Cursed Objects

To celebrate the launch of our first ever IRL exhibition, Cursed Objects in Museum Shops (2 May-26 June), we have several events coming in May and June. All of them are FREE, all are at Birkbeck Uni, 5 mins from Euston/King's Cross, but booking a place is essential - for full details, see our vibey new website, cursedobjects.co.uk Exhibition private view - Thu 1 May, 6-8pm Book your place here. Cursed Objects Live #2 - Thu 8 May, 7-8.30pm Back by popular demand, this is our second-ever live show, for Birkbeck's Arts Week! Book your place here. Millennium Tat - Wed 28 May, 7-8.30pm Join Dan and Kasia and two special guests - artist Darren Cullen and writer Imogen West-Knights – as they explore the spirit of the millennium via the museum gift shop. Book your place here. War, Memory and Tat - Wed 11 June, 7-8.30pm Join Kasia, Dan and three special guests – historian Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley, author Luke Turner and curator Kate Clements – as they explore the presence of war in the museum shop. Book your place here. We hope to see some of you IRL in the next two months! And don't worry, the actual full podcasts are going to keep on coming - there will be recordings of the above on your feeds soon, and a new flurry of fresh episodes... now that we have a moment to breathe, and the exhibition is finally in place. For more Cursed Everything: https://www.patreon.com/c/cursedobjects

The Simpsons are going to (have just been to) Japan! And they're here to tell you about what they did on their holidays – to discuss sustainable Japanese craft techniques, heated toilet seats, and a proliferation of cheap disposable plastic. Here are some of our key findings:  Don't mistreat the indigo vats. Japanese culture is trending. £4 bowls of ramen! (Four pounds Jeremy, that's insane.) You can find William Morris paper cups in the 100Yen store. A good loquat is hard to find. Kasia wants to meet everyone's siblings. HUGE NEWS: Cursed Objects in Museum Shops, our first ever IRL exhibition, opens VERY soon. 2 May - 26 June, the Peltz Gallery near Euston station; details here.  CURSED OBJECTS LIVE: 8 May 2025, tickets are free, but you need to sign up via our Patreon - only £4 a month! And you get 30+ free bonus episodes - with a lot more new bonus episodes to come (just as soon as the exhibition is in place, and we get a chance to breathe). VISIT OUR NEW WEBSITE! https://cursedobjects.co.uk/ - designed by Sophie Monk.

YES you can! SI se puede! Say YES to adventures. Say YES to life. Say YES to your boss (however dumb and awful their suggestion!). This week, Kasia and Dan are taking on 21st century positivity culture, YES men and women, Dice men, negative Nancies, toxic white-collar culture, wellness gurus, FOMO, JOMO, YOLO and YOKO (Ono). When did it become culturally hegemonic that you have to say yes to everything? Smile through the pain baby! ""“You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.” - Wayne Gretzky" - Michael Scott" - Dan and Kasia"   Sign up to our Patreon NOW to get first ticket news about the live events around our upcoming Cursed Objects exhibition at the Peltz Gallery in May and June!   Theme music: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Roll-up, roll-up for the biggest tent of all! We're launching into 2025 with a very special guest, Imogen West-Knights, and an absolutely vast cursed object, containing lots of smaller ones. That's right, we're turning the clock back a full quarter of a century to revisit the universal mockery, dodgy sponsors, New Labour hubris, sweet childhood memories, general hilarity, bomb threats and national self-loathing that all came messily, hilariously together to fill the Millennium Dome.  At the time, it was viewed as the white elephant that would stomp over all other white elephants, the most embarrassing of political failures – but Imogen's obsessive reporting on the Dome's history has turned up a more interesting verdict altogether. Was this the ultimate symbol of the early Blair years, for better and worse? What was the Dome Minister's deep connection to the 1951 Festival of Britain? What was it actually like to visit the Dome as a child in 2000? Should we all be a bit less cynical about massive projects like this? Just how tacky was it in the end? And what was the true spirit of the Willennium - sorry, millennium? Thanks so much to the brilliant Imogen West-Knights for sharing her worrying level of expertise on the Dome with us – you can read her 2020 Guardian Long Read on the Dome here. And buy her excellent debut novel Deep Down here. She is on BlueSky @ImogenWK. Big thanks to Cursed Objects listener Tilly Hawkins for also suggesting the 'Been there, DOME that' badge for our upcoming installation at the Peltz, and to H.O.M.E for providing a studio - check them out if you're a creative looking for a space to work in London. Theme music: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

It's a Spooky Christmas special! This week's Cursed Objects is a little bit less Stuart Hall, and a little bit more Derek Acorah, with an episode recorded on location in St Leonards, from the musty heart of a crumbling royal seaside hotel, ft. spluttering pipes, ancient heaters that smell of burning dust, random insects, rotting sash windows, damp everywhere and a fascinating history. Queen Victoria herself signed the visitors' book, as Princess of Prussia, no less. Dan and Kasia lean into the weird muzak and faded 1920s glamour and ask, what the hell is going on on the 3rd floor? Could it be MURDER, or HAUNTING? What music do you imagine freemasons listening to? Will Kasia lick the Grade II listed staircase? Will Dan ride down the bannisters? What do Morrissey and Chris Rea have to do with all this?  Theme music: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Back by popular demand, it's our annual Christmas party! And this year we're wrestling with TRADITION. Are you making a list, and checking it twice – just as you always do? Have you demanded figgy pudding from your local landowner – and threatened violence if you don't get some? Are you hanging up your stockings on the wall with Noddy Holder? What traditions define your Christmas? We've got Christmas tree gherkins, obscene Christmas jumpers, schmaltzy John Lewis adverts, and pop songs that make your ears bleed. It truly is the most cursed time of the year! Theme music: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford  

