Episode 47: Part 2 Child Fusion Reactors & Karen Silkwood

Curiosity can glow bright enough to light a room—or trigger a Geiger counter. We follow a remarkable arc from a twelve-year-old who assembled a working fusion setup out of surplus parts to a whistleblower whose warnings shook a nuclear powerhouse. The contrast is stark: a kid scavenging eBay for a turbomolecular pump, validating fusion with an open research consortium, and then answering to the FBI; a lab technician documenting contamination, faulty gear, and missing plutonium, only to vanish from the road with her evidence.

We unpack how resource constraints create sharper builders, how DIY science stitches together knowledge from forums, papers, and trial and error, and why nuclear experiments—even at micro-scale—draw fast attention. Then we pivot to the life and death of Karen Silkwood: her union organizing, the contamination scares, the lost documents, and the crash that fueled decades of questions. Investigators found puzzling damage, reporters chased leads, and a landmark Supreme Court decision affirmed a path to accountability even under federal regulation. Along the way, we dig into what fusion promises for energy, why corporate oversight matters, and how missing nuclear material becomes more than a line in a report—it becomes a test of public trust.

The throughline is power. Institutions celebrate breakthroughs when they can control the narrative, and they bristle when workers expose the cost of cutting corners. We talk about the tension between innovation and oversight, the fragile ecosystem of whistleblower protections, and why rolling them back chills the very truth-telling that keeps complex systems honest. If you care about clean energy, ethical tech, and the people brave enough to raise a hand when something is wrong, this conversation is a map and a warning.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves science and accountability, and leave a review with the biggest question you’re still wrestling with. Your take might shape a future episode.

FREE DOCUMENTARY
https://www.koco.com/article/karen-silkwood-nuclear-whistleblower-51-anniversary-death-oklahoma-kerr-mcgee-contamination/69416709

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

https://helena.org/members/taylor-wilson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HL1BEC024g&t=638s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tAsHGFA-74

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/09/nuclear-fusion-young-scientist-jamie-edwards-star-in-jar

https://newsforkids.net/articles/2024/09/04/16-year-old-student-builds-nuclear-fusion-reactor/

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2025/1/12-year-old-boy-who-achieved-nuclear-fusion-in-his-playroom-got-visit-from-fbi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood

https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/karen-silkwoods-sudden-death-unpacked-abc-documentary/story?id=115778837

https://www.patreon.com/InspiredEarth

https://www.instagram.com/inspiredearthofficial

Chapters

• 0:19 Funding Shortfalls Spark Creativity
• 0:50 The Twelve-Year-Old Who Achieved Fusion
• 3:10 Scavenging Parts And Hacking Hardware
• 4:06 Validation, Records, And An FBI Visit
• 5:15 From Fusion Fame To AI Labs
• 5:52 Fusion’s Promise And Surveillance
• 6:32 Enter Karen Silkwood’s Story
• 8:40 Union Organizing And Safety Violations
• 11:45 Contamination, Proof, And A Planned Meeting
• 13:15 The Crash, Missing Documents, Disputed Cause
• 16:00 Investigations, Missing Plutonium, And Closure
• 19:36 Lawsuit, Supreme Court, And Legacy
• 22:01 New Docs, Podcasts, And Ongoing Questions
• 25:18 Whistleblower Protections Under Threat
• 27:16 Final Reflections And Sign-Off

