Oil and Blood: The Osage Murders from Cautionary Tales

Revisionist History

Pushkin Industries

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 61.5K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, we’re bringing you an episode from another Pushkin show, Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford. This episode is based on Killers of the Flower Moon, with permission from its author, David Grann.

Minnie Smith grew sick quite suddenly. She had been young, fit and healthy; the doctors were baffled when she died. "A peculiar wasting illness," they called it. Then, her sister Anna went missing. She was found a week later, dead, with a gunshot wound to her head. When a third sister, Rita, died in an explosion at her home, the grim pattern was clear: the family was under attack.

Lawman Tom White came to town to investigate, and uncovered a vicious plot.

This episode is the first of two cautionary tales produced in association with Apple Original Films. The Killers of the Flower Moon movie is in theaters now. It's directed by Martin Scorsese, and stars Robert DeNiro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Pushkin
0:06.5	Wealth, greed, desire, murder, these are just some of the plagues that befell the Osage
0:14.5	people after vast oil reserves were discovered beneath their land.
0:19.4	Killers of the Flower Moon tells a story of the disregard for human life and betrayal
0:24.6	and greed.
0:25.6	Today on Revisionist History, we're presenting a special episode of cautionary tales.
0:30.6	You'll hear the story behind David Grant's book, Killers of the Flower Moon,
0:34.6	which has been adapted for the screen by Martin Scorsese and is now exclusively in theaters.
0:39.6	Plus, hear about the investigation that began almost 90 years later.
0:45.6	Here's the episode. Listen to cautionary tales wherever you get your podcasts.
0:50.6	This cautionary tale is based on David Grant's book, Killers of the Flower Moon,
0:56.6	and produced in association with Apple original films.
1:00.6	The film of the same title is now exclusively in theaters.
1:04.6	Once upon a time, the Osage Nation stretched across the centre of the North American continent,
1:24.6	from the Rocky Mountains through to what is now Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.
1:29.6	The incident Thomas Jefferson viewed the Osage people with wary respect.
1:35.6	When in 1804, he met with a group of towering Osage chiefs of the White House.
1:41.6	He remarked that they were the finest men we have ever seen.
1:46.6	The wary respect did not last.
1:50.6	By 1870, the Osage people had been pushed into buying land
1:55.6	that one observer described as broken, rocky, sterile and utterly unfit for cultivation.
2:04.6	Ravaged by smallpox, the death of the buffalo and brutal attacks from settlers,
	...

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