Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - The Doors of Death: The Herald of Free Enterprise

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

The Herald of Free Enterprise is a new class of ferry that allows cars to drive directly into the ship. The doors must be closed before every departure, or the ship sails with a gaping hole at one end. One black night in 1987, on the freezing waters off Zebrugge, Belgium, a single crew member falls asleep at the worst possible time.  For the sources, see the show notes at timharford.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than adds supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster,

IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-I-Hart. I'm Jake Brennan, and on the Disgraceland Podcast, I explore the wild lives of rock stars and unbelievable true crime stories from music history.

These are the stories you haven't heard, the kind you'll end up telling someone else. Like the time Paul McCartney spent in a notorious prison or the bizarre crime Lady Gaga is accused of, or that time Blondie's Debbie Harry escaped Ted Bunny. Listen to Disgraceland on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Pushkin The Port of Zabrugger, Belgium. Assistant Bosen Mark Stanley is helped. helping to direct all the trucks, cars and buses off the ferry

after their four and a half hour journey from Dover, England. Then he'll help to load up all the trucks, cars and buses that are waiting to board for the trip back to Dover. It's a chilly Thursday evening in March 1987. The ferry is the Herald of Free Enterprise. It's a relatively new design called Row Row, Row, Roll on, roll off. As the name suggests, this type of ferry is designed so vehicles can simply drive on in one port and off in the other.

There are big doors at the front and back that open so a ramp can be lowered. The vehicles park on a lower deck and their occupants head upstairs to spend the journey on one of the passenger decks above. Then, obviously, those big doors must be closed again before the ferry departs. Otherwise, you're going to see with a hole in one end of your ship.

It's the job of the assistant Boson Mark Stanley to close those doors. Four years earlier, on another Roro Ferry owned by the same company, the person responsible didn't close the doors. He'd fallen asleep. That could have ended in disaster. Had the waves been too high or the open doors sitting too low in the water, the sea would have rushed in.

They got away with it that time, but they were lucky. Back on the Herald of Free Enterprise on that cold Zabrugger evening, the vehicles are almost finished loading for their journey back to Dover. Mark Stanley's boss, the bosom, the kind of foreman, tells Stanley to go back to his. his cabin and take a break. It's been a long day. The ship's not yet ready to depart. When it is, the captain will call over the loud speakers, as always. Harbour stations? Hearing that, will be Mark Stanley's queue to return to his post and close the doors.

Stanley goes back to his cabin and makes a cup of tea to warm himself up. He sits on his bunk, intending to read for a while. He yawns and stretches. It really has been a long day. His eyelids start to droop. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales. The first time I went on a holiday outside the UK at the age of 12,

we didn't fly. It was expensive, especially for a family with four kids. Instead, we travelled on a brand-new row-row ferry. I still remember her name, Kuningen Beatrix. We loaded up the car at home, drove a few hours to the port, then onto the ferry. You could stand outside on an upper deck. Feel the sea breeze on your face. Listen to the seagulls and the chug of the diesel engines.

And watch the shoreline recede into the distance. or go inside where there was a cafeteria, slot machines, and a TV room showing cartoons. We enjoyed that journey. I expect we'd have enjoyed it less if we'd been aware of the memos circulating inside Townsend-Torrison, a company that owned the Herald and several other row-row ferries. Not long after that near-miss on the Herald's sister ship, when the doors weren't closed. The same ship had another near-miss.

The captain wrote a memo to the crew. Twice this ship has sailed with a stern or bow doors open. All the named persons must see that the system is worked to make sure this dangerous situation does not occur. Give it your utmost attention. The captain of the sister ship was a thoughtful man. He understood that people are human. utmost attention or not, things sometimes go wrong.

It's good to have a backup. He worried that from the captain's position on the bridge, he couldn't see the doors, so he couldn't check himself that there'd been closed before setting off. He wrote a memo to a company director. There was no indication on the bridge, he explained, as to whether the doors are closed or not. The memo pointed out that a work might be delayed in closing the doors,

or there might be a mechanical problem. The captain wouldn't know. He proposed a solution. Indicator lights could enable the bridge team to monitor the situation in such circumstances. A sensible idea. Lights on the bridge to show if the doors were open or closed.