From Patreon to main feed: Welcome all free-born Englishmen, sovereign citizens, rebel barons and new patrons! We're talking about myths of Englishness, why the state has such a fragile ego, a Covid-denying soft play centre called Cirq-D-Play, and why everyone is obsessed with an 807-year-old legal document that had to be rewritten several times and was then scrapped anyway. Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

This week, it's a deep dive into a steaming mug of cawfee. Hot java. A cup of Joe. Black gold. This is an episode about "the abominable, heathen-ish liquor" they tried to ban (they really did), and the array of wild political, social, cultural and moral meanings that have been attached to it over the centuries. What is a "sober intoxicant", what do genuine psychonauts make of it, and in what ways is coffee ‘more than a drink', from its colonial history, to 17th century coffee houses, to its social role today? And then there's this incredibly cursed 21st century mug: what is with this cringeworthy tendency to dress things which are quotidian and ultimately wholesome up as if they are illicit, counter-cultural, or subversive? Where does this ‘Brewdog-coded' recuperation of transgressive words, behaviours and signs come from? Also: which famous writer swallowed handfuls of ground coffee beans, until it made him sick? Which awful magazines were founded in 18th-century coffee houses? Have you heard of London chain 'Fuckoffee', and do you think we can get it shut down for being the lamest place on earth? Theme music: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

As a Cursed Objects bonus, without an actual cursed object, we present a live recording of Dan in conversation about his brand new book Multitudes: How Crowds Made the Modern World, recorded with friend of the pod, the brilliant journalist Hettie O'Brien at Burley Fisher Books in London on 30 October 2024.  Multitudes is out now, you can buy it here, or read various extracts and crowds-related articles on Dan's substack here. Hettie's book Diminishing Returns will be published in 2026, and until then, you can read her incredible long reads and other journalism here at The Guardian.   ****   To listen to the full-length episode, and 30-odd more exclusive episodes –  please join our Patreon!! ** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS **   **** Theme music: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Air isn't an object, right? Wrong. This week, climate comms expert and historian Dr Alice Bell makes Dan and Kasia think hard about ephemerality via a jam jar of polluted air, captured 'fresh' from the Euston Road in north London. In doing so they explore the history of the climate crisis – where it came from, who covered it up, and when people started noticing we were ruining the only planet we have.  Alice leads us through fog, smog and fumes, answering questions like: why were London's famous “pea-soupers” yellow-tinged (like yellow split-peas), rather than green-tinged? Why was coal dust understood to be a sign of thriving industry and progress? Why did unwell people go to seaside resorts to “take the air”? Which popular English meal was invented purely to give people a social activity indoors, away from the smog? Why have children always been at the forefront of the climate movement, from 1980s episodes of Blue Peter to the school strikes today? What do tobacco and fossil fuel lobbying have in common? Elsewhere, there is talk of Shell: The Musical, whaling ships, Captain Planet, Margaret Thatcher, and an answer to the biggest climate question of all, the one you've all been asking: what does Ludacris have to do with arctic drilling? Dr Alice Bell is Head of Policy for Climate and Health at the Wellcome. Her book ‘Our Biggest Experiment: A History of the Climate Crisis' (Bloomsbury, 2021) is available now, and is captivating, enlightening stuff - get involved! **** For the full-length episode, and 30-odd more exclusive episodes –  please join our Patreon!! ** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS ** **** Theme music: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Is there actually any moral value to hard work? From the Dignity of Labour to CEO Mindset, Girlbossing and Instagram Hustle propaganda, our entire culture is full of messages that working hard and 'loving what you do' will make you a good person. Aspiring idlers Kasia and Dan are here to tell you why that's wrong. Prompted in part by the Wellcome Collection's new 'Hard Graft' exhibition, we discuss bullshit jobs, proper binmen, modern slavery, and the horrifying frequency with which people are injured, maimed and killed in their line of work, from children in 19th century cotton mills, to exploited migrant workers and climate-related heat deaths in the 21st century. More light-heartedly, we discuss our most hated teenage jobs, and what the ideal length for a working week would be - 2 days? 3 days? What happened when Pret told their workers they needed to show they "aren't just here for the money"? And why does Keir Starmer think that workers and their bosses are 'on the same side'? Some links, as promised: The Four Yorkshiremen sketch Who remembers Proper Binmen? David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs Sarah Jaffe's Work Won't Love You Back Paul Myerscough on Pret and affective labour Please watch the amazing film Office Space! *** For the full-length episode, and 30-odd more exclusive episodes –  please join our Patreon!! ** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS ** **** Theme music: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

The early 2000s were a fever dream: why was pop culture so mean? Specifically, why was it acceptable to write off entire cities - and the people within them - as crap? This is the question posed by our special guest Isaac Rangaswami, journalist, writer and brains behind Instagram sensation Caffs not Cafes. Isaac's object is the wildly popular 2003 book Crap Towns, something about half of Britain received that year as a Christmas stocking filler.  How did something so cursed - so unpleasant - end up as a national publishing sensation? Were our brains all fried by lads mags, New Labour and tabloid journalism? And how did the miserably classist, sexist pop culture of the 90s and early 2000s shape a new generation of writers and social media users, to reject negative stereotypes and embrace the beauty of everyday spaces... even when they are a bit rubbish?   Follow Isaac's excellent new Substack Wooden City, and his Instagram account Caffs not cafes (if you haven't already). For first news and first dibs on tickets for the next live event – as well as the full-length episode! –  please join our Patreon!! ** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS ** Theme music: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford Special thanks also to Alex Rees, for helping to face audio gremlins. 

