

  And also, I feel like kids are like fairly easy to please in terms of spectacle. Like, it's really, I think it's more for adults, these things that like can penetrate when your senses have been really dulled, you know, because like, I feel like kids get pretty excited about marine animals if they simply swim sort of near them, you know, in a tank where nothing else is happening.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think generally, kids are just naturally really interested in the natural world. Like, I think they love animals. They love, like, you know, for the most part, being outside.

• 1:00:31Sarah Marshall?

  Like, kids are naturally curious, and then we teach them to be incurious because it's inconvenient. And then we send them to school and ask them to be curious again, but only about boring things.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:42Sarah Marshall?

  It's my analysis.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  I think something I noticed with kids, and I remember this as a kid, is the fascination with animals was also about, like, connecting with animals on an individual level, too. Like, bringing it back to that idea of,

• 1:00:56Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  I don't know, the idea that, like, oh, this whale, or this snake, whatever it is, could, like, be my friend.

• 1:01:03Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  And we will take on the world together. And I think it's just every kid's fantasy, and this is like the entire fantasy of Free Willy, or like the fairy tale of Free Willy, is the feeling of being chosen by a wild animal.

• 1:01:17Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  Like, this wild animal chose to be your friend, which means you're special.

• 1:01:22Sarah Marshall?

  And troubled kid meets troubled whale, and they have the, which I do feel like there is, like, you know, like, a lot of us like weird dogs, and we like weird dogs because we're weird people, you know? And there's something to that. Although, but I also think that, I don't know, I would love to know what you think about this. Because where I land right now is this idea that, like, that there's some kind of experience of, like, growing up, maybe, that, like, is developmentally necessary, or at least I hope that everyone has the capacity to get there. Where, like, you begin by thinking of animals, not everybody, but I think many human beings begin by thinking of animals as, Important or having an interest in them partly because of this idea of like them

• 1:02:05Sarah Marshall?

  as a proxy for our feelings or something that could choose us and befriend us and validate us in that way. And like, like, for example, I was out for a walk in my neighborhood recently. And speaking of like a recent Lulu Miller episode we did, there was a daylight coyote that I saw and then saw again, just like walking around in the neighborhood and like, you know, pausing to look. And I was like, thinking about that thing where like, there will always be a part of me that's like the kid at heart. That's like, what if this coyote and I become best friends and we're just a girl and a coyote, just living and loving, living in the sunlight. Wait, living in the sunlight, loving in the moonlight,

• 1:02:49Sarah Marshall?

  you know. But then there's also the part of you, the like adult brain that I think that you get to develop if you have, you know, the right teachers and stuff of like, this coyote needs to continue to fear people and not befriend the people in the neighborhood. And I have to continue and not try and get them to pause for longer than they are, basically. Yeah, it's almost like a tragic gay, like 1950s love story, you know, where it's like, Rupert, you'll always know my heart better than anyone else. But for our own safety, we must live separate lives. My love for you will always dwell in my heart. They're British.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  I got that. No, I know. I think you're right. Because even though I have this fantasy of like, oh, I'll befriend like a dolphin or a harbor seal or something and they like me and nobody else. And or, yeah, coyote or a wolf or especially, I think sometimes we have that fantasy with like predators.

• 1:03:56Sarah Marshall?

  Yes.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  Having something that's like so in our minds, like scary or powerful or mysterious.

• 1:04:02Sarah Marshall?

  Because humans are predators and we seek solidarity, I guess, with the other ones.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe. Or I think it's again, just like, Well, I think what is lurking under the surface of this fantasy of connecting with an animal like that is it is kind of wrapped up in our ego.

• 1:04:20Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Because we, it is really just about, or it's not the only thing, but a lot of it is about feeling special in some way.

• 1:04:29Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Yeah. And it's like asking nature to choose us. And then maybe there comes a moment or a time when the mature perspective becomes, and I think a lot of kids understand this from the jump, but I guess that there is the kind of like, I think growing up partly involves learning to not project your emotions in the way that maybe we do more as children when, when it's safer for sentimentality to be kind of the logic of our lives. And that, I don't know, that emotional immaturity involves being like, I need to value this animal more for what I'm able to do, you know, in this world that my species is controlling in so many ways to help protect their ability to live an autonomous life, basically.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Because I, I think if we let go of our ego in this fantasy and we really make it about what is best for the animal and realizing like, the best thing for a lot of animals is actually probably to not interact with humans all that much.

• 1:05:31Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  And even though we like crave that attention, it is the thing that can actually be the most detrimental or harmful to a wild animal.

• 1:05:42Sarah Marshall?

  Maybe this is me being sentimental right now, but it feels like we, like humans have this like homesickness or nostalgic for animals that like live more fully in nature than we do because.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:53Sarah Marshall?

  Like, I, I don't know. I kind of like to think that on some level, we recognize that we are animals and that we are of them, and yet that we don't get to be with them.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:01Sarah Marshall?

  And also to be clear, like, it would suck to live in the wilderness in many ways as like an animal, because like, most of your life is about eating enough food and survival and potentially getting eaten by something. And as a human, I like hardly have to worry at all about something eating me. And I really love that. As well, you know, so not to like romanticize it too much, but it does feel like there's this like lost Eden feeling that's driving some of that longing that we have.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  I think so. I think there's a lot of push and pull in these themes of like, well, yeah, the best thing for an animal, like for a wild animal is for them to probably not interact with humans as much as possible. That being said, being a wild animal is really difficult and like they are exposed to a lot of things that we aren't.

• 1:06:51Sarah Marshall?

  That's why we shouldn't stress them out because they're already under so much pressure.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  How can I do it all?

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  How can I have it all as a coyote?

• 1:07:05Sarah Marshall?

