470: What Happened to Karen Silkwood? The Lost Tapes

Summary

True Crime Obsessed – Episode 470: What Happened to Karen Silkwood? The Lost Tapes

Release Date: November 18, 2025
Hosts: Jillian Petavelli & Patrick Hines

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Main Theme

This episode covers Hulu’s documentary "What Happened to Karen Silkwood? The Lost Tapes," which delves into the mysterious death of Karen Silkwood: a whistleblower at the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant in 1970s Oklahoma. The hosts recap the investigation’s findings, unpack Silkwood’s legacy as a whistleblower, explore the ongoing conspiracy theories about her death, and weave in their trademark humor and empathy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background: Who was Karen Silkwood?

• Karen Silkwood was a lab tech and safety inspector at the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant.
• She was "super smart," the only girl in her high school chemistry class, and passionate about science.
  [08:08 Jillian]: "She made excellent grades in school... she was the only girl in her chemistry class, which was kind of, back then, was unusual."
• A single mother of three who sacrificed for her family and eventually took a dangerous job for financial security.

2. The Silkwood Story in Pop Culture

• The 1983 film "Silkwood" was based on her life, starring Meryl Streep, Cher (won Golden Globe), and Kurt Russell. [02:26 Patrick]: "It's a very famous movie called Silkwood... nominated for five Oscars."
• Her son Michael was so young when she died, he associates her more with Streep’s portrayal than his own memories.
  [03:41 Michael]: "...it’s not always her face that he sees. Instead, it's Meryl Streep."

3. Kerr-McGee Plant: Danger Unveiled

• The plant aimed to make fuel rods for a new type of nuclear reactor, processing uranium and plutonium—with notoriously unsafe practices.
• Staff contamination was widespread and downplayed. [12:02 Steve]: "Getting contaminated at the Kerr McGee plant was cost of doing business."
• Workers received minimal training, and "cancer was never mentioned."
  [15:09 Steve]: "Nowhere in the training material was the word cancer ever used."

4. Whistleblowing & Union Support

• Karen noticed severe safety violations — including breached glove boxes exposing workers to plutonium.
• She met with union leaders in DC (1974), who urged her to collect evidence before taking on Kerr-McGee.
• Became an undercover investigator at personal risk. [32:05 Steve]: "She volunteered for it right off the bat...we can't take on somebody like Kerr McGee without evidence."
• Evidence included falsified reports and ignored safety protocols.

5. Target on Her Back

• Silkwood’s persistent complaints shifted her from "nuisance" to an existential threat to the company (potential plant shutdown, legal liability). [27:52 Jillian]: "...when she went from being a nuisance... to being somebody who was going to actually cost some money...that was when Michael is saying she had a target on her butt."
• She suffered repeated plutonium contamination — eventually even at home.

6. Extraordinary Contamination & Sabotage

• Plant officials accused Karen of contaminating herself—an implausible claim.
• Evidence showed her test kits were deliberately spiked with plutonium from an area she couldn’t access. [34:17 Steve]: "Someone spiked the kits...the plutonium came from an area of the plant she had no access to."

7. The Night of Her Death

• On November 13, 1974, Silkwood was en route to meet a New York Times reporter to share her evidence.
  • She was last seen leaving a union meeting, carrying a crucial folder of documents.
  • She died in a car crash on a rural highway; folder/evidence vanished from scene.
• Official narrative: she fell asleep at the wheel under the influence of sedatives. [46:58 Patrick/Jillian]: "...Oklahoma State Highway Patrol maintains [from tire tracks] that...Karen didn't appear to turn the steering wheel, meaning she was asleep or 'in a state of stupor.'"
• Eyewitnesses claimed she was “alert” at the diner shortly before the crash.

8. Conspiracy, Cover-Up & Missing Evidence

• The union’s crash expert, A.O. Pipkin (who later investigated Princess Diana’s crash), found evidence suggesting Karen was run off the road:
  [49:23 Steve]: "Another vehicle may have hit the car in the rear being the thing that drove Karen's car off the road."
• Folder with evidence never recovered, highly suspicious given its significance.

9. New Evidence & The Lost Tapes

• Journalists Bob and Mike, dedicated Silkwood case investigators for five decades, obtain two significant sets of audio tapes:
  1. Trooper Larry’s Recordings: Allegations that off-duty cops, employed by the plant, tailed and forced Silkwood off the road.
     [53:59 Steve]: "They bumped her, knocked her off the road... she runs off the road and hits this big concrete abutment, kills her instantly."
  2. Private Investigator’s Tapes: Reveal law enforcement's reluctance to discuss surveillance, referencing concerns for their own safety. [57:24 Patrick]: "...the Oklahoma Police Department Intelligence Unit, she's like, look, on the tape she says, 'I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want any trouble. And I don’t want any trouble with my car or anything else.'"
• However, there is no “smoking gun.” The tapes add weight to conspiracy theories but aren’t conclusive.

10. Bigger Secret: Nuclear Proliferation

• Silkwood uncovered that 40–60 pounds of plutonium—enough for multiple bombs—was missing from the plant. [51:11 Michael]: "The plant was missing anywhere from 40 to 60 pounds of plutonium. Enough to make multiple bombs."
• If true, this implicated the U.S. in illegal nuclear proliferation.

11. Aftermath & Legacy

• The plant closed in 1975; Silkwood’s family settled a negligence lawsuit for $1M+ (roughly $6.6M today).
• Streets in Oklahoma still bear the names of Kerr and McGee, despite the scandal.
• The mystery endures: official narrative blames Silkwood, but her family (and many investigators) are convinced she was murdered.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Plant’s Attitude:
  [12:02 Steve]: "Getting contaminated at the Kerr McGee plant was cost of doing business."

• On Whistleblowing Danger:
  [32:07 Jillian]: "...it cannot be understated how dangerous this is. Like, this is so dangerous."

• On Karen’s Contamination:
  [33:04 Patrick]: "She was first contaminated in July 1974. And she would continue to test positive...so bad that the plant is now testing her apartment."

• On the Missing Evidence:
  [48:26 Patrick]: "The biggest thing, the folder with all of the evidence is missing forever and ever missing. It has never been recovered."

• On the Official Narrative:
  [52:52 Jillian]: "The official accepted legal narrative is that she fell asleep at the wheel, like, despite the evidence..."

• On the Real Stakes:
  [51:48 Jillian]: "...if real 40 to 60 pounds of plutonium is missing, that means that the United States was involved in nuclear proliferation, and Karen Silkwood was about to break that story to the New York Times."

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Topic | Timestamp | |---------|-------|-----------| | Opening & Mood | "This one made me sad." | 00:00–00:10 | | Silkwood in Pop Culture | Movie & Meryl Streep | 02:26–03:58 | | Karen’s Background | Early intelligence, motivations | 08:08–09:26 | | Inside Kerr-McGee | Safety failures & whistleblowing | 10:00–16:00 | | The Silkwood Shower | Harsh decontamination process | 20:44–22:29 | | Plutonium Contamination | Sabotage, targeting Karen | 33:04–34:55 | | Lead-up to Death | Karen’s final days, planned NYT meeting | 43:40–47:00 | | Crash & Coverup | Official story, folder disappears | 47:09–49:00 | | The Plant’s Big Secret | Missing plutonium, bigger government secret | 51:11–52:14 | | The Lost Tapes | New evidence, private investigator’s haul | 53:05–57:24 | | Legacy & Unanswered Questions | Ongoing mystery, impact | 62:25–end |

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Flow, Tone & Style

• Tone: The conversation is equal parts serious, empathetic, and laced with the hosts’ signature dark humor.
• Language: Conversational and irreverent, breaking up heavy topics with jokes, pop culture references, and side tangents (often about Meryl Streep, 80s movies, or hair envy).
• Sympathy: Deep empathy for Karen, her family, and whistleblowers in general—a recurring point about the personal costs of standing up to powerful interests.

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• The case is still mired in mystery, injustice, and speculation despite decades of investigation and even with "the lost tapes" and artifacts like the bumper.
• The hosts voice outrage at the disregard for worker safety and the possibility of a massive coverup involving both corporate and government interests.
• The episode underscores Karen Silkwood’s bravery and legacy, emphasizing both her personal tragedy and the unresolved dangers raised by her case.
• The story sits unresolved: the folder never found, the missing plutonium still unaccounted for, and justice never served. [65:29 Patrick]: "Karen Silkwood was murdered. Absolutely. She knew too much."

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For listeners new to the case, this episode provides a thorough, witty, and heartfelt summary—ensuring you come away both informed and emotionally invested in the Silkwood saga.

Transcript

[Jillian Petavelli]

Girl, this one made me sad.

[Patrick Hines]

Well, yeah, it's really awful.

[Jillian Petavelli]

As though, like, the rest of them haven't made me sad, but like, for some reason, like, I was sad watching this both times I watched it.

[Patrick Hines]

The whole thing sucks.

[Jillian Petavelli]

It's really awful.

[Patrick Hines]

It stinks to high heaven.

[Jillian Petavelli]

It stinks to high heaven. Hi. Jillian Petavelli.

[Patrick Hines]

Hello. Patrick Hines.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh, girl, what have we got to talk about? The YouTube.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah, we have a YouTube channel. So if you're watching this on YouTube, you're like, duh. I know.

[Michael Silkwood]

Hi.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

Hi.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And by the way, it took us about six months to hit 100 subscribers. It took us about another month to hit 150,000. It's wild. We love you, YouTube. We see you. We're so happy that you're here. We're so happy to be doing this for you on the YouTube. Tell them about the diski.

[Patrick Hines]

We have a Discord channel, I think it's called, or a Discord Place to Party.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

That has channels in it. So we're talking about, like, the episodes and we're talking about. Oh, I forgot to check in today. I always check in and say, like, what we're recording. I forgot to do that today.

[Jillian Petavelli]

It's never too late.

[Patrick Hines]

I know, but we're like sharing animal pictures and we're talking about music and we're talking about true crime stuff that we are interested in. And then we're talking about, like, a lot of other stuff that's also. There's also a channel where you can submit questions for us for, like, upcoming AMAs. It's.

[Jillian Petavelli]

We love them. Make them interesting. I want. I want to know the weird stuff you want to know? Not too weird, but like, you know, what are we talking about today?

[Patrick Hines]

Okay, this is what happened to Karen Silkwood. The lost tapes. It's on Hulu.

[Michael Silkwood]

A young mother found dead along a dark, deserted highway.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

I don't have any memories of us together.

