Cursed Objects

Remember in 2010 when 10 million Brits watched the first ever televised leader debate, and we collectively lost our minds?  We ponder the moment of madness that was ‘Cleggmania’, and the associated phrases ‘Cleggstacy’ and political fandoms ‘Milifans/ Milibaes’. What was it about Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, a formerly stuffy party that no one could even get excited enough to h...

What’s for dinner? A handful of grated cheese? Some olives and a croissant? A whole crab, eaten in bed? This one goes out to all the exhausted girlies who can’t be arsed to cook. What wonders emerge when women find moments of freedom from compulsory and unpaid domestic labour? Ladies, gentlemen and nonbinary pals, welcome to the cursed/blessed super-trend that was, and is, GIRL DINNER. This week D...

CO is back, with a dream guest for Dan and Kasia: Professor Patrick Wright , author of On Living in an Old Country and The Village That Died for England, joins us for an urgent and vital conversation about Englishness, heritage, national decline, landscapes, Brexit and Reform, historical memory, and social and cultural disintegration. This is a conversation about "the direly persistent English que...

Only 3000 people are invited to Davos, home of the World Economic Forum - and you’re one of them! Well, not really. But welcome anyway to this chocolate-box Swiss mountain town, transformed via "the Champions League of logistics" into a de facto military base for the world's economic, political and corporate superpowers. Guiding us through this deeply cursed world is very special guest Caitlín Doh...

New year, new you, new Cursed Objects - let’s dive in! This week, Kasia breaks the ice and takes us on a plunge into the cursed and blessed world of wild, outdoor and cold water swimming – while Dan nervously dips a toe in to see if he can hack the chills and spills. Wild swimming – or “swimming”, as it was sometimes known historically – has taken on an outsized and fascinating role in British cul...

Luke Skywalker, shut up and eat your jelly! As everyone knows, Christmas is like Cursed Objects Christmas, and so sure enough: it’s the long-awaited CO Christmas Special. REJOICE! This year, we are talking about childhood experiences of Christmas, then and now. Starting off with toy crazes, from Optimus Prime to Cabbage Patch Dolls, and therefore, the true meaning of Christmas: supply-chain econom...

What would Christmas be without a tour of London’s lights? For the first of our free xmas podcasts, Kasia and Dan go UP TOWN for an outside (!!) walking tour through Covent Garden, Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus. Known as stressful hot-spots for holiday season breakdowns, these Central London capitalistic hell-holes must have some redeeming features, right?!  We find out what London’s mark...

Not the Queen of Hearts! Greetings, England's roses, and welcome back to the People's Podcast - this week, it's the original parasocial relationship: ROYALTY.  Kasia is being pursued by a stream of Lady Di-themed cursed objects, and with Dan explores the universe of royal tat, Diana standom, 90s tabloids and the media hysteria around her death and funeral, when Britain discovered EMOTIONS and beha...

"Escape to the King's Cross Riviera," said the sign on the construction hoardings - so we did! And it forced us to ask questions like: 'What if you threw a major urban regeneration zone and lots of people came, but then they wanted a branch of All Bar One when they got there?' In this brand new episode, Kasia and Dan are on an Outside Broadcast Adventure (OBA), captured live during the heart of th...

We are back with another brand new episode, another very special guest, the brilliant Fearghus Roulston, and another fascinating assembly of some very Cursed Objects subjects – histories of conflict, conviviality, getting pissed, listening to punk and misremembering our own lives and favourite counter-cultural spaces.  Fearghus wants to make it clear he is not a “Punkademic”, but that it’s fine if...

This week, Dan and Kasia forage for meaning in the fertile terrain of culinary "movements", globalisation, multiculturalism and identity, megabucks fine dining, and the desperate search for authenticity in food. Earlier in the summer, Dan was sent to Oslo - for work, not as punishment - to explore 20 years of New Nordic Cuisine, a hugely ambitious attempt by 10 Scandinavian chefs to overhaul the w...

“I have been objectified as a vehicle”. We are delighted to welcome back our most-returning guest, as the brilliant historian and author Charlotte Lydia Riley talks us through the cursed world of being pregnant in public; about the way pregnant women – and, in different ways, mothers! – are treated by a frequently confused society. Why is there so much twee culture surrounding pregnancy, and how h...

Sit down please. We have something very serious to tell you. We have made a severe and continuous lapse in our judgement. We are sorry if you feel offended, for some reason. We are sorry if you feel like you've been scammed - please believe that that was never our intention. WE'RE SORRY, OKAY!!!! After a summer taking some time to reflect on our mistakes and do the work, we are so back - talking p...

Coming to you LIVE from the Cursed Objects in Museum Shops exhibition, with three very special guests: Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley, Luke Turner and Kate Clements. It's another lively live show, exploring war museums and their merch from several angles. How do war museums navigate ‘selling’ histories of death and destruction to their visitors? What can replica First World War trench whistles and Panze...

Coming to you LIVE... we are joined by two very special friends of the pod – artist Darren Cullen (aka Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives ) and journalist and author Imogen West-Knights – as they explore the spirit of the millennium via the museum gift shop. New Labour were great proponents of the culture industries, and made admission to the UK’s national museums free in 2001. Did this and grand projec...

Back by popular demand, our second-ever live show!! Dr Kasia Tee and Dan Hancox take you behind the scenes of their recently opened exhibition ‘Cursed Objects in Museum Shops’ at the Peltz Gallery . What does the history of neon signs, Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa and Lewis Chessmen socks have in common? As ever, expect the answer to be how life under late capitalism is producing some hig...

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 . C...

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...

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 every...

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...

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 Victor...

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 Christ...

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 produc...

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...

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 ar...