They are marketed as democratised holiday rentals, where you get an ‘authentic' experience by literally living in someone's home - so why are Airbnb's full of crap, generic art? The answer is obvious (predatory venture capitalism), but the effect is cursed in uniquely jarring ways.   Welcome back from your summer holidays - to a new season of Cursed Objects! This week Kasia and Dan explore the geographically and culturally bewildering experience of looking at a monochrome, wraparound canvas print of the Manhattan skyline, in a professionally managed Airbnb located miles from New York. What does it mean to travel, when you could be anywhere in the world once you arrive?  Journeying through a grimly commonplace experience of 21st century capitalism, how do identikit interiors and IKEA beakers expose Airbnb horrors we would like to pretend don't exist? What tactics - and political might - does this rental behemoth have, and who are the people fighting back?  En route, we cover authenticity, anti-tourist protests, carbon guilt and why the left maybe ought to be pro-travel, actually! *** FOR THE FULL EPISODE, please join our Patreon !! You can support us for as little as £4 a month and with that you'll get lots of extra episodes and updates about live shows (and our eternal thanks!) *** Theme music: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

If smart, humane, pro-migration Ed Miliband really hated Labour's infamous ‘Controls On Immigration' coffee mug – both of his parents were Jews who escaped the Nazis and found refuge in Britain – then why did he let it happen on his watch? Why is there so much cowardice, ignorance and fiction at the heart of our immigration conversation? Why does Labour have such a toxic relationship with migrants, given that most people with migration in their recent family histories (like Dan and Kasia, indeed) are expected to vote for them? Where does the notion come from that in order to ‘defeat the far right', you have to imitate their racist rhetoric, and repeat grim tropes like “legitimate concerns” and migrants putting “strains on public services”? As Kasia says, “Does it have to be like this?" Small boat crossings peak in August and September – four human beings drowned in the English Channel the day we recorded this episode. Nine things Starmer should do - open letter from 300 organisations working with refugees and asylum seekers End the 24/7 GPS tracking of migrants Jack Shenker's brilliant Hostile Environment Newscast for Tortoise *** FOR THE FULL EPISODE, please join our Patreon *** Theme music: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

How do you start collecting objects for a cursed museum? Kasia and Dan spend all of their money in the gift shop of the Museum of Neoliberalism (well, it wouldn't be a Museum of Neoliberalism if you left with more money than you entered with). They find a world curated by Darren Cullen - artist, activist and collector of some of the most mundanely dystopian objects imaginable. They discover corporate sponsored scout badges, chainsaws for kids and an Amazon employee's bottle of piss. How can you represent an ideology like neoliberalism that has such far-reaching but poorly understood implications?  PLUS they look at some of Darren's own creations that mimic and subvert the horrors of the everyday: ‘baby's first baby', the infamous Hell bus, and a mini diorama of an Amazon ‘fulfillment centre'. But don't worry, there are some blessed objects too - including ‘Don't talk to them' placards, that you can download from Darren's website. The Museum of Neoliberalism is closing in mid-September, get down as soon as you can (and make sure you book!).  If you want to hear more about Kasia and Dan's thoughts on neoliberalism (particularly in the Labour Party) find them in Rainbow Rhythms and Neoliberal Blues. You can also hear more about playmobil border force and riot cops in our episode on Dystopian Soft Play.   Theme music: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford Special thanks also to Alex Rees, for EQ advice.

Troubling war merch, Van Gogh bucket hats, Soviet space dogs and the scourge of ‘world' history - Kasia and Dan stage their first-ever live show to celebrate 100,000 downloads! They tell a sell-out crowd about some of their favourite cursed objects from museum shops, plus some of their favorites from the podcast. And we heard from YOU - via audience questions! Including: Why are museum shops all so same-y? Can you ever sell ‘respectful' merch? And why is glasses cleaner one of the most successful products sold in Italian museum shops? For first news and first dibs on tickets for the next live event – as well as the full-length episode! Along with 25+ others –  please join our Patreon!! ** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS ** Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford Special thanks also to Jade Bailey, for lending us her ears. 

