May 15, 2026 • 26 mins
In this week's Classic episode: today, Oliver Cromwell is known as one of the most famous figures in English history -- he was a Puritan with no military experience when the Civil War broke out in 1642, but within a decade he rose to the position of Lord Protector, essentially ruling Wales, Scotland and England. He died of natural causes, but was later executed... after his death. What are we talking about? Tune in to find out.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow ridiculous historians. A few years back, we got interested
in a guy named Oliver Cromwell.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
What of a pill?
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Not a nice fellow, bit of a bit of a
specific guy.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Not much sense of humor that Oliver Cromwell.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
He got in trouble. He was a Puritan, an ideologue
more so than a soldier, had no military experience when
the Civil War broke out in that part of the
world in sixteen forty two.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Yep, And he quickly rose in prominence and within the
ranks and became the Lord Protector and ruled over Wales,
Scotland and England. He did eventually pass away due to
natural causes. But this one has a twist.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Ending too, Ben.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Oh, that's right, because he was executed posthumously.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
How how, how let's throw the tape fine.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Now Ridiculous Histories A production of iHeart Radio. Ridiculous Histories
A production of iHeart Radio. Hello and welcome to the show.
(01:32):
Have you ever dreamed of toppling the status quo in
your neck of the global woods? Have you ever thought
of maybe starting a food fight in school, or you know,
orchestrating a coup in another country? I feel like all
of us have had these revolutionary or rebellious thoughts at
some point. But how far does it go? You know,
(01:54):
I've gone pretty far. My name is Ben.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
We have come a long way, Ben, just the two
of us want to look at it on like a
micro level, but on a macro level. Yeah, I think
that the human species has come a long way. We
certainly still oh I'm no, by the way, we certainly
still you know, have room to grow, but certainly not
quite running up on the kind of insurgency that let's say,
like a reign of terror like a robes Pierre situation
(02:19):
during the French Revolution, or maybe more of a Oliver
Cromwell kind of situation like in the old UK.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yes, yes, it's true. And by the way, shout out
to our own personal Cromwell super producer, Casey Pegram.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Ben, he deserves better than that he does. He does.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
He's you know what you deserve to be, Casey Pegrom
with no comparisons, no equivocations.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
You okay with that, Casey, I'm great with that.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Yeah, Because, as it turns out, Cromwell, who was kind
of like a Protestant robes Pierre in many ways, was
kind of a monster.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Well. His legacy is still a matter of hot takes
and controversy here today in twenty nineteen. Some people will
say he is the father of British democracy, he got
rid of the monarchy, albeit briefly, And then others will say,
no way, he's a war criminal. He hated the Catholics
(03:19):
and he led vicious military campaigns. But regardless of whether
you are pro or anti Cromwell, there is no denying
that he changed the course of history in England, Scotland
and Ireland. Let's learn a little bit about his life.
What do you say before we get to before we
(03:41):
get to his death spoiler?
Speaker 4 (03:42):
He's dead, He's dead. Dead is a doornail? Dead is disco.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
I always wonder where dead as a doornail comes from?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Isn't it from? Uh Dickens? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:50):
But what made someone say, you know what I think
of what I think of death doornails?
Speaker 4 (03:55):
I guess it's just because it's an inanimate object. Yeah,
but think because said dead is a table, the alliteration
is key.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Oh dead as see Yeah, dead is a dumbbell that works.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
But doornails were much more prevalent in the days of Dickens, perhaps.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
So Yeah, Originally all of the titles that Dickens used
in his stories had had the phrase door nail in them.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
It's also true so after fomenting the Parliamentarian uprising over
the Royalists in the English Civil War, Cromwell became the
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England in sixteen fifty three.
That's also, of course, after executing Charles the First, who
(04:42):
was the king at the time, and he ruled over England,
Scotland and Ireland just for in the grand scale of things,
time being what it is.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Blip of time, right right, because he assumed he assumed
this status as Lord Protector in sixteen fifty three. The
monarchy itself was restored in sixteen sixty, So this is
what maybe seven years.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Why did Cromwell have such a beef with the Catholics?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Ben, What a great question, nol You see, Oliver Cromwell
was born at the turn of the seventeenth century and
when he came into the world, England was a Protestant
country ruled by a king who believed that he had
divine rights, meaning he was king because God had purposely
made him king.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
This was kind of a thing with monarchs in those days,
like the son king, you know, I mean like a
lot of divine belief in that they were like the
extension of God's power on earth.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
It still is. I mean, how well, it's a very
effective way to bully people into thinking that they have
some sort of obligation to serve you. Right. So Cromwell
converted to Puritanism in his late twenties, and he thought
that King Charles the First was just two Catholic. He said,
(06:01):
this king is far too Catholic for me. He's a papist,
which was a smear word at the time. Many of Charles'
first policies, you see, such as levying taxes without the
consent of parliament, they made his subjects mistrust him and
they said, hey, you're not the kind of cultured monarch
we like. You're one of those tyrannical absolute monarchs.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Let's not forget.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
This is post Protestant Reformation, where the country was very
much split. It became largely a Protestant country, and then
the kings that would come into power they would either
be heavily Protestant or maybe not quite Protestant enough for
some people. But it certainly wasn't as popular in general
to be super Catholic. There was kind of like a
(06:45):
divide between the Church of Rome and the Church of England.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Absolutely, so the stage was set for a civil war,
a series of conflicts occur. King Charles is on the
losing end of history. He's overthrown executed. Fifty nine people
signed the death warrant for the king, and one of
them is Oliver Cromwell. And then they introduce the Commonwealth
(07:10):
of England to replace the monarchy. I mean, quote unquote
replace because Cromwell becomes Lord Protector, as we said, but
Lord Protector is pretty much still a king. It's a monarch,
you know. The best evidence for that is that when
Cromwell is done being Lord Protector, his son takes up
(07:33):
the job.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Just to jump in here real quick, I was being
a little bit purposefully hyperbolic at the beginning of the
show when I compared Oliver Cromwell to Rosepierre, who was
known for decapitating human people in the streets with the
famous quillotine. Cromwell was a bit more known for his authoritarian,
heavy handed rule than he was for bloody executions. But
(07:54):
we will be getting some bloody executions in this story
either way.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
So between sixteen fifty sixteen fifty eight or so. He's
ruling the UK. He has the same powers as a monarch,
but he's called Lord Protector and he technically doesn't have
a crown. I don't mean this in some figurative sense.
