In November of 1974, 24, 28-year-old Karen Silkwood was on her way to Oklahoma City from Crescent to meet a New York Times reporter.

Her mission? To blow the whistle on a billion-dollar nuclear industry company.

As Karen drove down a dark and desolate highway, important documents about safety concerns at the facility where she worked beside her,

her car veered from the road and smashed into the wall of a concrete culvert. Before anyone found her, Karen died at the scene of the single car crash.

Silkwood is a multi-part podcast that intricately examines the life of Karen Silkwood, the nuclear behemoths she sought to expose, the

government's role in potential wrongdoings, and asks the question, what actually happened on that

cold and windy November night 50 years ago? Did Karen fall asleep at the wheel? Did she die for what

she knew and what she was on her way to expose. Was it an accident or something far more

sinister? I'm about to play a clip from the podcast Silkwood. While you're listening, subscribe

to Silkwood wherever you're listening now or on your preferred podcast app. Here's the clip.

On Wednesday, November 13th, 1974, a breeze rumbled off James Mullins' red flatbed truck as he made his way up Highway 74,

traveling north from Oklahoma City, a town where oil companies extract crude from pools deep beneath the earth.

The wind carried red clay dust that blanketed the road and powdered

the truck's windows. This vivid red clay, a product of Oklahoma's iron-rich soil that covers over

one million acres of the state, is a defining feature of the landscape. Ahead of Mullins lay the tiny town of Crescent, home of the

Crescent Tigers, the Hub Cafe, the Ted Sebring Ford dealership, and the Kerr-Mage-Megie plutonium

plant, a billion-dollar titan of nuclear energy. This scene was familiar to Mullins, who had been

navigating Highway 74 daily for the past few weeks.

He was intimately acquainted with the landscape that stretched between Oklahoma City and Crescent,

pump jacks dotting his eyeline, the rolling pastures, endless wire fencing, the dense woodland hardwoods, and towering pines.

Mullins' teenage brother-in-law, Dalton

Irvin, was asleep next to him in the cab. Mullins' boss, John Trindle, was a quarter mile

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