Cursed Objects

FULL-LENGTH BONUS EPISODE AND MANY OTHERS HERE >> FOR ONLY £4 A MONTH https://www.patreon.com/posts/81073683 

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

We've done our duties Paddington, now take us to straight to hell (boy).

Two weeks of pent-up angst, hilarity and bewilderment comes out in a wild ride through Britain's "period of national mourning". 

What on earth is a 'national mood', what are its rituals, who invented them and when? What do these offerings - these marmalade totems - reveal about British sentiment and sentimentality? What does it say about the UK that foodbanks will close down as a mark of respect to a dead monarch? When are we all aware of our 'place in history'? Where were you when the Queen died / while we were getting high on marmalade sandwiches?

FULL EPISODE HERE, 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