I don't mean that he lost any power you would
get with metonomy or whatever. I mean that he didn't
(08:19):
have the jewelry. And here he's risen to the apex
of his life. In the beginning, he was just a
member of Parliament for Cambridge, but he became a Puritan,
and then later he becomes Lord Protector, helped in no
small part by his brilliant military career. You know, he
(08:40):
was a tactician. He had fought decisive battles, so he
wasn't out there, you know, doing mass executions. But war
has no small measure of violence. And while he was
Lord Protector, he was in a controversial, unsustainable place. Royalists
hated it. The Royalists were a faction of people who
(09:03):
believed in the divine right of the king. So if
you believe that God has decreed a certain person to
be the absolute ruler of a land, then you are
going to equate the actions of anybody opposing that king
to the actions of Unchristian nearly demonic forces, you know
(09:24):
what I mean. So Cromwell was like a demon made
flesh to these guys totally.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
And even though Charles I first was not popular because
he had chosen to marry a French Catholic princess, he
was still to those royalists the rightful monarch of the realm.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
So in a sense, he replaces this monarchical regime with
a puritanical republic. But he puts in some ideas that
seemed very forward facing today and did not go over
well at the time, which was he had this concept
of being religiously tolerant, and his contemporaries viewed that with suspicion,
(10:06):
especially residents of Ireland and Scotland's what we're saying here, folks,
is that even when he was alive, he was a
controversial figure. And today's story really really starts when he dies,
because the last few weeks of his life before he
(10:28):
passes away in what was a sixteen fifty eight, the
third of September, right, so right before he passes away,
he is having a terrible time. He's getting sharp bowel
and back pains. He has insomnia. He's freezing cold sometimes
and then just sweating hot other times. His throat hurts,
he's coughing, he's getting confused, he's vomiting left and right.
(10:52):
He would get worse and then he would get better.
So he kind of ebbed and flowed, you know. And
his doctors we're trying to figure out what was going
on with him. They had no idea. We have one
quote where his attendants have the sad apprehension of danger.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Fairly vague it really is. Is that it the foreboding quality.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, they had the shining about it. They said that
he might not get better at this point. This starts
happening when he is when he is almost sixty. He's
fifty nine years old, and he dies suddenly on September third.
So he's died, right, Cromwell has died, and his son
(11:36):
inherits the position of Lord Protector for a very very
brief amount of time.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Very brief. Yes.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
A year later, his son is overthrown by the army.
The monarchy is restored, so chalk one up for the
royalist and Charles the second becomes the new king. What
does he do after he becomes king? Is it like
a bygones, be bygone situation.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
No, I think that would have been a bummer, a
real let down if that was the Now. We wanted
some blood, man, We came here for blood, and boy,
will there ever be some blood?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
No?
Speaker 4 (12:05):
He declared everyone involved with overthrowing and executing the previous
king enemies of the state, whatever you want to call it,
and called for their immediate rounding up and execution.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Especially those fifty nine people who signed the death warrant.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, because I.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Mean, you know, their names are on a piece of paper,
their identities are out there, so it wasn't too too
hard to get round in them up.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
This makes me think of so off air. Before we
started this episode, we were talking about a strange moment
in a lot of people's financial history checks. We used
to do that too, We would put our names on
pieces of paper. It's still so bizarre to think about it. Like,
you don't even have checks. I have emergency checks, yep,
(12:52):
hidden away in my layer in casey, you have some
checks on the off chance you might ever need one, Right.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
That is correct? Yes, Casey on the case right there? Yeah,
Casey on the checks yep.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
I would you know what I would get some vanity
you know, vanity check I did.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
I had Superman ones.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Yeah, I had. I had a couple of different I
had Space ones. I believe it was very into space
And speaking of fantastic segues back to the point. Yes,
King Charles the Second once once, especially to find and
punish these fifty nine people who have signed the death
warrant for Charles the First. He catches many, several are hanged,
(13:34):
some are put in jail for life.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Let's backtrack just slightly. He did just call for their trial.