A record etched onto an x-ray of a (probably, now) dead Soviet citizen's head. That is the uniquely cursed object Stephen Coates came across in a Russian flea market in 2014. Weird, eerie, and almost polyphonic in quality, these DIY records captivated him and sparked a mission to find the bootleggers who had risked up to *five years* in a gulag for their love of music. How did they turn x-rays into subversive ‘rib music'? And what can a flimsy bit of plastic show us about subcultural life in the USSR?  Stephen Coates hosts the fantastic Bureau of Lost Culture podcast and his band, The Real Tuesday Weld, are well worth a listen. He also curates various events including London Month of the Dead and Salon for the City. Kasia and Dan have signed up to their mailing lists - you should too!  And if you enjoyed this episode please join our Patreon!! ** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS - AND GET 25+ FULL BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK** Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Oh god, not another one! When BREAKING NEWS bursts through the wall, we spring, gently and apologetically, into action, with a (cough) emergency p for the snappy g. That's right guys, we've got a bootleg Keir Starmer mug and we're not afraid to do a podcast about it.   Real change. Change you can believe in. Change for you, change for me, change for the entire human race. This week we are talking about campaign slogans, and the surprisingly long and contested history of “for the many, not the few”. Who is the ‘many' in this sentence?? And who are the few? How can it be that figures as diffuse as Blair, Corbyn and Starmer have all deployed the same slogan? And what was Theresa May's unique twist on it?  We also call in on one of our favourite subjects, TIME. How have the 1983, 1997, 2017 and 2019 election years come to stand-in for an entire political philosophy, and strategy? And what does it mean when election campaigns try to invoke mythical pasts – ‘we want our country back', ‘let's make Britain great again' – rather than imagined or promised futures? Also, can the Microsoft Paperclip icon help our political parties make a bit more sense?   And if you enjoyed this episode please join our Patreon!! ** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS - AND GET 25+ FULL BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK**   Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

What if there was an object so cursed that it was never even made? This week we are joined by culture studies don Prof Anamik Saha to discuss anti-racism, racism and corporate diversity in pop culture - via Agatha Christie, Yellowface, American Fiction and One Day - woke agendas and cultural elites, colourblind casting, sensitivity readers and cultural consultants. What does diversity and anti-racism really mean in publishing, TV, film and music – and when is it just for show, or to assuage white guilt? What happens when a long-dominant culture is dramatically challenged, as happened in the aftermath of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests? ALSO: What does an authentic depiction of a space cowboy look like? Is it ‘race-bending' when Anne Hathaway plays someone from Leeds? Is culture studies an entirely vibes-based discipline? You can get stuck into Anamik's brilliant, enlightening work here: https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/media/staff/4390/professor-anamik-saha. His most recent book is Race, Culture and Media (SAGE, 2021).    And if you enjoyed this episode please join our Patreon!! ** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS - AND GET 25+ FULL BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK** Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Were you into Cursed Objects before it was cool? Like Grandpa Simpson remembering the war, this week Dan and Kasia are holding a seance for those perennial whipping boys and girls, the hipsters – and recalling the green remembered hills of artisan beards, cereal cafes and small-batch trucker hats. Kicking off with a revisit to seminal, frequently painful 2005 sitcom Nathan Barley, we ask whether it is possible to make a defence of hipsters? Isn't it a better world when people are enthusiastically pursuing their own mad little niches and styles – even if their moustaches look a bit daft? Why do hipsters get blamed for gentrification instead of property developers? Why did Adbusters blame them for the demise of the counter-culture? And what about the future: does the word mean anything anymore, when they sell flat whites in Costa? Are we ready to declare the hipster officially dead, and have we identified the assailant: the influencer?  If you enjoyed this episode please join our Patreon!! ** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS - AND GET 25+ FULL BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK!** Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford    

The police just follow the law, right!? Our guest Melayna Lamb thinks we need to flip this thinking around - and see the police as a law unto themselves. Using the example of the very cursed ‘thin blue line' police badge, Melayna challenges the police's foundational idea that they are the ‘thin blue line between order and chaos'. What happens if - as we have seen on multiple occasions - it is the police who are a danger to the public and not the other way around. Expect discussions of the worst police merch you've ever seen, 90s sitcom The Thin Blue Line ft. Rowan Atkinson, kettling, colonial boomerangs, and yes, somehow we've managed to get Walter Benjamin in there too.  Melayna's investigated the relationship between the police and law in her co-authored book Policing the Pandemic - How Public Health Becomes Public Order, and in her brand new book A Philosophical History of Police Power, out with Bloomsbury now.  For further listening on the horrors of the police force, check out the Bad Gays podcast on Cressida Dick.   If you enjoyed this episode please join our Patreon!! ** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS - AND GET 25+ FULL BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK!** Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

How do you like your eggs in the morning? Hopefully not wet?? It's Easter, so in the spirit of bringing you some seasonal #content, Kasia and Dan explore what came to be known as ‘wet egg discourse' via a Morrisons food-to-go container of six hard-boiled eggs. Is it ever appropriate to eat an egg on a train? Why are eggs eaten around the beginning of spring? Why are there so many phrases and idioms that reference eggs? How much is the most expensive Fabergé egg on the market? And why is Frank from Always Sunny in Philadelphia so obsessed with them?   *** FOR THE FULL EPISODE, please join our Patreon!! *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS - AND GET 25+ FULL BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK!   Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Forget everything you thought you knew about the housing crisis! This week we have a very special guest, housing lawyer Nick Bano, with a hugely enlightening and at times shocking lesson in just how we got into this mess. Drawing on his searing new book Against Landlords, Nick argues that the YIMBY / NIMBY argument is distracting us from the real problem - landlordism (even if we build more bloody houses, who will be able to buy them??) What does Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech tell us about the long history of racism in the private rented sector? Why do all the worst people want to build on the Green Belt? What does it mean when Keir Starmer says he will build a "patriotic economy" through home ownership? Just how recently was landlordism unprofitable? And HOW can we bring in old pal Marx and use the state to fix all this?   Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis (Verso) by Nick Bano is OUT NOW, do go and buy a copy.   *** FOR MORE, please join our Patreon!! *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS - AND GET 25+ BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK!   Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Kasia and Dan are earning their lunch. And it's a big, steaming bowl of cuteness! They go to the Somerset House ‘Cute' exhibition to unravel how this seemingly benign cultural phenomenon has come to infect our brains with adorable kittens and kawaii. Often seen as infantile and saccharine - can cuteness be emancipatory or is it an escape from the grim reality of the world? What does it mean for accountability when you turn yourself into a ‘smol bean'? Who or what is behind the ‘cute' disciples who preach the Hello Kitty gospel on internet forums and instagram reels? Kasia and Dan discuss the sinister influences of global capitalism while simultaneously mourning the lost utopian futures of PC music via the very cursed object of Hello Kitty-branded motor oil. *** FOR MORE, please join our Patreon!! *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS - AND GET 25+ BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK!   Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford  

