HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whale sounds)
MARCUS PARKS
What's that noise? What's that noise? Am I about to be...
ED LARSON
(whale sounds)
MARCUS PARKS
Are we gonna be murdered? I think I'm about to be murdered by two big fat idiots.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whale sounds)
MARCUS PARKS
Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left, ladies and gentlemen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fun noises with the boys.
MARCUS PARKS
Fun noises with the boys is back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whale sounds)
ED LARSON
(whale sounds)
MARCUS PARKS
(groaning)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're finally here.
MARCUS PARKS
We're finally here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're finally here where people said that we might get to this point but we didn't choose this, Marcus.
MARCUS PARKS
We did not choose this at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
My name's Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every day.
MARCUS PARKS
And we're here today, we're gonna be doing something different with today's episode.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We've never done this before.
MARCUS PARKS
We've never done this before.
ED LARSON
I ain't done lots of shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He can't read. He can't have sex.
MARCUS PARKS
It's summertime. Summertime is a time when you try new things, when you try on some new hats.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So this is our brat girl summer.
MARCUS PARKS
I'd say this is more of our experimentation summer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it's the one where Katy Perry kissed the girl that first time.
MARCUS PARKS
I'd say this is more of the summer where you do too much cocaine and then you really think about your life choices afterwards.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, sure. Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Gets real hot, gets real sweaty.
ED LARSON
Speaking of hot and sweaty, I'm wearing a sweater.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that was a mistake.
MARCUS PARKS
Ed Larson is gonna be leading this episode and the next episode. He's gonna be leading us on the horrors of SeaWorld. My god, man. Please take us in.
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm in the passenger seat this time. This is nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, see? Now you feel like me.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I did a little bit of research on this. This is a topic that-
ED LARSON
Was it when you went to a pool and ate a bunch of fish, you fucking idiot?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're not the funny one today. You're Mr. Man With The Outline. You stick to your little fucking outline, none of your precious roasts.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, I give him permission. I mean even though I may not-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whale sounds)
MARCUS PARKS
Even though I may not be the driver, I think I'm still somewhat of a co-CEO here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't have to.
MARCUS PARKS
And I say Eddie, you get to be anything you want to be.
ED LARSON
Aw, thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's the problem with our old generation is that that's what's led to this sort of... It doesn't matter.
ED LARSON
Failing up!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. Now Eddie, you chose this topic. We decided that we wanted you to try to teach us something.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
About something that concerned you.
ED LARSON
I mean I'm always, I'm a big fan of animals. I love my animals. If you watch the Hamdates-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, I love my animals when they're a quarter pound, I love them when they're even better if they're half a pound.
ED LARSON
And I just think animal attacks... We talk about ghosts, aliens, serial killers-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We do talk about that.
ED LARSON
Yes. But to me the scariest thing in the world is being ripped apart by animals.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Apparently it's super not popular.
MARCUS PARKS
It's really not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did you see the story about the woman who got ripped apart by the pack of great danes recently?
MARCUS PARKS
I did see that, yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's crazy.
ED LARSON
No, no.
MARCUS PARKS
It's absolutely insane that that can happen. Did they end up finding the pack?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think they shot a bunch of them. I'm not quite certain. You ever hear the one about the infant girl torn apart by the squirrels?
ED LARSON
That's honestly worse than great danes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly it's just what happens.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why you never load a child's diaper with a bunch of hazelnuts.
MARCUS PARKS
And there's been plenty of babies eaten to death by rats.
ED LARSON
Oh lord knows.
MARCUS PARKS
Bit by bit by bit.
ED LARSON
There was a whole plague.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And the dingo ate my baby thing was also real.
ED LARSON
Very real.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We learned that in Australia.
ED LARSON
Very real. Yeah, Australia, lots of deadly animals of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta take the reins, Eddie.
ED LARSON
All right. Growing up in Florida, I loved going to places like SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, and Miami Seaquarium.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was the only place you could get a bath.
MARCUS PARKS
Aquarium sounds like an STD.
ED LARSON
It's now shut down because it was horrible. There were places that you could witness the impossible. You could see a 25 ft, 12,000 pound whale perform a water ballet with a human being.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The good old days!
ED LARSON
Yeah, man. It was a circus underwater on steroids. And best of all, at the end of the show you were as wet as the performers. Now you said the good old days, I'm gonna go ahead now and tell you it's still happening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh whoa! Wow! We could still see them, yay!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yes. You can still see them.
MARCUS PARKS
There's how many SeaWorlds now? Four?
ED LARSON
There are four technically now, there used to be five. But they shut the one in Ohio down a while ago.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, why? Because it's nowhere near the fucking ocean?
ED LARSON
The one in San Antonio is doing just fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
MARCUS PARKS
oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The one in San Antonio, I remember going to SeaWorld, San Antonio.
ED LARSON
You went?
MARCUS PARKS
No one wanted to go to SeaWorld San Antonio.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why would you?
MARCUS PARKS
Like that was always an option on vacations for everyone in Texas and everyone was like no, why would I go there?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
MARCUS PARKS
Six Flags Over Texas is so much closer.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And there's Wet 'N' Wild right across the highway.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Those fucking dolphins shouldn't be in the middle of San Antonio!
MARCUS PARKS
No.
ED LARSON
Now George Millay, one of the four men who started SeaWorld back in 1964 with Milton Shedd, Ken Norris, and David Demott. George Millet also started Wet 'N' Wild. So there you go.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See I don't like being wet though.
ED LARSON
I know you don't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't like being wet.
ED LARSON
You're gonna hate this whole episode.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't like sitting in my wet.
MARCUS PARKS
You some kind of cat? Why don't you like being wet?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't like water parks, I don't like being wet all day.
ED LARSON
You don't like log flumes either, do you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't. I don't want my bottom wet unless it's because I've met Paul Newman.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Here's a little log flume tip for you. When it's going down, lift your butt up just as it hits the water. That way when the water comes into the log, you aren't going to get it up your ass.
MARCUS PARKS
But when you sit back down, aren't you just sitting back down on wet?
ED LARSON
No, you're sitting back down in the seat and the wet's on the bottom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The thing is that you've let the wet touch the seat and now the wet will be on the seat.
ED LARSON
You're gonna get all kind of wet but you're not gonna get a puddle in your butt is what I'm saying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta take this from me.
ED LARSON
Well anyway, George Millay opened SeaWorld with good intentions, I'm sure. At first they wanted to build an underwater restaurant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, cool!
ED LARSON
Yeah. And then it was the concept of an underwater zoo that got them real excited.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
When they started this venture in San Diego with a couple of dolphins and sea lions, I'm sure they had no idea how successful and deadly it would become.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did they pull those dolphins and the sea lions from The Groundlings?
ED LARSON
I think they're UCB troupe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. So they don't get paid.
ED LARSON
No, they definitely don't get paid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They just get worked to death and then choose their favorite one.
ED LARSON
They at least get a meal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They get to go like to advanced sea lion class.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
And advanced advanced sea lion class.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And sometimes the trainers have sex with the students.
ED LARSON
But it was a success. And in 1989, George Millay and the boys sold SeaWorld to the Anheuser- Busch Corporation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! Beer did it!
ED LARSON
Yeah, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It would have been so much cooler if they filled all the fucking pools with beer.
ED LARSON
Just fucking whales hiccuping and shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it'd be fun as hell, man.
ED LARSON
So and they purchased SeaWorld and later Anheuser-Busch sold it to the Blackstone Group, those fuckers, in 2009 for $2.7 billion.
MARCUS PARKS
The Blackstone Group?
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
God, they sound like they sell whale meat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, Marcus.
ED LARSON
They own a little bit of everything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, Marcus. They're only the world's largest alternative asset member with more than one trillion dollars underneath them. There's no way they got anything nefarious going on. Oh their address is right here in town in Santa Monica! Oh wow!
ED LARSON
Blackstone renamed the corporation to SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment. And in 2013 they sold 37% of the initial public offering. So we know there are a lot of people making a lot of money off of these parks today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay. Of course.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I just still, besides the two of you, have you ever been to SeaWorld, Henry?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A million years ago in Florida.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I've never known anyone besides the two of you who have ever actually been to a SeaWorld. I don't know what a SeaWorld is.
ED LARSON
I mean-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a theme park aquarium.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but how is it? Are there rides?
ED LARSON
Now there are.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. There used to not be.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay.