  I'm just trying to collect all my nuts before the winter and also find a suitable mate. How can I have it all? That's what a squirrel's saying when she's stuffing nuts in her teeth. She's going, I can have it all. I can have it all.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  But yeah, it's a, that's what I find so compelling about this Keiko story is that it brings up all these themes and it's like going too far in one direction, it's never going to be the answer. And everyone kind of rallies around a really particular, like pointed perspective on how to address this issue of like, how do you put an animal back in the wild? And the answer is that, well, A, no one knows what the clear answer was. And also I believe that everyone involved in this story truly in their heart of hearts

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  had the best of intentions for Keiko along the way. Like everyone just had a very different idea of what was the best thing for him. For some people it was, you know, well, he shouldn't go back to the wild. He should just stay in Oregon or come hell or high water, we're going to release him. And it doesn't matter like whether he's ready or not, but it just him being in the wild is better than him being, you know, in captivity, even if it's like a sea pen in Iceland. And part of that is everyone, again, they wanted the best for Keiko. They were acting with the best of intentions, but it is also.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  Clear to me, or i- i- it seems apparent that there is ego wrapped in it. And I don't mean like, I don't necessarily mean like arrogance. I just mean that.

• 1:08:50Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, the human inability to sort of see things totally clearly, maybe where there's just like, we're always seeing somebody else on their needs, especially if they can't articulate them through this kind of screen of our own subjectiveness.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, exactly. A really great quote from a book that I love that is not about Keiko. It's about wolves, Wolfish by Erica Berry. She has this wonderful quote where she says, "To understand an animal exists neither to kill you nor to cuddle you is to untangle your ego from its life, to see it as complex and wild, worthy of existence, independent of your feelings about it." And I don't know, I just, I feel like that encapsulates some of the, the push and pull of we wanted the best for Keiko and we were doing our best, really acting, I think in a really commendable way as human beings.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Like, we really came together and tried to do something extraordinary. And, you know, like, real life happens. It, it didn't necessarily go to plan and it didn't, wasn't executed perfectly. But, yeah, I just, I, I, I think if we had sort of struck a middle ground in there somewhere, then that could have been, quote unquote, "the correct way to go about it." But hindsight's always 2020, so it's hard to say.

• 1:10:15Sarah Marshall?

  Well, and speaking about, I mean, this kind of gets to also my question of what's his life like between being captured in Iceland and then ending up in a movie somehow about 15 years later. But also, I mean, that brings us to something I realize we haven't actually, you saying that is making me realize we haven't talked about this yet, which is like, what is Keiko like? Like, what kind of a whale is he?

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. That's like, that's actually a very important aspect of this story. Because like people, like dogs, like any animal, I think, whales, orcas have personalities and they're, they can be very different from each other. And what is the strongest consensus about Keiko is that he was a really...

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  Friendly whale. He was really easy to work with. He got along with people really well. And it's like, at some point in the book, Kenneth Brower makes the point of like, this character trait of his, of working really well with people and getting along with people really well, while it would have never been relevant in the wild and would have never come up, it actually served him really well in his life.

• 1:11:33Sarah Marshall?

  He's like the Dick Van Dyke of whales.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he has been compared, I think, in one place, he was compared to a golden retriever. In another place, he was compared to a Labrador. And in another book, he was compared to a Saint Bernard. Like, he is just described as like, a very sweet and very passive whale.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  And some descriptions are kind of funny, because they kind of make him sound, I don't know, like, maybe he wasn't the sharpest whale, but also it was like, maybe he just wasn't very motivated.

• 1:12:10Sarah Marshall?

  As my mom says of her dog, "Not the sharpest poodle in the drawer."

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I say about my, my other dog, Precious. Like, eh, you know?

• 1:12:21Sarah Marshall?

  This is my daughter, Murphy. This is my other daughter, Murphy's sister.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. I haven't, I haven't brought her up, even though Precious takes up a lot of my brain space these days with her many needs, but.

• 1:12:37Sarah Marshall?

  She was a retired endurance athlete.

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  I know, exactly. She doesn't have to answer to anybody.

• 1:12:42Sarah Marshall?

  It's like you're taking care of, like, Kipchoge in there.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Wait, if it's like, taking care of what?

• 1:12:50Sarah Marshall?

  Isn't that like the marathoner Kipchoge, who's like beating everybody's records?

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:12:55Sarah Marshall?

  Runs like these crazy fast marathons.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  Oh, maybe, yeah. Yeah, no, she is. I mean, for those listening that don't know, Precious is a retired sled dog. Both my dogs are retired sled dogs. And Precious, at least once, ran the Iditarod. So she is a professional athlete, now retired. She spends her days wandering the beaches of Oregon and eating dead bird carcasses when I'm not looking. But, uh...

• 1:13:25Sarah Marshall?

  He's a, he's the sled dog of whales.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's like the precious of whales. He's a, he's very friendly and very sweet and loves people.

• 1:13:36Sarah Marshall?

  And does he get exhibited in Iceland after they catch him? Or is he immediately like sold on Timu? Or whatever the equivalent is?

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  Right? Yeah. He was held in Iceland. I, from what I can tell, he wasn't on display necessarily. There are a few whales being held essentially waiting to be sold to the next place.

• 1:14:03Sarah Marshall?

  Just like that guy in that weird Jurassic Park movie with the dinosaur auctions.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Mm hmm. Yes, exactly. This, it's, I, I love that. There actually are a lot of parallels to Jurassic Park in this movie.

• 1:14:16Sarah Marshall?

  Right? There really are.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so Keiko was held in Iceland for a few years. His early years are really murky because there just wasn't much documentation.

• 1:14:29Sarah Marshall?

  He has lost years like Shakespeare did.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's possible that like the confirmation of him sort of like arriving into the human world was in a Icelandic newspaper on November 6, 1979. And the first place he goes actually after Iceland is Canada. And he wasn't first named Keiko. At first supposedly he was named Siggy, which was the name of the, the son of the captain. And while he was kind of like in this holding pen.

• 1:15:02Sarah Marshall?

  That's such an absent dad thing to do, like not to profile this guy unfairly. It would be like,

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:15:08Sarah Marshall?

  I, I named a whale after you. I'm sorry I missed your play.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Right. I'm gone at sea fishing for herring and capturing whales for, you know, months at a time, but I named a whale after you.

• 1:15:19Sarah Marshall?

  They're gonna change it.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  They're gonna change it. So pretty much immediately when he gets to, Canada. So he first goes to Marineland.