[Michael Silkwood]

My heart knows there's a hole there. Fifty years later, her family is still wondering if someone else was involved.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

She called and said, they're trying to kill me. It wasn't an accident.

[Michael Silkwood]

A mystery so riveting it inspired an Oscar nominated film.

[Patrick Hines]

They're trying to kill me.

[Jillian Petavelli]

They want me to stop what I'm doing.

[Michael Silkwood]

Inside the renewed investigation into Karen Silkwood's death.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

They run her off the road. This poor girl was killed. She was murdered.

[Patrick Hines]

I tell you, Karen, you better get.

[Michael Silkwood]

The fuck out of there.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Shut them down before I go.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

We believe that she brushed up against one of the deepest, darkest secrets Held by the United States.

[Michael Silkwood]

The new clues.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

Here they are.

[Michael Silkwood]

They are from never before heard audio tapes.

[Patrick Hines]

I don't want any trouble on my job and I don't want any trouble with my car or anything else.

[Jillian Petavelli]

We open with a gentleman named Mike Meadows. He is. Now here's the thing. Silkwood is like a known story.

[Patrick Hines]

It's a very famous movie called Silkwood.

[Jillian Petavelli]

1983.

[Patrick Hines]

1983, let me tell you. The star studded.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, Cher. Cher won the Golden Globe. Directed by Mike Nichols, who also directed the Birdcage, by the way.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh, my God.

[Patrick Hines]

Written by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen. Nora Ephron. Like When I Met Sally. My Blue Heaven.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Of course.

[Patrick Hines]

Sleepless in Seattle.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Wait, you didn't mention David Strathairon.

[Patrick Hines]

Who I had everything.

[Jillian Petavelli]

He is in. He's that guy from Everything Everything. Biggest crush in the world. He's got floppy hair for I love him. He was in River Wild with Meryl Streep.

[Patrick Hines]

He's in Everything. He was in League of Their Own. He's in Everything.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah, he was in Everything Everything.

[Patrick Hines]

This was nominated for five Oscars.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Whoa.

[Patrick Hines]

Best Director, Actress, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, Film editing.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Wow.

[Patrick Hines]

They were nominated. So this is like a huge story.

[Jillian Petavelli]

You ever see the movie? Because I never did.

[Patrick Hines]

No. By all accounts, it's like an incredibly hard watch because the story is so awful.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And the Silkwood shower, which I think I have seen that full scene. It's brutal.

[Patrick Hines]

It's in the. What do they call it? Like the pop culture vernacular, you know. But it's a very famous moment in time because the is like so important.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Well, this documentary opens with a guy named Michael Meadows. He's Karen's son. He was just saying that he was so young, like this. This kills me when kids, like adult children of people who died a long time ago say this.

[Michael Silkwood]

Michael was just five years old when his mom died. So young that when he closes his eyes to remember her, it's not always her face that he sees. Instead, it's Meryl Streep. Streep played Karen Silkwood in the Oscar nominated 1983 film.

[Jillian Petavelli]

He sees Meryl Streep playing her. Like, does Meryl Streep send him a Christmas card every year?

[Patrick Hines]

Probably not.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Probably she would if she knew. She seems to be.

[Patrick Hines]

Maybe she's watched this, but she's so, you know.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah, she's Meryl Streep.

[Patrick Hines]

She's Meryl Streep. Do you know what I mean? We're here with two investigative journalists Mike.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And Bob, they love their jobs.

[Patrick Hines]

They love their jobs. They love each other. They are working with Michael to get answers. They've been working on this case for 50 years, and they just refuse to.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Accept the official narrative of what happened to Karen. Which is total bullshit.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah, the narrative is bullshit.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah, yeah. No, what they're doing is great, right? Them not accepting it. Opposite of whatever total bullshit is.

[Patrick Hines]

And they claim they have all this new evidence because they. They say that there are tapes of law enforcement confirming that Karen Silkwood was under surveillance. That'll make sense in two seconds.

[Jillian Petavelli]

One of those things is true. They have tapes and there's new evidence. We'll see.

[Patrick Hines]

We'll see. See. Aaron Katerski is here. He's the reporter and host of the stock.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

And Mike and Bob met in radio news over 50 years ago. Aaron, our host, literally says. My notes say I'm supposed to ask you guys if you know each other, but that seems very obvious.

[Jillian Petavelli]

They're basically hold. Because they're interviewed together. These are two men that are so comfortable with each other.

[Patrick Hines]

They're, like, in awe of what the other one does. They just have, like. They're in love. They're like. It's very, very sweet. Oh, that's insulting.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I'm in awe of what you do. Someday we'll get interviewed together again, and we'll be like, my.

[Patrick Hines]

And the person will be like, do.

[Jillian Petavelli]

You guys know each other?

[Patrick Hines]

You guys know each other, right?

[Jillian Petavelli]

Should I tell you about that time I went down on the submersible? That happened to us once.

[Patrick Hines]

I love that. He literally says, my notes say I'm supposed to ask.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And they kept it in just for clarity's sake. We did an interview once, a very long time ago, and the guy who was interviewing us had just interviewed a gu who had gone on the submersible. And that was like six months before the whole thing went to shit.

[Patrick Hines]

I know.

[Jillian Petavelli]

That was wild.

[Patrick Hines]

That was crazy. So Rosemary and Linda are here. They're Karen's sisters.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes.

[Patrick Hines]

And they say that Karen knew she was being targeted and that Karen knew they were trying to kill her. If you don't know, Karen Silkwood is maybe. Is one of the most famous whistleblowers of all time. So if you're brand new to this case, they kind of jump in, assuming that you know a lot about it. Yeah, but we'll get into that in a second.

[Jillian Petavelli]

The sisters also give us a bit of background on Karen. Like, she loved people never wanted her anybody. She loved music. She loved Janis Joplin.

[Patrick Hines]

And Bonnie, they're playing some of her Janis Joplin records.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh, my God. Whenever that happens, I'm like, how'd they get the rights to that?

[Patrick Hines]

I know for two seconds and like, fair use and lighten up. Estate of Janis Joplin.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Couldn't agree more. Janis Joplin is the kind that, like, if she were still alive today, I would totally go to a concert.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah, she wouldn't give a shit. Also, she would not. If her music is in a story that's really important. It needs to. You know what I mean? She would be like, hold on.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes. No. You know what?

[Patrick Hines]

Give me those 33 cents.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Totally. No, not Janis. Not my Janis Joplin.

[Patrick Hines]

I doubt it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I can name one song by Janis Joplin, can I? That's all I know.

[Patrick Hines]

The Piece of my heart. Yeah.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah, that's it.

[Patrick Hines]

Travel down the road.

[Jillian Petavelli]

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[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. It's rich, it's savory, it's slow simmered.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes.

[Patrick Hines]

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[Jillian Petavelli]

Unless she. In which case, we hope she uses our code. The thing is, it has up to 19 grams of protein per serving. That's why I've been drinking it a, because it's delicious and filling. But also, like, I'm really trying to up my protein. It keeps you full between meals and can help curb cravings.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. So you could have like a quick protein packed snack in the morning or you can like, I don't know, that like 3 o' clock slump where you're like, oh, my God, I have two more calls.

[Jillian Petavelli]

What do you mean it's only two hours till bedtime?

[Patrick Hines]

Exactly. Also my favorite part. You can just like instantly upgrade your meal. You can add it to rice, to soups or sauces for richer flavor and extra protein.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Anything you put water in, you can put this Kettle and Fire in.

[Patrick Hines]

Exactly.

[Jillian Petavelli]

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[Patrick Hines]

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[Jillian Petavelli]

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[Patrick Hines]

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[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes.

[Patrick Hines]

Tell your grandma we said hi.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Tell her we said hey. And we love her broth.

[Patrick Hines]

Only if she uses kettle bars.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Exactly.

[Patrick Hines]

It's the fine print. So, yeah. Karen Silkwood, super smart. She studied really hard. She, quote, made excellent grades in school. She was the only girl in her chemistry class, which was kind of back then, was unusual. Girls didn't take chemistry class. You were going to be a housewife.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And she, like, fought her way into a chemistry class and was amazing at it. And, like, ultimately, they tell us this later, but, like, she really wanted to use her chemistry knowledge in the world. Like, she wanted to do that as a job. And that's kind of how we end up where we end up.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. So Karen went to college on a scholarship, and she ended up dropping out because she got married and had three kids. And then she got divorced and moved to Oklahoma. And this is sort of where the story begins.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. So Michael is her son. He's got two siblings that we never meet, but he was three and a half when they moved to Oklahoma. And, like, once again, he has almost, like, no memory. Like, all of this happened before he was forming real memories.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I used to think about that every time you and I would get on a plane when Daisy was, like, a baby. I'm like, if this plane goes down, she will not remember me.

[Patrick Hines]

I think she will.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Well, now she will, but, like. But that's the part of this story that's really hard for me. I was saying to you before we started, like, this one was really hard for me for some reason. Maybe that's what it's rooted in is the fact that this poor man has no memories of his mom, but yet somehow his mom's story is iconic. Like, it's so famous.

[Patrick Hines]

It is. It's very famous. And, like, when this movie came out, as per my research, it was a big deal. It, like, it people. It really, like, threw people off because they're like, wait, this was happening, like, last year?

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

Like, this was happening under everyone's noses.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Well, because what I didn't know is that this story we learn is so much bigger than just the contamination that we all know. But, I mean, it's a global. So she found out shit that would have affected the entire world.

[Patrick Hines]

And also, she just kept, like, tugging at the string to see what would unravel. Like, I don't think she knew it was going to be that big. But she just kept asking questions.

[Jillian Petavelli]

But she knew she was going to die.

[Patrick Hines]

Right.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Because. And we'll get there in a minute. But, like, Karen gets to the point where, like, she's so contaminated by the plutonium, she's working with that. Like, the reporters say to us at one point, like, this was what she wanted to do before she. She was, like, in her 30s.

[Patrick Hines]

It's awful. So she's in Oklahoma, and Karen gets a job at the Kerr McGee Plutonium Production Plant. And she worked her way up to this, like, very lucrative position of lab tech.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. And so, like, we learn about this plant, we see the plant. It's still in this town today, but it's just like a band. It's like terror. It's like where the high school kids would go at night to scare each other, it feels like.

[Michael Silkwood]

And we Learned this Kerr McGee facility once represented the future of American energy independence. This was the 1970s. Nuclear energy was going from wartime to something toward peacetime. But Karen Silkwood said what went on in this facility was not safe.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Nuclear energy was, like, the way of the future at the time that Karen was working at this plant.

[Patrick Hines]

And Karen is, like, cool. However, this facility is not safe. Almost immediately, she knew that this was not fully on the up and up.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. And so Mike and Bob, again, they've been on this story for 50 years, and they're sort of giving us their background as to, like, why they're like a dog with a bone with this particular story.

[Patrick Hines]

And it was Watergate. It was specifically the movie all the President's Men.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. And Woodward and Bernstein. Like, and if you don't know who they are, they were the investigative journalists, I think, for the Washington Post, like, who uncovered Deep Throat. Like, that was, like, the golden age age of investigative journalism. There's a lot of that still happening today.

[Patrick Hines]

That movie is excellent, by the way. It will make you want to be a journalist for five minutes. It'll make you want to do what they did.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are some podcasts I've listened to that make me want to be, like, an investigator. Like, there is something so beautiful about being that person who's awake at 4 in the morning, like, because they did it. Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

They were in the parking lot. They were making. They were knocking on doors at 2 in the morning, like they were doing it. And because it's all true, it makes you be like, oh, my God, what am I doing? Right. Wasting my life.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Well, and that's what Mike and Bob wanted to be in, like, this Was their story like they were there from the beginning.

[Patrick Hines]

So they say the plant from the beginning was not very well run.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

And as time went along, it got worse. They fell behind production schedules. More and more people were getting contaminated. Getting contaminated at the Kerr McGee plant was cost of doing business.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. Getting contaminated at the Kerr McGee plant was the cost of doing business. Like. And Karen, because of her knowledge, because she like took chemistry in 11th grade and cared about science, she will understand what a lot of people who worked at that plant didn't understand. Because a lot of them were not very well educated. A lot of them were very young. But Karen knew the implications of working with these kinds of chemicals in a way that other people she worked with did not.

[Patrick Hines]

And the plant wasn't being honest about it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Exactly. Yeah. And it was like a super high paying job. So people, that was what they cared about.

[Patrick Hines]

So we meet Steve, and Steve knew Karen Silkwood. He's here with us today. He worked for the labor union that represented Karen and some other employees.

[Jillian Petavelli]

He worked for the oil, Chemical and Atomic workers union, which I said, woof.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Atomic workers.

[Patrick Hines]

Crazy.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Do we still have those?

[Patrick Hines]

That's like what Homer Simpson did, right?

[Jillian Petavelli]

He was an atomic worker.

[Patrick Hines]

He like worked at the plant.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah, I guess so.

[Patrick Hines]

The Springfield Power Plant. Right.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh God. Be safe, everybody. If that's your job, please be safe.

[Patrick Hines]

Dental plan.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Okay.

[Patrick Hines]

He's the one who recorded Karen.

[Jillian Petavelli]

That's what Homer Simpson did, I think.

[Patrick Hines]

Anyway, we hear Karen on the tapes explaining how bad this place was. In the laboratory we've got 18 and 19 year old boys, you know, 20 and 20 anymore. I mean, and they don't.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

They didn't have the schooling, so they don't understand what radiation is.

[Patrick Hines]

They would hire young kids who don't know what radiation even is, they don't know to ask questions. They didn't know that they should be asking questions, let alone what to be asking.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

And the plant wasn't telling anybody anything. So they were just like, I have this really great job that's kind of at the forefront of this really amazing thing in the world. And why would I ask a question?

[Jillian Petavelli]

And you'd be lucky to work here. Yeah. We learned that Karen started at the plant in 1972. And the plant was originally designed to, quote, make the fuel rods that power a new kind of nuclear reactor.

[Patrick Hines]

A nuclear reactor. Sounds really scary.

[Jillian Petavelli]

It really does. That means that they were processing uranium and plutonium. And I said, I don't know much, but that doesn't sound good.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. So here's the thing about plutonium, it's one of the most radioactive substances on Earth.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes. It has a half life of 24,000 years. I don't know what that means.

[Patrick Hines]

Half life is, like, when it starts to decrease when it's at, like, it's 50% potency.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh. So I hit that, like, 15 years ago.

[Patrick Hines]

But then this is when it starts to. Like when you're kind of at the other side of.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. It's still not good, though. Even if you're on the other side of that half life, I still want nothing to do with it.

[Patrick Hines]

24,000 years means that none of us are going to hear. It's not relevant to us because it's still going to be very potent for generations and generations.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And when you hear that, all you can hear is, like, the warmth. Yes.

[Patrick Hines]

It's that green ooze thing that's fluorescent.

[Jillian Petavelli]

This is not good.

[Patrick Hines]

And what it feels like.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Why do we need it for bombs for?

[Patrick Hines]

What did I write down verbatim? A new kind of nuclear reactor?

[Jillian Petavelli]

I don't know. I don't think we need it.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. So it's very, very, very, very dangerous.

[Michael Silkwood]

How dangerous was the work Karen Silkwood and others at that plant were doing? Did they know it at the time?

[Steve (Union Representative)]

No. There was very limited training provided to the employee. And nowhere in the training material was the word cancer ever used again.

[Patrick Hines]

It was like, just say thank you for the job and show up on time and clock in and clock out.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Well, and contamination with this stuff gives you fucking cancer. And they also say that nowhere in the training material was the word cancer ever used, which is why I'm so glad. I was just really glad to know there was a union, you know, that at least somebody was trying to do some kind of oversight.

[Patrick Hines]

But my question is, like, the people who run the plant.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

They knew and just didn't care. Right, of course. Like, why wouldn't you just tell people and be aware of it? Like, I know. I know that the answer is money.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

Like, when you really lay it down like that, it's like. Or you could just have everybody be safe and then make zillions of dollars for years and years and years instead of being the abandoned plant that the kids write graffiti in or whatever.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Exactly.

[Patrick Hines]

And people dying, by the way.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And also, like, maybe we just don't need to make things that give people cancer.

[Patrick Hines]

Because one thing that's missing from this is that this is bigger than Karen Silkwood and she knew it. So, like, what happened to her is tragic, but how many Other people are sick. This is the Erin Brockovich effect, right?

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. Like a couple of times I'm like, whoa, no, this isn't Aaron Brockovich. I kept doing that.

[Patrick Hines]

Like, how many other are got sick and died from cancer that we're not talking about right now?

[Jillian Petavelli]

Well, and we get a number. At some point they tell us something like two thirds of the people who work in this plant. And we learned kind of how this contamination was happening. So we learned that Karen was working with what was called a glove box. So imagine like a big plastic thing. And in the plastic thing is where all the really bad shit that gives you cancer is. And there's rubber gloves that you stick your hands in.

[Michael Silkwood]

It was designed to protect workers from radiation while they handled tiny plutonium pellets.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

There's always supposed to be a barrier between the worker and plutonium. And what was going on in this plant was that barrier was being breached.

[Patrick Hines]

That barrier was becoming breached, as they say. So, like, it's supposed to protect you from radiation while you're handling all these pellets, but because they're cutting corners or whatever, they don't care. They only hear about money, Right? That barrier is becoming breached. And also they're never saying the word cancer. Cancer doesn't exist.

[Jillian Petavelli]

No cancer.

[Patrick Hines]

Never heard of it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And like, I don't know that human beings should be in any sense touching plutonium.

[Patrick Hines]

Right. But without the training, without being open about what is going on there, because people don't even know what it. Like, what is it contaminated? Like, what does that mean? Like, how could I, a human being, I'm talking about in the 70s, they're like, yeah, that wasn't even on their radar to be thinking about. No, contaminated.

[Jillian Petavelli]

You know, we learned that for the first few months, Karen was really happy and like I said before, like, she was a smarty pants. She loved the science and like she was doing the kind of work she always wanted to do.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah.

[Jillian Petavelli]

You know, and getting paid very well, by the way.

[Patrick Hines]

And I just do want to say too, like, people would go home and probably be sick and not know, to make the connection, right. That they're getting sick from work.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And as you were saying earlier, the company's counting on that. That's why it's not part of the training.

[Patrick Hines]

Exactly. Travel down, girl.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Let me tell you about against the Odds. So look, you're standing on the beach when you notice something strange. The horizon doesn't look right at first. All you can see is a thin white line. Then the line starts to raise. You realize it's not the horizon at all. It's a 30 foot tall wall of water and it's racing straight toward you. What would you do?

[Patrick Hines]

On the day after Christmas? In 2004, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of Indonesia, triggering a devastating tsunami. It struck Thailand without warning. No alarms, no cell phone alerts, no evacuation.

[Jillian Petavelli]

In this season of against the Odds, experience one of the deadliest natural disasters in history through the perspectives of those who did everything they could to survive.

[Patrick Hines]

Follow against the Odds on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of against the Tsunami in Thailand early and ad free right now on Wondery. So Don Gummo's here, Karen's friend.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Okay, can I talk about him for 20 minutes?

[Patrick Hines]

Because your big crush played him in the movie.

[Jillian Petavelli]

So David Strathairon plays this guy in the movie. I don't know if this man is gay or not, but they show us older pictures of him. It's in this moment that we're talking about Don that everyone's like, karen loved everybody. They didn't care if you were different or what. And then we meet Don and they're like besties in the movie. They show a clip of David Strathairan playing this guy, and he's chewing gum and he pulls it like a strand of it out of his mouth and she bite like they. It was that kind of gay thing. And then we flashback to these pictures of don from the 70s with him and Karen. This man had the most glorious head of stringy, long blonde hair. And I had to actually pause and look at the. I'm like, that is my dream hair. When I go to sleep at night in my Helix mattress and my miracle made sheets, that what I imagine. I like, that's what I dream of. I dream of that kind of hair. If I could have any magical power, it would be that hair. That long, stringy blonde hair.

[Patrick Hines]

When you say stringy, I feel like you don't mean stringy because sometimes people could say stringy as like. Oh, like not. You mean like luscious?

[Jillian Petavelli]

Well, no, it is kind of thin, but it would look great in a top knot. Like one of those, like, things where like the cool, like, effeminate guys put their hair, like in the half up, half down. Yeah, I'm just saying dawn and I would have been tight back in the 70s and I really want that hair.

[Patrick Hines]

Okay, great. I feel like we can make that happen.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I really want that happen.

[Patrick Hines]

Can't we do anything now?

[Jillian Petavelli]

I don't know. You know what I mean? Nothing feels possible anymore. Although recently, things are on the up and off a little bit better. So maybe we can. Who knows?

[Patrick Hines]

Hello from New York City.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I just wanted to give Dawn a shout out because I love David Strathair and I love the moment in the movie where they share the gum strand. And I love the 70s hair. I was so into it.

[Patrick Hines]

And Don says, like, everybody knew Carrie.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

And I were buddies. She was a firecracker. She could be sweet and she. She could be kind and she could be compassionate.

[Patrick Hines]

Everybody knew that we were buddies.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes.

[Patrick Hines]

So that kind of means, like, you mess with one, you mess with both. Totally. I just love that dynamic. So a worker sets off an alarm in the plant. Right. And whenever that happens, they'd have to go through what they call decontamination now in society. And because of the movie, we know it as a Silkwood shower. That's how big the story was and how big the movie was.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. And we see, like, a clip of the movie, and it is fucking brutal.

[Patrick Hines]

They say they show it in devastating detail in the movie. The word trust.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I. I can see it because they. It looks to me like they're being. Because they have plutonium on their body. And so they're being. Two people hold them down. They restrain them in a shower. They're in moon suits. You are naked, and they are scrubbing your body with wire brushes.

[Patrick Hines]

And it's very. You're being manhandled. Super strong water in your face and your mouth. It's at hard water pressure. It's painful. It's humiliating. It's scary. It's totally traumatizing. It's totally dehumanizing. But also, it's like, I just wonder.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

If you need to do this.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

And this is how you get yourself clean from a day at the office. Maybe it's just, like, not safe.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Once again, I don't think we need to be making this stuff now. I'm sure there's somebody in the sciences who's listening to this, who's screaming at me. And it does great, I'm sure. Fine. But, like, I like this. No. Especially now we have robots. And I don't want robots taking people's job, but I want them taking these jobs. I want robots taking these jobs.

[Patrick Hines]

Right.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And then we hear Steve from the union, who I love on a recording with Karen in the 70s, telling Karen, Girl, you only have to work at this plant for one month to have enough contamination on your body to cause cancer. And that she's like, don't fucking tell me that. He's like, I am gonna tell you that.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. You know, but also, like, this, what they call, like, the Silkwood shower. The plant is arguing that everything is on the up and up with, quote, existing regulations.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes.

[Patrick Hines]

So big plutonium, like the bad guys.

[Jillian Petavelli]

As we call it.

[Patrick Hines]

The villains in every Muppet Movie. Like the oil tycoons. Willem Dafoe is playing them.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Probably he was born to play.

[Patrick Hines]

They testified that they, quote, tried to be responsive to requests and all of their violations were low level. And that, like, these violations don't present any problems or any harm to the public and employees. Lies on lies on lies, all about the money.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And the union is here to say that, like, complaining about safety concerns was near impossible.

[Patrick Hines]

Right. You know, to this day, Both Kerr and McGee, the two evil guys.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

They have streets named after them.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I know.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

Still, Robert S. Kern was the most powerful person in the state, easily. And the US Senate. And the US Senate. He did good things for Oklahoma because he was so powerful. He brought a lot of projects to Oklahoma, where a lot of money was spent. President Kennedy, during the time, came here to kiss the ring twice. Twice.

[Patrick Hines]

JFK came to kiss the ring twice, they say.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I looked him up to be like, who's he with? He was with the Democrats. But they say this guy did a lot of good things for Oklahoma. He brought a lot of projects to the state where a lot of money was. No. And, like, President Kennedy would come to, quote, kiss the rain, like, by a lot.

[Patrick Hines]

This wasn't one of them. This is really awful.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I know. It's what we were talking about with the Tylenol murders. It's just like putting money ahead of people. And it's like, yeah, we just can't be surprised. You know what I mean? But they were counting, like, the reason Karen Silkwood stood out, the reason her story is what it is, is because she was very smart, she was very educated, and she understood the implications. And they were sort of counting on their workforce not being like her.

[Patrick Hines]

And also on top of that, like, in addition to that, this was a time when all of this nuclear power was seen as the savior of America. So the public was really in support of the plant. And the plant paid very, very well. Three bucks an hour, which today is like 50 an hour.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

So the town was booming. Everybody loved the plant. It's saving the world. No one wanted it to close. And honestly, Karen Silkwood was coming in and ruining everyone's good times. She was being a bummer.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Right.

[Patrick Hines]

And no One wanted to hear about.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Except for the union guy.

[Patrick Hines]

Right. Which like obviously. But like she. Everything's great. Why you gotta be a bummer? Says everyone to Karen Silkwood.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And it's like in this moment that we get Michael the son back to say that like in the 50 years since his mom's death, he's been carrying out his own investigation. And then this is it. This is why it was so hard for me. And I can finally identify it because he says to the camera, I think.

[Michael Silkwood]

It'S about what I missed, you know, like what the.

[Jillian Petavelli]

The could haves.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

What could have been affects me more.

[Michael Silkwood]

Than actual sadness of losing her.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

Because I don't have any memories of us together. My heart knows there's a hole there.

[Jillian Petavelli]

That is so heartbreaking.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. And the question mark of what actually happened to her? How did she die and why? And was there someone behind it? There's that. It's not like there's so many unknowns here.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

And she became a legend and Meryl Streep is playing her. And there's like a lot to unpack as someone as a little kid like.

[Jillian Petavelli]

That I'm sure of his life. Like I. Can you imagine? Like you're the guy at the cocktail party. You're like, you're Karen Silkwood's kid. And then all of a sudden that's all that person wants to talk to you about for the rest of your life. Like this has been this guy's life his whole life.

[Patrick Hines]

And it's not his last name.

[Jillian Petavelli]

No. Right.

[Patrick Hines]

And I, I don't know why that is, but I would completely understand if that he did it for like a year when he was growing up. And then being like, no, I'm going to.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Or maybe when she had to leave the dad and go raise those kids, like the three kids on her own, she's like, I'm dropping that son of a bitches last name. The kids can keep it.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah.

[Jillian Petavelli]

You know what I mean? Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

But like, can you imagine?

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh, he's a great guy. In which case I say, sorry, whatever.

[Patrick Hines]

But if you like introduce yourself and you're like, wait, Silkwood. Oh my God, I just saw that movie. And then it's like.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Cause it's not like it's, you know, Johnson.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah.

[Jillian Petavelli]

You know. Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

And it's like a pretty last name. But it's like everyone's gonna be like, oh my God, like that movie like the Shower. And it's like, oh, no, that's not like, yeah, it's a movie, but it's Also my mom. And now there's this horrible connection to it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Excuse me, Cher.

[Patrick Hines]

Cher. So our journalist friends are telling us how dangerous this whole place was. Like, they say the entire wall was contaminated, every bit of it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

So they're in the plant now, this dilap. Outdated old building, and they're pointing out all of the holes in the wall where they had to, like, actually remove the plutonium. And one of them goes all the way to the top.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

So the whole wall was. Yeah, contaminated. Contaminated. Every bit of it. And we hope it's not now.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And I hope it's not now. And I'm like, can you guys get out of there? Like, can we just err on the side of caution?

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah, we can film this elsewhere.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Didn't we learn this the hard way? Just, why is that building still standing?

[Patrick Hines]

And honestly, it's not adding that much anyway.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Knock that shit down.

[Patrick Hines]

You know, like, what the half life is 24,000 years. We're not even mean. We haven't even scratched the surface of it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh, my. We're not even. I mean.

[Patrick Hines]

Well, you never will.

[Jillian Petavelli]

We.

[Patrick Hines]

The Earth will explode by the time that one.

[Jillian Petavelli]

The plutonium will still be here.

[Patrick Hines]

We'll still be here.

[Jillian Petavelli]

The plutonium and the cockroaches.

[Patrick Hines]

Fuck off, both of you. I don't need either of them.

[Jillian Petavelli]

No.

[Patrick Hines]

So, like, what happened? So part of Karen's job was doing quality control checks, and she was seeing all of these safety concerns firsthand. And she was like, no, no to that. No to that. Like, she's not gonna let this stand. But the plant wasn't listening to her or doing anything about it. So she was the person, like, who would see all these horrible things and then do her job. And then they'd be like, shut up, you idiot girl.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Like, the only way to make Karen go away would be to do the necessary upgrades to make it so that, like, this was no longer a safety concern. We're talking money. And so her son Michael says when she went from being a nuisance, she just basically being the woman in the background being like, it's not saying that.

[Patrick Hines]

Glove thing doesn't work.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I've got plutonium all over my face. Face. When it went from just being that person to being somebody who was going to actually cost some money by either maybe shutting down the plant or doing whatever it took to do the upgrades to make it safe. That was when Michael is saying she had a target on her butt.

[Patrick Hines]

But in the most cynical way I can say it. Yeah, you got to spend money to make money.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Of course.

[Patrick Hines]

So what they could have done is done this right, whatever right is for the time and still maybe not be the abandoned plant.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I mean, my thinking on that is just that maybe there is no way to do it right.

[Patrick Hines]

That's what I'm saying.

[Jillian Petavelli]

So that like they would have to have shut down the plant. Like if she were able to, like, I mean, when we see how top level she was getting with like where she was get how much information she had and who she was giving it to, this plant absolutely would have been shut down.

[Patrick Hines]

Yes. You know, travel down, girl.

[Jillian Petavelli]

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[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. So Chime is banking done, right?

[Jillian Petavelli]

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[Patrick Hines]

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[Jillian Petavelli]

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[Patrick Hines]

I know. And let me tell you, like sometimes you need cash and it's an emergency and it's not just like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm paying this insane fee for a bottle of water. But you also can't be an emergency. But like you never know when you need that atm.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I was in a gym. I had to have the guy. I had to pay the six bucks.

[Patrick Hines]

You had to do it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

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[Patrick Hines]

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[Jillian Petavelli]

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[Patrick Hines]

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[Jillian Petavelli]

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[Jillian Petavelli]

Girl Home Chef is back. You know we love the Home Chef. It is rated number one by users of other Meal kits for quality, convenience, value, taste and recipe ease.

[Michael Silkwood]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

So Home Chef makes cooking simple, fresh food delivered, easy recipes to follow and meals that actually taste great. And guess what? Gordon Ramsay has joined the chat.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

So with Gordon Ramsay's exclusive recipes on the Home Chef menu, you can enjoy five star meals without the stress.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. And it's not one size fits all. Fam. Home chef has over 30 meal options each week with choices for different diets and tastes. We do a whole gluten free thing for me. It's amazing.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. And so you can choose from Gordon Ramsay's co branded dishes that are featured across Home Chef's culinary collection.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

And the classic meal kits and the express options. So you have options.

[Jillian Petavelli]

It's so fun. I'm obsessed with the website. You just go through, you actually ads, you take away. You get to see what they have. They all the food all looks so good.

[Patrick Hines]

So many options.

[Jillian Petavelli]

You're saving so much money over, like ordering out or even going to the grocery store. Like, give me one reason not to do Home Chef.

[Patrick Hines]

I can't.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Okay, great.

[Patrick Hines]

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[Jillian Petavelli]

It's unbelievable. So fam. For a limited time, Home Chef is offering our listeners 50% off and free shipping for your first box, plus free dessert for life. Go to home chef.com TCO that's home.

[Patrick Hines]

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[Jillian Petavelli]

Homechef.com TCO must be an active subscriber to receive free desserts. Yeah, but you will love it. It's great.

[Patrick Hines]

You will love it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

It's so good.

[Patrick Hines]

So 1974, Karen goes to Washington D.C. to meet with the union leaders, which.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I gotta say, like, poor went out for Karen. Like three kids, full time job, single mom. She's making time like she cares that much that she's going on a trip to D.C. leaving her kids to go, like, make some hay, to save some lives.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. And the union's like, karen, girl, we hear you.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

But we can't take on this without evidence.

[Michael Silkwood]

And Karen's like, she becomes something of an investigator for her union to gather the evidence.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

She volunteered for it right off the bat. And she was talking about all the stuff that she had come across. They said, well, we can't take on somebody like Kerr McGee without evidence. And she volunteered.

[Patrick Hines]

I'll be right back. I'll get the evidence myself. Brb.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And Steve is like, it cannot be understated how dangerous this is. Like, this is so dangerous.

[Patrick Hines]

Tells her. He's like, okay, fine. Because there's no stopping Karen Silkwood.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Right?

[Patrick Hines]

Right. So he's like, okay, fine. If you're gonna do this, this, be careful. And above all, don't tell anybody what you're doing.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

Because you already have a target on your back, and now you're actively investigating and gathering evidence. Like, you can't tell anyone you're doing this.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And we're going to learn. You know, they say it's somewhere in here soon. Like, one of the reasons she was doing this was because she knew she was dying anyway, you know? And, like, she's doing this on the way out, and they say that she's reporting, like, important safety protocols are being ignored, factory reports are being falsified. So, like, they knew.

[Patrick Hines]

They know.

[Jillian Petavelli]

They know.

[Patrick Hines]

And Aaron, our host, this is when he says something that made my jaw drop. He says he's asking the journalist, and he's like, didn't she become walking evidence herself? And I was like, holy.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Because she's compiling a long list of radiation exposures. So, like, she's taking names.

[Patrick Hines]

Right? So she was first contaminated in July of 1974. And she would continue to test positive for plutonium poisoning, which she was forced to do weekly and then eventually daily. So she had to do these urine tests. And the plant, she is so, like, her tests are coming back so positive for plutonium. However you say that, like, the results were, like, oh, my God, like, extra like, so bad that the plant is now testing her apartment.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Right.

[Patrick Hines]

Because one day she tested positive even though she wasn't in the lab that day.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And the reason they're testing it is because they're starting to point the finger at her that she's faking this. Like, she's either stealing plutonium or she somehow is lying.

[Patrick Hines]

She's doing it to herself.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Exactly.

[Patrick Hines]

For the drama.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Exactly.

[Patrick Hines]

Like, give me a break. And it's like, how can the plant be doing all of these tests and still do nothing?

[Jillian Petavelli]

Like, we see the scene from the movie where they're emptying out her house, like, against her will, to test everything in there. And some guy from the company is saying, like, did you put the plutonium in the house yourself? And he says, I know you would do anything to hurt the company.

[Patrick Hines]

Like, to slow down on this dear listener. It's her. Yes, it's Karen Silkwood. She's that contaminated.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Right.

[Patrick Hines]

That she contaminates everything around her. This is a human being we're talking about.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Well, and one of the reasons that was happening now they say this to us. And it took me a minute to sort of digest.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

Our reporters say unbeknownst to her, and this was proven conclusively, someone spiked the kits, put plutonium in the sample containers. She was horribly contaminated. And the plutonium came from an area of the plant she had no access to. It was under lock and key. Under lock and key.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Somebody did contaminate her on purpose even.

[Patrick Hines]

More than she already was.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Right. Like somebody took plutonium and actually. And they said were they, that she couldn't have done this to herself because that kind of plutonium was kept under lock and key in an area of the building that she had no access to. They are actively trying to kill her.

[Patrick Hines]

To shut her up.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

These people have streets named after them. I mean, literally every, like little bit in my notes in big bold letters. They still have streets named after them.

[Jillian Petavelli]

We had to rename those Pennsylvania Way. Like, God, Pennsylvania Way.

[Patrick Hines]

Look, I'm not. I'm not all that great, but I'm not this guy Heinz. I'm not. I'm not this bad.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I want the intersection of Pennsylvania Way and Heinz Avenue.

[Patrick Hines]

Let's do it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

You know what I mean? I mean, give me a Heinz Circle.

[Patrick Hines]

At least do what most basic street name, Main street. At least for. Get that guy's name off it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

Like I don't. It doesn't need to be me, but it's got to be like Main street and what, vine or whatever.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And it's not like we're breaking the story.

[Michael Silkwood]

You know what I mean?

[Patrick Hines]

Like, this is a 50 year old story.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And like they made a movie out of it with Meryl Streep.

[Patrick Hines]

What are you doing? Putting the names and Cher and Kurt.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Russell and David Strathan again.

[Patrick Hines]

Hello.

[Jillian Petavelli]

At two Pens Volley.

[Patrick Hines]

No, I love. He's in everything.

[Jillian Petavelli]

He's like played the gay guy.

[Patrick Hines]

I know.

[Jillian Petavelli]

He shared that gum moment. It was so cute.

[Patrick Hines]

It's very cute.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I think a gay guy and his friend would do.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. Karen would later say that she felt it, like how she was so contaminated that she. And this could have been her own mind playing tricks on her. But probably not just based on how like she was so contaminated that she's contaminating things around her, like, I don't know, maybe her children or something, that maybe she'd be that terrified. But she says that she goes, I feel like the contamination is coming out of my body. I can't imagine what that must feel like.

[Jillian Petavelli]

That is the embodiment of that. Like.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. You just feel like she's a walking contamination. Like, it's terrifying.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And to answer your earlier question, this.

[Michael Silkwood]

Is where they say government records would later show that more than 70 workers, over half the employees working inside that plant, had been exposed to airborne plutonium, Putting them at risk for acute radiation poisoning, cancer, and eventually death.

[Patrick Hines]

Risk for acute radiation poisoning, cancer and death. Like, airborne. Which means that you don't have to touch it. Like, no matter what they were doing, it wasn't working. Yeah, it wasn't working.

[Jillian Petavelli]

So by October of that year, things were so bad that Steve, the union guy guy, is urging Karen to get out. We hear this call between them, and it's in this call that Karen is like, I gotta shut them down before I go.

[Patrick Hines]

And so I just want to say they skipped this Because I was kind of like, where. What is happening that she has? Not just the contamination, which I know is awful, but, like, what is she. What has she been saying in public? Like, how bad is the press for these guys on this? So I looked it up, and in the summer of that year, 1974, she testified about this to the atomic energy commission. And she says everything that we've been saying, but, like, it's out there now on the record. Like, she's talking about evidence of spills and leaks and alleging that the company's falsified inspection record. So everything we just learned about. But Karen is talking about it to a lot of people publicly on the record. So, like, that's why the heat is really being turned up on her. And, like, that's why this conversation with her friend Steve, the union rep. Yeah. Where he's like, I tell you, Karen.

[Michael Silkwood]

You better get the fuck out of there.

[Jillian Petavelli]

That place. That place can turn into a hellhole. It's going to get. But I'm going to shut up. Damn.

[Patrick Hines]

Before I go, yes, I'm going, But I'm going to shut them down on my way out. Like, there's no way I'm.

[Jillian Petavelli]

She just fudgeing. Walks into work. Yeah. I testified yesterday, bitch. And here I am to clock in.

[Patrick Hines]

That's what I mean. And they're kind of like, how do we stop her? Like, she will not be stopped.

[Jillian Petavelli]

It's like, this was, like, good roseanne energy. Remember when roseanne was good back in the day?

[Patrick Hines]

No, it's. I'm losing. I'm losing it. I know I'm losing it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

God. But there, like, I remember roseanne, like, staging a protest at the plant and, like, getting everyone to clock out. Like, it was on the show. Yeah. There was a moment there's that great.

[Patrick Hines]

Dan moment where he walks out the door, the back door, with what's her. The sister's husband, where he, like, goes to beat the. Out of him.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh, yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

Like, such a good.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And there's also, like, the. Laurie Metcalf, Dad's dead. That's great. I mean, oh, my God.

[Patrick Hines]

That's very good.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I told you about the time I met Lori Metcalf at the dog park. And it was just. No. And she literally. I. I saw that it was her. It was just me and her. And I swear to God, she looked up at me and her eyes said, gay boy, don't mention Dad's dead. Gay boy, don't.

[Patrick Hines]

I've had like four of them today.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I. I can't. She's in Hell's Kitchen. She's on our turf.

[Patrick Hines]

It's like, she can't walk down 8th Avenue.

[Jillian Petavelli]

No, Dad's dad.

[Patrick Hines]

No, he's fine.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Sends his love.

[Patrick Hines]

That moment where he just takes his jacket.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh, yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

It's very good.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

So Karen did have a plan. And she'd called her family a few weeks before she was killed, saying, like, I'm gonna come home. I just have some loose ends to tie up. But, like. Cause everyone wants her to get the hell out of there and maybe, like, undo some of this or get the treatment she needs or something and like, be home with her kids while she still can. I mean, it's. Everyone knows it's really bad for her. Right? But I think part of it. I mean, she's not here to tell us this, unfortunately, but I think part of it is like, I'm so far gone, I have to do this.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah, well. Right. And so November 11, 1974, two days before she dies, she goes to a place called Los Alamos, which is the national laboratory for screening. And apparently it's also the site of the top secret government program that developed the first atomic bomb.

[Patrick Hines]

I'm like, if we have to do that, your plant is not working. No, we're going to top secret government locations for super secret screenings that no one can know about. It's not working.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Can we also maybe, like, regular human beings not be touching the things that go into making atomic bomb? You know what I mean?

[Patrick Hines]

I mean.

[Jillian Petavelli]

But the results are bad.

[Michael Silkwood]

The results aren't good. There's plutonium in Karen's lungs. Technically, it's in the acceptable range. She flies home November 12th.

[Jillian Petavelli]

There's an acceptable range of plutonium in my lungs.

[Patrick Hines]

I don't want to hear it. No, I don't want to hear it. Shut up. I don't care what the answer is.

[Jillian Petavelli]

No. She flies home the next day, November 12th. Steve, the union guy, is super worried about her.

[Patrick Hines]

But, like, Karen and Steve are fucking done.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes.

[Patrick Hines]

They're ready to go public. Enough is enough. She has everything she needs now.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes. Yes. Because, like, once again, the testing was really bad. She's not going to live long one way or the other. No.

[Patrick Hines]

And she's like, oh, here's the evidence from that super secret, top secret thing I just had to do. Like, she has more than enough.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

So union Steve sets up a meeting with Karen and Steve and David Burnham from the New York Times.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. So he's the guy who broke the Serpico story. Tell us what that is.

[Patrick Hines]

It's all about all the corruption in.

[Jillian Petavelli]

New York in the NYPD and the Al Pacino movie.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Okay.

[Patrick Hines]

Another very, very, very famous movie about something that actually happened.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

That came out 10 years before Silkwood. Oh, it came out in 1973.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Well, so this guy broke that case. And his first meeting with Karen And Steve is November 1974. And they say, like, these were the final days of Karen's life. Obviously, she didn't know it, but at.

[Patrick Hines]

First David said no. He goes, I don't want to go. That's not my beat. To which I say, david, we don't have time for this.

[Jillian Petavelli]

David, girl. He says the bureau chief made him do it. Like, girl, can you just.

[Patrick Hines]

His boss was like, david, you're going. He's like, fine, fine.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I'll go.

[Patrick Hines]

Fine.

[Jillian Petavelli]

But now we sort of get into the final days of Karen's life, and they say that, like, they were very hard. There was an enormous amount of pressure on her.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

She essentially was a spy, an untrained spy, but a spy inside her own company. It is a hard job. I. I think she must have known that her life was at risk. Yeah. She thought she was going to die from the plutonium anyway.

[Jillian Petavelli]

An untrained spy inside her own company. Like that must be fucking terrifying.

[Patrick Hines]

Well, she's keeping so many secrets. All of the pressure is on her shoulders. Like, she knows she's going to die from the plutonium, which is, like, horrible. I hate that we're talking about a human being and using the word contaminated.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I know.

[Patrick Hines]

Just is so disgusting. I know that that's scientifically the word. Like, I get it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

But it just feels so dehumanizing.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Like, once again, you only had to work this plant for a month to get the level of contamination that she got.

[Patrick Hines]

And she's also like. I mean, I'm sure some people are like, karen, you're paranoid. You're almost out. But she was like, I think they're trying to kill me.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

Because the facts are she knows too much. She's talking about it, she's gathering evidence, and she has the ear of a lot of people. Like, she was absolutely right to be feeling that.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And there's. We haven't even gotten there yet, but there's like. Like a huge international crisis secret that she also becomes. Which is another reason they're trying to kill her. We'll get there in a second.

[Patrick Hines]

Okay? Travel down, girl.

[Jillian Petavelli]

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[Michael Silkwood]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

You know, we love a good life hack 100. We need them these days. We need a little extra boost. And so it's. If coffee alone just isn't cutting it anymore, this is a next level upgrade.

[Jillian Petavelli]

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[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. And now you're like, oh, well, but I need the coffee. But I. I deal with the crash. No, no, no. Now we're not like muscling through anything anymore.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Exactly.

[Patrick Hines]

We're done with that.

[Jillian Petavelli]

So, fam, get 61% off your first coffee plus starter kit, a free A2 probiotic creamer with over $100 in free gifts by going to everydaydose.com TCO or entering TCO at checkout.

[Patrick Hines]

That's everydaydose.com TCO for 61% off your first order.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Everyday Dose is also available at your local target.

[Patrick Hines]

You love it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

We love it.

[Patrick Hines]

So the day she died was the day she was supposed to meet with the New York Times.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes.

[Patrick Hines]

So the night before, she goes to visit her friend Don. And she basically is like, don, someone's following me. I'm absolutely terrified. So she spends the night there because she just needs someone else to be around her. She doesn't feel safe.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Right, Exactly. So on Wednesday, November 13, this is the day that she dies. They say she goes to work, which.

[Patrick Hines]

Is insane to think about, by the way.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I know. After work, around 5 o', clock, she drives to the local diner for a union meeting and she's carrying a folder full of papers. Now we assume this is the folder she's going to give to the New York Times. This is all the shit.

[Patrick Hines]

Because this is the night she's meeting with the Serpago guy who broke the story. Like everything's going to break tomorrow.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes.

[Patrick Hines]

So she gets up and goes to work. She goes to the union meeting and she has the folder of papers that she's going to present to the New York Times to be like, here's what we have.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And this woman, Jean, a fellow employee, like she's on camera back in the 70s saying, like her friend and fellow.

[Michael Silkwood]

Kermagee employee Gene Young was there and reportedly the last person to speak see her alive.

[Patrick Hines]

She said, I've got everything together. And she did. I swear to God, in front of God. You know, she had it. You saw it?

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes, I saw the folder.

[Patrick Hines]

And she said she had all her evidence ready to go.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Don, the fun gay guy with the long hair, he contributed to the folder.

[Patrick Hines]

Oh, fun. So and Karen was like, she was fine, but she was also stressed.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes.

[Patrick Hines]

So she wasn't like. Because that's important. So she was stressed and she was distraught. She's about to go to this life changing meeting. Like this is it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes.

[Patrick Hines]

Tomorrow. Everything's to change in one way or another. Right. It was like. So she's a wreck.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

She's going up against these evil muppet villain zillionaires.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. So she leaves the diner Union meeting at 7:15pm we're told it's dark, but her friends say she was alert. Seven miles down the road is where she crashes.

[Patrick Hines]

So yeah, just to stress that like she was at a union meeting at a diner. I know diners have full bars, which everyone forgets. I would have forgotten diners have bars.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh God.

[Patrick Hines]

It's very weird.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Well, now I'm starting.

[Patrick Hines]

Right. I just tasted before I almost said this out loud, but I didn't like the taste of like the pickle on a sandwich, like mixed with the condiments. I just like, that's what I.

[Jillian Petavelli]

That very specifically, like a mayo mustard situation.

[Patrick Hines]

Like something where you just like bite in. You get like that great bite of the pickle.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yep.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

Oh, God.

[Patrick Hines]

Okay, so now my mouth's watering. Just saying. But the point is, like, she was stressed, but she was alert. Like she was ready. This is it. This is going to change everything. So she wasn't hammered. She was getting into her car to go have the biggest conversation of her fucking life.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. So she's driving down Highway 74. It's a two lane road. The speed limit is 55 miles an hour. It's rural and dark.

[Michael Silkwood]

And then they say, what exactly happened next is the great mystery of Karen Silkwood's life and death. Her small Honda Civic ended up smashed on the east side of the highway, jammed into a concrete culvert. Karen was declared dead at the scene.

[Jillian Petavelli]

She's declared dead at the scene. So essentially her car went off the road. Somehow, if you don't know what a concrete culvert is, is in looking at it, it looks like they burrow under the highway for, like, a drainage ditch or something. And this is the cement on the sides of that that is sort of keeping the road up.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah.

[Jillian Petavelli]

So it's like a big concrete slab.

[Patrick Hines]

And law enforcement immediately says, oh, she ran off the road by herself like that. From. Without even investigating it. Like, they're writing their documents where it's like, oh, she, like, ran off the road somehow because she was hammered, probably.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And this becomes the accepted story of how Karen Silkwood died because the Oklahoma.

[Patrick Hines]

State Highway Patrol maintains that based on the tire tracks that they looked at seconds, Karen didn't appear to turn the steering wheel, meaning she was asleep or, quote, in a state of stupor.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And they say they also found a pill bottle in her purse. And we do know that she'd been prescribed a sedative to help with her anxiety because she's out there trying to save the fucking world.

[Patrick Hines]

Right. But she'd only driven about seven minutes. And all of the witnesses at the diner say that she was alert and fine. And even if she popped a pill the minute she got in the car seven minutes, like, she wouldn't have totally fallen asleep, which is what they're trying to say.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And why would she have. Just think about the logic of that. This woman is about to, like, go to the New York Times with the story to save all these lives. It's literally her life's work.

[Patrick Hines]

She's been through plenty.

[Jillian Petavelli]

She's gonna pop a fucking Xanax before she gets. No, no. And our reporter friends are the ones that have been on it for 50.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

Years are saying it was a concerted effort, first off, to make Karen Silkwood look like a floozy and a drug addict. And, you know, not somebody you could trust.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And not somebody that you could trust. Right.

[Patrick Hines]

She was crazy and she Was paranoid. She was making up all these things and a mess.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And she just didn't have her shit together.

[Patrick Hines]

And so the steering wheel, though, was bent and bro. Which does not match up with the she just fell asleep and didn't even turn the wheel narrative.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Right. And they're saying that, like, it appears that she braced her arms for impact. So the same cop who's like, she drove off the road, they say to him, it looks like she braced for impact. So, like, she couldn't have been asleep at the wheel if that's the case. Right. And he's like, yeah, actually. Yeah, you're right.

[Patrick Hines]

Also, the biggest thing, the folder with all of the evidence is missing forever and ever missing. It has never been recovered.

[Jillian Petavelli]

What we're told is that there were papers that were scattered all over the city scene. One of our reporter friends says somebody scooped them all up and put them back in the car as the car was towed away.

[Patrick Hines]

They say the accident report never confirmed what those papers at the scene were. Yeah, that's really, really interesting that she had the thing that was going to blow this whole thing up. Piles and piles of paper. She was on her way to blow it all up.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Right.

[Patrick Hines]

Then she gets in an accident, and now the papers are nowhere.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Right.

[Patrick Hines]

Weird.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. And especially we're going to get more information on this in a second. So the union brings in their own crash expert, a guy named AO Pipk.

[Patrick Hines]

His name is Adolphus Oscar Pippin.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Adolphus Oscar. I'd go by AO I'd go by AO Ayo.

[Patrick Hines]

Pipkin. AO AO River.

[Jillian Petavelli]

But he would eventually consult on the crash that killed Princess Diana. And he says, like, we see him in an interview at the time.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

He says, in my opinion and the people that I've had working with me, there's no circumstantial evidence there to indicate that somebody may hit another vehicle, may have hit the car in the rear.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Another vehicle may have hit the car in the rear being the thing that drove Karen's car off the road.

[Patrick Hines]

Right. But there are also other ways to mess with a car other than crashing into it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

You know, like, there are other ways to make her lose control or whatever.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I've got a brake line or two in my life.

[Patrick Hines]

Really?

[Jillian Petavelli]

No. Can you imagine?

[Patrick Hines]

Say, what's that like? How do you do that?

[Jillian Petavelli]

You feel all powerful.

[Patrick Hines]

Really?

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. You just. One snip, one snip, and that's it. Wow. Don't cross me.

[Patrick Hines]

That's interesting, because then the person feels no power or control when they're trying to Press.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I've actually, like, been in a car where I've been like, what would happen if my bike, if I went to put on the brake shut down? Like, my. And it didn't work.

[Patrick Hines]

Some of my anxiety dreams manifest that way where I'm driving a car and I'm. I'm like, I can feel it right now. And I can feel it in the dream that I have both feet on the brake, like, and I'm like. I'm like, up. And it's not working and nothing is slowing down at all.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh, that's awful.

[Patrick Hines]

It's really. But it's such a visceral, like, I can feel it in the dream that, like, it's not stopping and all of my weight is on it and I'm like, up, you know, like on those stupid, stupid bikes at the gym. What is it spinning?

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

Which is fun, but it always hurts my butt. I can never get comfortable. My feet are never comfortable. Comfortable in the thing. I just can't do it. But you know how they're like, oh, jump, Go up like that, like when I'm standing on the steering wheel. Crazy.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I've never taken a spinning.

[Patrick Hines]

Oh, my God. My dreams are the worst. Yeah, they're the worst. Anyway, obviously the story makes national news.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes.

[Patrick Hines]

But like, what doesn't make national news is like. And here are the papers that were found at the scene. Right. It was just like, oh, this person. Right.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Like, yeah, sorry, I just got to the part of my notes where I'm like, oh, right. And here's something. They just drop in. So this is another major thing that would be reason enough for the plant to want to have her killed.

[Michael Silkwood]

The plant was missing anywhere from 40 to 60 pounds of plutonium. Enough to make multiple bombs.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Multiple bombs.

[Patrick Hines]

Multiple bombs.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And we learned that just weeks before Karen died, she told a fellow employee, a guy named James Noel. She told him that she knew it. Yeah, like she. She stumbled upon this information like that to me is maybe even bigger than all the contamination.

[Patrick Hines]

And like, she didn't tell him how she found out. She just said that she knows. So we will never get to the bottom of exactly what she uncovered.

[Jillian Petavelli]

No, but like somebody says, if real 40 to 60 pounds of plutonium is missing, that means that the United States was involved in nuclear proliferation.

[Patrick Hines]

Yes.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And Karen Silkwood was about to break that story to the New York Times.

[Patrick Hines]

In addition to everything else that is.

[Jillian Petavelli]

World shaking, earth shattering news, major.

[Patrick Hines]

And so this, of course, prompted investigations from the FBI and the CIA. There was a congressional investigation yeah, but our journalist friends are like, just in the simplest terms, she knew too much.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Exactly.

[Patrick Hines]

And she stumbled upon more than just the dangers of all these chemicals. And the United States was involved in all this horrible shit. And it's like.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Well, like one of the deepest secrets held by the United States. Karen Silkwood figured it out, and all.

[Patrick Hines]

Of her papers are just gone.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And they're all gone.

[Patrick Hines]

And this is the day she was on her way to the meeting. It doesn't take. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist.

[Jillian Petavelli]

No.

[Patrick Hines]

To put two and two together and be like, okay, something happened.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Exactly. So we learned that the Carmagee plant closed in 1975. I know Karen's family sued the company for gross negligence, eventually settling for more than a million bucks. I looked it up. That would be $6.6 million.

[Patrick Hines]

And everyone still has their streets named after them. Wild in spite of it all.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Pennsylvania Circle Circle, Pennsylvania.

[Patrick Hines]

C. It's been 50 years of conspiracy theories or. And questions and no movement on the case at all.

[Jillian Petavelli]

The official accepted legal narrative is that she fell asleep at the wheel, like, despite the hammer. Right, because she took a fucking Xanax. No.

[Patrick Hines]

No. So journalists Bob and Mike have uncovered recordings. There are these two sets of tapes.

[Jillian Petavelli]

This is why we're here.

[Patrick Hines]

So the set of tapes, number one, is an impromptu investigation, they call it, by this former highway patrolman. And he just found himself in the middle of one of the famous. Most famous cases ever, named Larry.

[Jillian Petavelli]

So this guy has a badass backstory. Like they said. He's an Oklahoma law enforcement legend, known for his heroic actions during the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings when he ran into the rubble to save traps. People like, fucking good on you, Larry.

[Patrick Hines]

Right?

[Jillian Petavelli]

But he says in the early 90s, he started recording these tapes when he was a state trooper. Because in his investigation, according to Larry, he heard what really happened to Karen Silkwood, was some local officers were working off duty for the KGEE Company who owned the plant. And the crash that killed Karen Silkwood didn't happen the way the authorities said. They said an attorney tells this Larry guy that a former Oklahoma City cop said that he and three other off duty officers were tailing Karen because they're working for the company, like, off hours.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

Said they had been drinking a little bit and they were following her. They bumped her, knocked her off the road, probably with no intentions necessarily of killing her. But she runs off the road and hits this big concrete abutment. Kills her instantly.

[Jillian Petavelli]

But she hits the concrete embankment and dies.

[Patrick Hines]

And Larry the cop is like, sure, Jan, right, sure.

[Jillian Petavelli]

But like, he's saying that, like, he believes that she was killed. Like, this is what happened according to this attorney who heard it from the cops.

[Patrick Hines]

Heard it from and heard it from and heard it from.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah, but apparently it doesn't sound implausible to me.

[Patrick Hines]

No, it doesn't, but I don't buy the. Like, we were just gonna nudge her car to scare her. Like, no, that's the part I don't buy. Yeah, because Larry starts asking around, and apparently he says it's confirmation, but it's really like, other people also have heard the story before, independently from him, I guess. And so everyone in town knows the story and they're told. They're like, larry, girl, shut up. Yeah, like, if you keep looking into this, like, you'll be in danger, girl.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I don't know. I mean, the thing about this, to me is that, like, this sounds totally plausible. Like, the company hired cops to tailor. They told them to kill her.

[Patrick Hines]

They'll get away with it. They'll scoop up the papers. The end.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And so that's the thing. My only question is, like, can four people keep a secret all their lives?

[Patrick Hines]

Well, because Larry eventually gets the names of these people supposedly involved in this version of the story, and he takes the names to the FBI and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, and nothing comes of it, and no one will comment on it now. And I'm like, well, guess what? All four people allegedly involved are dead, so we're never going to really get to the bottom of this anyway. Does it sound plausible? For sure?

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. And I'm like, none of them told their wife. None of them told their kid. You know what I mean? I'm like, no, they literally took that secret to the grave. Which is. Or not because they're cops and they can cover shit up and get away. Like, this does sou like a plausible explanation to me.

[Patrick Hines]

Except don't act like you're just trying to scare her. That's the only. That's the only thing. I'm like, yeah, but sure. But again, like, most big lies have enough truth where it's like, well, that makes sense.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And especially if, like, the company knew that, like, tomorrow was the day we're going to Karen. So he's going to blow up our secret about nuclear proliferation and United States involvement in that huge. Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

So the other set of tapes.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Okay, here we go.

[Patrick Hines]

Is from a guy who, quote, kept really good secrets.

[Jillian Petavelli]

A guy named Joe Royer. He was a private investigator on. On the tape. Bob knew the guy One of our journalist friends knew the guy. He died. He calls the widow and he's like, are there any, anything like, any recordings, anything like that? She's like, yeah, I do think there are some in some boxes in our storage.

[Patrick Hines]

So she hands over the key to the storage unit.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh, my God.

[Patrick Hines]

Mike and Bob are thrilled. This is their.

[Jillian Petavelli]

It's a warehouse.

[Patrick Hines]

This is all their President's Men moments.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

And so they're like rifling through everything and they eventually find the box with all of this stuff from the case.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

Right here, Bobby, it says Silkwood Investment Investigation Tapes. Here they are. There they are. Yeah, it's all here. There they are. Holy mackerel. Something called Deep Throat.

[Patrick Hines]

And there's a tape labeled Deep Throat. And they're like, oh, my God. This is really our moment.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Here we go. Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

So these tapes are between Joe the PI and members of law enforcement.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Can I ask you a question?

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Is there a smoking gun?

[Patrick Hines]

No.

[Jillian Petavelli]

No, there's nothing here. There's this moment where it's like, ok, okay. Did we find. We get five minutes of the documentary of them, like cracking open the vault and we see them find the tapes.

[Patrick Hines]

And it's like a Rocko moment where it's like nothing's in the vault, literally.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And then they cuts back to them in the interview. They're like, well, there's no smoking gun.

[Patrick Hines]

But what, what they do say again, it's plausible deniability. It's just stuff where it's like, if you're listening for it, whatever. But like the former secretary for the Oklahoma Police Department Intelligence Unit, she's like, look, on the tape she says, I don't want to talk about this. I don't want any trouble. And I don't want any trouble with my car or anything else.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh, my God.

[Patrick Hines]

So at first you're like, wait, or maybe she's just referencing one of the biggest story news stories that's ever happened.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

Or maybe she's saying that's how they do things and I don't want my breaks to be cut or whatever.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. I mean, the big thing we learned here is that the Oklahoma City police had cutting edge surveillance technology. So the question was, were they using that surveillance technology on Karen Silkwood? Is that how they found out what they. What she knew and so they had.

[Patrick Hines]

To kill her and like, when and where she was going so that if they did something to her car.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Right.

[Patrick Hines]

That would be the reason.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Exactly. Now it is curious, like, why would Oklahoma City Police Department have such, like, Wild, cutting edge technology.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah.

[Jillian Petavelli]

You would think that, like, if the government of the United States knew that Karen Silkwood knew the biggest state secret of all time, that, like, she knew £60 of plutonium was missing, maybe they would have shipped some of that good surveillance equipment down to Oklahoma City. So, like, that. That makes sense.

[Patrick Hines]

And what the hell did that investigation uncover? Nothing.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Nothing.

[Patrick Hines]

All these, the FBI and the CIA being like, hey, about those 50 pounds of chemicals. Like, where are they? U.S. government.

[Jillian Petavelli]

But where are.

[Patrick Hines]

Like, but where'd they go?

[Jillian Petavelli]

But, like, to this day, where are.

[Patrick Hines]

Where are they?

[Jillian Petavelli]

You know what I. What happened? That's my big takeaway from this one.