This week, Dan and Kasia are getting into a submersible and heading into the dark blue depths, poking around the extremely cursed domain of Britain's unnatural party of government, THE CONSERVATIVE AND UNIONIST PARTY. The Tories. The true Blues. That lot.  Specifically, we're talking Tory merch. Just what the hell is going on in the Tories' online shop, who is all this crap for, and what does it tell us about the British right in 2024? Who are the Tory faithful, and what stories do they want to tell about themselves? Why did any of them 'TRUSS' in Liz? Why does Theresa May get a £32 commemorative toby jug but Harold Macmillan doesn't? Why are so many Conservative leaders depicted by their own side as mournful dogs? Why did we coin the term 'shagorama', and is it too late to take it back? Elsewhere, we discuss the role of the infamous 'Hang Nelson Mandela' posters in the 1980s, and Dan tells us about the time he went undercover to a young Tory Christmas party in the name of journalism.   *** FOR MORE, please join our Patreon!! *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS - AND GET 25+ BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK!   Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

We're baaaack! And we're feeling FIT, while also reassuring you that it's what's inside that counts. Kasia and Dan return with a new series, where today we're talking about the beauty industry, vanity and gender, and - following a Cursed Objects outing to the Wellcome Collection's new exhibition The Cult of Beauty - early modern German wife-prettying windmill technology.  From the masterful make-up artists of Glow Up: Britain's Next Make-Up Star to the hall of rubbish mirrors of the Palace of Versailles, this episode has it all. We also hear about the beauty industry exhibits in the Museum of Transology – as liberatory objects that affirm a sense of self in a culture that would too often deny it to trans people.  Also: if pretty privilege is really a thing, shouldn't the parliamentary Conservative Party be a party of hotties?   *** FOR THE FULL EPISODE, join our Patreon!! *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS - AND GET 25+ BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK!   Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

It's a classic Haunted Dickensian Cursed Objects Office Christmas Party! If you think Halloween is the spookiest time of year - you're dead wrong. We're gathering round the metaphorical office photocopier to delve into the pagan origins of festive ghost stories. What can a mysterious RNLI lifeboat poster in Kasia's hallway tell us about the ‘happy ghosts' found in the haunted house that is Cursed Objects HQ? And no festive season would be complete without a slightly tipsy guide to hauntology. Did Burial create it in a south London branch of McDonald's, or are its origins in the organic sounds of vegetables being destroyed for foley effects? Only a trip back to the 1970s and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop holds the answers. PLUS we have real-life, genuine ghost stories (well, one - about a ‘ghost plane'... oooOOoooOoo). Back by popular demand, our now-regular Christmas tradition - we are a full house ft. our whole team, sound designer Mr. Beatnick and artwork maverick Archie Bashford. Stay tuned to our Patreon for some special festive bonus content - including a reading of an M.R. James ghost story. *** IN FACT, WHY NOT join our Patreon!! *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS - AND GET 20+ BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK! Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Service! This week, we are hovering around ‘the pass', checking our plating is okay, and asking how a simple labour-saving device, a coffee shop palette knife, caused Kasia so much angst and strife – “like a dagger to my heart”? Maybe it's because of the uniquely painful and exhausting nature of working in food and drink service. Kasia and Dan discuss the legendary pamphlet Abolish Restaurants, the politics of tipping, the way food TV and memoirs (even the sainted Anthony Bourdain!) valorise a macho, masochistic attitude to epically long shifts in the kitchen, and the objects which symbolise the drudgery of low-paid work. Why do the same restaurants and cafes that bang on about how sustainable their ingredient-sourcing is never EVER talk about how their workers are treated?   *** For the full episode, join our Patreon!! *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS - AND GET THIS AND 25+ OTHER BONUS EPISODES - AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK!   Here is the Abolish Restaurants pamphlet - download, share, print it out! https://files.libcom.org/files/Prole.Info-%20Abolish%20Restaurants.pdf   Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Mice, lice, moths…and prehistoric-looking ‘weta' grasshoppers. We are in the grips of a pest control moral panic. Could the humble hedgehog be the solution to the bedbug APOCALYPSE that newspapers keep telling us is wracking London? From Ancient Greek prayers for worms to eat someone else's crops, to lousy experiences of the Spanish Civil War, and ‘squander bugs' that undermine the wartime economy, pests have always plagued civilisation. So why is everyone obsessed with them right now? It's a creepy, crawly episode of Cursed Objects, featuring Bill Spikes, a lil' cuddly hedgehog toy from the Charles Dickens Museum.    *** If you enjoy the work we do here at Cursed Objects, join our Patreon!! *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS - AND GET 20+ BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK! Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Recorded on a hungover rainy Sunday, it's a history-on-TV episode, and it's an episode about HISTORY IN THE FIELD. Literally in the field, or rather in a field: metal detecting, archeology, and a little bit of mudlarking on the side. Don't we all want to find some buried treasure? This week, Dan and Kasia talk about the sweet and gently profound Mackenzie Crook sitcom Detectorists, and what a powerful case it makes for 'ordinary civilians' doing grassroots history as a hobby. Maybe we all have a Saxon burial ground underneath our feet? Isn't that a thrilling thought? Can even a ringpull from a can of Tizer help bring the 1980s to life? Then there's Time Team, the show responsible for bringing archeology to the masses and making it sexy - how did it end up as a YouTube show, and what became of the anti-establishment hero at the heart of it (we're not talking about Tony Robinson, sorry Tony). *** For the full episode, join our Patreon!! *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS - AND GET 20+ BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK! Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