But I would imagine this is something along the lines
of a kangaroo court situation where I wasn't like they
were gonna, you know, walk away Scott free.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Right right.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
And the thing is that, as as we mentioned, not
all fifty nine people on that list were still alive
when Charles two came into power. So he had this
weird pickle, you know, do we prosecute the dead? Do
we let bygones be bygones?
Speaker 2 (14:05):
No?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
He says, no, we do not, and so he orders
the bodies of several of the people have signed these
death warrants to be exhumed.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
So on the twelfth anniversary of the death of King
Charles the first, Our buddy Oliver Cromwell, Master Protector, whatever
you call it, Master and commander Lord Protector. Now whatever
was dug up exhumed for the purposes of, you know,
making a show out of kind of re executing him.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
It reminds me of that there.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
Was a pope story we did where they dug up
a pope and propped him up with his bones and
the papal.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Robes exactly exactly the cadavers synod right after the death
of John the Eighth formosis.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
So yeah, So Charles the Second has a lot of
these people dug up and their bodies are exhumed, and
for the less egregious offenders, they're just buried in communal
burial pits, so they lose the honor of being buried
on their lonesome right. But Oliver Cromwell, along with three
(15:15):
other people get awarded death sentences, despite the fact that
Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw, Henry Ireton and Robert Blake are
all dead. They're dead men given death sentences. So as
you said, Noel, they chain the guy up, they hang
him in chains at Tyburn, and in the afternoon they
(15:36):
hang him there for like a day, and then as
the afternoon winds on, they take him down. They cut
off his head and they put it on a spike.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Have a good head on a spike. It's just it's
such a statement piece, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Yeah, it's real, it's real power move, Yeah, very much so,
so they put this head on a twenty foot tall
wooden spike.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Question, there are a difference between a spike and a pike?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
A good question. A spike and a pike. Let's do
a little quick Internet search here. Pike is to attack,
prod or injure someone with a pike. Well, spike is
to fix on a spike. Oh, because pike and spike
are both verbs as well.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
So I'm thinking a pike would be part of some
sort of turret, like a fence or something like that,
and a spike is just more like a like a hole,
like a stick in the ground.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, a pike can also be a pole, like a
long pole that you use in infantry. Right, and then
the air turnpikes and turnpike comes from my carnoledge is
coming out here. Turnpike comes from the days of private
roads when a log would be physically placed across the
road and you had to pay someone to turn the
(16:45):
pike or the long pole.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Interesting, And I think spike is maybe just a little
more of a generic term. And also, as we're going
down this Google rabbit hole, which may or may not
be interesting to you, a spike was also an Old
English term for an ear of corn.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Oh, and corned beef is just salted beef because they
would describe the units of salt used as corns.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
I thought that was peppercorns corned beef.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Pretty sure, salt. Of course, you can put pepper on
it if you want.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Well, Ben, through the magic of editing and time travel podcasting,
you have once again proven me wrong.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
I'm not out training it.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
You're not out too. You just do it continuously because
you're better than me.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
No, no, no, no one's been.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
We are both.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
We're both on the quest for the truth. It's true,
and no one is perfect. But you know, one huge
statement in favor of our character or collective character, is
that we've never dug someone up, knocked off their head
and hung it on a spike or pike.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
How long did they leave it up there?
Speaker 4 (17:47):
No way longer than seemed humane than any of this,
And just particularly humane in the first place, but this
one stuck around as a tourist trap for like decades.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah yeah, and people would passed the head around. This
thing was around for twenty five years on that on
that spike. Eventually it's taken down and for the next
two hundred years, many different people take possession of this head.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
When I first read got passed around, I pictured people
passing around in a circle, like a hot potato.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Game or something like that.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
It was much It was a much larger scale version
of hot potato like that, where it kind of changed
hands a lot. I believe for a time it was
in the possession of a failed actor who was also
a kind of the town drunk and was rumored to
have been a relative of Cromwell himself. This man's name
was Samuel Russell. This comes from a Fantastic av Club
(18:39):
article about the subject that you can look up, and
Russell was not a particularly good steward of this artifact.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Let's call it yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
You can see some of the blow by blowers we
say passed by pass of this in article on Atlas
Obscura The Morbid Journey of Cromwell's Traveling Heads. As you
were say saying, Noel, the guy who possessed the head,
Samuel Russell not the best guy. He was poor, he
was considerably in debt. He had a serious drinking problem.
(19:12):
He would literally pass the head around at parties. Sam
bring out the head. Yeah, and he refused to part
with the head. People would offer him money for it,
but instead of that, he would just borrow money from people,
and multiple folks for one reason or another said we've
(19:33):
got to get this head away from this drunk guy,
so they continued offering him money. Eventually, a prominent goldsmith
and clockmaker named James Cox enters this story.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Yeah, he was a smart fellow because he was playing
the long game, because he kept trying to buy the
head off of him, off of Russell, knowing that even
though he was turned down in exchanged for loans, he
was eventually going to come to the point where Russell
could not pay him back the loans, and then he
would have the upper hand to say, hey, I'll absolve
your debt, you pour unfortunate bastard if you just give
(20:08):
me the head. And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah, give me the head.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
He's he was able to flip it for like three
times what he'd invest it was it twice? I think
it was quite a nice profit.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, yeah, he sold Cox that has sold the head
in seventeen ninety nine for two hundred and thirty British
pounds to three brothers with the last name of Hughes.
