Podcast: Serial

When the movie “Free Willy” is released, word gets out that the star, a killer whale named Keiko, is sick and living in a tiny pool at a Mexican amusement park. An environmentalist sets out to give the fans what they want: their favorite celebrity orca back in the sea.

Keiko has a new tank in Oregon and a dream team of experts that gets him into shape. But soon they start fighting over what a realistic future looks like for this golden retriever of an orca.

Keiko finally arrives in Iceland, where years of preparation will be put to the test when Keiko gets his first chance to interact with orcas in the wild — something he hasn’t done since he was a calf. It does not go according to plan.

A fresh training team takes a hard-line approach and doubles down on breaking Keiko’s bond with humans. By summer it seems to be working, until one day Keiko swims away. This is the moment they’ve all been waiting for.

Keiko disappears in Icelandic waters, swimming east for four weeks. Unobserved, with no human contact. Since nobody knows what happened to Keiko during that mysterious time, we decided to recreate it — as a musical. From Keiko’s perspective, naturally.

Watch the music video for "The Ballad of Keiko" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1k1TQ2Lh0o

After a month at sea, Keiko pops up near a Norwegian fishing village, causing a stir among the residents and his own team of caretakers. They figure that if they wait until spring, maybe Keiko will swim off again with a wild pod. If they can all just make it to spring.

After the movie “Free Willy” became a hit, word got out that the star of the film, a killer whale named Keiko, was sick and living in a tiny pool at a Mexican amusement park. Fans were outraged and pleaded for his release. “The Good Whale” tells the story of the wildly ambitious science experiment to return Keiko to the ocean — while the world watched. An epic tale that starts in Mexico and ends in Norway, the six-episode series follows Keiko as he’s transported from country to country, each time landing in the hands of well-intentioned people who believe they know what’s best for him – people who still disagree, decades later, about whether they did the right thing.

The criminal case against the men accused of planning the Sept. 11 attacks is the one aspect of Guantánamo that would seem to make sense – until you start watching it.

Majid Khan spent years locked away in CIA black sites. What would he tell the world when he finally got the chance to speak?

One reporter has been covering Guantánamo since the day the prison opened. The military would like her to go home now.

After the worst happens at Guantánamo, the warden tries to explain it to the outside world – and to himself.

A new warden comes to Guantánamo and decides to make some changes. A prison’s a prison, he thinks. How hard could this be?

The case against a young airman gets even weirder when the government pulls in two fresh investigators. Part 2: A bride, an FBI agent, and a polygraph machine.

An Arabic-speaking airman is sent to Guantánamo to translate, and soon finds himself at the center of a major scandal. Part 1: Suspicion swallows evidence.

Maybe you have an idea in your head about what it was like to work at Guantánamo, one of the most notorious prisons in the world. Think again.

In 2002, an elite interrogation team secretly staged Guantánamo’s most elaborate intel operation — to try to get a single detainee to talk.

From Serial Productions and The New York Times, Serial Season 4 is a history of Guantánamo told by people who lived through key moments in Guantánamo’s evolution, who know things the rest of us don’t about what it’s like to be caught inside an improvised justice system. Episodes 1 and 2 arrive Thursday, March 28.

News about an upcoming project.

A police officer in Rutherford County, Tenn., sees a video of little kids fighting, and decides to investigate. This leads to the arrest of 11 kids for watching the fight. The arrests do not go smoothly.

From Serial Productions and The New York Times in partnership with ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio, “The Kids of Rutherford County” is reported and hosted by Meribah Knight, a Peabody-award winning reporter based in the South.

Wes Clark reads a telling line in a police report about how Rutherford County’s juvenile justice system really works. He and his law partner Mark Downton realize they have a massive class action on their hands.

From Serial Productions and The New York Times in partnership with ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio, “The Kids of Rutherford County” is reported and hosted by Meribah Knight, a Peabody-award winning reporter based in the South.