847: The Truly Incredible Story of Keiko the Killer Whale
This American Life
11/17/24
•62m
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Keiko was a hugely beloved adventure park attraction. He was also captured in the wild and taken away from his mother when he was just a calf. When Hollywood learned about him, a colossal effort began to un-tame him and send him back to the ocean.
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- Prologue: Ira introduces a new series from Serial Productions and The New York Times. "The Good Whale" is about the killer whale Keiko and is reported by Daniel Alarcón. (2 minutes)
- Act One: Daniel Alarcón takes us back to the early 90’s when Keiko lived in an adventure park in Mexico City, swimming with human friends. (43 minutes)
- Act Two: Producer Diane Wu travels to Minnesota, where the turkey set to be pardoned by The President of the United States later this month is having the turkiness trained out of him. (10 minutes)
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Previous Episode
846: This Is the Cake We Baked
November 10, 2024
•62m
With Donald Trump’s victory this week, many people looked at the election results and thought, yeah, this is the country I thought it was. For some people, that was a hopeful thing. For others, kind of the opposite. This week, we talked with people who helped make it happen and some who are looking to what’s next.
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- Prologue: Ira talks with Zoe Chace about watching Trump’s victory from an ecstatic room in Michigan. Then he checks in with a DC cop who was injured at the Capitol on January 6. (7 minutes)
- Act One: Trump has claimed that he will be able to deport between 15 and 20 million people. But neither he nor his team have spelled out exactly how they’d do it. Producer Nadia Reiman looked into what mass deportation could actually look like on the ground if and when it comes to pass. (17 minutes)
- Act Two: Trump won record numbers of Latino voters this year. Ike Sriskandarajah spent the day with a guy in Pennsylvania who's been working to bring Latino voters to Trump for years. (15 minutes)
- Act Three: Ira talks with two of Trump’s “political enemies” about their post-election plans. (8 minutes)
- Act Four: Ten different states had abortion rights measures on their ballots this election. Producer Miki Meek got curious about a particular kind of political ad that aired in many of those states and called up a few of the women whose stories were featured in them. (9 minutes)
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Next Episode
848: The Official Unofficial Record
November 24, 2024
•61m
How do you count almost 12 million votes if you’re not the government? This week, we bring you the extraordinary story of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who created the only verifiable public record of votes in their presidential election — and other stories of people trying to correct the official record with their own versions.
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- Prologue: Host Ira Glass sets us up for Nancy Updike’s insider account of the recent presidential election in Venezuela. The story is an incredible national drama that plays out in thousands of polling stations across the country, with regular people trying to ensure a fair vote count that everyone can agree on. (2 minutes)
- Act One: Producer Nancy Updike tells the story of the people of Venezuela trying to prove who won their recent presidential election beyond a shadow of a doubt. (22 minutes)
- Act Two: Host Ira Glass spent America’s presidential election in the swing state of Michigan, where he found very little dispute over the ballot count from Republican poll challengers in Detroit now that they are doing the counting themselves. (8 minutes)
- Act Three: This story is about a creepy and dangerous creature that does all kinds of terrible things. It’s also about someone trying to set the record straight on those exact assumptions about this notorious creature. (9 minutes)
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