Story about living spaceships?

[sherbang]

Can anyone help me remember a story?

It was about living spaceships.  The spaceships were like hollowed-out space whales.  The "space whales" were captured and forced to serve as spaceships.  I think the story revolved around one of them getting free somehow.  I can't remember if it was alone, or with help, but I think there was still a person inside along for the ride.

It was podcasted at least a year ago, but probably a few years ago.

I haven't had much luck searching for it.  If anyone can help me identify it, I want to share it with a friend, I'd appreciate it.

[Fenrix]

The first ones that come to mind for me are the Boojum stories over on Drabblecast.

[sherbang]

That's the one I was looking for.  Thanks Fenrix!

[TRJ]

I can't help you with that podcast.  But Anne McCaffrey has a series of novels about living spaceships of a different sort.  The spaceships are actually cyborgs.  The idea is that in the womb babies are identified with severe birth defects, so severe they would die without extensive technological enhancement.  A space agency pays the expense of saving their lives and enclosing them in a life support system.  They are trained to be the brains of a special kind of FTL spaceship called a brainship.  Each brainship has a crew of 2, the brain, which is one of the former students encased in a cylindrical shaped life support system, who is interfaced the spaceship, which she/he senses and controls as his/her body, and the brawn, a graduate of the brawn accademy and selected by the brain, which is the senior partner, to serve as the mobile partner.  The 2 are employees of the space agency and are paid for their services, with the brain payed at a higher rate.  Once the brain has earned enough to pay back for the cost of both the medical treatment and the spaceship itself, the brainship becomes a free ship having no further obligation to the space agency.  "The Ship Who Sang", published in 1969 was the 1st in the series I read.

[SomebodyElse]

The novella Binti also features living starships bred from fish.