It would have been a bit of hassle and expense to implement, but not that much. But when the director got the captain's memo, he was far from convinced that it was worth the bother. He circulated the memo to his company colleagues and asked for their opinions on the idea. Nice, said one. But don't we already pay someone? Another shrugged.

Assume the guy who shuts the doors tells the bridge if there's a problem. Well, he should, but he's a. He won't if the problem is that he's asleep. The captain's sensible, easy to implement solution went nowhere. And so, two years later, as Mark Stanley dozed in his bunk on the Herald of Free Enterprise, there was no indication on the bridge that the ferry's doors were still wide open. As darkness fell in Zebrugge, the Herald left the road. the calm of the harbour for the open sea, carrying 459 passengers and 80 crew.

Ian Yardley's book, 90 seconds at Zabrugger, brings together accounts of what happened next. It started with the plates in the cafeteria sliding slowly across the tables. Everyone began to joke about it, recalled one passenger. Then there was a crash from the kitchen. the sound of smashing crockery. In British culture, there's a reflex response to the smash of dropped crockery in a cafe or pub. Wehey!

A big cheer went up, said one passenger. Some people clapped, added another. The ship righted itself. Presumably it had just been hit by a wave. No need to worry. But it continued to roll to the other side, slowly at first, the passenger recalls. Then it suddenly accelerated like a wire had been cut.

No one had a chance. Another added, the ship literally tipped over as if you were knocking over a glass of water. It seemed that quick. One young man was drinking at the bar when he saw a baby hurtling through the air. Like a javelin. Instinctively, he dropped the drink and not.

launched himself towards the baby, but missed. He grabbed onto a chair. I've never sobered up so fast in my life. Another man recalled, I wedged myself up against a chair and table. People were flying past me like bullets. The furniture, at least, was all bolted to the deck. One young woman recalled that holding onto a table took every ounce of strength and more. Another, near the duty-free, had to hold on while being clattered by the falling bottles of whiskey and vodka.

One man was dangling from a table, trying to keep hold of his seven-year-old son. When a girl flew by and made a desperate grab for the man's legs, it was too much, his partner recalls. He lost his grip. That was the last I saw of them. Then the lights went out. For one crew member, that was actually a relief. He'd been clinging to a partition wall, watching with helpless despair as people were thrown like rag dolls, 30, 40 feet through the air.

It will be embedded in my mind for the rest of my life. It took just a minute and a half. for the ship to settle on its side. It was only by chance that it wedged on a sandback instead of sinking completely. The sea rushed in. Those inside the ship who'd survived the fall now found themselves struggling to stay afloat

in bitterly cold water in pitch darkness. Then objects began to rain down on them, making it hard to find space. Ironically, they were life-jacket. A locker on the wall, now above them, had burst open. There were so many life jackets, said one passenger. Everyone was tangled up in the straps. Assistant Boeson Mark Stanley, meanwhile, had found his boss, Boson Terry Ealing.

The doors, Terry. Don't worry about that now, said Ealing. We've got this to sort out. Cautionary Tales will be back after the break. Are the host of the podcast, Oncour. Check out our brand new episodes featuring music from the show that everyone is reheating as we speak. Heated rivalry. Join me as I go behind the songs that brought Shane and Elia together.

I'll tell you the stories of Fice, My Moon, My Man, Wolf for raids, I'll Believe in Anything, and tattoos all the things she said, and how they all became a part of this global phenomenon. Stream encore on IHeart Radio, crave, or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster,

IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcast.

Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-8-4-I-Hart. I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Hollywoodland, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them. Like how the story of Marilyn Monroe isn't just the story of a Hollywood icon. Marilyn Monroe has become so iconic that her death can only be explained through conspiracy theories. And for some fans who can't let go, these stories have metastasized from

conjecture to accepted fact. So on August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started, and she died again. And now, we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died, the third way. Learn more about what happens when fame, media obsession and conspiracy collide. Listen to Hollywoodland on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I was 13 years old when the Herald of Free Enterprise capsized in Zabruger. It's the first news story I remember finding personally shocking. The pictures on the television showed the ferry lying on its side, so agonizingly close to the safety of the harbor walls. I've been on holiday last year on a ship like that.

It had sailed with the doors open. How on earth could that have happened? A senior judge, the Honourable Mr Justice Sheen, was put in charge of answering that question at an official inquiry. The immediate cause was easy enough to identify. Mark Stanley was supposed to close the doors and didn't. Stanley told the inquiry I thought it was dreaming

I never fell off my bunk I leapt because I knew something was not right my thought then was the doors the doors the doors had not been shut I knew I hadn't checked them I was just hoping someone else had done it Mr Justice Sheen clearly had some sympathy for the assistant Bosom

Mr Stanley has frankly recognised his failure to turn up for duty and he will no doubt suffer remorse for a long time to come but it was clear to Mr Justice Sheen that the safety of a ship really shouldn't depend on whether or not one man nods off on his tea break Townsend Torreson must have had backup systems mustn't they Sheem wanted to know what they were He talked to Mark Stanley's boss, Boeson Terry Ealing. Ealing could have closed the doors.

Why didn't he? It has never been part of my duties to close the doors, said Ealing, or make sure anybody is there to close the doors. The judge was unimpressed. He took a narrow view of his duties, and it is most unfortunate that that was his attitude. Still, we can hardly get outraged about someone not doing something that isn't their job. But hold on, Ailing said it wasn't his duty to make sure anybody's there to close the doors.

Was there someone else who did have this duty? Yes, Sheen discovered, the ship's chief officer. Actually, in the company's written policy, his duty was to ensure that the doors are secured. But in practice, Townshend-Torrison defined that as checking that the person whose job it was to close the doors was somewhere in the vicinity of the doors and therefore presumably about to close them. Mr Justice Sheen shook his head. That's a weird way to understand, ensure that the doors are secured. The chief officer told Sheen that he thought he saw Mark Stanley on the deck approaching the doors, but must have been mistaken. Sheen interrogated the captain. It's his

responsibility to make sure that his ship is seaworthy. Why had he set off with a large hole in one end of it? He explained to Sheen that nobody had told him the doors hadn't been closed, so he assumed they had. If that sounds crazy, remember it was exactly what a senior company figure had shrugged in response to the sensible idea of an indicator light. Assume the guy who shuts the doors, tells the bridge if there's a problem. It was even written down in a company policy, kind of. The policy said that others on the ship had to report any deficiency which is likely to cause them to be unready for sea. And, in the absence of any such report,

the captain could assume that the vessel is ready for sea. Once again, Mr Justice Sheen frowned at the drafting. Were open doors a deficiency? Unclear. The company interpreted its own policy to mean that the captain could simply assume the doors had been closed unless told they hadn't. As Mr Justice Sheen pointed out,

that was, of course, a very dangerous assumption. The sea wasn't especially rough in Zebrugge, but the herald was sitting low in the water and lower at the front, which was the end where the doors were open. As the ferry picked up speed, that pushed the front end lower still, and waves began to lap onto the vehicle deck. The deck was a big, open space.

As water sloshed about, the ship lost all stability, rapidly tipping onto its side. It took just a minute and a half to plunge everyone on board into a horrible, black, freezing nightmare. As eyes slowly got used to the darkness, some passengers realised they were trapped under toughened glass partitions down the middle of the deck,

just a couple of feet above where the water had risen. One pummeled the glass above with such force he dislocated all his fingers. Bosen Terry Ayling found himself above those glass partitions and went to look for something to smash them. I'll never forget having to walk on the windows, he said. It was like a scene out of a horror film. We were walking on people's face. and fists hammering at the windows.