ED LARSON
So in 2013, that documentary Blackfish came out after Dawn Brancheau was killed in Shamu Stadium in 2010. Now the movie was huge, it won an Oscar.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I remember.
ED LARSON
It decimated SeaWorld.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
So they added rides after the movie came out to get people to come back to the park.
MARCUS PARKS
Ah okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And Dawn was killed by the massive and known aggressive orca Tilikum, who was captured in the wild off of the coast of Iceland as a pup in 1983 and ended up being the largest orca in captivity until his death in 2017.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now in true Last Podcast on the Left fashion, was Tilikum molested? I want to know what made Tilikum so aggressive.
ED LARSON
You know, Henry-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And what really led to, was it a head injury? Was there a loss of status?
ED LARSON
I really hate to tell you this but in fact, it was all of those things.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow! See, this is honestly, I'm glad we're here.
MARCUS PARKS
No, the serial killer soup is like trans species, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's incredible. Can you imagine getting killed in Shamu Stadium by getting killed by Shamu is like the same if you wrestled in Chris Benoit Arena.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Now I was gonna save this fact to the part of this where I tell you a bunch of killer whale facts. But a male killer whale can have an 8 ft penis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey. But I mean that means he gets to molest more by the yard than a lot of guys.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I like how you called Tilikum known aggressive orca. It's like known sexual predators.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a problem.
ED LARSON
Tilikum had previously killed two other people before the gruesome death of Dawn Brancheau. If he was known to have killed humans before, why was he performing with people for stadiums full of spectators?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know, why was R. Kelly allowed to go into any single bathroom unaccompanied?
ED LARSON
Phenomenal question. As of the time of this recording-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Peepee was his main weapon. We came for the raps but then everybody else was forced to experience the peepee.
ED LARSON
And the hotel lobby of course. As of the time of this recording, four people have been killed by orcas in captivity, Tilikum claiming three of those deaths.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No shit!
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And there are no reported human fatalities by the fins of orcas in the wild.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, like they are normally... Like now we're seeing an uptick in orcas attacking boats.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But mostly we're saying apparently that's larrikin orcas.
ED LARSON
It's a fad.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
They're calling it a fad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I did not know that. We talked a little bit of this on Side Stories, about how whales literally have fads, they act in weird kind of patterns.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like the ones where all the whales had the fishes on their heads.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they have different languages for different regions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Whales are incredible.
ED LARSON
They are unbelievable, very highly intelligent, emotional animals.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they'll kill again.
ED LARSON
And today we're going to look at killer whales and the theme park industry, particularly SeaWorld, and why there are still killer whale shows to this day. Our main source materials today are the book 'Death At SeaWorld' by David Kirby and the film Blackfish directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh Wow. That is a difficult name.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is an extremely difficult name. Now people are asking why fish true crime now? And it's always been this way.
ED LARSON
Man, I remember I was so excited when it came out. I went and saw Blackfish in the theater and it was a fairly fun experience.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it shouldn't have been.
ED LARSON
What do you mean?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it was so sad.
ED LARSON
Yes. But what happened was, it was very serendipitous, I was in New York City, I got on the train, I went and met our buddy Trey Galyon at the Sunshine Theater. But while I was on the train, just like one of those out of nowhere massive rain storms came.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And completely fucking destroyed me. And I got out and I had to get from Delancey and Essex all the way to the Sunshine Theater.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I remember.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh that's a long walk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know that walk.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
It was a long walk and I was soaked to the bone. And I showed up soaked to the bone. I was like one for Blackfish, please.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was like you just came from SeaWorld.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm a big fat wet animal and I want to see a movie about another big fat wet animal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This just happened to me! I just survived!
ED LARSON
I literally was like you know how some people go see Batman dressed as Batman?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I dressed as one of Shamu's victims.
ED LARSON
I also thought it'd be hilarious if you were like hidden in the exit with a bucket of water and then whenever he like splashed in the movie-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Splash!
ED LARSON
You just went and got the front row.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the new 4DX.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, like Herschell Gordon Lewis used to do with The Tingler.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, the smell of it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. What they used to do is they put these little buzzers in seats and during certain scenes it would tingle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It would ping your balls.
MARCUS PARKS
It would ping your balls, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm the Tingler.
ED LARSON
Now Henry, you can back me up on this. Even before the movie Blackfish came out or the death of Dawn Brancheau, one of my YouTube holes that I would go down to late at night were SeaWorld accidents.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, no. We spent hours-
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Years at your house at night stoned out of our minds, watching animals kill other animals, watching animals kill humans, watching this type because there's something fun about watching animals do it.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like animals attacking each other, like when I watch animal shows with Natalie, Natalie always roots for the innocent creature running from the predator.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I'm like the predator's gotta eat, right. He's gotta eat. They gotta live.
ED LARSON
That's the whole thing.
MARCUS PARKS
And we're talking about in the wild here. We're not talking about like dogfights or anything.
ED LARSON
No, no, no!
MARCUS PARKS
This is like in the wild. Like watching-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You said cruel, not cool, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Cruel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, we're not watching dogfights. No, it's more like I like watching-
MARCUS PARKS
Or cockfights.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A rhino fight a bunch of tigers.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
No, no, nature.
MARCUS PARKS
Nature.
ED LARSON
Nature, nature, nature. But also SeaWorld accidents.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
There's just something comical about it to me. I mean what did they think was gonna happen? You put a 12,000 pound super dolphin in a tiny tank with humans and make them do tricks for food. Chaos is sure to happen.
MARCUS PARKS
It is.
ED LARSON
There's something about a total unstoppable force of nature that has always intrigued me. Tsunami footage, also something I can get lost watching.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well because tsunami footage is so fascinating because it's so slow yet so destructive.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I like tornado footage myself. When the tornado starts coming towards it, when people realize the tornado is coming towards them and they start running. That's what I love seeing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very exciting.
MARCUS PARKS
Because I've experienced it and it's terrifying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
ED LARSON
I can only imagine. Tornadoes are like the one thing I haven't been through yet. One day.
MARCUS PARKS
One day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll show you. Come with me.
ED LARSON
So the SeaWorld videos were fairly innocent, or so I thought. Occasionally a trainer would get whipped in the air the wrong way or Shamu would eat a pelican and you'd watch the trainers flip out and try to get the show back on track all while the lamest, whitest, fake African- inspired music played.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Send me on my way!
ED LARSON
Yeah. Imagine if Paul Simon had his testicles removed and had to record the rhythm of The Saints of Orlando with the creative notes coming from SeaWorld execs. That's the music they play.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) You know what it's like to be a fish. It is easy to be a fish. Fish like life. Who is my fish- like friends? No, Paul Simon honesty still was already fake African.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yes. No, no. But he was fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Send me on my way! You know what I found too? I was reading the thing about the orcas purposely fishing for birds.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they would go and they would spit out fish.
ED LARSON
I showed this on the Hamdate.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then they come and they eat the birds. But that's also showing that they are in circumstances where they're extremely bored.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And they're fucking highly intelligent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
They hunt in the wild like no other animal does. Their brains, we'll get to it, are fucking 12 pounds. Which is one of the... Like pound for pound, dolphins have the biggest brains in the world.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's why we make such excellent candles out of them.
ED LARSON
So the videos were always hilarious especially because we knew that Tilikum had previously killed a man. Not the first one in Sealand of the Pacific, that one wasn't a popular story here in America. That happened in Vancouver. I'm talking about the death of Daniel Dukes, a 27 year old scruffy-looking fella who on the night of July 6th, 1999, thought it would be a good idea to jump in Tilikum's tank and play with the majestic creature.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You and me, Tilikum, are having a night on the goddamn town. I hope you like champagne!
ED LARSON
Yeah, no. He definitely had white man dreads.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, buddy! I named each one after my favorite speaker during the civil rights movement.
ED LARSON
It was all over the news. Do you guys remember it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, of course.
ED LARSON
No one felt bad for the guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
MARCUS PARKS
No.
ED LARSON
In fact, he was ridiculed for his ridiculous act, it was on like all the late night shows were making fun of him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, the killer whale didn't stalk him outside of his apartment and then hide in the closet and then wait for him to go to sleep and surprise attack him. He had to go to the whale.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah. SeaWorld even referred to him as a vagrant who climbed into the tank and drowned.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what? I identify as a vagrant and I take that offensively.