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:19

One problem Caesar faced was money. The school approved his project, but they only gave him 25% of the money needed. Caesar says not having enough money meant he had to be very creative, and as a result, he wound up learning much more. Which you kinda hear that. Um in other cases as well. That you have to be more crafty and creative when you're uh more poor and have less resources. And you end up being smarter as a result of it. Twelve-year-old boy who achieved nuclear fusion in his playroom got a visit from the FBI, published 28th, January 2025. Most twelve-year-old boys picked up video Oh, this is from uh Guinness WorldRecords.com, by the way. Most twelve-year-old boys picked up video games or action figures or playing cards, but when they want to unwind in their playroom. I totally misread that. Most twelve-year-old boys pick up video games or action figures or playing cards when they want to unwind in their playroom. But Jackson Oswald from Memphis, Tennessee, USA, wasn't like other 12-year-olds. One day I had a sudden epiphany, he said. I realized that I could be the absolute best at whatever video game, but in the end it still wouldn't mean much. In the grand scheme of things, video games had no role to play. So I changed my ways. Immediately I switched to the closest thing to video games in real life, science. Jackson's effort paid off in 2018, when just two hours shy of his 13th birthday, he became the youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion, but what he never expected was a visit from the FBI. That's hilarious. It was only two hours before. For those lacking a stem brain, nuclear fusion is incredibly complicated for at home scientists. The process involves isolating two or more atomic nuclei. Well, I mean it must not be that bad if we're having multiple children do it. Before combining them under intense pressure and heat to form one or more atomic nuclei and neutrons. The end result is a release of absorption of energy, which is why the technology is often associated with a power supply. Inspired by the story of Taylor Wilson, who built a nuclear fusion reactor as a teenager, Jackson's mind opened to the possibility that someone so young could accomplish such a task. He started watching physics videos on YouTube, researching the materials he would need to complete his attempt at the source at only eleven years old. Jackson shopped on eBay and found the materials he needed for the first step of his plan, a demo fuser, which creates plasma but doesn't achieve fusion. He bought the devices to the school science fare after finishing it the night before, and even thought it delightfully shocked and confused the room. Jackson knew it would take more to achieve his final vision. His repairs involved rebuilding the vacuum chamber, obtaining a turbomolecular pump from eBay, as you do, repairing his melted inner grid system from tantalum, and sourcing deuterium for fuel somewhat legally. It's interesting. And they have uh like Twitter posts or Instagram. What is that? Yeah, it's Twitter. They have Twitter posts of him building it. Which is interesting. It's like as he's going. Almost every single part came from eBay, liquidated research, military facilities would dump tons of valuable equipment for cheap, sometimes in perfect condition. The turbomolecular pump I got for a few hundred dollars was worth nearly fifteen thousand. After those modifications and about a year of testing, Jackson successfully achieved fusion. His record was validated by Fuser.net, the open source fuser research consortium, on 2nd of February 2018 and confirmed by Fusion researcher Richard Holt, who maintains a list of amateur scientists who have achieved fusion at home. Because Jackson achieved Fusion at 1.30 p.m., just two hours before his birthday, at 3.38 p.m. he was technically 12 years old, and therefore also received a Guinness World Records title for his incredible work. And there's a picture of him doing it on his birthday, December 19th, 2024, is when that was posted on Twitter. But his story would prove far from over, as one Saturday he was woken up by two FBI agents who made a sweep of his house with the Geiger counter to make sure there was no radiation detected from Jackson's experiments. Fortunately, I remained a free man. After the news picked up Jackson's exploits, he was thrilled to be invited to energy startups around the country for tours and even visited fission power plants to see the technology in action. Nowadays you see him working on hardware for research labs like Midjourney and other new work involving AI. So again, Midjourney and AI guarantee you Peter Thiel's involved and and Elon Musk, Sam Altman, all these people. Can you believe that this they have this kid and they put him to work on mid-journey? What a joke. That's that's a shameful joke. That's ridiculous. What a waste of talent to put him in mid-journey. Which is like an AI artificial image generation thing. And notably nuclear fusion reactors, the technology that Jackson was working with in his playroom are still being considered for long-term solutions for energy, such as China's artificial sun, which was unveiled last week. And uh which this is from almost a year ago. So that's interesting. Uh I think that it's also interesting how a lot of these people end up getting visited by the FBI when they're trying to make a reactor. And uh I don't think that that's a coincidence. I think that's very, very interesting. So we're gonna move on to Karen Silkwood, who is a nuclear advocate, and her story, uh kind of related with the FBI, and like people who try to go rogue and do their own thing. Uh you see this in different circumstances of alternative energy