• 1:15:29Sarah Marshall?

  They're like, he doesn't look like a ciggy. Don't be silly.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  I guess so. I don't know why they changed it, but he goes to Marineland of Ontario, near Niagara Falls. And they changed his name to Kago, K A G O, or Cago.

• 1:15:44Sarah Marshall?

  Wow.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  And that means little boy in Icelandic, supposedly.

• 1:15:47Sarah Marshall?

  God, he's like the Black Beauty of whales.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:51Sarah Marshall?

  Remember Black Beauty? Life was so hard for Black Beauty.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  Oh, Black Beauty. Oh, my gosh. I need to reread that.

• 1:15:57Sarah Marshall?

  I think Black Beauty was like an important book in the history of the animal welfare movement. Like, don't quote me on that, but that, I think I might have something there. Yeah.

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's kind, it's, in a way, it's kind of similar-ish to like The Call of the Wild, from what I remember, of just, you know, following a animal's life.

• 1:16:16Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, for people who did not get to be sensitive little girls, Black Beauty is a memoir, as told by a horse, about his various owners, some of which were very abusive.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:28Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, horse memoirs.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  We need more horse memoirs. Yeah, just, I can see how it would be maybe illuminating for a lot of people to really think about, like, the whole of an animal's life. And like where that animal was before they arrived in your life and where they went after. And how an animal is just, like a horse, or a pet especially, is just at the whim of humans for their entire life. And Kago certainly was. That's the, the short story of his life is he was just, he was, he was a whale that was moved around a lot. Because humans, you know, made decisions for him for his entire life.

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  And he spent about five years there, and they, and these years are also kind of murky. There's not tons of information. But he shared a tank with about five other whales. And he was reportedly bullied by the other whales. This speaks to his personality, that he was just a kind of submissive, passive whale. And

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  Even though the other whales, there were other Icelandic whales, and actually, one of the other whales, I think during this time in his tank was Tilikum. So he was another Icelandic whale, though he wasn't like a part of the same pod that Keiko was from. But Keiko was what one of the authors, other authors of Keiko's story, said he was at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

• 1:18:04Sarah Marshall?

  Like when you have chickens.

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yep. There was, yeah, pecking order of sorts. And also, like, think about, you know, these animals are highly social. And then you remove them from their family unit, from their pod, and then you stick them in a tank with essentially strangers.

• 1:18:26Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, it's like whale jail.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it makes sense that the whales might pick on each other. Again, not to anthropomorphize, but I feel like humans do this too. If you, it's like similar behavior we observe in, you know, jails or prisons. You take a bunch of people and kind of force them to inhabit a space together, then...

• 1:18:51Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, or British boarding school.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  Or that, yeah. Any situation where some of the choice of who you interact with on a daily basis has been taken away from you.

• 1:19:01Sarah Marshall?

  It's like Boy by Roald Dahl.

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:04Sarah Marshall?

  I love how I'm like passionately against anthropomorphizing, unless I do it, then it's fine. Then it's cool.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Well, you know what actually sums up like the issue of anthropomorphizing for me is it's a Sarah Anderson comic, you know, Sarah Anderson? I think that's her name.

• 1:19:23Sarah Marshall?

  No.

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  She has this one, it's like four panels, and the first panel is a scientist at a conference, and she says something like, "And therefore, we cannot definitively say what an animal is thinking or feeling." And then the next panel is like her about to open the door to go home, and her cat's waiting for her, and she opens the door, and the cat leaps into her arms, and the scientist says, "Aww, I missed you too." To me, that's just, that's it in a nutshell. It's like, yeah, we can't say it. But also, we do know on some level, especially when we have...

• 1:19:59Sarah Marshall?

  But if you know in the conscious part of your brain that like, yeah, when you're thinking hard, you're trying to maybe... I don't know, because then it's like, there's a question of like, what is empathy? And when does it become something else? Or what are the varieties of it? Because I feel like for some people empathy is like, well, I value your perspective by considering it to be similar to my own, or that like, me valuing your life is assuming there to be similarities. And I feel like perhaps a deeper level, or a more capacious level of empathy is like, thinking really hard about what might motivate someone different from you, including if they're a killer whale. And also like, accepting the mystery of just like, the things that you can't know, you know?

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:41Sarah Marshall?

  Like, I think accepting lack of understanding is actually an underrated part of relationships.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:47Sarah Marshall?

  I guess being like, I don't know why this is important to you, but it's important to you, and that's all that matters. And I don't need you to like, explain it to me in a way that makes it make sense to me, like, I care about you and I'll do it.

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That's, that's exactly what I was thinking of. Like, the most important or significant like, gift, I guess you can give in a relationship is just being like, I believe what you're telling me. I don't, I'm not gonna like, tell you, I think I know better than you, that what's best for you. And I, I think I've struggled with that at times in my life of like, realizing like, oh, I am not the arbiter of like, what is best for this person in my life, even though, you know, my god, sometimes you really feel that way about someone that you care about. You're like, man, if you just did this one thing differently. But it's just fully recognizing that this other being in your life, be it an animal

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  or a person, they're the arbiters of their own life. They are the final say of like, of what is best for them and what they need.

• 1:21:52Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, like how I make a nice bed for my cat and he prefers to curl up on an empty pizza box.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's his prerogative. Like, he can do that. And I think that is the issue with, I don't know, if we're trying to like, dial in on like, where the line is of the issue of anthropomorphizing, I do think it's somewhere in there of like, letting go of the idea that I know what's best for you, and not fully listening.

• 1:22:20Sarah Marshall?

  Right, right. So it's kind of, I mean, it's like parenting, I guess, in a way, this like, attempting to live in a way where you can be a good steward of nature, where like humility is part of that toolkit, and being able to listen to the extent that you're able to, which is harder if someone, you know, communicates differently, because they're of a different species.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Right, I know. So that's the whole issue, right? Like, I mean, we have a hard time with this as humans, and we can talk to each other.

• 1:22:47Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Yeah, we have a hard enough time understanding each other.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:51Sarah Marshall?