ED LARSON
The truth is when he was found by the staff in the morning, his body was mutilated and draped over the back of Tilikum.
MARCUS PARKS
He was draped over the back. So was he doing the thing? Because I've seen the videos-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was wearing him like a hat.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I've seen the videos of killer whales like popping seals up into the air.
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Was he popping him into the air and he just fell?
ED LARSON
He had been playing with him for hours.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Aw.
ED LARSON
Yes. SeaWorld claims they had no security tape footage that night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We don't know what happened.
ED LARSON
Yeah. So no one knows exactly what went down that night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So why would they lie about not having the security footage? Like is it just because it was way more grisly than they wanted to tell?
ED LARSON
SeaWorld seems to me like they enjoy a good cover up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I do understand.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I think that if they were to show a picture of a killer whale covered in blood with blood in the water and a mutilated corpse, it might hurt ticket sales.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Possibly an arm or a leg that had got accidentally-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But not for us. We drove for two hours to see Snowtown. I think I would do the same thing. I feel like if they want the true crime audience, throw some blood in there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like do it, fake it for us.
MARCUS PARKS
And if you're watching this on our Patreon, video on Patreon, you can see in the background the corrosive chemical sign. I bought that from an old man in Snowtown who had no sense of irony.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely none.
MARCUS PARKS
I paid $8 Australian dollarydoos for it.
ED LARSON
Man, I spent $10 on a fucking license plate. So stupid. I always jump the gun on these buying things.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But hey man, that's when you open your TGI Saturdays and you put it on the wall.
ED LARSON
But to assume that SeaWorld didn't have a security camera on a $10 million animal in a much more expensive facility is very hard to believe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They absolutely had cameras on and they saw exactly what it was. They just did not want to bum people out.
ED LARSON
I'm sure they immediately deleted it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Daniel Dukes was by no means a normal American.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he wasn't a racist. He wasn't connected to David Duke, was he?
ED LARSON
No, no. But he was from South Carolina so maybe. No, it's Dukes with an S. I almost wrote David every single time in the script.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just wanted to, you just miss him.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Talk about someone I wanna see get ripped apart by a killer whale.
MARCUS PARKS
No, couldn't be related to David Duke. But he could be related to Daisy Dukes.
ED LARSON
Ooh!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh! Cute.
ED LARSON
Daniel lived a freewheeling lifestyle. He loved music and animals.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He better.
ED LARSON
And seemed to not be fond of responsibility.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think anybody climbed into a killer whale tank is necessarily like always on the up and up.
ED LARSON
He backpacked all around America and eventually landed in Florida, as lots of individuals do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And when you say backpack, you think I carried my things in a backpack? No, friend. I hid inside of a backpack and someone put me in the back of a bus and drove me around. And that shit was hella awesome. I was a textbook.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Florida seems to be the end of the road for a lot of people.
ED LARSON
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's because it's great. It's a haven for con men.
ED LARSON
It's where you go to be forgotten.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah. He had a couple of small brushes with the law, some petty theft and marijuana convictions. He lived with the Hari Krishna community for a little while, it didn't work out. He was like I'm out, peace!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I am sick of the quiet singing.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And so he left South Florida and started to go north. And a couple of days before his death he actually spent a couple of days in jail, in an Indian River County jail for stealing a Three Musketeers bar for breakfast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Aw, why? Oh that shouldn't be a crime.
ED LARSON
And then on July 4th-5th, he was spotted inside the park by staff. They noticed him because he had dreadlocks and he was also hitting on a lot of the ladies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hi! Hi, whale! Hi, Mr. Shamu! Can I come inside there? Hi! Hey lady, you look like a whale I can ride.
MARCUS PARKS
Do you offer discounts for vagrants?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! I ain't got no home.
ED LARSON
I believe the way they put it in the book seemed similar to that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I gotta tell you, lady, most girls love this. I just wanna let you know before I start. Second of all is do those udders provide milk or is it the back udders? Can I squeeze your butt just a little bit?
ED LARSON
Oh the butt is back udders.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just curious as all hell. Curious as a little cat.
ED LARSON
So when he wasn't hitting on chicks, he watched the Shamu show repeatedly. And security noticed him but didn't pay him much mind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, excuse me, Shamu. How did you book this gig? Because I got a feeling.
ED LARSON
You paying for them fish?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wait a second, you get free fish and all you gotta do is slap around inside the water?
ED LARSON
And so on July 5th when the park closed, Daniel hid close to the Shamu Stadium. And when the coast was clear, he hopped out of the gate to G pool, disrobed down to his underwear, boxer shorts, I believe, and he went towards the tank. And on this particular night, Tilikum was the resident in that pool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, man, I could see him putting a shower cap on, getting that big brush. Being like we are all bathing tonight real deep. Can't wait to snuggle with you, Shamu. Let's gonna put on a show. Let's watch some 20/20. Yeah, that's my favorite. You guys get cable in this water? The whole reason I'm making fun of this man or talking in this character is just this idea of like man, that killer whale is gonna love me.
ED LARSON
Yeah. I mean it's a ridiculous thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's gonna love me. It's like every drug dealer I've ever had, being like can't wait to talk about FIFA with you, friend.
ED LARSON
We all know when someone jumps into the enclosure at the zoo, it doesn't end well.
MARCUS PARKS
No. No, no, no. At that point, I would say unless you're a child who fell in, you deserve everything that's coming to you.
ED LARSON
No one's rooting for you.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh can you imagine if you jumped into the jail cell with Carl Panzram and said I dare you to kill me? It's the same thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually I think there was a woman, I half heard this on the news this morning, there was a woman who jumped into a tiger enclosure yesterday I think.
ED LARSON
That happens more than you think.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Remember when someone did it at the Bronx Zoo and they took its foot?
MARCUS PARKS
They took the woman's foot?
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It might have been a dude, I can't remember.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Regardless, 7:05 July 6th the next morning, a worker arrived to a ghastly sight. At first he didn't realize what he actually saw. He thought there was a large white toy on Tilikum's back. But upon further inspection, it was not a toy. It was the nude, lifeless body of Daniel Dukes. Staff was notified and Tilikum allowed himself to be wrangled into another area.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I didn't do shit. I didn't do shit!
ED LARSON
I didn't see nothing! Allegedly I was in the tank.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I blacked out. Yeah, there was a rage of course, he entered into my section and for a while we were hanging out. Yeah, it did seem to be consensual. But next thing you know he started choking me during intercourse and I blacked out.
ED LARSON
But when they fished out Dukes, he had multiple bite marks, was extremely bruised, and had drag marks all along his body. His boxer shorts were found at the bottom of the pool. And Tilikum gingerly had removed his left nut and they found it at the bottom of the pool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So he gnawed off his ball?
ED LARSON
He opened his scrotum. They're like doctors with scalpels, these things. He opened his scrotum, removed a single testicle, spit it out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What if it turns out it had cancer in it? Wouldn't that be amazing?
ED LARSON
That's the test they shoulda run!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh my god. It turns out that it was going to kill him anyway.
ED LARSON
He tried to save his life!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is a doctor, not a whale.
ED LARSON
But they found the nut at the bottom of the pool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh well. The old Hitler special.
ED LARSON
Among Dukes' possessions were a cigarette stuffed with weed-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Are these possessions or are these leavings?
ED LARSON
Some beads, $2 in cash, and no admission ticket was found.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow, he climbed the fence.
ED LARSON
SeaWorld to this day calls him a trespasser and a vagrant and they're trying to save face of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I would say he is a trespasser, he is a vagrant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are disavowing him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yes, yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're saying they're not in with him. He did technically arrive dressed up as a penguin.
ED LARSON
But where's the video?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He dressed up as a penguin. It's because they don't want... I do see-
ED LARSON
Maybe he won a bet. And they were like you know what? You go in the tank.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If he showed up just like-
ED LARSON
We don't know, we don't see, we've never seen the video.
MARCUS PARKS
You never know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he was so high when we arrived, we assumed he was special needs. So we decided his Make-A-Wish could be 'let's give him a ride in the tank'.
MARCUS PARKS
Yup. And it all went horribly wrong.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Sure, he wasn't invited in the tank. But one would think it wouldn't be so easy for him to sneak in and jump in the tank. How was there no security around the largest animal in the largest attraction at SeaWorld Orlando?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think only because only a moron would climb into the aquarium with a thing called a killer whale.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the only thing is that it's because...