They wanted to start their own public display, so they
got the head as part of other Cromwell related items.
They made a bunch of posters for the event. But
(20:39):
then they found themselves in a bit of a pickle
because they wondered whether the head was actually the head
of Cromwell. And when they wrote to Cox to ask
for I guess the chain of custody, you know what
I mean, Cox was kind of evasive, and so they thought,
is this guy selling us a counterfeit head? I mean
(20:59):
we've all been there, right, Casey. Casey was just telling
me about something like this there other day.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, I'm I'm not at liberty to discuss that matter.
It's an ongoing.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Situation, investigation, you know yourself.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
Yeah, you've been You've been advised by your legal tya okay,
And this has not been Casey on the case. So
this this is, yeah, this is if there's the case's pending.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
That's fair.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
That's that's a different sound Casey is a man of
many side hustles.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Let's put it that way. That's true. That's true.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
I mean, we live in the gig economy. So what
happens to Cromwell's head.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Well, here's the thing. There's a lot of conflicting tales
as to what happened.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
There's some versions of the story that say the head
itself was given a proper burial by loyalists to Cromwell,
or at least those that sympathize with his cause. Uh,
there's another version that says the head kind of disappeared.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Right, It's commonly accepted that the head was given a
dignified burial and a secret place, secret location Sidney Sussex
College in Cambridge in nineteen sixty. But the story is
too good to let the facts distract from the possibilities, right,
Because as you said, there are people who argue multiple
(22:20):
other things about it. One of the craziest, the craziest
stories I heard was that it was secretly taken by
a fraternal society.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
I have a question, too, Ben, in this time where
there wasn't any obviously any DNA or any lab science
at all. How could you confirm the veracity of a rotted,
shrunken head leathered up like beef jerky when you know.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
You know, you know, you just feel it in your heart.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, you just feel it in your heart. Okay have
you ever been in that situation?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (22:47):
Not?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Well, we are about to have an amazing weekend.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
I'm excited.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
So what an ignoble end? This is not what the
Lord Protector thought was in store for him. He was
separated from his grave first, then he was separated from
his body, and hopefully finally Cromwell, divisive character that he is,
has come to some sort of rest. According to the
(23:17):
head's latest owner, one Horace Wilkinson, he's the one who
talked about the secret burial in nineteen sixty The head
is still there today, and he announced that he had
buried it in this location in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, secret burial mine rear end. Yeah right. What about
the rest of his body? Though? Man? What of that?
Speaker 1 (23:38):
No one knows for sure. There are some good ideas
out there.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
No one is entirely sure about what happened, but the
most likely story, according to John Morris, who is, a
Cromwell biographer, is the same thing that would have happened
to the bodies of a lot of folks who were
executed on mass like this, And that they were just
thrown into a pit head on a pike body and
a pit tales all as.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Time song as old as rhyme that too.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Some other versions of the story include the idea that
it was chucked into the Thames. And then there's a
bonker story that comes from a man with the name
of Samuel Pepys in sixteen sixty four.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Pepes Peppees, Peppyes, p e p Ys.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
I just thought it was fun to say. I will
say it again, Peppyes. What did he say?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Ben? This is? I love the story. I want to hear.
I want to hear it from from the mouth of
Ben very Well.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Samuel Peppees in sixteen sixty four claimed that Cromwell had
swapped bodies of various dead kings from one grave to
another with another story, raising the possibility that it wasn't
his corpse that was decapitated after all, but that of
Charles the First. But Charles the First already lost his
(24:50):
head the first time around.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
A man I want to believe this very pees.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Let's not let the facts get in the way of
a good story.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
We never do.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
This is a situation where in the fact this stranger
than the fiction. It's a bit morbid, but we hope
that you found the story of Cromwell's posthumous execution as
strange as we found it. Stay tuned for our upcoming
episode where we get even more morbid and grizzly morbid morbid.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, Oh it's bad.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
It's peak morbidity.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
We're going to have to do a trigger warning on
that one.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
It's probably the grossest ridiculous history we have ever done
so far.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
So far, let's just say this.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
It involves very crude surgery during a very specific period.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Which one was it again?
Speaker 4 (25:36):
Then it was the disco era, yes, aka the late
seventeen hundred.
Speaker 5 (25:42):
Early eighteen hundred. Yeah, the first disco era. That's right,
it was the crossover.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
A lot of people think of the disco era as
like the nineteen seventies, but that is actually the fifth
Disco era.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
These are facts.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Thanks so much to our super.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Producer Jasey pegram Always, and thanks to our research associate
Gabe Lucier for a job well done. As per usual.
Thanks to Christopher Hasiotis, who's just we like him.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
He's a pal. We're gonna have him back very soon.
Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
And thanks to you, Noel. Thanks to thanks to everyone
who took decent care of Oliver Cromwell's head.
Speaker 6 (26:17):
Yep, we'll see next time, folks.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
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Fellow ridiculous historians. A few years back, we got interested
in a guy named Oliver Cromwell.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
What of a pill?