  Even if we share a language and a dialect and everything.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then if we try to do the same for an animal that has no language, at least as far as we understand language, and it communicates in really different ways, and doesn't even have like, the same concepts that we do, then it's a harder thing to figure out, like, how that, you know, your dog might be expressing what they need in a given moment.

• 1:23:18Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Looking for clues and being observant is different from like, looking for confirmation

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:23Sarah Marshall?

  of the emotion you assume they would have, or you would like them to have, or something.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Right. I think with whales, especially, what happens with projection is that whales don't have an expressive face. And so I think it's

• 1:23:41Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  easy for us to project a lot of emotions on them. Like, I really think

• 1:23:47Sarah Marshall?

  Good point.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  What's that film device where it's like,

• 1:23:51Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, yeah. The montage effect?

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, where you have like, someone with a blank expression in one frame, and then in the next frame, you have something sad. So then you like, are like, oh, that person's sad, even though

• 1:24:03Sarah Marshall?

  Yep.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  their face is pretty neutral. But then if the next frame was like, something happy, you might interpret their emotion as something different, just by the juxtaposition of those. Those images and I, I think that happens with animals, especially

• 1:24:20Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  That don't have like, we just kind of, I don't know, we take like our feelings in the given moment and that's like the frame of like the happy thing or the sad thing adjacent to the animal's facial expression. And we're like, oh, they're happy too, or oh, they're sad about this, or you know, we let our imaginations run wild.

• 1:24:39Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Well, and infamously, that's why the not live action, because it was so computer generated, but that's why the like weird, hyper realistic Lion King, I think part of why it weirded so many people out because lions don't have eyebrows. Like, we gave them eyebrows in the animated version because animators recognized that they needed to be like made to look more like dogs so that they could have

• 1:24:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:00Sarah Marshall?

  Facial expressions that people could read. But if you go to like a lion with no eyebrows, then like it's like those lions were not emoting.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I haven't seen it because I just at this point refused to see it.

• 1:25:13Sarah Marshall?

  Because your life is too short to watch a non emotive lion.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:17Sarah Marshall?

  Because I think that like the stage show of The Lion King probably feels more real to people because then it's like these extremely stylized, like basically puppet versions of the characters, but it's like a story about human emotions.

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:25:30Sarah Marshall?

  So if you, if you're mapping that on to animals and then you go to the literal animal that doesn't convey those emotions because it was a human invention to begin with, then like, it's gonna be weird.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kind of missing the point of like, what made it a compelling story? I mean, yeah, it's cool that they're lions. Like, I'm not saying that it's, I don't love that aspect of it.

• 1:25:53Sarah Marshall?

  We all love lions.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  We all love lions.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  But it's, yeah, that's kind of missing the point of like, what made it a compelling story and what made it a compelling story is the emotions of it.

• 1:26:07Sarah Marshall?

  Right. You know, and then the stories that humans tell about animals are often about ourselves, you know, I mean, with exceptions and like Free Willy is kind of an exception, but it's also like the whale story is an allegory for the kid's story.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:26:22Sarah Marshall?

  This whale and this kid have both been bounced around and then he He's kind of a foster whale, as in real life. Well, and where does he go after he's in the scary holding facility in Iceland? Like, what's, what's the path that he takes to Hollywood?

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  He eventually, again, this, this time period is just a little blurry. And he just, from what I can read, he was just sold to an amusement park in Mexico City called Reno Aventura, which is still around today. It is a Six Flags now. And it's in the, you know, middle of Mexico City, which Mexico City is in a high desert. The elevation is something like 7,800 feet and, you know, really dry weather. So basically, like, a whale has never experienced anything like that before. I can safely say.

• 1:27:16Sarah Marshall?

  Whale's never dreamed or even wanted to go to the mountains, and yet here he is, so.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, there he was.

• 1:27:23Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:27:24Sarah Marshall?

  Poor Keiko, my god. That's like as far from the ocean as you can get, in a way.

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  In, in a sense, yeah, especially like vertically. He gets to, he gets to Reno Aventura. They immediately have to change his name for the final time. Because, well, you'll remember his, his name now was Kago or Keiko.

• 1:27:46Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, yes, I, I remember enough Spanish 101 to know where this is going.

• 1:27:52Speaker 01

  So I'm sure that he arrived and they were like, what's his name? They're like, Kago. And they're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. We can't have a whale that means I shit.

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  Which is what I believe it means, or like to shit or something.

• 1:28:10Sarah Marshall?

  The jokes write themselves, you have to admit it, yeah.

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  Poor Keiko, like, he didn't, he didn't want to be. Well, he didn't even have a name, you know, who, who knows?

• 1:28:20Sarah Marshall?

  Right, he doesn't care. Again, we're, I mean, look, we're just gonna be dancing on this line the whole time.

• 1:28:25Speaker 01

  Right. But he, um, so they, they changed his name to Keiko, which is actually like a feminine Japanese name that means lucky one, which feels very.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  Prescient for his, his story and Keiko, by all accounts, was just absolutely adored by his keepers in Mexico City. He, he had three young female trainers, Claudia Turan, Renata Fernandez and Carla Corral. So while Keiko was in Mexico City, he did appear in a few telenovelas.

• 1:29:08Sarah Marshall?

  Oh my God, what? What, what, what was he doing in these telenovelas?

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  Honestly, I don't even know. Like I, my Spanish isn't good enough for me to follow, but you can find him on YouTube.

• 1:29:20Sarah Marshall?

  Okay, we need to find out if it's at all possible because we're going to do this in two chapters. For chapter two, just like, did anyone get dangled over his enclosure in a telenovela? Was he used in a James Bond kind of a way? Was he friendly? We gotta know.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  Like, I thought you died when you fell into the, into Keiko's tank. It's like, no, that was my twin sister.

• 1:29:48Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  So he was loved by his trainers and he was loved by people in Mexico. And I haven't listened in full to the serial podcast yet. I've just kind of scanned the transcripts to make sure we're not like overlapping too much. And, and I will eventually, but I do, I'm very excited to listen to the first episode because the first episode was done in collaboration with a Mexican radio station, Radio Ambulante. And so the first episode was, from what I can tell, just like stories about Keiko from the perspective of people living in Mexico City and just like how much everyone loved him. And he was like, I think they said he was like Mexico's pet. He was like Mickey Mouse.

