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.

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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 **

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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!

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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

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

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.