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Not a nice fellow, bit of a bit of a
specific guy.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Not much sense of humor that Oliver Cromwell.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
He got in trouble. He was a Puritan, an ideologue
more so than a soldier, had no military experience when
the Civil War broke out in that part of the
world in sixteen forty two.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Yep, And he quickly rose in prominence and within the
ranks and became the Lord Protector and ruled over Wales,
Scotland and England. He did eventually pass away due to
natural causes. But this one has a twist.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Ending too, Ben.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Oh, that's right, because he was executed posthumously.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
How how, how let's throw the tape fine.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Now Ridiculous Histories A production of iHeart Radio. Ridiculous Histories
A production of iHeart Radio. Hello and welcome to the show.
(01:32):
Have you ever dreamed of toppling the status quo in
your neck of the global woods? Have you ever thought
of maybe starting a food fight in school, or you know,
orchestrating a coup in another country? I feel like all
of us have had these revolutionary or rebellious thoughts at
some point. But how far does it go? You know,
(01:54):
I've gone pretty far. My name is Ben.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
We have come a long way, Ben, just the two
of us want to look at it on like a
micro level, but on a macro level. Yeah, I think
that the human species has come a long way. We
certainly still oh I'm no, by the way, we certainly
still you know, have room to grow, but certainly not
quite running up on the kind of insurgency that let's say,
like a reign of terror like a robes Pierre situation
(02:19):
during the French Revolution, or maybe more of a Oliver
Cromwell kind of situation like in the old UK.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yes, yes, it's true. And by the way, shout out
to our own personal Cromwell super producer, Casey Pegram.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Ben, he deserves better than that he does. He does.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
He's you know what you deserve to be, Casey Pegrom
with no comparisons, no equivocations.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
You okay with that, Casey, I'm great with that.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Yeah, Because, as it turns out, Cromwell, who was kind
of like a Protestant robes Pierre in many ways, was
kind of a monster.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Well. His legacy is still a matter of hot takes
and controversy here today in twenty nineteen. Some people will
say he is the father of British democracy, he got
rid of the monarchy, albeit briefly, And then others will say,
no way, he's a war criminal. He hated the Catholics
(03:19):
and he led vicious military campaigns. But regardless of whether
you are pro or anti Cromwell, there is no denying
that he changed the course of history in England, Scotland
and Ireland. Let's learn a little bit about his life.
What do you say before we get to before we
(03:41):
get to his death spoiler?
Speaker 4 (03:42):
He's dead, He's dead. Dead is a doornail? Dead is disco.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
I always wonder where dead as a doornail comes from?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Isn't it from? Uh Dickens? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:50):
But what made someone say, you know what I think
of what I think of death doornails?
Speaker 4 (03:55):
I guess it's just because it's an inanimate object. Yeah,
but think because said dead is a table, the alliteration
is key.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Oh dead as see Yeah, dead is a dumbbell that works.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
But doornails were much more prevalent in the days of Dickens, perhaps.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
So Yeah, Originally all of the titles that Dickens used
in his stories had had the phrase door nail in them.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
It's also true so after fomenting the Parliamentarian uprising over
the Royalists in the English Civil War, Cromwell became the
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England in sixteen fifty three.
That's also, of course, after executing Charles the First, who
(04:42):
was the king at the time, and he ruled over England,
Scotland and Ireland just for in the grand scale of things,
time being what it is.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Blip of time, right right, because he assumed he assumed
this status as Lord Protector in sixteen fifty three. The
monarchy itself was restored in sixteen sixty, So this is
what maybe seven years.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Why did Cromwell have such a beef with the Catholics?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Ben, What a great question, nol You see, Oliver Cromwell
was born at the turn of the seventeenth century and
when he came into the world, England was a Protestant
country ruled by a king who believed that he had
divine rights, meaning he was king because God had purposely
made him king.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
This was kind of a thing with monarchs in those days,
like the son king, you know, I mean like a
lot of divine belief in that they were like the
extension of God's power on earth.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
It still is. I mean, how well, it's a very
effective way to bully people into thinking that they have
some sort of obligation to serve you. Right. So Cromwell
converted to Puritanism in his late twenties, and he thought
that King Charles the First was just two Catholic. He said,
(06:01):
this king is far too Catholic for me. He's a papist,
which was a smear word at the time. Many of Charles'
first policies, you see, such as levying taxes without the
consent of parliament, they made his subjects mistrust him and
they said, hey, you're not the kind of cultured monarch
we like. You're one of those tyrannical absolute monarchs.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Let's not forget.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
This is post Protestant Reformation, where the country was very
much split. It became largely a Protestant country, and then
the kings that would come into power they would either
be heavily Protestant or maybe not quite Protestant enough for
some people. But it certainly wasn't as popular in general
to be super Catholic. There was kind of like a
(06:45):
divide between the Church of Rome and the Church of England.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Absolutely, so the stage was set for a civil war,
a series of conflicts occur. King Charles is on the
losing end of history. He's overthrown executed. Fifty nine people
signed the death warrant for the king, and one of
them is Oliver Cromwell. And then they introduce the Commonwealth
(07:10):
of England to replace the monarchy. I mean, quote unquote
replace because Cromwell becomes Lord Protector, as we said, but
Lord Protector is pretty much still a king. It's a monarch,
you know. The best evidence for that is that when
Cromwell is done being Lord Protector, his son takes up
(07:33):
the job.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Just to jump in here real quick, I was being
a little bit purposefully hyperbolic at the beginning of the
show when I compared Oliver Cromwell to Rosepierre, who was
known for decapitating human people in the streets with the
famous quillotine. Cromwell was a bit more known for his authoritarian,
heavy handed rule than he was for bloody executions. But
(07:54):
we will be getting some bloody executions in this story
either way.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
So between sixteen fifty sixteen fifty eight or so. He's
ruling the UK. He has the same powers as a monarch,
but he's called Lord Protector and he technically doesn't have
a crown. I don't mean this in some figurative sense.