It's our 50th episode! Sort of. There's an asterisk. But it's sort of our 50th episode! To mark the occasion, Dan and Kasia are tackling their own logo, the Cursed Objects avatar and icon: the beans clock. They take on the politics of time, and discuss the use of the clock to discipline people into docile worker-drones. They learn the helpful unit of time measurement "pissing-while" and why some people thought the clock was "the devil's mill". Other vital questions: Why did Hugo Chavez put the clocks back by 30 minutes as an anti-imperialist gesture? What is it like to experience time being floaty, bendy or stretchy, rather than flying in a straight line like an arrow? Why do we talk about saving time, wasting time, time theft, clock-watching and our time being 'our own'? Why on earth does Kasia always have her time set one hour ahead? Is she really 'hacking time'?   *** Also, why not join our Patreon? *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS, IN EXCHANGE FOR  20+ BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

What happens when a revolution dies? Jack Shenker witnessed firsthand the phenomenal Egyptian strike waves of the late 2000s that led to the toppling of the Mubarak regime, reporting from Tahrir Square and the towns and factories beyond - in 2016 publishing The Egyptians. This episode, our very special guest brings in a mug from the April 6th Youth Movement, once among the leaders of the revolution and now outlawed by the state and designated a terrorist symbol - the first time our cursed object has had to be smuggled across borders. Reliving Jack's experiences of revolutionary promise, collapse and anguish, we discuss the painfully quick cycle of birth, life and death or a revolution, just as the mug became revolutionary legacy-tat, before being banned as a symbol of sedition. How did Jack end up burning incriminating documents in his old Cairo apartment? How many references to Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile will we squeeze in? Is everything neoliberalism's fault? Get involved in this very special episode to find out. Find Jack here: https://twitter.com/hackneylad   *** Also, why not join our Patreon? *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS, IN EXCHANGE FOR 20+ BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Welcome to a new series of Cursed Objects! For the first episode back, very special guest historian Charlotte Lydia Riley brings in a souvenir mug commemorating the British Empire Exhibition of 1924 – where the very normal exhibits included a working coalmine, a model of the Prince of Wales sculpted out of butter, and… actual human beings brought back from the colonies to the metropole. Charlotte explains how groups like the Union of African Students pushed back, and the imperial undertones of Winnie the Pooh and Adrian Mole.  We discuss Charlotte's brilliant new book Imperial Island, about empire in the 20th century, and whether reading deep into everyday pop culture is the best way to escape the official narrative of empire. What did you learn about the British Empire at school??   Imperial Island is out now - go and get it immediately, you won't regret it: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442125/imperial-island-by-riley-charlotte-lydia/9781847926432  Charlotte can be found here: https://twitter.com/lottelydia   *** Why not join our Patreon? *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS, IN EXCHANGE FOR 20+ BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

For the next Patreon-only Cursed Summer Session, Dan and Kasia get stuck into a decades-old British institution, with a TV review of Antiques Roadshow - comparing the huge gulf between the show in 1990 and 2023. Is it the most suffocating, reactionary show on TV? Twee middle-class commodity fetishism? Or is there more to it than that - couldn't this also be a democratic goldmine, a forum for grassroots, participatory material history for the masses? What kind of objects need to appear on Antiques Roadshow to make it something more than Tory heritage industry fluff?  *** For the full episode, join our Patreon!! *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAVOURITE CULTURAL HISTORIANS AND GET 20+ BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK!

Sit up straight, hippies! Kasia and Dan have some questions for you, and it's high time you answered. Where did all this magic mushroom merch come from? What makes tye-die and flares swing in and out of fashion? What is the thread between psychedelia in 1960s pop culture and medieval dance manias? What does Camden market have to do with all this? Are drugs still winning the war on drugs? And most infuriatingly of all, how is there so much cowardice, hypocrisy and bullshit in British discourse around drug policies that we are now behind even the United States? *** For the full episode, join our Patreon!! *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAV CULTURAL HISTORIANS AND GET 20+ BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK! Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Pukka! We're dancing in the moonlight with the king of the English culinary world, Jamie Oliver. How did someone so cringe achieve such dizzying levels of fame and power? How did he end up being an unofficial advisor to Tonty Blair? Special guests Jonathan Nunn and Biz take us through Jamie's Naked Chef years, the Downing Street years and the Jerk Rice years, via the extremely cursed Cookin': Music To Cook By compilation CD. From New Labour and school dinners to the notorious Lamb Curry Song (complete with dodgy Jamaican accent), it's a wild ride with the world's most milquetoast indie soundtrack.   *** Why not join our Patreon? *** ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YOUR FAV CULTURAL HISTORIANS AND GET 20+ BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK!   Jonathan Nunn is a writer and co-founder of online food magazine Vittles. He edited the brilliant London Feeds Itself.  Biz is Director of Resonance FM, and has written for the New Statesman, New York Times, The Nation, and the Times Literary Supplement.   Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Come fly away with us and Alain de Botton (sorry but he's coming too), and take a trip on Venga Airways - but we're not leaving the ground: you're trapped with us in the departure lounge, for ever. Are airports the most cursed spaces in the modern world? Liminal spaces between nations and cultures, a surveilled, high-security purgatory, with access to Oliver Bonas. Why the hell are Gen Z *choosing* to hang out there, for fun? And are personalised gifts like our Cursed Objects Toblerone the last gasp of late-period consumer capitalism? FULL EPISODE HERE >> ONLY £4 A MONTH for this and 20+ more bonus episodes, AND a free Cursed Objects sticker pack! https://www.patreon.com/posts/work-of-in-age-85132408 Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