• 1:30:35Sarah Marshall?

  Which is so similar to the way Oregonians have felt about him. And it never, for some reason, never occurred to me that people there loved him just as much.

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  Right. He spent like 13 years there, I believe. He, he arrived in 1985 and then he would go to Newport in 1996.

• 1:30:58Sarah Marshall?

  So like 11 years?

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. 11 years. You know, so he spent a good amount of time there.

• 1:31:03Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  Unfortunately.

• 1:31:06Speaker 01

  The issue in Mexico is that as much as, you know, people loved him, the park was not really well-equipped to take care of an animal like Caico.

• 1:31:17Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  Killer whales prefer high latitudes, meaning like, you know, you're getting towards, you know, the sort of polar regions. They like cold, colder climates.

• 1:31:26Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  And inhabit more like further north and further south across the globe. They're not really equatorial. And the water in Caico's tank was always too warm for him. And so he became very, in order to not overheat, he just wouldn't move around that much.

• 1:31:51Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  From what I understand, like, the water was just like the city water that had like chlorine in it, and then they would add salt to it to make it salty, but it just wasn't really the best quality seawater for him. And then, of course, I think infamously, his tank was really very small. The tank that you see in Free Willy, like where he is in the stadium, that's his tank in Mexico City.

• 1:32:21Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, I love how that kid opens a door in Oregon and walks into an enclosure in Mexico.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  The wardrobe to Narnia.

• 1:32:31Sarah Marshall?

  The subtle knife. Yeah. Well, and how does he get the curly fin?

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  So, oh, that's an interesting point, because I think people, including myself, thought like, oh, that's just something that happens to whale, to killer whales when they're in captivity. And that's like, sort of true, but there's a little more nuance to it. This was explained to me by Dr. Naomi Rose, who was involved with the project. And she explained that male killer whales, they have a very, very tall dorsal fin that gets to like six feet. Female killer whales, their dorsal fin never gets that tall. They kind of stay in proportion to themselves. Like, they, they just kind of become a bigger version of a baby whale. Versus a male killer whale, when they go through puberty, their dorsal fin all of a

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  sudden becomes really tall, like, yeah, around six feet or so. Their pectoral fins get really big and their flukes of their tail also get really big and they get so big that they like curl around. And this is also a little different depending on whales, killer whales around the world. So you have what's called different ecotypes, which is basically like an ecologically distinct population and they'll, I guess, kind of, maybe this is a little bit of a stretch, but I think it's just, it's like similar to people. They're all the same species. And then depending on where you are in the world, they look a little different from each other. So like killer whales in Antarctica,

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  their eye patch is like really weirdly small when you look at it. Like it looks very different from a southern resident killer whale where you're like, huh. So the male killer whales, they have this big tall fin and that happens during puberty. So if they are caught before they hit puberty and then they are in captivity and they spend a lot of time at the surface, their dorsal fin will likely fall over. Not like guaranteed, but it's just that it's

• 1:34:32Sarah Marshall?

  Because it's spending too much time out of the water?

• 1:34:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's not that, I don't know, like that hydrodynamic support they get from, you know, traveling long distances because killer whales in the wild, they can travel like 100 miles in a day. They are covering so much ground all the time and they're not hanging out at the surface all the time. I mean, obviously they come up to breathe, but they're not just like lolling around on the surface. There are examples of male killer whales in captivity, though, that they were caught later in their life. And so their fin shot up before they were caught and so kind of developed, I guess, more structural integrity. And so their fin doesn't flop over in captivity. But Kegel,

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  As I mentioned, he was caught when he was like two or three years old. So his, his fin was likely going to flop over, uh, no matter what.

• 1:35:23Sarah Marshall?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  So in Mexico, he's not doing, he doesn't have the best conditions. His tank was 90 feet long by 43 feet wide by 20 feet deep.

• 1:35:36Sarah Marshall?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  And I believe when Keiko got to Oregon eventually, he was 20 or 21 feet long. He was still like a sub adult male.

• 1:35:47Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 1:35:48Speaker 01

  So he could barely, like, if his nose was touching the surface, his tail would be touching the bottom. Like, there just really wasn't, his tank was designed mostly for bottlenose dolphins. He shared the tank with a couple of other dolphins and no other killer whales. He was the only one. During this time, because his tank was too warm, he developed what's called a papillomavirus on his fins and I believe a little bit on his tail stalk. So papillomavirus is something similar to like a herpes virus.

• 1:36:24Sarah Marshall?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  Keiko developed these painful warts.

• 1:36:28Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm. And now he's at an increased risk for cervical cancer.

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. Have to get screened every so often. But he, um, if you watch Free Willie, you can see it. Like, they couldn't hide it. And it just looks like these little lumpy growths where his pectoral fins meet his body.

• 1:36:48Sarah Marshall?

  Keiko.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  And like a little bit, again, like on his tail stalk. And yeah, it was just probably not comfortable for him and just, you know, his body's just kind of fighting a virus continuously. So he was not in the best of health. His food also was not high quality either. I don't believe the park really had great access to like really fresh fish. According to Kenneth Brower in his book, the fish that he got was trucked down from San Diego, like from SeaWorld in San Diego.

• 1:37:24Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  At times in an unrefrigerated. Truck.

• 1:37:27Sarah Marshall?

  That's gotta be a long drive.

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's like a 13 hour drive or no, sorry, 31 hour drive according to Google Maps.

• 1:37:35Sarah Marshall?

  Well, that's even longer.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah, the heat, the poor diet and the virus, this all just contributed to his deteriorating health. And this is the state that CAKO is in when people see the movie and start calling that 1-800-for-Wales number, asking about, hey, whatever happened to Willie? And, you know, the movie did really well. They made it for $20 million. It grossed $153 million.

• 1:38:08Sarah Marshall?