technologies of let's say they're an inventor, you know, something kind of happens to them. And this is an example of that with a uh whistleblower within the energy sector. And I've talked about how a lot of the people in charge of these technologies are very powerful, very exploitative, and have very little morals, and that they will go to extreme lengths to stay in power. And I think this is an example of how far they will go. Should uh say all these kids played ball with them, so to speak. Like the one kid was working with Peter Thiel and speaking at NATO, which is crazy. The other kid worked at Mid Journey. Uh the other guy had the FBI coming after him, too, the first guy, who ended up uh not taking it well. So Karen Gay Silkwood was born in 1946 in Longview, Texas, and raised in Nerderland, Texas. She lived with her mother Merle and father Bill and sisters Rosemary and Linda. In high school, Karen was a straight A student and a member of the National Honor Society. Chemistry was her best subject. Wow, so she must be very smart. In the fall of 1964, she enrolled at Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas on a scholarship from Business and Professional Women's Club. In 1965, uh Silkwood dropped out and married a pipeline worker. They had a divorce. Uh, she moved somewhere else. So let's let this is where it gets more interesting here. August 1972, Silkwood was hired as a metallography laboratory technician with Kerr McGee Corporation. So remember that name, Kerr McGee. At their Cameron River Plutonium Production Plant near Crescent, Oklahoma. She joined the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, OCAW, local, in November 1972. She participated in a strike to protest poor working conditions. Here we go. The workers are organizing, the poor people are organizing. That's not good for the rich people. The ultra-rich. And when I say rich, I'm always talking about like ultra ultra rich. Like um, if you have a million dollars or you're a multimillion dollar like person, you're nothing compared to these ultra-rich people. You're still part of everybody else. So uh the protesting poor working conditions. Kerr McGee succeeded in breaking the strike by hiring people from the surrounding area to cross the picket line. The company's managers also began working behind the scenes to entice workers to sign a petition calling for decertification election to eliminate the union. In August 1974, Silkwood was selected or elected to the OCAW Locals Three Person Bargaining Committee, the first woman to hold such a position at Kermagee. It was a critical time for the locals as Decertification Drive had collected enough signatures to force an election on October 16th. Silkwood's specific specific union duties included investigating health and safety issues she discovered at the Kimaran plant when she considered to be uh what she considered to be numerous violations of health regulations. Such as exposures of uh workers to contamination, faulty respiratory equipment, improper storage of samples. She believed the lack of sufficient shower facilities was increasing the risk of employee contamination. She also found evidence of missing or misplaced plutonium. On September 26, 1974, Silkwood and two other committee members attended a meeting in Washington, D.C. With Tony Mazoki, OCA OCAW's legislative director, the committee members voiced their complaints about the dangerous workplace conditions and sought advice on how to win the upcoming decertification election. In their discussions, Mazuki learned that the committee members and presumably the rest of the Kamaran plant were not adequately informed about the hazardous material they were working with. He later wrote, When I explained the connection between plutonium exposure and cancer, it took Karen by surprise. And so they made plans that day to have two atomic scientists from the University of Minnesota come speak to the Kamarin workers. Mizuki recalled how Silkwood took him aside at one point and said, You know, there's some other problems that I'd like to speak to you about. I said, What are they? She said. I work in a quality control lab and noticed the lab technician would use a felt pin on the X-ray to cover that little thin line that showed a crack in the control weld rods, and she told me that there was some fooling around with computer data. I said, Look, Aaron, if you could prove that, and I think we could use it to beat the company and improve the conditions in the facility. At the conclusion of the meeting, Mizuki and his staffer Steve Wadka counseled that the best hope for survival in of the Kimarin workers and their locals was to raise awareness about Kerm McGee's practices with the Atomic Energy Commission and the national press. To that end, OCAW initiated an aggressive whistleblowing campaign. They campaigned they claimed that Kermagee plant had manufactured faulty fuel rods, falsified product inspection records, and risked employee safety. The union threatened litigation. On September 27, Silkwood testified to the AEC about having contaminated being contaminated with plutonium. And she alleged the safety standards had been relaxed because of a need to increase production. She appeared at the AEC hearing with two other committee members who likewise testified that Kerr McGee was endangering its workers. The whistleblowing effort and a visibility abroad was combined with educational sessions on plutonium toxicity that Silkwood arranged with Atomic Scientist, attended by 100 of her workers. Helped fight off the decertification of the Union. The Camaran local voted 80 to 61 in October to keep the OCAW as their bargaining agent. Very interesting. I bet they the the energy cabal was livid. On November 5th, 1974, Silkwood