ED LARSON
7/11s have security guards.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I agree.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but no one's gonna shoplift a killer whale.
ED LARSON
You think so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, I saw fucking Ace Ventura.
MARCUS PARKS
That was a dolphin.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Critics claim that he was led to believe that the whales were not dangerous by the messaging that SeaWorld puts out over around their whales. One claiming that they turned Tilikum into Mickey Mouse.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well yeah, that's if you also apply SeaWorld's advertising to dabs. Like you know. I could see why you think that it's... You're watching it over and over again.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if you're some sort of drug-addled... I'm not gonna say, I'm just gonna say man with no necessarily goal. Man with not an identifiable goal, right, not a vagrant. And he's here watching the show again and again and again. And they're probably at some point truly-
ED LARSON
He probably was just like losing his mind happy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, just being like whoa, this is fucking... I'm here, dude!
ED LARSON
Like a week ago he was Hari Krishna. Two days ago he was in jail for stealing candy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Literally. If you got arrested for stealing candy, that's even stranger in and of itself.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like that you got caught. And so he's there probably watching trainers react to this animal, not really understanding, like most people do. Like people come to stand up shows and think you just necessarily make it up as you go.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like people do stuff like that where it's like he's probably looking at these trainers being like I can totally do that. Birds love me.
ED LARSON
Yeah. So also check out this quote from Ken Balcomb, an orca activist, said this about Tilikum in an interview that week.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You pull them out of their element and you've already got a potential delinquent. You put them in a captive situation where they are locked in a small space with limited context. Basically you're building a cycle. It's true!
MARCUS PARKS
I'm sure that's exactly how the orca activist talks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Basically I'll tell you what, if it wasn't for how small our vaginas are, more whales would do more to us if they could. But they don't like the split noise. They're not turned on by it.
ED LARSON
Well SeaWorld rebuked the claim suggesting that the death was hypothermia and drowning.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely not.
MARCUS PARKS
How did they explain the testicle?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, your balls sometimes... I wish they could escape me.
ED LARSON
Yeah. They said that Tilikum was not responsible. But the coroner's report did not list hypothermia as a cause of death and Tilikum attacked Dukes while he was still alive.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dukes attacked Tilikum!
ED LARSON
Dukes was hugging Tilikum.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's an attack to a whale.
ED LARSON
Almost every part of Duke's body had been beaten up. Also his blood work came back clear of all drugs including marijuana.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank god I ate that apple cider vinegar before my fucking work interview. But I do want to tell the story too because I did research the concept.
ED LARSON
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You remember the brothers that went after the Siberian tiger?
ED LARSON
Oh the Christmas at the San Francisco Zoo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, this was on Christmas Day. This was at the San Francisco Zoo and these two brothers, Kulbir and Amritpal Dhaliwal, arrived hammered, high, throwing nachos and screaming at a tiger.
ED LARSON
Yeah. I believe a can as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes. And then the tiger jumped the far too short for regulation fence because they measured it wrong. It was supposed to be 20 ft tall, 16 ft tall by regulations. It turned out to only be 12 ft tall.
ED LARSON
That tiger also sat there for fucking years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the tiger finally said fuck this shit and killed one of the brothers.
ED LARSON
On Christmas?!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
On Christmas! You come into my fucking house on the lord's day! He was also Catholic. They knew the tiger was Catholic. And then he killed one of the people and attacked the other two in front of a concession stand and they had to shoot the poor tiger, which made me feel bad for the tiger. He just got pushed to its limit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Of course. And it was, yeah, the cops came and shot him.
MARCUS PARKS
Well what happened yesterday was a woman in New Jersey at the Cohanzick Zoo-
ED LARSON
Never been.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's in Bridgeton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh Bridgeton!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My favorite place to get drunk and punch myself in the face.
MARCUS PARKS
She climbed over a wooden fence and tried to touch a tiger. She was almost bit but then she skidded away. And now police are looking for her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That doesn't count.
ED LARSON
That's one fat, lazy tiger.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually I'm looking at a picture of the tiger right now. It is very fat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's good.
ED LARSON
Man, there is one tiger at the Cincinnati Zoo that I go and I look at it. And I don't know, it's definitely got some mental problems.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's just upset.
ED LARSON
But before we go any further into the abuse of Tilikum leading to him killing two other humans, we have to talk about orcas in general. Don't worry this isn't gonna turn into too much of a science project but I figure we gotta talk about some of this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is his version of wagon manifests.
ED LARSON
Yeah. No, this is very like bathroom book facts about orcas you just need to know.
MARCUS PARKS
I love this!
ED LARSON
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So killer whales are not whales.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Propaganda!
ED LARSON
They are a type of dolphin called Orcinus orca or orca for short.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I didn't know they're dolphins.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I didn't know they're dolphins either.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, they're dolphins. Yeah. They're not whales.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow.
ED LARSON
But some people call them whales still. I don't know, it's very confusing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just feel like are they a hybrid like my RAV4?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Like a whalephin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whalephin.
ED LARSON
They have another thing called false killer whales. Have you seen these guys?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
ED LARSON
Oh my god. They look like Shamu fucked a xenomorph. They're terrifying-looking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where are they from?
ED LARSON
I don't know, I don't know exactly where they're from. But they have them at some of the SeaWorld parks as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, they are!
MARCUS PARKS
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It looks like it's been outfitted by the guys that have Punisher symbols on their cars.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, it's like matte.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah. They look like a Dodge Challenger.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa! That's so cool. That's so tubular. I wanna drive to see Fast & Furious movies while me exactly-wife is yelling at me on speakerphone!
ED LARSON
Yeah. But they're also a dolphin.
MARCUS PARKS
Why does it look so much greasier than a regular dolphin or a whale?
ED LARSON
I know, it looks crazy, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's cool.
ED LARSON
Yes, I love a false killer whale. All right, so out of anything talked about on this show before, they are the perfect killers. All right?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Males in the wild live from 30-60 years and can get up to 32 ft long and weigh up to 13,000 pounds. Females can live from 50-90 years in the wild and can get up to 22 ft long and up to 11,000 pounds. That's roughly 40 times the size of a human.
MARCUS PARKS
Jeez.
ED LARSON
All right? There's two types of orcas, transient and resident.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And one can vote and one can't?
ED LARSON
Actually yes. Transient orcas are just as they sound, they have no particular home and in the wild can swim up to 100 miles a day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they choose this life?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
It seems like it. And resident orcas live in one place. So you'll see the same pod in the Puget Sound.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it's just random. Or is it a type of whale? Entirely different.
ED LARSON
They are different types of the same whale.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting.
ED LARSON
Now resident orcas, pretty much their diet consists mostly of fish and kelp. Whereas transient orcas are known to eat other sea mammals such as seals, other dolphins, and sometimes even smaller whales.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow, they're cannibals?
ED LARSON
Yes. Well no, other whales. Like smaller whales.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So the transient ones have to fight harder in this life.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the resident ones, you need to require probably a steady food supply, nug.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All sorts of shit.
ED LARSON
Now but the resident whales will kick the shit out of a transient whale if they show up in its neighborhood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they're looking to fuck.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because the transient whale shows up, it's looking a fuck, right. And you're like no, that's my resident ass whale wife.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can't come in here and fuck my wife, buddy, just because you're in from out of town, all right.
ED LARSON
And they're usually in pods but also there's lone male transient orcas as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. That is like their version of serial killers.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I've seen those transient orcas that pop the seal up into the air 20 ft and then just do it over and over again until the seal is dead. It's incredible.
ED LARSON
We'll get to that in a second.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just see him walking around with like the Jeffrey Dahmer glasses on.
ED LARSON
Here's another fun one. Killer whales have no sense of smell. Yeah, they have great eyesight but that doesn't help when hunting at night or in murky waters. They survive and thrive on echolocation. They release a series of clicks and noises and listen for the echo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So that's when they are going like (dolphin sounds).
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is like sending out iMessages.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And they use this to not run into rocks, boats, etc. Also to locate prey and other orcas in this manner.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which also kind of speaks to the fact that they might know the difference between various preys and boats. Like obviously they're playing because now what we're seeing with the orcas doing this weird behavior, attacking the boats, like they know they're boats.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Oh yeah, they know they're boats. They also can tell if it's a salmon or a trout by the echolocation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So can I, by the market price.
