Tilikum

Didn't, like, a trainer get killed by-

A famous orca, um, named Tilikum-

Oh

[laughs]

[laughs]

... uh, whales s- uh, orcas

Tilikum did?

Yeah.

And a trainer named Dawn Brancheau is performing with one of the park's many orcas, or Shamu whales.

This whale's name is Tilikum, and Dawn will be the third person whose death is attributed to Tilikum.

This is the story of Tilikum, the killer whale who killed three people before SeaWorld finally stopped letting trainers get in the water with killer whales.

Oh, my God.

The icy.

I'm the deep sea.

So this is-

Where Tilikum belongs.

I definitely watched it when I was a kid, but Blackfish is the kind of darker version that really sticks out in my mind.

And Tilikum, The Whale, like, again, in terms of storytelling, I couldn't necessarily recall the... you know, a lot of the sort of more factual details necessarily of what SeaWorld were doing, but I empathize so much with that whale and like the distress and the kind of psychological damage done to that animal in a way that I really, like I can feel emotionally like what I felt whilst watching that film.

And it's a pretty dark film actually.

Have you seen it recently?

I absolutely can't.

Yeah.

So, like, as you're talking about Tilikum and those things, like, it just sticks with me for such a long time.

And I think that's the case for a lot of people.

Currently my most listened to episode apart from the American Horror Story ones.

It's the one about Tilikum and Blackfish in SeaWorld.

So, you know, I must have obviously done something right there.

But like I said, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

A real animal.

Yeah, who did you guys settle on? Was it Tilikum, the orca?

I did Tilikum because it's the-

Yeah

... only orca who's ever killed a person, so I think 100 years from now, that sticks, you know?

The W- SeaWorld, yeah.

So that's a really sort of similar story in that I think the orca is called Tilikum, but don't-

Yeah

... you know, don't at me if I'm wrong.

Yeah [laughs]

... um, so that whale's actual name in real life was Tilikum.

Yeah.

He lived in a, in that tank at SeaWorld-