performed a routine self-check that showed almost 400 times the legal limit for plutonium contamination. She was decontaminated at the plant and sent home with a testing kit to collect urine and feces for further analysis. Although there was plutonium on the inner portions of the gloves, which she had been using, the gloves did not have any leaks or perforations, according to tests performed subsequently by Kerr McGee personnel. And I just want to say super quick, collecting the urine and feces, that goes back to when America, I think it was a military, were feeding human beings, and I think I think they were minority people, uh plutonium and oatmeal and all sorts of food, and they didn't know it. Similar to the Tuskegee uh medical experiments where they were experimenting on the uh on the black people for different diseases. I can't remember the diseases right now, but it was a whole bunch of them. But yeah, so they knew that plutonium would go through the body because they had fed plutonium to Americans before in a test without them knowing it, which has become public now. This suggests that the contamination had not come from inside the glove box, but from somewhere else. So it's not it wasn't the gloves, they're saying. The next morning as she left for a union meeting, Silkwood again tested positive for plutonium, although she had performed only paperwork tasks that morning. She was given a more intensive decontamination. On November 7th, as she entered the plant, she was found to be severely contaminated, even expelling contaminated air from her lungs. A health physics team accompanied her back to her home and found plutonium traces on several surfaces, especially in the bathroom and the refrigerator. When the house was later stripped and decontaminated, some of the property had to be destroyed. Silkwood, her boyfriend Drew Stevens, and her roommate Sherry Ellis were sent to Los Alamos National Laboratory for in-depth testing to determine the extent of their contamination in their bodies. There were questions about how Silkwood became contaminated during this three-day period. She said that contamination in the bathroom may have occurred when she spilled her urine sample on the morning of the 7th. This was consistent with the fact that the samples had collected at home, had extremely high levels of plutonium, whilst the samples collected in the fresh jars at the plant showed much lowers. She concluded that someone working for Ker McGee had deliberately contaminated her. Especially after just learning about the toxicity. Starting in August, the pellet lot two nine samples were kept in a Kermagine vault to which she did not have access to. Interesting. By November, Silkwood believed that she had assembled sufficient documentation, including company papers, to corroborate her claims against Kermagee. So she said she had proof. She decided to go to the public with this evidence and contacted David Burnham, a New York Times journalist who Tony McCosey referred her to. Burnham had previously spoken, had previously broken the Frank Serpico police corruption case and was now researching atomic energy issues. On November 13th, 1974, Silkwood attended a 5.30 p.m. union meeting along with 10 other members of the OCAW local at the hub cafe in Crescent. She made a brief presentation and sipped ice tea. Another intendee at the meeting, Wanda Zhang Jin Zheng, stated in a sworn affidavit in January 1975 that Silkwood had a folder, a spiral notebook, and a packet of documents at the cafe. During a break in the meeting, Zheng said she spoke with Silkwood, who was crying quietly and admitted how frightened she was, that she had been so badly contaminated she would eventually get cancer and die from the plutonium in her lungs. But then Zheng stated in her affidavit, Karen pointed to her documents and said there's one thing she was glad about, that she had all the proof concerning falsifications of records, and as she said this, she clenched her hand more firmly on the folder and notebook she was holding. She told me she was on her way to meet Steve Wadka and New York's New York Times reporter to give them the material. At 7 10 PM, Silkwood left the meeting, got entered her 1973 White Honda Civic, and drove alone towards Oklahoma City, about 30 miles or 48 kilometers away to meet Burnham and Wadka. Less than 30 minutes later, Silkwood's body was discovered in her smashed up car, 7.3 miles from the cafe. The car had run off the left side of State Highway 74, traveled some distance along the grass shoulder, and then struck the right wing, the wing of a wall of culvert 0.11 miles or 180 meters south of the intersection West Industrial Road. And it gives the GPS coordinates. The impact from hitting the wall caused her to be impaled by the steering wheel and pinned to the roof of the Honda Civic. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Silkwood's car contained none of the documents she had been holding in the meeting at the hub cafe. The Oklahoma State Trooper at the crash site remembers that when he found one or two tablets of a sedative of quailude in the car and believed there were two marijuana joints. Interesting. The coroner found 0.35 milligrams of quaalude in her blood. A therapeutic dose is 0.25. A toxic dose is 0.5. Oklahoma Highway report concluded that she fell asleep at the wheel and died of the accident. The OCAW hired a crash investigator, A.O. Pipkin Jr., to examine the car and see no crash. Based on his examination, Silkwood had not fallen asleep while driving. The steering wheel was bent back on the sides, proving that she'd been wide awake and hanging on as she tried to maintain control. In support of this notion that she was awake, he added two other observations. First, the anomalous