Cursed Objects

Subversive Coffee

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

Multitudes - Live From the Crowd! Ft. Hettie O’Brien

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.

 

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Theme music: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford

Every Breath You Take ft. Dr Alice Bell

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!

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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 **

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Theme music: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford

Kill the Boss in Your Head

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!

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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 **

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Theme music: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford

Crap Towns and Caffs (not Cafes) ft. Isaac Rangaswami

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. 

Airbnb: Prints of Thieves

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!

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Theme music: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford

Racist Mugs and Legitimate Concerns with Labour

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

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Theme music: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford

The Museum of Neoliberalism ft. Darren Cullen

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.

Cursed Objects, Live! #1 Notes from the museum shop

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. 

Bone music, Soviet outlaws and X-ray rock ‘n’ roll ft. Stephen Coates

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

The Unstoppable Many vs. The Immovable Few (Emergy P for the Snappy G)

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

Black Frankenstein and White Corporate Diversity ft. Anamik Saha

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

Hipster Analysis

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

 

 

Walk the (thin blue) line ft. Melayna Lamb

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

A Sack of Wet Eggs

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

Against Landlords ft. Nick Bano

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.

 

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Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford

Hey QT!

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

 

Major Jugs and Starmer Flip-Flops

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

You're Beautiful (no matter what they say)

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

Haunted Dickensian Christmas ft. Mr. Beatnick and 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.

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Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford