Cursed Objects

We’re BACK following two Patreon-only episodes – and we are celebrating! Bunting? Check. Tables? Check. Unelected head of state who costs the British taxpayer £67 million a year? CHECK. That’s right – this week we are discussing HM The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. The resources for which the Government have spent big money for you to download . All this fuss has got us wondering - is coronation chick...

Crayons out for universal health care! Stay home, protect the NHS, make a sign to put in your window, clap for your doctors and nurses, give them all a badge - but don't bother with a pay rise. This week, Kasia and Dan delve into the deep passions, protective instincts, personal pathos and politics swirling around every British resident's relationship with the National Health Service, the only acc...

Welcome all free-born Englishmen, sovereign citizens, rebel barons and new patrons! On this first of what will now be regular Patreon-only episodes - 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...

Series 2 ends with a bang, and some serious vexillology: talking homonationalism, gay villages, the commercialisation of Pride, the history of criminalisation of LGBTQ people, the Gay End of History, and this flag - The Pink Jack, with legendary writer and podcaster, Bad Gays' Huw Lemmey. Bad Gays: A Homosexual History is published by Verso on 31 May 2022 and you can (and should) pre-order it RIGH...

U-F-Whoa! It's the penultimate episode of Series 2, and this week Dan and Kasia consider the Wyrd 1990s, bedding down in Area 51 with Mulder and Scully (and their mates from the Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevik NWO) to ask why alien conspiracies thrived in mainstream pop culture immediately after the end of the Cold War. Was this catharsis as the threat of nuclear annihilation receded? Or just a silly dist...

'Wall Street's Guantanamo' or 'our Statue of Liberty'? This week Dan and Kasia grapple with a series of very large cursed objects, the sky-scraping glass-and-steel totems to finance capitalism in London's former docklands. There is discussion of the east London grime scene, hostile architecture, Stuart Hall, dystopian privatised public spaces, and how buildings can embody the spirit of the age. If...

It's the end of another busy day running the patriarchy. You drop your designer briefcase in the hall, put on your football-shaped slippers, and place your watch on your executive watch stand. Your apartment is filled with many leather-bound books and smells of rich mahogany. There's whisky in the decanter and a ludicrously expensive Lego Millennium Falcon to build. You are modern man incarnate, a...

Cursed Objects sells out!! (Not really.) This week, Dan and Kasia investigate why every sinister corporation in the world has started obsessively pursuing 'brand collabs'? Why are we letting multi-billion dollar companies cannibalise the language and practices of creative work? Where is the line between art and commerce, and how do we unpick this stuff without sounding like tedious Bill Hicks-lovi...

Class. Gender. Nuclear families. Savoury jelly. Fish paste. National identity. The 1970s. Innovation in post-war capitalist production. AND! Highly specific pieces of kitchen equipment and dinner parties. This week, Dan and Kasia ask: why do we all hate dinner parties? Or rather, why do we all *say* we hate dinner parties, but love having dinner with our friends? Where did all the stigma come from...

Art and commerce, haunted ears, starving artists and the way galleries fetishise madness to make £££. Welcome back, and welcome to our first ever guest (!), the wonderful Alice Procter. Series 2 returns, the UCU strike is finished, and Kasia, Dan and Alice are DEEP in the politics and economics of the museum gift shop, as well as checking in on how that whole 'decolonising the museum' thing is goi...

This week's episode of Cursed Objects has been postponed - because we are supporting the University and College Union (UCU) digital strike. Please consider joining us in donating to the UCU’s strike fund by going to www.ucu.org.uk/fightingfund We return with Series 2 Episode 4 next Monday -Kasia and Dan x

When did our star signs start running our lives? According to horoscope app Co-Star, it has been downloaded by a quarter of all young women aged 18–25 in the U.S. Even if we are living in a material world, maybe the great horoscope renaissance is offering something that's missing from modern life? Via a cursed Capricorn necklace and some Tik Tok witches, Kasia and Dan tackle the weird, the mystica...

Celebrity gloss, celebrity GOSS! How do you write a 260-page biography of a young TV presenter who you've never met and never interviewed, and hasn't ever done anything but be on TV? Padding! Baffling, bizarre digressions and weird AF padding. But you've gotta just churn it out in time for Xmas. Dan and Kasia discuss the cash-in tat produced around 2000s celebrity pop culture, the grim misogyny of...