fact that the car had veered from the right to the left shoulder. In most one vehicle accidents where the driver has gone to sleep or because of impaired abilities, the vehicle goes off to the right because of the contour of the road, namely the crown, because roads are built at an angle so the water rush washes off of it. So there all roads have an angle or they're supposed to. So that's why the car would go to the right. Was because that's like what physics does. It shows that the Honor Tracks in the grass showed the car did not drift but was actually out of control, it left the highway. The only way that the car could have been put in that attitude, he wrote, was either an impact by an unknown vehicle or a combination of impact by an unknown vehicle and driver overreaction and subsequent loss of control. Before I go on, I will have to remind everybody that the documents were gone, and I believe that they had to do some plutonium testing on her remains, and even her remains were still radioactive, which is absolutely insane. But most significantly, Pipkin found damage to the rear of the vehicle, which according to her friends had not been present before. As the crash was entirely a head-on front end collision, it didn't explain the fresh dents on the left rear fender and the bump above it. A microscopic analysis of the rear of the cart revealed paint chimps that could only have come from the impact of another vehicle. In light of Pipkin's findings, some friends and journalists theorized that Silkwood's car was rammed from behind with intent to cause a fatal crash. OCAW officials, Mazuki and Wadka did not believe it was a premeditated murder because that stretch of highway is flat, and the odds of her hitting an extra an obstruction like a concrete hovert culvert were so remote, instead they suspected it was an attempt which went tragically awry to scare and intimidate her into stopping her whistleblowing and returning the documents. She could have flipped over. So yeah, I think that it it definitely and if they're planning to, then yeah, I think that it could it definitely have been premeditated. Another hypothesis is that she was being chased to force her to halt, that she drove evasively, including speeding along the left grass shoulder, and while looking behind her to the right at the chase's car, she didn't realize until late that she was racing towards the culvert. Due to concerns about contamination, the Atomic Energy Commission and the State Medical Examiner requested analysis of Silkwood's organs by Los Alamos Tissue Analysis Program. On November 18th, she was buried in Kilgore, Texas. Silkwood's plutonium contamination and the mysterious circumstances of her death became a national news story. It aroused public suspicion and resulted in federal investigation of the Camaran plant security. National Public Radio, NPR, reported that investigation determined 20 to 30 kilograms of plutonium had been misplaced at the plant. The unaccounted for nuclear material generated speculation as to its whereabouts. Richard Rashk suggested the missing plutonium may have been stolen by a plutonium smuggling ring, given that the quantity was enough to make three or four nuclear bombs. He added that security at the Chimaran plant was so lax that workers could easily smuggle out finished plutonium pellets. Kerr McGee closed its nuclear fuel plants in 1975. Department of Energy deported or reported the Chimaran plant as fully decamp decontaminated and decommissioned by 1994. In November 1976, Karen's father, Bill Silkwood, and his attorney, Daniel Sheehan, who now works on UFO stuff, filed a complaint against Kermagee for gross negligence in handling the plutonium that contaminated her. Bill Silkwood asked for$160,000 for Karen's loss of property, personal injury, and mental anguish, and as a punishment for Ker McGee and others named in the complaint. The months leading up to the trial were likewise filled with controversy. According to Rashke, officials investigating Ker McGee's operations and circumstances of the car crash were themselves at risk. People had been tailed and forced off lonely roads by speeding cars. Wow, so they did the same thing to them. Two shadowy characters about to be subpoenaed suddenly packed up their attache cases and fled to West Germany. One apparently healthy police officer about to be deposed died of a heart attack. There was no autopsy. Someone tried to murder a Kerr McGee manager who knew too much. Someone tried to assassinate Bill Taylor, the chief investigator for the legal team representing the sea the Silkwood family. And then there were all those strange clicks on everyone's telephone. Wow. Maybe I should come back through here and like read all of these other pieces of information like about all these other people. That's fascinating. I didn't know that all of them were that's like almost everybody. That just shows how powerful these people are and how brazen they are. Like when it starts to get this when they're threatened, they get uh desperate. The trial occurred in spring 1979. Jerry Spence was the chief attorney for the Silkwood estate, assisted by Daniel Sheehan, Arthur Angel, and James Ickard. William Paul was the chief attorney for KermaGee. The plaintiff presented evidence that a tops autopsy showed Silkwood was contaminated with plutonium at the time of her death. To prove that contamination was sustained at the plant, evidence was given by a series of witnesses who were former employees of the facility. The defense relied on expert witness, Dr. George Voles, a high-ranking s scientist at Los Alamos. Voles said he believed the contamination of Silkwood's body was within legal standard. The defense later proposed that Silkwood was a troublemaker who might