It's a source of strength, life, sickness, disgust, delight and deep nausea. It's fraught with climate controversy and tensions over rights, care, state power, social democracy, misogyny and outrageous colonial history.  Where did we learn that strong kids drink milk? Why is the Laughing Cow not laughing anymore? Why have neo-Nazis adopted it as a weird signifier of their racism? And what does the rise and rise of oat milk - with its cringe hipster tweevertising - tell us about late capitalism? Also - why not join our Patreon? ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YR FAV CULTURAL HISTORIANS AND GET 20+ BONUS EPISODES AND A CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK! Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Oh so you're 6 months old and you say you're a true Guns 'n' Roses fan? Name their top 3 albums then! Coming to you live from the furious and cathartic heart of the moshpit, this week Dan and Kasia take on the golden age of RAWK, homemade metal 'battle jackets', music fandom and nerdery, masculinity, authenticity and the long history of rock 'selling out'. What happens when a music and fashion sub-culture moves on from its golden era - what is left in its wake? And why are metallers so obsessed with fortified wine?   FULL EPISODE HERE >> ONLY £4 A MONTH TO LISTEN AND SUPPORT YR FAV CULTURAL HISTORIANS AND GET A *FREE* CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK https://www.patreon.com/posts/death-to-false-h-83369555   Here is Jude Rogers on band t-shirts: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/oct/13/band-tshirts Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Smoking is almost too on-the-nose a subject for Cursed Objects. But vapes - candy-coloured, daftly-named, targeted at children, making wads of $$$ for the same tobacco companies - vapes are perfect. How are these cursed little dummies - cheap plastic disposable tat, destined for landfill - marketed? Why did fags disappear from the movies? How has Big Tobacco adapted to bans on its lobbying, advertising and product placement? In 1974, 45% of British adults smoked. People smoked not just in restaurants and pubs, but on the tube, and in hospitals. Those numbers have fallen to 13% today - a huge social change - but what else has changed, since smoking ceased to be an integral part of the fabric of everyday life? FOR REGULAR BONUS EPISODES - OVER 20 IN ALL ALREADY - AND A FREE STICKER PACK, SIGN UP HERE....... ONLY £4 A MONTH TO SUPPORT YR FAV CULTURAL HISTORIANS: https://www.patreon.com/posts/73409944   Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

The desire to feel like you are 'part of history' can turn even the most ardent republican into a flag-waving monarchist shill. So why are we all so desperate to tell subsequent generations that we were 'there' and how does this urge corrode politics? Just in time for the King's Coronation, from our Patreon to main feed, we explore the period of national mourning we recorded in September 2022 following the Queen's death. 9 months have passed, but many of the themes explored in this episode are timeless..   FOR PART ONE OF THE EPISODE, SIGN UP FOR ONLY £4 A MONTH TO LISTEN AND SUPPORT YR FAV CULTURAL HISTORIANS: https://www.patreon.com/posts/73409944   Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Kasia and Dan address their toughest question yet: are cats left wing? Springing from a shared love of feline friends, they trace the history of cat-obsessed activists and intellectuals through Kasia's cat The Professor's very gross lost claw. Why did the left choose to welcome these ruthless killers into their homes? Are cats incapable of love, or is that a myth spread by 'Big Bird'? And they trawl the digital recesses of blog sites (so you don't have to) to test if cat memes will turn you into a libertarian or communist. They also read Leigh Claire La Berge's brilliant book Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary.    FULL-LENGTH BONUS EPISODE AND MANY OTHERS HERE >> FOR ONLY £4 A MONTH: https://www.patreon.com/posts/81738158?pr=true   Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick   Artwork: Archie Bashford

There is a gift shop in Guantánamo Bay. That's it. That's the episode. From ‘mindfulness' mugs to lip balms, Kasia and Dan explore the extremely cursed Guantánamo merchandise and everyday objects on offer - alongside ‘enhanced interrogation techniques' like waterboarding, and the kidnapping of foreign nationals for long-term detention without charge. From their use of euphemistic language, to the geography and history of this highly secretive US naval base, still squatting on Cuban soil – this is part history lesson, part fury at the continuing injustices committed in the name of the war on terror and 'all our freedoms'.   FULL-LENGTH BONUS EPISODE AND MANY OTHERS HERE >> FOR ONLY £4 A MONTH https://www.patreon.com/posts/81073683    Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick   Artwork: Archie Bashford