  Man, $20 million for a movie where you have to work with a large predator is, you know, we're never gonna get back to there.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  Reading some of the, like, the interactions between Reno Aventura and, like, Warner Brothers or Earth Island Institute, sometimes I feel like, I don't know, I could be reading this wrong, but I feel like Reno Aventura just wasn't fully briefed on, like, the financial resources that Warner Brothers had. I just feel like they didn't really leverage their negotiations as much as they probably could have. But the movie did way better than anyone was expecting. And then the phones were ringing off the hook for 1-800-for-Wales.

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  And they got supposedly around, and I'm not sure exactly the timeframe. Phillips said it was just within the next several months, they received 300,000 phone calls.

• 1:39:12Sarah Marshall?

  I believe it.

• 1:39:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I do too. I mean, it's like, we did it. It was pretty easy to just call and leave a message. And I think an interesting, an interesting point here is that Phillips, he's done really great campaign work on other environmental issues regarding the ocean and whales and that sort of thing. And I think he had a bit of a misjudgment here in that he thought in putting the number at the end of the movie, people were going to call asking how they can help whales in general. And he was very surprised when pretty much every single phone call was just asking about CAKO.

• 1:39:54Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  Which, to me, is like, well, yeah, of course they are. That's how human beings work.

• 1:40:02Sarah Marshall?

  Right. That's human behavior for you.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:05Sarah Marshall?

  You're like, hey, wouldn't it be great if you could think about whales more? And we're like, what about that, that one whale? Tell us about the one we were looking at for the last two hours. We get attached.

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. We, it's easier for us to empathize, again, with an individual rather than thinking of a population. And I understand, you know, conservation workers, they have to think about the population at large. They can't really be too concerned about the suffering or trials and tribulations of individual whales. And at the time, like, Earth Island Institute's main concern in regards to whale conservation was whaling activity taking place in other countries. To them, that was like, that was the tie-in. It was like, okay, we'll do this movie about a whale. That'll get people to care about

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  whales and be able to push, you know, political leaders and legislation about banning products from countries that are continuing commercial whaling practices. So Phillips recalls that the phone number, he thought that this phone number would be sufficient and get kind of people galvanized around caring about these whaling issues overseas. But what becomes very clear is that people are, and very notably to the CAKO story, children were very concerned about CAKO.

• 1:41:34Sarah Marshall?

  Do you remember this? What's your personal experience of this part of the story?

• 1:41:39Speaker 01

  I have been trying to remember. Like, I followed the CAKO story really closely.

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  And I wouldn't be surprised if I either called this number or wrote a letter or like sent a postcard or whatever, being like, you need to like, you know, make sure Keiko gets released to the wild, because that's what a lot of kids did.

• 1:42:05Sarah Marshall?

  What do you remember just about that feeling of being invested in it? Like, do you remember, I don't know, like, seeing the movie and like, what feelings you had about Keiko at that age?

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  I think why it was partially really powerful to children is that I think kids can really understand the fear of being separated from your family. I think it's a really primal fear that we all have. And it is like, you know, being separated from your family for a child is, you know, like, you are not going to do well without your, your family. Your chances of survival are, are definitely lower. And I think that's just like ingrained in our DNA as social beings, especially, that we need our families to survive.

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  And so then you have this story about a very charismatic animal. I will also say, have we said the words charismatic megafauna yet? Because I'm surprised it hasn't come up more.

• 1:43:09Sarah Marshall?

  No, we have not. Tell us about that for a second.

• 1:43:13Speaker 01

  Charismatic megafauna is a term, I think, mostly actually used in like, the conservation and environmentalist space. And using a charismatic animal, like a panda, or a tiger, or a whale, to inspire people to care about an environmental issue of some, there's deforestation, or pollution, or climate change, or whatever it is. And megafauna usually comes from the fact that these are usually large animals, because we're just, we just seem to be drawn to larger animals. And using these symbols to then inspire change, inspire action, that would protect-

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  Protect other animals that like are kind of under the umbrella that would be impacted. So like if you pass legislation that reduces overfishing or something for in order to protect whales. Well, that's not just going to protect the whales. It's going to have really positive outcomes for other species in the ocean, too. But you can't really get people as excited about like plankton, even though it's a very important part of the ecosystem.

• 1:44:22Sarah Marshall?

  Cause we don't empathize with plankton sufficiently.

• 1:44:25Speaker 01

  No, yeah.

• 1:44:26Sarah Marshall?

  We could probably all spend an hour per day sitting around attempting to empathize with plankton, but life has just gotten so busy.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Yeah. So it's kind of a like a shortcut, like almost like an emotional shortcut.

• 1:44:38Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Or it's like that animal is like president of the ecosystem or something.

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:45Sarah Marshall?

  It's like, there's probably like, you know, yeah, like within, I don't know, to use the Northwest as an example, like probably lots of little mammals and bugs and like little clams that are like extremely important to the balance that we're trying to maintain, but that you're not going to get people excited about them, but that we will be excited about like, what's an animal in the, I don't know, bears.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Or like I, I think of, um, there's a big push on the Oregon coast to restore sea otter populations. There's

• 1:45:15Sarah Marshall?

  There you go. We love an otter. We'll do anything for otters.

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  Freaking love otters. I mean, and they are an important keystone species in, you know, kelp forests along the coast. And we do need them, but they also just in bringing them back, it's going to have a kind of cascading effect of things that are positive, positive for the sea urchin populations in that they'll help control the sea urchin populations on the coast and which will have a positive effect on the kelp. And, you know, it just has these domino effects.

• 1:45:49Sarah Marshall?

  Which is nice because it's a case of humans being kind of like silly in our own way and being like, I like that they hold hands, but like our desire for cute things is actually causing us to accidentally do something that's helpful in many more ways than that. So that's kind of nice.

• 1:46:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's a useful tool that a lot of groups do use. And whales are definitely a charismatic megafauna that has been used in that way.

• 1:46:16Sarah Marshall?

  I'm imagining whales being like, oh, I don't know. I just like to tell stories.

• 1:46:24Sarah Marshall?

  It's my whale impression.