[Patrick Hines]

Right. You know, so this former secretary is like, I think they were doing these illegal wiretaps. But as much as I agree that something horrible happened to Karen, so what? There's no proof of it in these tapes.

[Jillian Petavelli]

No. And I love that, like, at the end of this part of the interview, they go back to. Bob and Mike are reporters, and they're.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

Like, our hope was that it would be the long sought after smoking gun. But, you know, it's of kind. Kind of like those National Treasure movies. One clue leads to another clue leads to another clue.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Don't you invoke the name of the National Treasure. I fucking love those movies.

[Patrick Hines]

I've never seen any of them.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh, it's like Nicolas Cage, like, doing, like, the.

[Patrick Hines]

Like stealing the Declaration of Independence or something. I love it so much.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Oh, my God. And, like, they find, like, invisible ink on the back and shit, right?

[Patrick Hines]

That's like a fun popcorn movie.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I love it so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they're just like, there really isn't anything here.

[Patrick Hines]

Right. And then they go back to the guy who investigated the crash independently, who also investigated Princess Diana's A.O.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Pipkin murder. Adolfo Alfonso.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. And so to make things more complicated, her name is also Karen.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. So it's his daughter. So, like, we learned that this guy AO on his deathbed, says to his daughter, in the most dramatic way possible, please hold on to this evidence.

[Patrick Hines]

Tell my story.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Tell my story. He's got the bumper. He's got Karen Silkwood's bumper. Because that's what Bob and Mike are looking for. Anything that was actually at the crash scene that, like, might hold evidence.

[Patrick Hines]

And let me tell you, we are there, and we're just looking at a bumper.

[Jillian Petavelli]

No, but wait. Can I tell you, this is insane, because the daughter has done the thing and she's held onto the bumper for all of these years, and we're being told that maybe this bumper is going to hold the key to this whole thing. She walks them into the garage to show them the bumper. The bumper is on a pile of newspapers on top of an old refrigerator next to bottles of bleach. This is not a piece of evidence that has been well preserved. It does not matter what is on this bumper. No court would ever uphold evidence like it's been sitting in this garage for 50 years.

[Patrick Hines]

It's where you would like store a broken old bumper and not the bump from the Karen Silkwood case.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Exactly. Like, remember in the staircase when we found the blowpoke and it was like, you don't touch it. I thought. I know, I'm sorry.

[Patrick Hines]

I thought I was safe.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This is a safe space. This should be a safe space. I know blowpoke haunted us for years.

[Patrick Hines]

For years.

[Jillian Petavelli]

But remember, like, they found it and there was like the cobwebs and nobody could touch it. You got to film it and then.

[Patrick Hines]

You got to get like, not this.

[Jillian Petavelli]

But like, it is kind of amazing to see the bumper of Karen Silkwood's car. Like, that is kind of an amazing artifact.

[Patrick Hines]

And what she's showing them is that because she says, my father was 100% positive that Karen did not die from falling asleep at the wheel.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

And they're like. And she's like, here's the evidence. But then the bumper.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And then these, these two reporters who've been on this case for 50 years, like, my God.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

Holy mackerel. There's. There's black stuff in it still. Yeah.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Is that good?

[Steve (Union Representative)]

Yes. Yeah, it's good. Yeah.

[Jillian Petavelli]

There's black marks on it. And she's like, it could be from anything. It's like, this bumper has not been preserved. It has not been wrapped up. It's been a 50 year old bumper that's been in a garage for 50 years.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. It's not no evidence, Reval. And I know what they're probably. Someone might be able to be like, oh, well, that dent shows this. Or the physics are like, I don't think they're actually talking about like forensics in terms of like fingerprints or anything or any chemicals on it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Can you imagine being a friend going into this lady's garage and being like, what's that bumper? Oh, that's Karen Silkwood's bumper.

[Patrick Hines]

And I'm like, it's just out like that.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Like that is an artifact. You know what I mean?

[Patrick Hines]

And it's like, I wish it gave us more. I wish we had more Answers. But I left with more answers than I came in with.

[Jillian Petavelli]

No, you mean questions.

[Patrick Hines]

More questions.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes, yes.

[Patrick Hines]

Not an answer in sight about.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Not an answer in sight.

[Patrick Hines]

And in particular, the 50 or maybe 60 pounds of chemicals that are just, like, gone for going to say, the.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Two things I learned in this documentary is how amazing Karen Silkwood was and that there is 60 pounds of plutonium out there that is still unaccounted for all of these years later.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah. And then they. We meet a new guy named Steve Irwin. Crikey. No relation.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Not that Steve Irwin, but he's like.

[Patrick Hines]

A new crash investigator. The guy who took over the Princess Di person. And so this Steve Irwin is like, one of A.O. pipkin's proteges.

[Jillian Petavelli]

His whole thing is he's here to, like, use modern technology to recreate the crash scene. And this is actually kind of because we learn there are two of these embankments where, like, she crashed into one of them. And for 50 years we got the wrong embankment.

[Patrick Hines]

Yeah.

[Jillian Petavelli]

So, like, this crash scene investigation is. It was like, it was actually this one and not that one, which seems important.

[Patrick Hines]

Very important.

[Jillian Petavelli]

But also, like, he's able to say.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

That if she leaves at 55 and gets down to 30, then it implies breaking.

[Michael Silkwood]

His analysis essentially rules out the highest highway patrol's official cause of the crash.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

There's not evidence here that would say Ms. Silkwood was asleep all the way to that head wall.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Quite the opposite.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

It feels like this idea of braking and steering feels pretty well supported by the evidence that we're confident in.

[Jillian Petavelli]

She had to have braked to have done that, so she could not have been asleep. So, like, the point of this guy is to say, like, she was not asleep at the wheel. No matter what happened, she was not asleep at the wheel.

[Patrick Hines]

But, however, he cannot prove one way or the other if there was a second vehicle.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Right.

[Patrick Hines]

He says that evidence isn't available.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I mean, we got the bumper. It's not available.

[Patrick Hines]

Right. But Karen Silkwood's family is actually happy about this because they feel like now they have two very good people telling them, like, she was not asleep.

[Jillian Petavelli]

No.

[Patrick Hines]

And so they feel better knowing that, like, no, we're right. We're not crazy. No, something bad happened to her. And she wasn't, like, popping pills and getting behind the wheel. Like, no, she wasn't.

[Jillian Petavelli]

And may I just say, I don't think she was, but if she was, if she. Like, again, those pills were. Were prescribed for the anxiety that she was feeling harboring probably the deepest, darkest national security secret anybody's Ever known in.

[Patrick Hines]

This country and that she was on her way to tell the world about it.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Exactly.

[Patrick Hines]

So, like, that would stress you out, too.

[Jillian Petavelli]

So if she had taken the pill, which I don't think she did, but if she did, I don't fucking blame her.

[Patrick Hines]

And even if she took one.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah.

[Patrick Hines]

It wouldn't have made her pass out after seven minutes. It doesn't matter. No, it doesn't matter. And also, do the fucking autopsy then, coppers.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Right, Exactly.

[Patrick Hines]

Let's get the science to tell us exactly what, Like, Give me a break.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Right.

[Patrick Hines]

And so, like, the papers have been. Been destroyed.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I guess we don't know they've been lost. Like, the idea was that the papers were put back in the car. Was the car just, like, taken and totaled? You know?

[Patrick Hines]

And that's a problem.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I mean, it is the problem. Can you imagine? Like. Because what they're saying in the end.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

Is, like, there's always a smoking gun somewhere. We just haven't found it yet. If we could find those papers, it would change everything 100%. I believe the papers were taken out of the car by someone.

[Jillian Petavelli]

We think this can be solved if we can ever find the papers. And I'm like, boys, I've got bad news for you.

[Patrick Hines]

They've been long destroyed.

[Jillian Petavelli]

They're long destroyed. Destroyed.

[Patrick Hines]

Long destroyed. So to me, it's like, I don't know if we will ever know 100% what happened, but I know something bad happened. I know it wasn't just an innocent accident.

[Jillian Petavelli]

No, it absolutely was not.

[Patrick Hines]

No way.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Karen Sil was murdered.

[Patrick Hines]

Absolutely. She knew too much.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yeah. Oh, my God, girl. We did the. What's it called?

[Patrick Hines]

What happened to Karen Silkwood? The Lost Tapes.

[Jillian Petavelli]

I mean, wild, Wild. So wild. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube. YouTube, fam. Go subscribe. True crap obsessed podcast. Over 150,000 subscribers. It is insane. We've got a disky. Jillian's cleaning the desk.

[Patrick Hines]

Discord. It's really fun. It's just, like, a nice way to communicate and share things and. I don't know.

[Jillian Petavelli]

It's fun. What are we doing next?

[Patrick Hines]

Girl Thirst trap. The fame, the fantasy. The fallout.

[Jillian Petavelli]

What is that?

[Patrick Hines]

It's insane. It's two episodes. We're gonna do it in one.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Ooh.

[Patrick Hines]

It's about a guy who went viral. This, like, young guy. And all of these women were obsessed with him. And then, like, shit got bad because we can't have nice things on the Internet.

[Jillian Petavelli]

No, no, no, no.

[Patrick Hines]

So it became, like, a doxing thing, but people were just like, giving him money because they thought he was cute. He like, no winked at them. And then the video went viral and everyone was like, take my mortgage, take my 401k.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Why couldn't that have been my life? I mean, you know what I mean?

[Patrick Hines]

So. But it gets, it gets crazy. It's just like, it's just like a warning about being online a little too much.

[Jillian Petavelli]

Yes. All right, well, listen for the trailer for that and we love you.

[Patrick Hines]

We love you.

[Jillian Petavelli]

All right, bye.

[Patrick Hines]

Safe, please. Bye.

[Jillian Petavelli]

If you haven't seen William White on your social media feeds recently, lip syncing to retro hits, well then check your phone. It's probably broken.

[Patrick Hines]

21 year old William White now has 2 million followers. We gave up our lives to raise children, be married. But Whitey, your phenomena keyed us back into that fun part of our lives. Everybody knows William Wade is the cougar panty remover.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

The older fans spend, they have money.

[Patrick Hines]

I've probably given him 100 to $200,000. It was kind of addictive thing to get him to say your name.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

Thank you, Karen. With PayPal.

[Patrick Hines]

Watching William's TikToks, I was surprised at the feelings that were coming up within me.

[Steve (Union Representative)]

I feel like a lot of my fans needed to feel young again, gain a spark back.

[Patrick Hines]

I've been lusting after William White, who's younger than my son.