have poisoned herself. Wow, that's just the defense attorneys, like they come up with the most ridiculous, offensive, preposterous, insulting ideas and it's infuriating. After the summation arguments, Judge Frank Theas told this jury if you find that the damage to the person or property of Karen Silquid resulted from the operation of this plant, defendant Kerr McKee Nuclear Corporation is liable. The jury rendered its verdict of$505,000 in damages and$10 million in punitive damage. On appeal in federal court, the judgment was reduced to$5,000, the estimated value of Silkwood's lost property at her rental house, and the award for punitive damage was reversed. In Silkwood vs. McGee Corporation 464 U.S. 238 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the original jury verdict. The court ruled that NRC's exclusive authority to set safety standards did not foreclose the use of state tort remedies. Although although indicating I don't have no idea what that means. Although indicating it would appeal for other reasons, Kermage agreed in nineteen eighty six to settle settle out of court for one point three eight million, or close to four million today, while admitting no liability. And it says that uh in the movie China Syndrome, they had a scene that echoed Silkwood's story, uh 1983 movie Silkwood. Um Cher was in it apparently. PBS Frontline produced uh program called Nuclear Reaction. And I'll tell you some more stuff right now. If you need if you want to know more about her, it looks like ABC put out a documentary uh November 14th. And uh November 14th, 2024. So this is ABC News. Fifty years ago, the death of 28-year-old plutonium plant worker and whistleblower in Oklahoma, a death many found mysterious and sparked decades of speculation, shocked the nation. The official story was that Karen Silkwood died in a one car crash November 13, 1974, on the way to meet a New York Times journalist. Very convenient, and hand documents she'd been secretly collecting at her job that would have proved the company's negligence. And she drove off the highway and died. We never believed it, Mike Bocher said in an official of the official narrative. Bocher and his reporting partner Bob Sands, both veteran Oklahoma journalists, say many Oklahoma speculate that Karen Silkwood may have died for what she knew. Silkwood's story became widely known, inspiring several books, articles, and a major motion picture. Um and that it says when she noticed she felt unsafe working conditions such as leaks, spills, and coworkers frequently getting contaminated, she spoke up to make improvements. She became Nuclear Energy's first whistleblower, though the term whistleblower had just started being used. This was at a time the idea of someone inside a big corporation exposing alleged misdeeds was shocking. Silkwood's allegations of contamination ultimately and ultimate death sparked investigation by Oklahoma Highway Patrol, FBI, and a civil lawsuit that went to the Supreme Court. Several news outlets investigated this matter. Silkwood's story gained significant attention in 1983 with the release of Silkwood, a movie based on her life and performance that earned her an Oscar nomination. Merrill Street portrayed Silkwood in the film. For 50 years, this story has been one Botcher and Sands can't get out of their minds. Suspicion of flout foul play has swirled around for decades. What had Silkwood uncovered? Who had she upset? Why did her car crash into a concrete wall? Was there a second car involved? There are fewer and fewer people alive to share what they know from that night Karen died. Many of the people who worked with Karen in the plant are already dead. However, Sands and Bocher have new leads, never before heard investigative tapes, a fresh look at a critical piece of physical evidence. Plus, they track down people who can illuminate who Karen was and what she was uncovering about her workplace. The duo first spoke with Michael Meadows, Silkwood's son. He was only five years old when his mother died. There's never been a definitive answer. Both sides told a very different story that night of what happened as and as her son, I would like to have a definite answer. Instead of cherished memories of his mother, Meadows left with the black and white photos, newspaper clippings, and police reports. When he he tries to picture what his mom was like, the image that comes to my mind is Stroop's portrayal. The fact that there's still so many people afraid to tell what they know or what they have heard is amazing to me that fifty years later, a company that barely even exists, if it does exist at all, still has that kind of control of intimidation. That shows you how powerful these people are. Kind of reminds me of some stranger things type of thing. That company was Kerr McGee, named after its influential leaders Robert Kerr and Dean McGee. It doesn't exist anymore, but in the early 70s, Kerr McGee was a giant in Oklahoma and in America's oil and gas industry. So for Silkwood, going against her employer would be a steep hill to climb. The company maintained that allegations of malfeasance were overblown, and some claims even made up by overzealous union members. Steve Wodka and Karen Silkwood in the early 70s as a young staff member for the A S A or O C A W, which represented Silkwood and other plants. Um trying to see if there's anything we haven't heard before. So yeah, this is uh the ad for the ABC documentary from 2004, and then there is um Karen Silkwood was right remembering the nuclear whistleblower 51 years after her death. And this is November twelfth, twenty twenty-five. Uh Coco K-O-C-O.com has a You've liked hour-long documentary for free that you can watch. I'm just gonna play a few moments here and we can listen.