• 1:46:26Speaker 01

  So yeah, Phillips concedes that like, alright, this is gonna be about CAKO. As much as I think our time and effort would be better spent focusing on killer whales or just whales at large across the world, he shifted his perspective and realizing like, okay, CAKO becomes a symbol that people can relate to. He said, "But then I saw the power in it, concentrating on CAKO as a metaphor, getting CAKO back to his family, or at least doing the best we could for CAKO. We didn't know whether we could get him all the way back to his family, but we knew getting him out of Mexico was important. Right from the beginning, the goal was rescue, rehabilitation, release.

• 1:47:08Speaker 01

  We wanted to bring him back to health and we wanted to release him. I started seeing the power in that. I can talk about the impact of fisheries on marine mammals until I'm blue in the face and lots of times the little kids nod off. Talk about CAKO and they're totally wide-eyed. I had never experienced that." So from his perspective in this, in the conservation work, he's like, alright, this is the thing that's gonna get people to care about these issues. So he takes on, with some conversations with Warner Brothers. So like Warner Brothers is also getting a lot of heat at this time from the media because there's literal children being like, "What's happening to CAKO?" And the media's like, just eating this up.

• 1:47:51Sarah Marshall?

  Free CAKO, CAKO is innocent!

• 1:47:54Speaker 01

  And so the media is like, putting a lot of pressure on Warner Brothers to do something about it. And this is where I feel like Warner Brothers probably starts to feel a little bit like Michael Ironside in the movie, where they're like, "God, this whale's a pain in our ass." And notably, after this is all said and done, like, once Warner Brothers steps out of the picture, they make it very clear, "We are never having a real whale in any movie ever again."

• 1:48:26Sarah Marshall?

  It's never happening. They are Michael Ironside.

• 1:48:31Speaker 01

  They are. They don't want, they didn't want him to die, but they...

• 1:48:35Sarah Marshall?

  They're like, "You give these environmentalists an inch, they take a mile." It's all Transformers from now on, or whatever we make next.

• 1:48:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and like, all the follow-up Free Willy sequels, they're, it's all animatronic.

• 1:48:49Sarah Marshall?

  If we put a charismatic megafauna in a movie, it's gonna be Ben Affleck.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  Yes, only, only humans and CGI from now on, or animatronics. But yeah, they're getting heat from it and they're calling David Phillips and being like, "We need help. We don't know what to do." And this is when Phillips is like, "Okay, Earth Island Institute is going to take on this monumental task of helping Keiko." And the, the goal, like he said, was, "We're gonna try to get him back to his family, but they're sort of taking it in incremental steps." So first they were like, "We just need to get him out of his situation in Reno Aventura, because he's not gonna last much longer." And several people said that. They said, "He's, he's not gonna make it if he stays here much longer."

• 1:49:38Sarah Marshall?

  He's a chronically ill girlie.

• 1:49:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. He has chronic health issues. So that's when this project starts to form. So there's the formation of the Free Willy Keiko Foundation, which is a foundation housed by Earth Island Institute. And they immediately start trying to fundraise and trying to figure out, "Okay, well, if he's not gonna live in Mexico anymore, where is he gonna live?" And they looked at several different options. They had a few different bids on places that Keiko could go next. One of them, like, they had these, they had some applications from, there was a girl

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  from a place in Canada who like, put together this whole packet of like, "Oh, Keiko could come live in this bay by my house."

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  And they said it actually was like, like, I think they were like, pretty impressed with this proposal she put together, but for a few different reasons, it wasn't gonna work out. Another notable option that wasn't really much of an option was Neverland Ranch. So Michael Jackson actually put in, he, he put his offer out of like, "Well, Keiko could come live at my place at Neverland Ranch."

• 1:51:03Sarah Marshall?

  Michael, no.

• 1:51:05Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:51:07Speaker 01

  I'm sure this wasn't really entertained by anybody, but one of the main legal reasons this couldn't happen is that within the Marine Mammal Protection Act, marine mammals...

• 1:51:20Speaker 01

  If they are in captivity, have to be on public display. They can't like reside at a private residence. I don't know why we can't make this the case for every like wild animal or you know exotic animal.

• 1:51:34Sarah Marshall?

  I guess I assume because the precedent had already been set and it's harder to change it once it's already kind of, you know, so it's like we were like, we already set it up so that weird shady guys can hoard big cats and we can't change it now.

• 1:51:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:49Sarah Marshall?

  That's my impression of the American legal system.

• 1:51:52Speaker 01

  It's good. Yeah, it's uh, so thankfully, you know, that was never going to be an option. But um, so there's a few places they considered, but then, and I am not positive exactly how the Oregon Coast Aquarium came up.

• 1:52:10Sarah Marshall?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:52:10Speaker 01

  One story that I came across is, you know, the artist Wieland?

• 1:52:15Sarah Marshall?

  Of cour- Brianna, I lived in Honolulu as a kid. It was Wieland on every corner.

• 1:52:22Sarah Marshall?

  The beautiful murals of the apple cheek children riding orcas around. Do I know Wieland? I think we had a Wieland book when I was a kid.

• 1:52:31Speaker 01

  My parents have that print in their house. Like this is, yeah.

• 1:52:36Sarah Marshall?

  I loved Wieland. Yeah.

• 1:52:38Speaker 01

  I know. I love Wieland too. I've, my parents had this book because again, they love Wieland. They had that print. They have a bronze statue, uh, like first breath or whatever. It's like a humpback lifting a calf.

• 1:52:49Sarah Marshall?

  Oh my God, I've seen that statue in your parents' house. Yeah.

• 1:52:52Speaker 01

  My sister and I would hang Christmas ornaments on it at Christmas time.

• 1:52:57Speaker 01

  Which my parents were like, okay. But we also had this book and it was about Wieland murals. So if you go to almost any like major city on the West Coast, including Alaska.

• 1:53:10Sarah Marshall?

  Oh yeah, you showed that to me.

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's likely a building with a Wieland mural and it's of a whale and he called them whaling walls. So there's one here in Newport. I can't believe it's taken me this long to mention that I live in Newport, but I do, uh, as of a year and a half ago. And there's a whaling wall in Newport on the bayfront and it's of gray whales. Uh, there's one in Anchorage, Alaska, that I would see all the time. That one was of, I think bowheads and bluegas.