I don't mean that he lost any power you would
get with metonomy or whatever. I mean that he didn't
(08:19):
have the jewelry. And here he's risen to the apex
of his life. In the beginning, he was just a
member of Parliament for Cambridge, but he became a Puritan,
and then later he becomes Lord Protector, helped in no
small part by his brilliant military career. You know, he
(08:40):
was a tactician. He had fought decisive battles, so he
wasn't out there, you know, doing mass executions. But war
has no small measure of violence. And while he was
Lord Protector, he was in a controversial, unsustainable place. Royalists
hated it. The Royalists were a faction of people who
(09:03):
believed in the divine right of the king. So if
you believe that God has decreed a certain person to
be the absolute ruler of a land, then you are
going to equate the actions of anybody opposing that king
to the actions of Unchristian nearly demonic forces, you know
(09:24):
what I mean. So Cromwell was like a demon made
flesh to these guys totally.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
And even though Charles I first was not popular because
he had chosen to marry a French Catholic princess, he
was still to those royalists the rightful monarch of the realm.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
So in a sense, he replaces this monarchical regime with
a puritanical republic. But he puts in some ideas that
seemed very forward facing today and did not go over
well at the time, which was he had this concept
of being religiously tolerant, and his contemporaries viewed that with suspicion,
(10:06):
especially residents of Ireland and Scotland's what we're saying here, folks,
is that even when he was alive, he was a
controversial figure. And today's story really really starts when he dies,
because the last few weeks of his life before he
(10:28):
passes away in what was a sixteen fifty eight, the
third of September, right, so right before he passes away,
he is having a terrible time. He's getting sharp bowel
and back pains. He has insomnia. He's freezing cold sometimes
and then just sweating hot other times. His throat hurts,
he's coughing, he's getting confused, he's vomiting left and right.
(10:52):
He would get worse and then he would get better.
So he kind of ebbed and flowed, you know. And
his doctors we're trying to figure out what was going
on with him. They had no idea. We have one
quote where his attendants have the sad apprehension of danger.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Fairly vague it really is. Is that it the foreboding quality.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, they had the shining about it. They said that
he might not get better at this point. This starts
happening when he is when he is almost sixty. He's
fifty nine years old, and he dies suddenly on September third.
So he's died, right, Cromwell has died, and his son
(11:36):
inherits the position of Lord Protector for a very very
brief amount of time.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Very brief. Yes.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
A year later, his son is overthrown by the army.
The monarchy is restored, so chalk one up for the
royalist and Charles the second becomes the new king. What
does he do after he becomes king? Is it like
a bygones, be bygone situation.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
No, I think that would have been a bummer, a
real let down if that was the Now. We wanted
some blood, man, We came here for blood, and boy,
will there ever be some blood?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
No?
Speaker 4 (12:05):
He declared everyone involved with overthrowing and executing the previous
king enemies of the state, whatever you want to call it,
and called for their immediate rounding up and execution.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Especially those fifty nine people who signed the death warrant.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, because I.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Mean, you know, their names are on a piece of paper,
their identities are out there, so it wasn't too too
hard to get round in them up.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
This makes me think of so off air. Before we
started this episode, we were talking about a strange moment
in a lot of people's financial history checks. We used
to do that too, We would put our names on
pieces of paper. It's still so bizarre to think about it. Like,
you don't even have checks. I have emergency checks, yep,
(12:52):
hidden away in my layer in casey, you have some
checks on the off chance you might ever need one, Right.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
That is correct? Yes, Casey on the case right there? Yeah,
Casey on the checks yep.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
I would you know what I would get some vanity
you know, vanity check I did.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
I had Superman ones.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Yeah, I had. I had a couple of different I
had Space ones. I believe it was very into space
And speaking of fantastic segues back to the point. Yes,
King Charles the Second once once, especially to find and
punish these fifty nine people who have signed the death
warrant for Charles the First. He catches many, several are hanged,
(13:34):
some are put in jail for life.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Let's backtrack just slightly. He did just call for their trial.
But I would imagine this is something along the lines
of a kangaroo court situation where I wasn't like they
were gonna, you know, walk away Scott free.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Right right.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
And the thing is that, as as we mentioned, not
all fifty nine people on that list were still alive
when Charles two came into power. So he had this
weird pickle, you know, do we prosecute the dead? Do
we let bygones be bygones?