A plain ham sandwich, a bottle of still water and a pack of ready salted crisps – it's a meal (deal) fit for a King, and a Cursed Objects x Lecker collab! This week, legends in their own lunchtimes Kasia, Dan and special guest Lucy Dearlove delve into claggy sandwiches, terrible sushi and supermarket psychology and ask: what the hell is going on in Britain that our most well-known high street chemist changed the way we eat lunch? What do your meal deal choices say about you, and what's the most cursed meal deal of all? How have the intertwined histories of British capitalism, office work and food led us to this point - where a ham and cheese sandwich, Coke Zero Vanilla and Itsu seaweed thins is a normal lunch combination? If you're enjoying Cursed Objects, please support our Patreon, for regular bonus episodes (and a Cursed Objects sticker pack!): patreon.com/cursedobjects. You can also follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK. Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Could we BE any more cursed? This week, Dan and Kasia talk about the strange, mutant afterlife of Friends, the world's least cool situation comedy. On the agenda, such questions as: has some kind of Friends merchandise atom bomb been detonated in recent years? What does the show tell us about the politics and culture of the 1990s - and why is that decade so 'long'? Why are tweens in Britain in 2023 wearing Central Perk t-shirts and 'We Were On A Break' socks? What kind of comfort is it that we find in lightweight sitcoms - "playing in the safe memory of history"? And why did 9/11 not occur in the Friends version of New York? FULL EPISODE HERE >> ONLY £4 A MONTH TO LISTEN AND SUPPORT YR FAV CULTURAL HISTORIANS AND GET A *FREE* CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK https://www.patreon.com/posts/73409944 Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Kasia and Dan explore the crisis in British swearing through Robert Peston's very cursed book ‘WTF'. What does it say about our society that a leading political pundit sells his books through expletives? And with groans of despair viscerally being felt across the UK whenever someone calls Matt Hancock a ‘cockwomble', what has become of swearing as a once transgressive art form? It's a wild ride into Westminster's ‘chumocracy', the publishing industry's sweary self-help books that atomise your depression and captisalise on a 'punk' ethos, and the most groan-worthy recesses of Internet forums.   If you're enjoying Cursed Objects, please support our Patreon, for regular bonus episodes: patreon.com/cursedobjects. And very soon: CURSED OBJECTS STICKERS. You can also follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK. Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

What happens to the space-time continuum if you open an advent calendar in April? What are the healing properties of "different flavours of damp twig"? This week, Kasia and Dan are exploring the quasi-mystical powers of herbal tea, via an out-of-time advert calendar covered in a thick layer of dust. We talk about measuring the passage of time with hot drinks, about Kasia's relationship with the Polish diaspora in the UK, about folk culture, identity and assimilation, about foraging, about herbal remedies, and about our estranged relationships with the land. FULL EPISODE HERE >> ONLY £4 A MONTH TO LISTEN AND SUPPORT YR FAV CULTURAL HISTORIANS AND GET A *FREE* CURSED OBJECTS STICKER PACK https://www.patreon.com/posts/73409944 Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

Go east! Kasia and Dan tackle a satirical boardgame about queuing in Cold War-era Poland and go deep into 'Ostalgie' -- how do people remember the Soviet era, especially people who don't actually remember the Soviet era? Pioneers, communist pickles and coffee made from acorns all feature, along with 'Good Bye, Lenin!' and an immersive theatrical experience in a Lithuanian nuclear bunker. Here is Svetlana Boym's essay, 'Nostalgia and its Discontents'. If you're enjoying Cursed Objects, please support our Patreon, for regular bonus episodes: patreon.com/cursedobjects. And very soon: CURSED OBJECTS STICKERS. You can also follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK. Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

IT'S CUUUUUURSEDMAAAAAAAS! We're having a work Christmas party and you're all invited -- we've got some festive VKs and gingerbread milk stout, and we're going to finally determine who's been naughty and who's been nice - with help from Gary Barlow, our designer Archie and our producer Nick Wilson. Along with some dangerous live DIY we have tales of bleeding eyes (aka when Dan became Jesus), the survival of hard currency via Chocolate Oranges, Guy Ritchie characters, Franciscan monks and fake-northern monks, and some feral behaviour around ham - a drunk history ft. three bald kings and one sentimental Xmas fairy. If you can, please SIGN UP for our Patreon for only £4 a month here: https://www.patreon.com/cursedobjects Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford

It's spooky season, it's harvest season, it's pumpkin season, it's nesting season, it's hygge season, it's cuffing season, it's christian girl autumn -- but where do all these labels and ideas come from?? As the nights draw in, Dan and Kasia ask how we got from the ancient Celtic pagan festival of Samhain - where the boundary between the mortal world and the Otherworld opened to allow the dead to walk amongst us - to Halloween Nike Air Max 90s and pumpkin-spiced-latte candles? And why are kids in urban primary schools taught quite so many songs about the importance of the harvest?? If you can, please SIGN UP for our Patreon for only £4 a month here: https://www.patreon.com/cursedobjects Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford  

FROM PATREON TO MAIN FEED: it's a Hot Geist Summer episode where Kasia and Dan take a cursed journey into the darkest parts of the experience economy... from yuppie ballpit bars and escape rooms in Shoreditch, to the commodification and historicisation of the Holocaust, it's a wild ride with the spiritual godfather of Cursed Objects on his 130th birthday. If you can, please SIGN UP for our Patreon for only £4 a month here: https://www.patreon.com/cursedobjects Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick Artwork: Archie Bashford