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  There's ones in San Diego, they're just all across. And he was like doing this tour and it was a conservation message behind it as well. He was trying to bring attention. Wieland's done a lot of work with environmentalists and activists that are fighting for conservation of whales and dolphins. And he got to Oregon and he was at first approached by the director of the Oregon Coast Aquarium at the time, Phyllis Bell, asking if he could paint a wall on the side of the outside of the aquarium. And he eventually decided to not do the aquarium, but that was how he got in contact with Phyllis Bell. According to Wieland, he was

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  one of the people that suggested to Phyllis Bell, like, hey, you should think about taking in keiko. And he certainly thinks he had something to do with that. And I haven't come across yet how David Phillips came across the idea of Oregon Coast Aquarium. I don't know if like Phyllis Bell reached out to David Phillips after she spoke to Wieland, being like, hey, we'd love to have him. And for those listening that aren't familiar with the Oregon Coast Aquarium, this aquarium opened in 1992 in Newport, Oregon.

• 1:55:04Sarah Marshall?

  I had no idea it was so new. That's amazing.

• 1:55:06Speaker 01

  I know. Isn't that crazy? It was really new. And the Oregon Coast Aquarium has a special place in my heart for many reasons. The keiko story, and then I also volunteered there when I was like 12 years old. And I really love it as an institution. They're very education focused. They aren't about big flashy shows with jumbotrons that say believe and magic and a random guy playing the electric guitar.

• 1:55:33Sarah Marshall?

  They're about gently touching an anemone in a tide pool display.

• 1:55:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes. And, you know, if they have, like, they do have sea lions and seals and teahiders. A lot of them are, especially the ones that are still there now, are animals that were Injured and were rehabilitated and then deemed like, you know, they weren't going to be able to survive in the wild anymore. So they become an ambassador for their species in that way. So they weren't like collected necessarily. Some of the animals are collected, like the fish and octopus, but I know the marine mammals are not. And they do a lot of like, they are involved in a lot of rescue and rehabilitation of animals on the coast.

• 1:56:19Speaker 01

  They're actually in the process of building a marine wildlife rescue center. And it's not, it's not going to be a center that's available for public viewing. It's just, it's going to be a place for if someone finds a sick seal or sea lion on, on the coast, then they have the appropriate facility and permits to restore that sea lion back to health and then release it. So anyway, I just, as an institution, I have really loved them and their work. And this seemed, and I think that appealed to David Phillips as well. He was like, okay, this is the kind of place I could see Keiko going. And then all the, the environment was more appropriate for Keiko as well. The water, they were going

• 1:57:01Speaker 01

  to be able to pump in actual sea water from the bay, from the Quinna Bay.

• 1:57:06Sarah Marshall?

  Just like when they filmed Titanic.

• 1:57:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. They were just going to have better access to resources. And so, once they landed on Newport being the location for Keiko's next home, they started building his tank. And again, this is like where the money side of things really comes into play. So Warner Brothers, like they gave some money to help relocate Keiko and Earth Island Institute was really, really starting their fundraising campaigns, asking people to donate a few dollars here and there. And, you know, a lot of kids donated money. So there's like lots of stories

• 1:57:50Speaker 01

  of like classrooms getting together and like breaking open their piggy banks and pooling their money together and sending it to Earth Island Institute. As you can imagine, even With all of that goodwill and altruism demonstrated by the public and by these young kids, it still wasn't nearly enough to fund this astronomically expensive project. The success of a project comes down to leadership and to money, and that's going to change fairly substantially and is going to set the course for really the remainder of the project. That big decision is waiting for them when CAKO finally arrives in Oregon,

• 1:58:33Speaker 01

  which I will tell you about next time.

• 1:58:37Sarah Marshall?

  And you know what else is waiting? A whole lot of gift shop stuff.

• 1:58:43Speaker 01

  Yes, we can go over my, uh, my collection.

• 1:58:46Sarah Marshall?

  And we can talk about the time I saw CAKO, your experience with CAKO.

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  Yes. Oh, my gosh.

• 1:58:54Sarah Marshall?

  With the acceptance that I am inevitably projecting my own emotions onto CAKO, I sure do love him.

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  Me too. I really do love him. He's been my, uh, a kind of like companion to me all these years, thinking about him. And, uh, yeah, I'm so happy to share his story with you.

• 1:59:15Sarah Marshall?

  Where can we find more of you while we wait for installment two to come out?

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can check out my website, briannabowman.com. Not so much on social media, though I am on LinkedIn, if anyone wants to find me there. And I also am working on a podcast about this very story. It would be a narrative, uh, limited series podcast. So more of a kind of cinematic telling of this story. I've interviewed a lot of people involved with the project. And, uh, if you would like to support that project of mine, uh, you can go to the Patreon for it. The title of the podcast is Rewilding the CAKO Story.

• 2:00:03Sarah Marshall?

  And you're also on the radio.

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's right. Also on the radio. If you, if you happen to be in Central Oregon, or the Willamette Valley, or the Central Coast, you can hear me on the weekends for Weekend Edition on KLCC. You can stream it online, too. So support your local public radio station, support NPR.

• 2:00:26Sarah Marshall?

  Support your local whale.

• 2:00:28Speaker 01

  Support your local whales, yeah.

• 2:00:30Sarah Marshall?

  Brianna, thank you so much for coming and talking about CAKO and being so generous with your time and enthusiasm, which is the backbone of this show, unbridled enthusiasm for Northwesterners who no one can find a tank big enough for.

• 2:00:46Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:00:48Sarah Marshall?

  Until next time.

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  Goodbye, Sharon.

• 2:01:06Sarah Marshall?

  And that was our episode. Thank you so much for listening to part one of this whale of a tale, and we're going to have part two for you in two weeks. Thank you to Brianna Bowman, our guest. You can find her website in our show notes. And thank you to the people who helped make this show. Miranda Zickler is our producer and editor, and Nicole Ortiz is our administrative assistant. We can't wait to see you again in part two. See you soon.