Speaker 2 (14:05):
No?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
He says, no, we do not, and so he orders
the bodies of several of the people have signed these
death warrants to be exhumed.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
So on the twelfth anniversary of the death of King
Charles the first, Our buddy Oliver Cromwell, Master Protector, whatever
you call it, Master and commander Lord Protector. Now whatever
was dug up exhumed for the purposes of, you know,
making a show out of kind of re executing him.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
It reminds me of that there.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
Was a pope story we did where they dug up
a pope and propped him up with his bones and
the papal.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Robes exactly exactly the cadavers synod right after the death
of John the Eighth formosis.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
So yeah, So Charles the Second has a lot of
these people dug up and their bodies are exhumed, and
for the less egregious offenders, they're just buried in communal
burial pits, so they lose the honor of being buried
on their lonesome right. But Oliver Cromwell, along with three
(15:15):
other people get awarded death sentences, despite the fact that
Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw, Henry Ireton and Robert Blake are
all dead. They're dead men given death sentences. So as
you said, Noel, they chain the guy up, they hang
him in chains at Tyburn, and in the afternoon they
(15:36):
hang him there for like a day, and then as
the afternoon winds on, they take him down. They cut
off his head and they put it on a spike.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Have a good head on a spike. It's just it's
such a statement piece, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Yeah, it's real, it's real power move, Yeah, very much so,
so they put this head on a twenty foot tall
wooden spike.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Question, there are a difference between a spike and a pike?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
A good question. A spike and a pike. Let's do
a little quick Internet search here. Pike is to attack,
prod or injure someone with a pike. Well, spike is
to fix on a spike. Oh, because pike and spike
are both verbs as well.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
So I'm thinking a pike would be part of some
sort of turret, like a fence or something like that,
and a spike is just more like a like a hole,
like a stick in the ground.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, a pike can also be a pole, like a
long pole that you use in infantry. Right, and then
the air turnpikes and turnpike comes from my carnoledge is
coming out here. Turnpike comes from the days of private
roads when a log would be physically placed across the
road and you had to pay someone to turn the
(16:45):
pike or the long pole.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Interesting, And I think spike is maybe just a little
more of a generic term. And also, as we're going
down this Google rabbit hole, which may or may not
be interesting to you, a spike was also an Old
English term for an ear of corn.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Oh, and corned beef is just salted beef because they
would describe the units of salt used as corns.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
I thought that was peppercorns corned beef.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Pretty sure, salt. Of course, you can put pepper on
it if you want.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Well, Ben, through the magic of editing and time travel podcasting,
you have once again proven me wrong.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
I'm not out training it.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
You're not out too. You just do it continuously because
you're better than me.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
No, no, no, no one's been.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
We are both.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
We're both on the quest for the truth. It's true,
and no one is perfect. But you know, one huge
statement in favor of our character or collective character, is
that we've never dug someone up, knocked off their head
and hung it on a spike or pike.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
How long did they leave it up there?
Speaker 4 (17:47):
No way longer than seemed humane than any of this,
And just particularly humane in the first place, but this
one stuck around as a tourist trap for like decades.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah yeah, and people would passed the head around. This
thing was around for twenty five years on that on
that spike. Eventually it's taken down and for the next
two hundred years, many different people take possession of this head.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
When I first read got passed around, I pictured people
passing around in a circle, like a hot potato.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Game or something like that.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
It was much It was a much larger scale version
of hot potato like that, where it kind of changed
hands a lot. I believe for a time it was
in the possession of a failed actor who was also
a kind of the town drunk and was rumored to
have been a relative of Cromwell himself. This man's name
was Samuel Russell. This comes from a Fantastic av Club
(18:39):
article about the subject that you can look up, and
Russell was not a particularly good steward of this artifact.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Let's call it yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
You can see some of the blow by blowers we
say passed by pass of this in article on Atlas
Obscura The Morbid Journey of Cromwell's Traveling Heads. As you
were say saying, Noel, the guy who possessed the head,
Samuel Russell not the best guy. He was poor, he
was considerably in debt. He had a serious drinking problem.
(19:12):
He would literally pass the head around at parties. Sam
bring out the head. Yeah, and he refused to part
with the head. People would offer him money for it,
but instead of that, he would just borrow money from people,
and multiple folks for one reason or another said we've
(19:33):
got to get this head away from this drunk guy,
so they continued offering him money. Eventually, a prominent goldsmith
and clockmaker named James Cox enters this story.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Yeah, he was a smart fellow because he was playing
the long game, because he kept trying to buy the
head off of him, off of Russell, knowing that even
though he was turned down in exchanged for loans, he
was eventually going to come to the point where Russell
could not pay him back the loans, and then he
would have the upper hand to say, hey, I'll absolve
your debt, you pour unfortunate bastard if you just give
(20:08):
me the head. And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah, give me the head.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
He's he was able to flip it for like three
times what he'd invest it was it twice? I think
it was quite a nice profit.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, yeah, he sold Cox that has sold the head
in seventeen ninety nine for two hundred and thirty British
pounds to three brothers with the last name of Hughes.
They wanted to start their own public display, so they
got the head as part of other Cromwell related items.
They made a bunch of posters for the event. But
(20:39):
then they found themselves in a bit of a pickle
because they wondered whether the head was actually the head
of Cromwell. And when they wrote to Cox to ask
for I guess the chain of custody, you know what
I mean, Cox was kind of evasive, and so they thought,
is this guy selling us a counterfeit head? I mean
(20:59):
we've all been there, right, Casey. Casey was just telling
me about something like this there other day.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, I'm I'm not at liberty to discuss that matter.