The struggle for survival brought out the best and worst of human nature. In one part of the ship, with a yawning space above the fatally cold water, a rope was lowered. Two men shoved others aside so they could be the first declined. Both lost their grip and fell to their deaths. But others, were heroic. One man, with his wife and daughter, realised that their route to safety lay on the other side of what used to be a corridor

and was now a vertical shaft filled with water and too wide to jump. I spread myself in the water, he recalled. I arched my back and held onto the railings on the other side so people could use me as a stepping stone. He told his daughter to walk across his back. Then his wife. Then 20 total strangers. The press dubbed him the human bridge. People looked after children. It didn't matter whose child. Babies were plucked from the water and handed up to those above who could hug them to keep them warm. A woman consoled a nine-year-old who kept asking, why should I die? I've been such a good girl. I've never told any lies.

A middle-aged truck driver found himself in charge of another small child. Amid all this panic and chaos, he recalled, she just sat on my knee smiling. I'll never forget her for as long as I live. One woman recalled how her husband made sure she was safe, then went back into the bowels of the ship. He was not looking for anybody in particular, just anybody he could help.

She had no idea where he was for the next day and a half. It turned out he'd been helping people for hours until he collapsed with hypothermia and had to be taken off the ship by professional rescuers. He'd saved many lives and was traumatised. I obviously didn't do enough. Assistant Bosen Mark Stanley, meanwhile, spent two hours pulling people up through a smashed window before he too collapsed,

bleeding from a deep gash in his arm. He kept repeating, It's my fault. It's my fault. A hundred and ninety-three people died on the Herald of Free Enterprise. We've met four workers on the ship whose actions combined to cause those deaths. One fell asleep.

One didn't do something, that wasn't his job, one misidentified a colleague, and one followed company policy. None of these things seem like hanging offences. Regular listeners to cautionary tales will know that this is typical of many disasters. There's no obvious villain who deserves to be locked up, just a series of innocuous seeming things that happen or fail to happen. The classic way to look at such disasters is the famous Swiss cheese model developed by the accident expert James Reason.

It imagines safety systems as being like layers of cheese, each have holes in them, and the problem comes when all the holes just happen to line up. The Herald of Free Enterprise was one of Reason's first case studies. Indeed, the idea of the Swiss Cheese model, traces back to 1987, the year of the Herald disaster. Reason and a colleague doodled the layers on a paper napkin in a pub. Often, inquiries into disasters find that nobody had ever foreseen how the holes might line up.

The inquiries inform new regulations that plug holes or add another layer. But what if an inquiry finds that people, had foreseen exactly how those holes might line up and done nothing about it. Then a good way to prevent future disasters might be to identify who's to blame and hold them accountable. Mr. Justice Sheen could see exactly who to blame.

But could they be held to account? Cautionary tales will be back after the break. Heard the chaos. Now you can see. it. Hello. Oh my gosh. Watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish,

right inside the free IHR Radio app. Gets the blood going up. Catch every laugh and eye roll on shows like the Tom Green Farmcast and park the bus. Now with full video. It's the same hosts and the same chemistry with all the hilarious moments you've been missing. Right on your screen. Cheers. Open the free IHRRA radio app.

Search video podcasts and tap watch. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business.

Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-844-I-Hart. I'm Jake Brennan. And on my podcast, Hollywoodland, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them. Like how the story of Marilyn Monroe isn't just the story of a Hollywood icon.

Marilyn Monroe has become so iconic that her death can only be explained through conspiracy theories. And for some fans who can't let go, these stories have metastasized from conjecture to accepted fact. So on August 4th, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started, and she died again. And now, we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died, the third way. Learn more about what happens when fame, media obsession, and conspiracy collide. Listen to Hollywoodland on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Two years before the Herald disaster, remember, a sister ship had sailed with its doors open. The captain made a sensible request for an indicator light

and got a dismissive reaction from the higher ups at the company. Assume the guy who shuts the doors tells the bridge if there's a problem. Another response was outright sarcastic. Do they need an indicator to tell them whether the deck storekeeper is awake and sober, my goodness. Mr Justice Sheen was scathing. It is hardly necessary to comment that these replies display an absence of any proper sense of responsibility.