If this is indeed a new Cold War, then when did it get so hot in here? Dan and Kasia are back with a bang, launching Series 2 of Cursed Objects with a bit of geopolitical pizzazz - talking leadership cults, "great men of history" and the ironic veneration of dictators. Stalin makes an appearance, and we look at the time Vladimir Putin extolled the virtues of hip-hop for clean living and a greater...

A sexy Putin calendar. An unauthorised Fearne Cotton biography. A Van Gogh eraser shaped like his dismembered ear. Adorno takes on his horoscope, Stuart Hall takes on Canary Wharf, the 1970s take on dinner parties and the 2020s take on "brand collabs"... guess who just got back today? That's right! Hosts Dr Kasia Tee and Dan Hancox return on Monday 31 January - and then every Monday for the next 1...

Deck the halls with mince pie-flavoured Wensleydale, Dan and Kasia have both been shopping, opened some disgusting cans of seasonal beer, and are back for a one-off Christmas special! There's pigs-in-blankets everything and dried fruit where it shouldn't be, as we discuss our festive favs, 'premium mediocre', the 17th century roots of the Christmas meal, and the very recent history of gross superm...

Series 1 closes with an Olympian nightmare. Kasia and Dan de-mythologise London 2012: surface-to-air missiles on east London rooftops, cops arresting protesters, VIP lanes on the roads - all in the name of "cheering up the country in hard times". We talk about riots, food banks, authoritarian capitalism, and what the controversial London 2012 Opening Ceremony tells us about national identity. Key...

It's Episode 9, and this week Dan and Kasia are looking at the transcendental appeal of cheap religious tat, and the mass reproduction of images. There is faith, forgery, bootlegging and breakfast... and glow-in-the-dark Baby Jesus keyrings. We ask why Topshop went through a phase of selling rosary beads, and why people buy postcards of the Mona Lisa. Moreoever, does the reproduction of art reduce...

Kasia and Dan are struggling to feel ‘mindful’ despite using their fresh-off-Amazon colouring-in wallcharts, puzzles and self-help books. Interrogating the mental health crisis and neoliberalism, they discuss ‘mindfulness’ and the ways that employers and political parties pay lip service to the health of the nation. Key object: Labour 'colour-in-at-home' postcard.   For more: follow us on  twitter...

Kasia and Dan dig into the cursed experience of being 'on the apps' - dating apps - and discuss 'tweevertising', why companies are more interested in 'driving engagement' than selling products, and how we came to live in a world where brands want nothing more than to be our mates. Key object: Hinge bath bomb   For more: follow us on  twitter  and  instagram @CursedObjectsUK, and if you are enjoyin...

Dan and Kasia are having a kickabout and looking into the role of the Spanish Civil War in left-wing mythology. What connects lower league English football with the Spanish Republic of 1931-1939? Why do the International Brigades – the independent fighters who came from across much of Europe to fight against fascism – mean so much to the British Left so long after the war was lost? Key object: Cla...

It's episode 5, and this week Kasia and Dan are worrying about ' Agamben Toys ': dystopian play-things for kids like Playmobil prisons and riot cops with tiny plastic riot shields, guns, mean-looking dogs and roadblock accessories. Why do these objects exist, why do they unsettle adults more than they do kids, and what can they tell us about the Boring Dystopia of the real world? What is the histo...

Join Kasia and Dan as they take a walk down the 'world food aisle' of the Big Sainsburys - delving into the politics of flavour, globalisation, multiculturalism, cultural appropriation and identity, via imported spices and delicious salty snacks. Key object: Polish curry-flavoured instant ramen.   For more: follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK, and join our Patreon! patreon.com/curs...

Dan and Kasia explore a distant memory – the DVD box set – through the nostalgic, dream-like world of the hit murder mystery Poirot. Get ready for debates on Netflix destroying our brains, poverty in seaside towns, and TV watching as an act of family negotiation. Key object: 28 disc DVD box set of ITV's Poirot   For more info: follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK, email us at Cursed...

This week Kasia and Dan delve into the concept of 'Austerity Nostalgia'. Why is the Second World War still so important to British culture, over 80 years after it began? This week's Cursed Object: a Keep Calm and Carry On Poster   For more info: follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK, email us at CursedObjectsPod@gmail.com, or join our Patreon: patreon.com/cursedobjects   Theme music...