It's an ongoing.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Situation, investigation, you know yourself.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
Yeah, you've been You've been advised by your legal tya okay,
And this has not been Casey on the case. So
this this is, yeah, this is if there's the case's pending.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
That's fair.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
That's that's a different sound Casey is a man of
many side hustles.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Let's put it that way. That's true. That's true.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
I mean, we live in the gig economy. So what
happens to Cromwell's head.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Well, here's the thing. There's a lot of conflicting tales
as to what happened.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
There's some versions of the story that say the head
itself was given a proper burial by loyalists to Cromwell,
or at least those that sympathize with his cause. Uh,
there's another version that says the head kind of disappeared.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Right, It's commonly accepted that the head was given a
dignified burial and a secret place, secret location Sidney Sussex
College in Cambridge in nineteen sixty. But the story is
too good to let the facts distract from the possibilities, right,
Because as you said, there are people who argue multiple
(22:20):
other things about it. One of the craziest, the craziest
stories I heard was that it was secretly taken by
a fraternal society.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
I have a question, too, Ben, in this time where
there wasn't any obviously any DNA or any lab science
at all. How could you confirm the veracity of a rotted,
shrunken head leathered up like beef jerky when you know.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
You know, you know, you just feel it in your heart.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, you just feel it in your heart. Okay have
you ever been in that situation?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (22:47):
Not?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Well, we are about to have an amazing weekend.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
I'm excited.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
So what an ignoble end? This is not what the
Lord Protector thought was in store for him. He was
separated from his grave first, then he was separated from
his body, and hopefully finally Cromwell, divisive character that he is,
has come to some sort of rest. According to the
(23:17):
head's latest owner, one Horace Wilkinson, he's the one who
talked about the secret burial in nineteen sixty The head
is still there today, and he announced that he had
buried it in this location in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, secret burial mine rear end. Yeah right. What about
the rest of his body? Though? Man? What of that?
Speaker 1 (23:38):
No one knows for sure. There are some good ideas
out there.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
No one is entirely sure about what happened, but the
most likely story, according to John Morris, who is, a
Cromwell biographer, is the same thing that would have happened
to the bodies of a lot of folks who were
executed on mass like this, And that they were just
thrown into a pit head on a pike body and
a pit tales all as.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Time song as old as rhyme that too.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Some other versions of the story include the idea that
it was chucked into the Thames. And then there's a
bonker story that comes from a man with the name
of Samuel Pepys in sixteen sixty four.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Pepes Peppees, Peppyes, p e p Ys.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
I just thought it was fun to say. I will
say it again, Peppyes. What did he say?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Ben? This is? I love the story. I want to hear.
I want to hear it from from the mouth of
Ben very Well.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Samuel Peppees in sixteen sixty four claimed that Cromwell had
swapped bodies of various dead kings from one grave to
another with another story, raising the possibility that it wasn't
his corpse that was decapitated after all, but that of
Charles the First. But Charles the First already lost his
(24:50):
head the first time around.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
A man I want to believe this very pees.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Let's not let the facts get in the way of
a good story.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
We never do.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
This is a situation where in the fact this stranger
than the fiction. It's a bit morbid, but we hope
that you found the story of Cromwell's posthumous execution as
strange as we found it. Stay tuned for our upcoming
episode where we get even more morbid and grizzly morbid morbid.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, Oh it's bad.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
It's peak morbidity.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
We're going to have to do a trigger warning on
that one.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
It's probably the grossest ridiculous history we have ever done
so far.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
So far, let's just say this.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
It involves very crude surgery during a very specific period.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Which one was it again?
Speaker 4 (25:36):
Then it was the disco era, yes, aka the late
seventeen hundred.
Speaker 5 (25:42):
Early eighteen hundred. Yeah, the first disco era. That's right,
it was the crossover.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
A lot of people think of the disco era as
like the nineteen seventies, but that is actually the fifth
Disco era.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
These are facts.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Thanks so much to our super.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Producer Jasey pegram Always, and thanks to our research associate
Gabe Lucier for a job well done. As per usual.
Thanks to Christopher Hasiotis, who's just we like him.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
He's a pal. We're gonna have him back very soon.
Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
And thanks to you, Noel. Thanks to thanks to everyone
who took decent care of Oliver Cromwell's head.
Speaker 6 (26:17):
Yep, we'll see next time, folks.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Joy is essential. And it's also elusive. You can't order it, borrow it, or simply hope it into life. But now, there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence: The Joy 101 Podcast with Hoda! Best known for her Emmy-winning work and co-anchoring Today, Hoda Kotb infuses her authenticity, curiosity, and warmth into conversations with the world’s most fascinating people. Entertainment legends, sport icons, wellness experts, and everyday folks will share how they find, allow, and experience joy. Hoda will offer her own tips and takes on seeking a more balanced, harmonious life. If you're craving inspiration, support, and useful tools to maximize your joy, tune in to these candid, uplifting, and moving on-air chats. Joy after a breakup, joy as an empty-nester, joy after loss, joy as a caretaker — Hoda's new podcast will speak to you. Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb, an iHeartPodcast.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com