A year later, another captain sent another memo after another near miss to chase up the suggestion. It is so important to the safety of the safety of the moment. the ship that the doors are closed, he pointed out. We should have bridge indication. Is the issue still being considered? The reply said simply, If the doors are left open, then the person responsible for closing them should be disciplined.

The failure of imagination is staggering. It should have been obvious that leaving the doors open might sink the ship. If that happened, how could anyone possibly think that disciplining the assistant Boson would solve anything? The assistant Boson, Mark Stanley, didn't need anyone to tell him of. The next morning, in hospital, one survivor recalls seeing him in a dreadful state, sobbing and repeating. It's my fault. Mr. Justice Sheen disagreed.

A full investigation leads inexorably to the conclusion that the underlying or cardinal faults lay higher up in the company. The more Sheen learned about how Townsend Torrison was managed, the more appalled he became. Sheen wanted to know who was responsible for those sloppy and ambiguous written orders. The company's lawyer replied. well, in truth, nobody, though there ought to have been. Nobody was responsible for safety either, sheen found. The board of directors did not appreciate their responsibility for the safe management of their ships.

The ferries regularly sailed with more passengers than the legal limit because nobody had come up with a system for counting them. That, observed Sheen, should not have been beyond the wit of the managers. When the Herald sank, Townshend Torrison had no idea how many people had been on it, let alone a list of their names. What about keeping track of how low the ship sat in the water, at the front and the back? That should be measured before each journey, and the herald's logbook was full of numbers. but those numbers showed that it always sailed on an even keel. That wasn't credible.

The captain admitted that instead of actually doing the measurements, the crew had simply been making the numbers up. Nobody ever checked. Mr Justice Sheem delivered a clear and damning answer to the question of how on earth a ferry had set. sail with its doors open, from top to bottom, he said. The body corporate was infected with the disease of sloppiness. Sheen made some specific practical recommendations for preventing future disasters, such as install indicator lights. But if the real cause of the accident was

corporate sloppiness, the best way to prevent a repeat might be to incentivise of corporations to be less sloppy. Sheen couldn't do that, though. He might be a judge, but as chair of an inquiry, his remit was limited to finding out what had happened. He couldn't hand down punishment. In parallel to Sheen's inquiry, another legal process was running its course,

the coroner's inquest. It, too, had a limited remit. to decide what cause of death to put on the victim's death certificates. The inquest's jury decided that the deaths on the herald of free enterprise were unlawful killing. But they, again, had no power to punish anyone. They couldn't even say who they thought had acted unlawfully. So what would happen to Townsend-Torrison? Nothing much, it seemed.

There'd be monetary costs, of course, but they had insurance. The brand name had taken a hit from all of those aerial shots of the capsized herald with Townsendorrison emblazoned down its side, but not to worry. They could and did simply change their name and keep on doing business. That seemed very wrong to a man named Peter Spooner. When Peter Spooner first heard the news about the herald of free enterprise, his heart lurched. His son Martin had planned to take that ferry with his friends,

coming home from a holiday in Bruges. The next day, Spooner tried and tried to get through to an emergency hotline. He found a number for Townsend Torrison's head office and rang it. He recalls, I was shooed away by an unsympathetic executive. It was only when Martin's friend turned up, ashen faced on Spooner's doorstep, that he found out Martin hadn't made it. Peter Spooner went into a period of shock. After six months, he snapped out of it.

The inquiry had published its report, the inquest was drawing to a close. Spooner realised that Townsend-Torrison was going to face no meaningful consequences for their sloppy corporate culture. So what was to deter other companies in future from being similarly sloppy with matters of public safety? Spooner helped to form a group, the Herald Families Association, that would take Townsend-Torrison to court. It was a case of seeking justice, said Spooner. Not vengeance. The inquiry and the inquest had both had narrow terms of reference.