ED LARSON
And also they can tell the dimensions of the air in the bladder of another mammal.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now that is just so that you could also tell what kind of animal it is, I imagine. I imagine that's like-
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's like their heat signature.
ED LARSON
If it's a dolphin or a seal or whatever. They also can echolocate near and distant targets simultaneously which scientists don't really understand.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I remember from Ecco the video game.
ED LARSON
Yes. Yeah, Ecco the Dolphin.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I never learned how to play that game. I just swam around on the first level for a while and then...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's really all I ever did with it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was otherwise not a very interesting game.
MARCUS PARKS
It was a renter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I remember. Well no, Ecco was the one that came with the system.
ED LARSON
Yeah. It was either that, Sonic, or Greendog.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah and I already had Sonic and Greendog was stupid.
ED LARSON
I love Greendog!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hated Greendog.
ED LARSON
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I liked Sonic.
MARCUS PARKS
Greendog?
ED LARSON
He was the surfer with the big nose. You'll recognize him when you see him. Anyway, echolocation does not work through kelp. Salmon therefore hide in the kelp. Orcas over dolphins have figured this out and just tear up kelp whenever they see it, hoping that fish are hanging out in there.
MARCUS PARKS
Greendog the Beached Surfer Dude!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude, that brings you all the way back, dog.
MARCUS PARKS
I've never-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a total garbage game.
MARCUS PARKS
It's incredible. I've never heard of this game in my entire life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, man.
ED LARSON
Yeah, man. Sonic won.
MARCUS PARKS
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it totally sucks.
MARCUS PARKS
Please continue.
ED LARSON
Orcas never fully sleep because they can't breathe underwater.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And sleep is a cousin of death.
ED LARSON
It is. For orcas it definitely it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
They remain partially conscious so they don't drown. One half of their brain sleeps at a time and only for a handful of minutes at a time.
MARCUS PARKS
That's crazy.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's crazy, man.
ED LARSON
Orcas in the wild will babysit younger orcas in their pod when it's needed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're just saying this because orcas, they got like fairly layered intelligence.
ED LARSON
They're geniuses.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But for orcas.
ED LARSON
I don't know, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you see one learn how to play the flute and put together a fantastic new instrumental album out of nowhere?
ED LARSON
If it had fingers.
MARCUS PARKS
Man.
ED LARSON
They definitely sing songs.
MARCUS PARKS
I think about it a lot, how like whales and dolphins, they probably have an inner life and an entire society.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That we don't understand.
MARCUS PARKS
So many things that we don't understand, don't know about. They just swim around and have fun all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well dolphins, well some of it's quite harrowing, Marcus.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh I know some of it is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You think it's all fun and games? I don't think The Little Mermaid was a documentary. I don't think they're down there playing jazz and playing instruments on it and wondering if they're gonna get fucked. And they're not all made out of fucking great... They don't have great bodies.
MARCUS PARKS
(scatting Under The Sea) That's all I'm thinking about.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't think it's like that. No, I don't think it is like that. I think it's hard to be a dolphin and I think honestly a lot of them should just get into coding.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, get that side hustle. That's what dolphins need. Side hustle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Need a side hustle.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Really make their life miserable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
OnlyFins. I'm angry at myself. I'm angry at myself.
ED LARSON
Henrytunes.com.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
One of their favorite meals? Great white shark liver.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh! Me too.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah. They're known to kill great whites, rip out their livers, share them with their friends, and discard the rest of the carcass.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
That's incredible.
ED LARSON
Yeah. They've also been known to eat deer and moose if they swim out too far.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I bet. I bet.
ED LARSON
But they don't eat humans which is bizarre.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's because normally, see from what I have read with humans and predatory animals is that we legit don't taste good.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that we are just never considered to be the number one meal for any apex predator because of how difficult we are to catch.
ED LARSON
They should just kill us though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They could.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They could have back in the day, they could have stopped this human experiment real early if they had wanted to. But we are just never, they don't eat enough of us. They don't like our taste.
ED LARSON
Yeah. They also enjoy playing with their food.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
ED LARSON
Sometimes for hours. Planet Earth has great footage of killer whales tossing around a seal back and forth, hurling it into the air to just rip it to shreds after a very long torture session, sometimes lasting hours.
MARCUS PARKS
(David Attenborough voice) The killer whale has been seen to play with its prey for hours on end.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The reason why you're hearing this type is this is the last thing you'll ever experience. I'm gonna tie you down and I'm gonna gape you big. Next thing I know I'm gonna have my dog have its way with you.
ED LARSON
To be honest-
MARCUS PARKS
David Parker Killer Whale.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Scientists don't know exactly why they do this. Maybe it's for fun.
MARCUS PARKS
David Orca Ray.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
David Orca Ray!
ED LARSON
David Orca Ray, there it is.
MARCUS PARKS
So jetlagged.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, we're getting back in the pocket.
MARCUS PARKS
Things are a little slow, yeah.
ED LARSON
The reason, well one thing I think is that maybe it's because the sea mammals fight back that it can't be for fun. Other scientists think it helps with their digestive system.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I bet you it's something like that there's also something to intelligence involving play, whether that is the thing that comes up a lot of the time. There are a lot of animals. So it mostly seems to be also to express energy. But it must have some form of... Technically if it's there, it must have some kind of Darwinist reason for being there.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It helps them. Because it's a behavior that is learned and kept up. So it's like they all watch other whales do it and then they do it and it means something. It must be about them either building community-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Grassroots campaigning.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then maybe a lot of it... But yeah, it might just help them, like a nice 10 minute walk after you eat.
ED LARSON
Well they say orcas usually swallow their food whole which is hard on the stomach. So the flopping around of a seal might help take its skin off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh like tenderize it.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Make it soft.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow!
ED LARSON
Yeah. They also learn to eat certain parts of animals like the shark liver or penguin breast. They rip the breast off penguins and only eat that and leave the rest of it behind.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting.
ED LARSON
And then they've also been known to remove salmon heads before swallowing the rest of the fish because the heads don't digest as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa! And it gets stuck in their assholes like little bits of corn.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And they know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow! That's interesting.
ED LARSON
Yeah. No, thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I mean but that's the thing is stuff like that has to be taught.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Like they have to be talking to each other and tell them like don't all over the salmon head.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or it's all watching them do it and then they all just mock the behavior and then it does serve a purpose.
ED LARSON
Yeah. They do have different dialects.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Like a whale from Washington won't understand a whale from Nova Scotia or Iceland or anything like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I'm still in enough of free speech jail that I won't do the Asian whale accent here.
ED LARSON
That's because they've all been killed. Here's something cute. They love community, we all know that, they love their pods, they have big families.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
And they have smaller families and extended families. But they also assist each other in calf birth in the wild. The mother will swim around in circles, give birth, and then the other whales will lift the pup up to the surface and help it breathe. And then after they could be seen celebrating, jumping in the air, excited that a new orca has joined the pod.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa! One more, yeah! One more of us, yeah!
ED LARSON
They are clearly a highly intelligent and emotional animal with extremely large brains. Dolphins in general have the largest brain to body ratio of all animals. Now that the trivial pursuit of animal facts is over for now, let's talk about SeaWorld and how they acquire these magnificent animals.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well I know that it ain't easy.
ED LARSON
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it's also not super good to the animal. I remember reading about Ringling, about how when he used to get elephants for the circus. They used to do a thing where they'd go to Africa, they'd get something like 100 elephants because they knew they needed to get three for the circus.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that's how many would live in the transit from where they were taken to America.
ED LARSON
God, just imagine dump dead elephants off the side of a train. Just that's your job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no. Definitely created probably a number of cryptids and it probably fed whole various nations of the kirkus and the snerkus.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting connection there. Barnum's most famous elephant, Jumbo, was killed when he was hit by a train.
ED LARSON
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Some say saving a small boy.
ED LARSON
Really?
MARCUS PARKS
Some say.
ED LARSON
Some say.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Some say! That's how they sold it.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean PT Barnum was the master of bullshitters.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So I think it was Barnum say.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes, yes.
ED LARSON
So as we said earlier, SeaWorld had four US locations, now they have three US locations. And they recently opened up another one in Dubai of all places.
MARCUS PARKS
Dubai is just... I've heard someone describe it as Linkedin with slave labor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes, yes, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Like it's a horrible, horrible... It seems like just a horrible place that shouldn't exist.
ED LARSON
I'm terrified of it, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a tribute to human misery.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So now let's add animals into it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Let's take orcas to the fucking desert.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they shouldn't be there. It should be where the water is. At least Orlando is natural. Well it's sort of close to the water.
ED LARSON
So they have all these locations and the Shamu show is obviously the biggest draw. So they gotta keep getting as many whales as possible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, Shamu is never... Shamu is just the name of like the brand. There was an original Shamu.
ED LARSON
Shamu was the first killer whale brought to the San Diego Zoo in the 1960s. Now Shamu is the stage name for all orcas that perform at SeaWorld.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay, okay.
ED LARSON
Like Flipper.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like Joe Biden, like the guy that is now Joe Biden.
ED LARSON
Yes. Yeah, Mr. Harris.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. The fact that he was cloned several months ago.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's the reason why.
MARCUS PARKS
And the clones don't last so long, that's why he looks like-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, they degrade.
MARCUS PARKS
They degrade very easily, yeah.
ED LARSON
So all the whales have other names. But let's go through a quick yet confusing history of these particular killer whales. Also just so you know, SeaWorld refuses to use the term orca and only calls their performers killer whales.
MARCUS PARKS
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that's a more marketable name for a creature that you can go pay to see, I imagine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Oh much, much more.
MARCUS PARKS
And you don't feel as bad watching a killer whale get mistreated.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess, yeah. Honestly that is very interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I never thought about it that way. Because then you're like well that's a dangerous ass animal, it's a good thing it's in there instead of out there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.
ED LARSON
SeaWorld has three ways of acquiring orcas. In the old days, they were captured in the wild and sold to aquariums and marine zoos. This practice was done in Iceland, Canada, and off the coast of Washington State. No longer happens in these places for ethical reasons. It's a disgusting practice, we'll get more into it in the next episode.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Especially when they make these whales book their own bringers. They gotta go show up and they're supposed to do 10 minutes. They gotta do three impressions.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you have an idea? Just dropping that in some character actor's lap? Oh you gotta come up with three impressions. You know what I mean? It's a whale, how much is the whale gonna do? If you're already playing Shamu-
ED LARSON
Now you're venting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How do they get these gigs?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Iceland still whales. There's still this huge argument within Iceland itself as to whether whaling is wrong or not.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Doesn't seem like they have much to do over there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Except to see us live.
ED LARSON
Yeah, man. Come check us out in Reykjavik.
MARCUS PARKS
Come see us in Reykjavik.
ED LARSON
Don't bring the whales.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
You gotta buy at least four tickets for a whale.
MARCUS PARKS
They've been doing it since the 12th century, they got it down pat.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Well Russia recently, a couple of years ago, has been continuing the practice of capturing orcas and selling them to zoos and aquariums in China. If you want to learn more about this, there's an amazing article called 'Why Defenders of killer Whales are Worried about China' by Leah Thompson. Give it a read. They also buy killer whales from other theme parks when they're down and out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh so they flip whales.
ED LARSON
Yes. SeaWorld also, because a lot of times when they hunted these whales in the wild back in the 70s and 80s, they would capture a couple of the babies and then they would throw them out to other zoos. These zoos start closing down, SeaWorld's buying the same whales from the same pods and now they're mingling back in with each other.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they're making money on top of the whale money they're already making.
ED LARSON
It's crazy. So they buy whales from other theme parks when they're down and out. And of course they've come under scrutiny for breeding the orcas in the parks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they are not allowed to breed them.
ED LARSON
They have stopped breeding them in the parks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is it just because of the #MeToo movement?
ED LARSON
The uproar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah, the uproar, people hated it. Oddly enough, Steve-O helped stop that.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
ED LARSON
Yeah. When he he climbed a giant crane and brought a giant Shamu pool inflatable up there with him and wrote SeaWorld Sucks on it. And the fire department had to get him down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, I always say Mr. Rogers said look for the helpers.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you never know when they come.
ED LARSON
And then he also climbed the sign going into SeaWorld Drive, he climbed up there as well and crossed out Drive and wrote Sucks.
MARCUS PARKS
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow!
ED LARSON
Yeah. So Steve-O has actually drawn a lot of attention and helped stop the breeding in captivity of orcas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's incredible.
ED LARSON
SeaWorld has a history of moving their whales around the country from location to location to help the breeding process.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it seems to be a lot like priests. When one of these whales fuck up or one of these animals fuck up, they just move them. They just move them to another spot.
ED LARSON
Yeah, man. It's complex and sad but also important to the story of Tilikum. And here's a breakdown laid out well by David Kirby in the book 'Death at SeaWorld'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So now this is where you're saying this is gonna be very sad.
ED LARSON
This is gonna be sad and also a little confusing. And so-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's my favorite.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's great for podcasts.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love this!
MARCUS PARKS
Sad and confusing. Let's just all go watch Dancer in the Dark, why don't we?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I remember that? It's so quiet!
ED LARSON
So Katina is the matriarch whale of the Orlando whales. And by 1991 she was one of three left there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay. So there was many whales there, now there's only three. She's the main mama bitch.
ED LARSON
Yes. Katina was captured off the coast of Iceland in October 1978 when she was two or three at the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is also when we got Martina Navratilova.
ED LARSON
Yes. See this is very young for a female orca to be separated from its mother. Female orcas will stay by their mother's side up to 15 years. Some even stay close to their mother after they themselves have had a calf of their own.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is this not how to make its own girl whale boss in a way?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Get away from the traditional gender roles of whales.
ED LARSON
Well actually the lady whales are usually in charge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh okay, Kamala.
ED LARSON
In some cases, 3-4 generations of females swim in close proximity to each other.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
ED LARSON
Orcas usually first mature to give birth at the age of 15. Katina was 9 when SeaWorld made her have her first calf.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Was her trainer Matt Gaetz?
ED LARSON
He was in Florida! In 1984, Katina was impregnated in San Diego by a much larger orca, Winston, who was captured off the coast of Washington in 1970. Winston was purchased by SeaWorld San Diego in 1976 after spending time at a UK amusement park where he got the shitty name Winston of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) Of course my name's big old Winston. I'm ready to fuck. Yeah, you bring her out there, I'll give her a big quick shag.
ED LARSON
Winston himself was rounded up in a notorious mass capture in Penn Cove, Washington.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) Where were you at? Penn Cove, there, guv? Scooped us up, took me to a place where I could fuck all willy nilly. Best night of life.
ED LARSON
Now I know what you're thinking, this isn't gonna turn into the killer whale episode of Some Place Under Neith.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where are the whales?
ED LARSON
But these highly intelligent, emotional animals were trafficked for many years, just stating the facts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
ED LARSON
Katina was then shipped back to Orlando to give birth there because she was pregnant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that is very much a pastime in Florida. Getting pregnant as a child and have birth in-state.
ED LARSON
That's honestly what happened to my family. And that's what she did. September 26th, 1985, Katina gave birth to the first orca ever born in captivity, Kalina.
MARCUS PARKS
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So her name's Katina, the baby's named Kalina.
MARCUS PARKS
Right.
ED LARSON
Correct. I have photographic evidence of me there with my family soon after this happened.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
ED LARSON
As a fellow big baby born in Orlando, my family took me to see baby Shamu to pay respect.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly it feels like a very passive-aggressive 'you're not that big'. Oh he thinks he's the biggest baby.
ED LARSON
Yeah. The birth of Kalina, baby Shamu, was a media sensation even more than my own.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
ED LARSON
Yeah. See Winston-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is all about jealousy.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It really is because you only got one newspaper article and this baby was covered.
ED LARSON
I got articles all across the country! They were talking about me in Chicago, they were talking about me in Alaska!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They shouldn't have been though.
ED LARSON
People were sending sweaters.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It sounds like they were trying to traffic you. You know what I mean? I dare you to traffic this big baby.
ED LARSON
They couldn't find a car seat big enough. Winston was unable to celebrate the birth of his daughter because he died seven months later in San Diego from a heart attack.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's because men are expendable.
ED LARSON
He was 19 when he died.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Damn, dog.
ED LARSON
And remember orcas have a life expectancy of 30-60 years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did he have to go to the Gulf War?
ED LARSON
I think he died before that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
ED LARSON
Baby Shamu brought in millions of visitors. So what happens in show business when you're a hit?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah!