SPEAKER_00: 36:11

KOCO's team of investigative journalists spent two years digging through long-lost files, interviewing people who lived this firsthand, and talking with family members of those who have passed. They shared secret recordings, diaries, and deathbed confessions. We traveled to the National Archives where 50 years of clues were buried in boxes that had to be wheeled in. From Karen's handwritten notes about what happened inside the Kerr McGee nuclear facility to the receipts she kept during her contamination.

SPEAKER_01: 36:42

So, yeah, fascinating. Um this is uh I I'll put the link in there, but so this is free, and so there there's a lot of new uh content being produced about Silkwood still today. And it says here at the very end, uh biography written Judge Frank Theus, who oversaw the civil trial following Silkwood's death. He described a meeting between the FBI and the CIA where agents were warned that speaking about plutonium missing and crescent involves spies and counter spies of the US and could damage our national security. So, even the CIA and the FBI were involved in this. So, yeah, I don't wanna play too much of it uh for copyright, obviously. And um, here we have June 30th, 2025. Uh again ABC. This might be the same one. Listen to the radioactive, the Karen Silkwood mystery podcast. And it looks like there's eight episodes. Uh so yeah, there's a lot of new stuff coming out about Karen uh Silkwood. Um here it says uh this is Coco again, Kara K O C O. In the course of operating the uranium plant, a considerable amount of soil outside the plant was contaminated with low enriched uranium. Silkwood uh de the decommissioned plant began decommissioning of the plant began in 1975. Groundwater remediation is scheduled to last until 2039. Silquid died when she was 28. If she was still alive, she would be 93 by the time the remediation is expected to be completed. You know, you look at it from the outside, and if you don't know what you're driving past, you wouldn't even pay attention to it. Oh, I think we just heard that. Uh so yeah. More content being released. Uh I think we've read most of that. Uh, this was from November 19th, 2025. So pretty recent. And I just wanted to end it with a reminder of something that we're doing now, because that was a lot of talk with whistleblowers. It says November 18th, President Donald Trump's administration is close to implementing a rule that would end long-standing legal protections for whistleblowers among senior federal senior federal employees, according to documents reviewed by Reuters, prompting backlash from lawyers representing government workers. So anybody who cares about all this technology we've been talking about, or UFOs or whatever, uh you know, or just transparency and accountability in general, and corporations not just being able to go crazy and do whatever they want. We need whistleblowers to be able to be protected. And Trump said that he was gonna protect whistleblowers. And look at what he's doing now. So I just needed to point that out. This is from November 18th, so not that long ago. That Trump was ending protections for whistleblowers. Specifically, documents showed the rule would exclude senior employees from legal protections that prohibit prohibit US government agencies from retaliating on whistleblowers who accuse them of wrongdoing, such as violating the law or wasting funds. And what was the whole point of the whole doge thing? If we're just now gonna make it illegal, weren't they like bragging about it? This whole thing is backwards. This administration makes making good on its determination to silent dissent in all forms, creating a culture of fear, silence, and intimidation. Said Andrew Bacak or Bakaj Bacaj, Chief Legal Counselor of Whistleblower Aid, a nonpartisan group that represents government whistleblowers. I hope that you guys enjoyed that. Uh pretty interesting stuff, and uh I think it shows the dichotomy of what happens when you go rogue versus like all these other kids who were pretty much trying to work with them inside the system. It's very interesting. And all of the tech billionaires trying to get a hold of this technology way back, like over ten years ago. So it that shows a lot as well. Very enlightening. And I hope you guys have a great couple holidays and be safe out there. Adios, you know, you can see the job.