A criminal trial, they thought, might focus minds in other companies and help prevent other tragedies. But the families faced a problem. Setting sail with the doors open didn't seem to have broken any specific law. That might seem surprising, but the Roro Ferry, remember, was a relatively new design of ship.

Maritime laws had been written long before they were invented. Those laws said it's an offence to keep a ship in port that's unfit to go to sea. But a Roro Ferry in port? with its doors open isn't a problem. The law said nothing about going to see in an unseaworthy condition. Row row ferries sailed through a loophole that no one had ever imagined. The row row ferry is an early example of what's since become known as the pacing problem.

Innovations create risks that laws never envisaged, and regulators don't always notice. until after something's gone wrong. As Spooner put it, regulation and legislation can only do so much. They follow in the wake of disasters, instead of anticipating them. Still, though,

the risk of sailing with the doors open should have been obvious to Town Centaurason. The company's failure to manage that risk seemed like it might fit the legal concept of gross negligence. If a person causes death by gross negligence, they can stand trial for manslaughter. How about a company? The Herald became only the third trial for corporate manslaughter in English legal history. Neither of the first two had succeeded.

The prosecution soon bumped up against an ironic problem. The offence of corporate manslaughter was as sloppy worded as town's end. Torrason's company policies. It required the identification of controlling mind behind the company. But as Mr. Justice Sheen had made all too clear, nobody was in control. The case against Townsend Torrison collapsed. Paradoxically, the company's very failure to designate responsibilities had let it off the hook. The problem wasn't with one individual, but the cumulative effect of a rotten culture. A flippant memo here, some loosely interpreted phrasing there. The sloppiness infected the whole body corporate. And the law simply wasn't set up to deal with that.

In 2007, 20 years after the Herald disaster, the British government introduced a new law on corporate manslaughter. It followed a long campaign by the war. the Herald Families Association and Peter Spooner. But legal scholars say the new law isn't working as well as they'd hoped. How to deter companies from being sloppy with public safety seems to be a harder problem to solve than we might hope. Five years later, on the 25th anniversary of the disaster, one retired director of Townsend-Torrison saw fit to complete.

plain to a newspaper that it was a monstrous injustice that the company had ever been prosecuted. He sniffed, it was just one of those tragic accidents. The assistant Boson, Mark Stanley, could never shrug it off like that. It's not up to me to blame anyone else, he said, and I'm not going to. He coped with his remorse as best he could. and died in 2016, a grandfather and much-loved coach at his local football club. He once reflected, you thought, how can I ever live with this? You can, in the end.

But perhaps the final word should go to a nine-year-old. I've been such a good girl. I've never told any lies. We tend at age nine. to think that the world is just, that actions always have consequences. As we get older, we realise that's not true. But even as adults,

it's a lesson we never stop having to relearn. Key sources for this episode include Mr Justice Sheen's 1987 investigation report and Ian Yardley's book 90 Seconds at Ziborne. Brugger, The Herald of Free Enterprise Story. For a full list of sources, see the show notes at Tim Harford.com. Cautionary Tales is presented by me, Tim Harford. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust.

The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Gretta Cone, Corrin Gilead Fischer, Benderdaf Haffry, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. It really does make a difference to us. And if you want to hear it, add free and receive a bonus audio episode, video episode,

and members-only newsletter every month, why not join the Cautionary Club? To sign up, head to Patreon. That's Patreon, p-a-t-r-e-on-com slash cautionary club. I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Disgraceland, I tell the stories behind music's biggest names. Like how the story of the foo fighters isn't just about music, it's about grief, shock, in the moment everything changed. Imagine that.

You're in the biggest band on the planet, as Dave Grohl was in 1994 in Nirvana. And the phone rings. And you learn that your singer, your friend, the reluctant voice of a generation, Kirk Cobain, is dead. Listen to Disgraceland on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.

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