ED LARSON
They put you on tour!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come on, baby! Do the hits!
ED LARSON
Yeah. So in 1990 at four years old, Kalina hit the road. Remember female orcas stay with their mothers for 15 years in the wild.
MARCUS PARKS
So if we're like talking the orcas is actual like-
ED LARSON
Intelligent beings.
MARCUS PARKS
Animals with intelligence. So we're talking like generational trauma with these whales.
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Or dolphins.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And every time they're ripped apart from their families, the mother screams for years.
MARCUS PARKS
Years.
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Jesus.
ED LARSON
It is very upsetting. So they hit the road with baby Kalina. Her first stop was Ohio. She was first to perform at a premature age with orcas she did not know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just take the word orca out and replace it with Lindsay Lohan and it's exactly the same. It's exactly the same story.
ED LARSON
She then did shows in San Diego and in the very tank that her father died. And then finally ended her tour in San Antonio.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, booked and busy.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This is so fucking sad.
ED LARSON
I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's extremely sad.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh my god. You end the two year tour and you end up in San Antonio.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh!
ED LARSON
Yes. And while she was in Texas at six years old, she got pregnant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
ED LARSON
And we all know how hard it is to get an abortion in that state. Her baby daddy was Kotar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kotar!
ED LARSON
Yeah, a smaller orca captured off the coast of Iceland.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Short king!
ED LARSON
He had been shipped around the SeaWorld parks as well. Kotar had a tough time at the parks because of his size. He was often bullied by the other whales, male and female alike.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't let anybody fucking do that to you, Kotar. It's all about the fucking motion of the ocean.
ED LARSON
That's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Most of the time, the fucking female whales just want you to be confident. It's not about you being big, it's about showing up and saying I'm the man to be here to fuck.
ED LARSON
All right. So we got many killer whales in the mix now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
SeaWorld was for lack of a better term killing it and ranking in millions of dollars of profit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they are loving this.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just printing money, nothing but baby whales and everybody loves it.
ED LARSON
Yeah. They started to acquire other orcas to keep up with demand. They often would get orcas from parks that were not doing as well as them. In 1987, Orlando bought a large moody orca from a place called Marineland, Ontario. He was a transient orca, not a resident orca like all the other orcas, that was caught off the coast of Victoria, British Columbia. His name was Kanduke, a big old aggressive boy because his diet consisted of mammals like seals, while Kotar, being from Iceland, grew up eating fish.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they were just hanging out.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The different kinds of guys.
ED LARSON
Trainers were not allowed to be in the water with Kanduke because he was a transient orca and was more dangerous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And Kanduke is the opposite of Marcus on vacation because Marcus on vacation was Can't Duke.
MARCUS PARKS
Ah. It took 2.5 weeks in Australia and it became distressing.
ED LARSON
Really? It took that long.
MARCUS PARKS
It took a long time. I got regular the day before we left.
ED LARSON
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, man. It's called traveling. It's called your belly hurts.
ED LARSON
Don't eat so... Do you eat cheese a lot?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He needs more roughage, I talked with him.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I ate good.
ED LARSON
He did eat good, we ate together.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
All right. Well we'll shake you a bunch if you need next time.
MARCUS PARKS
Thanks.
ED LARSON
Also Kanduke showed signs of aggression and self-harm. He was known to ram his own head into the wall until bleeding.
MARCUS PARKS
Jesus.
ED LARSON
And sometimes when the trainers arrived in the morning, bugs would be swarming around his wounds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now it's just very interesting because like people, Kotar is like oh no.
ED LARSON
This is Kanduke.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is Kanduke, I know. But Kotar is like oh shit, they just brought this big troubled crazy guy in here that I gotta deal with like he's in fucking gen pop in prison.
ED LARSON
Exactly. And then one day in Orlando Kanduke and Kotar got in a big old fight in front of everybody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
ED LARSON
They repeatedly beached themselves on the side out and would scream in anger and frustration.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, that's kind of fun though as people at SeaWorld kind of watching it. But it's not good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I mean do you want to be there that day or not? I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the screaming day?
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well just watching the two whales fight each other is kinda fun.
ED LARSON
Well at the peak of the battle, the little guy Kotar, fresh out of ideas, bit Kanduke on the penis, severely wounding him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what my father told me is that there's no such thing as a fair fight. You just have to do it. You gotta win. If you gotta punch a guy in the dick, you gotta pull out his eyeballs, that's what you gotta do.
ED LARSON
That's what Kotar did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, man. It's fucking short kings, man. Short kings rule.
ED LARSON
And they punished him and sent him back to San Antonio.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Worst thing you could possibly do.
ED LARSON
And that's where he mated with Kalina.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
ED LARSON
And gave birth to their son named Keet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh whoa, are they all from the Palin family? I like that they all hung out together. I mean he just got to go fuck.
ED LARSON
Basically. And Keet stayed in San Antonio and Kalina was finally shipped back to Orlando and reunited with her mother Katina after being separated for almost five years. She was also pregnant again from Kotar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Damn, they need condoms.
ED LARSON
This was less than one year after the birth of Keet. The gestational period for killer whales is usually 17-18 months in the wild. They usually wait five years between calves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But if we've learned anything from Alabama, the best part about it is that fucking is free. You know what I mean? It's easy to do. It's fun to do, it don't cost money to gush inside.
ED LARSON
Well Kalina's second calf, Keto, was born in Orlando. She's around five years old at this point, one third of the age of most killer whale mothers. Keto would grow up to be an angry fucker, just after Tilikum of course. Also SeaWorld wasn't even slowing down the breeding. Kanduke had also impregnated Katina while he was in Orlando.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Damn, dog.
ED LARSON
Now SeaWorld has now created a whole new killer whale. Because remember Katina, a resident fish eater, and Kanduke, a transient mammal eater, gave birth to Katerina.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, that should be like the super whale.
ED LARSON
So it's a new super whale.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, that's cute.
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Either that or its entire brain is completely fucked up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa! We'll see.
ED LARSON
Well SeaWorld is very creative with the whale breeding but not so much in the naming department.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, there's a lot of same names.
MARCUS PARKS
Like K-K-K.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can there be a Steve?
ED LARSON
Yeah, I don't know. There are no Steves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the fucking whale called the Reaper!
ED LARSON
Yeah, this is Sean. Well Katerina was shipped off to Ohio because the baby Shamu business was going well. And then they sent her to San Antonio when she was four years old and then she died from a bacterial pneumonia at the age of 10. Bacterial pneumonia seems to be the trend on how these whales die in captivity. Female orcas in the wild lived to a maximum lifespan of 90 years old. She was 10.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus.
ED LARSON
There were three other SeaWorld owned whales in the mix here. Kenau, a female who gave birth to two baby Shamus in captivity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
ED LARSON
The first died at 11 days old and the other was Kayla. Kenau was sent to Orlando and Kayla was sent to Ohio. Kenau only lasted seven months in Orlando and died at the age of 17, also from bacterial pneumonia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus Christ.
ED LARSON
Meanwhile in Florida, the mammal-eating Kanduke continued to impregnate other fish-eating Icelandic killer whales.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is what I do, friend. Okay? I kill. I fuck. Kanduke can do.
ED LARSON
Gudrun, a female, was captured from the same time as Kenau off the coast of Iceland.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh I know a Gudrun.
ED LARSON
You do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You do?
MARCUS PARKS
It's an Icelandic name.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow!
ED LARSON
But first she was shipped to perform in the Netherlands before being purchased by SeaWorld Orlando. Gudrun gave birth to Taima and Nyar a couple of years apart. Gudrun was a better mother to the first.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a judgment call.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I think that you're a bastard for doing that because I think all mothers are blessed.
ED LARSON
Well by the mid 90s, SeaWorld was having a hard time keeping up with the demand for their shows. It was harder to capture killer whales in the wild, Canada, Iceland, and Washington state outlawed the capturing of the whales, as we said. So they were forced to breed in captivity or just buy whales from other parks. There were not many options left. Kanduke dies-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Damn, not the cum supplier!
ED LARSON
Yeah. Kotar was in Texas. So SeaWorld Orlando needed to fix this problem. Where were they going to hunt for a new stud? They only had two options. Keiko, owned by Mexico City Amusement Park-
MARCUS PARKS
Keiko.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And his fucking dick was fucking... He's ready to fuck whenever, dude. He's hanging there, he's camera ready, man. He's ready to fuck now, man! I'm ready to fuck!
ED LARSON
Actually Keiko was very depressed and he had a bent dorsal fin and he was covered in lesions.
MARCUS PARKS
Ugh.
ED LARSON
Unhealthy at best.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like it's, yeah, I mean honestly especially these days the bar is so low for men.
ED LARSON
Keiko though went on to be the most famous orca in history, better known as Willy from Free Willy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No shit!
MARCUS PARKS
It's incredible.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why I got yelled at down the street whenever I made anything above a slow walk where people would go like 'hey, Free Willy!' everywhere I went?
ED LARSON
Yeah, that was a couple of years that we all dealt with that if you were fat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I remember that. I remember that.
ED LARSON
Well I'm gonna sidetrack us for two seconds here just to talk about Keiko because this story is insane as well. Free Willy, if you remember, was a huge hit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
People loved Free Willy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
$153 million off a $20 million budget. It was about a boy who falls in love with an orca named Willy and is determined to free him. It's a nice movie, Michael Madsen's in it and he's even nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's nice in that movie.
ED LARSON
He's very nice in that movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's his only movie where he plays like a nice person.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He has to be nice.
ED LARSON
Yes, yeah. He's a single father, I believe. Spoiler alert, they free Willy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
ED LARSON
Yeah. Well the fucking poster is the spoiler to the end of the movie so I don't feel that bad. Anyway, right before the credits roll in Free Willy, it says 'you can help save whales of the world by calling 1-800-4-WHALES'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you call it and you're like hey, are you single? Are you a transient whale looking for a warm porthole?
ED LARSON
Well I called it earlier today and it was just a message of a nice old man telling you to go to the website keiko.com and leave a message if you feel like it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's an old way of using the internet. But yes.
ED LARSON
Everyone of course after they saw the movie and that was like hey, that's a great idea. How about we free Keiko? He's the star of the goddamn movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dude. So you mean to tell me he gets to just be the guy inside, he gets to act like a free whale and he's definitely not a free whale because he's on camera doing cues?
ED LARSON
Yeah. So they're like let's free his fucking ass. So 1-800-4-WHALES got 300,000 calls to free Keiko. And then that was easier said than done. Remember Keiko is super sick. He's in this crappy Mexico City aquarium. It just was. His tank wasn't even filled with salt water, it was filled with fresh water and chlorine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus Christ.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh god.
ED LARSON
So they couldn't even grab... It's not like you can just grab them and ship them back to Iceland and expect everything to be fine and dandy
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, he'd get torn apart by the other whales or just die immediately just from the environment.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And he also has no idea how to be an orca. He needs to learn how to do whale shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Like talk and eat. Right now he's eating dead fish out of people's hands. He doesn't know how to hunt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean that's also the reason why they changed the way they do that. Now we know that they try to feed it in a way that kind of stimulates their brains or whatever.
ED LARSON
Right now I mean still they're just giving them dead frozen fish.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But like we saw that one when we went to Seatime in in Australia, in Sydney where they have the dugong and they give it like its special leaves inside of the park.
ED LARSON
Well that was a nice aquarium.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. We're talking SeaWorld.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And dugong, he was one of the three dugongs in captivity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He couldn't do back.
ED LARSON
Because he can't go back. Much like Keiko. He's out there, they built him this new gorgeous facility.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they moved him out, they didn't take him out, right?
ED LARSON
Well before they moved him out, they had to build him a new facility in Oregon and that took a year and a lot of money and they were trying to raise money. So Warner Brothers chipped in, thank god, because they made so much money off of the fucking movie and then made three other movies. And another eccentric millionaire, Craig McCaw, helped cover the rest of the cost.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As long as there can be a little hole I could stick my dick in.
ED LARSON
Dude, this guy, he had cellphone money and he was just giving $300,000 a month to Keiko.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dude, that's the type of insanity these people need. These whales need somebody who's just gonna give them money.
ED LARSON
Yeah. So the facility is still there, it's gorgeous and it simulated the ocean and they began to release fish in there to teach him how to hunt. When they thought he was ready, they shipped them back to Iceland on a C-17, the army fucking covered it.
MARCUS PARKS
What did they do? Just fucking throw buckets of water throughout or what?
ED LARSON
He's in a giant concrete like-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like a tube.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, tube. Yeah, tube. Sedated, I'd imagine.
ED LARSON
Yeah, I imagine. And when they shipped him back to Iceland-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Should have used the indica.
ED LARSON
They still couldn't get him free just yet because they didn't know what would happen. So they put him in this bay and they had a giant netted area that was like a couple of acres wide. And then he kind of hung out in there and he caught some fish and he started to talk to some other orcas. And eventually they let him go and see how it do. He couldn't socialize with the other orcas that well but he was very interested in them. So he followed a pod of orcas all the way from Iceland to Norway. Once he got there, the other orcas were like you're weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're fucked up.
ED LARSON
Like why do you like these humans so much? Because the humans are like watching this all go down.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they're like huh?
ED LARSON
Make sure that their millions of dollars are like going towards something positive here.
MARCUS PARKS
And he keeps going back to them because that's where fish come from.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course!
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And he likes them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Those are my buddies, yeah.
ED LARSON
And the other orcas are like what the fuck are you doing? Are you a spy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. Seriously, are you Melania?
ED LARSON
And so eventually he doesn't make any friends and he he lives a very lonely existence for a couple of years and dies of bacterial pneumonia.
MARCUS PARKS
My god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus Christ.
ED LARSON
So but he technically was released into the wild and did live for a certain amount of time free. He had no friends but he did get to live free again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's the ultimate freedom.
MARCUS PARKS
No friends.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No friends. No nothing.
MARCUS PARKS
No friends, no attachments.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely nothing.
MARCUS PARKS
Vagrancy, my friend.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, full total floating.
ED LARSON
So there's only one other option to stud for Orlando now. It was an 11 year old male from a place named Sealand of the Pacific. His name was Tilikum and he just got done killing his first victim, Keltie Lee Byrne. And that's where we'll pick up next week-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
ED LARSON
In the Horrors of SeaWorld part two.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus Christ, that is very funny. You just did it like literally Tilikum is a serial killer. He is the meanest of the whales.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the longest body count of any purposeful animal besides elephants. Elephants kill the most trainers in captivity.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But not one elephant has killed the most.
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I mean? But it's kind of interesting.
ED LARSON
Yeah. So Tilikum has killed two other people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he set the context like it was a serial killer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And that's where we'll pick back up!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like he did all, he did his background.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did a psychological makeup. It is a true crime episode.
MARCUS PARKS
It is. But with a whale. With a dolphin!
ED LARSON
That's the thing!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good work.
MARCUS PARKS
Way to go, buddy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Really good work. Tricked them. Tricked the audience.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And if you want to see Eddie's wonderful killer whale sweater-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh you didn't even mention the fact that he's sweating balls in here for no fucking reason.
MARCUS PARKS
No reason.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But if you wanna go see it, it's on the Patreon.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Patreon.com/lastpodcastontheleft is where you can go to watch video episodes. You can follow us at TikTok and Instagram @LPontheleft. You can also check out our streams at twitch. tv/LPNTV and catch all those streams later on after the fact on YouTube. You can come see us on tour. We got shows coming up in Boston, in London, in Reykjavik, in Los Angeles and New York City. And Chicago, we got Side Stories tickets for sale.
ED LARSON
Next week!
MARCUS PARKS
Next week.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Next week.
MARCUS PARKS
So come on out for that.
ED LARSON
The Park West Theater. I can't wait. That place is fucking beautiful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't wait to be there. I can't wait to do it.
ED LARSON
I can't wait to get sick on food afterwards with you too, buddy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna get really gross. Yeah, yeah. I wanna get some Italian beef.
ED LARSON
I wanna get some backstage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And then after the show I wanna go out and get sick again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I wanna get real sick.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Just remember we got the show the next night.
ED LARSON
Yeah, I'll shit it out. I have the opposite problem, too much dookie.l
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no, it's always there, friend.
MARCUS PARKS
I got a real shy rectum.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a shy rectum.
ED LARSON
Mine loves friends!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not like Tilikum.
ED LARSON
No, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. So hail Satan, everyone.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
ED LARSON
Hail Kalina.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, poor Kalina.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure. Poor Kalina.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She never stood a chance. She was in that video with James Dean.