Cursed Objects

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 RIGHT NOW.

Huw Lemmey's Utopian Drivel Substack is here.

The Bad Gays podcast, which Huw hosts with Ben Miller, is here.

If you've enjoyed Cursed Objects so far, please support our Patreon - regular bonus episodes coming after S2 finishes: patreon.com/cursedobjects. You can also follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK.

Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford

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 distraction in a godless universe? Why do conspiracy theories appeal to people in the first place? Also featuring crop circles, Corbyn conspiracies, yer man Senator McCarthy and S Club 7's visit to the Bermuda Triangle.

If you're enjoying Cursed Objects, please support our Patreon - regular bonus episodes coming after S2 finishes: patreon.com/cursedobjects. You can also follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK.

Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford

'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 you're enjoying Cursed Objects, please support our Patreon - regular bonus episodes coming after S2 finishes: patreon.com/cursedobjects. You can also follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK.

Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford

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, and these are your man-gifts - and this week, Kasia and Dan are going to find out just what it is that's so cursed about all those gendered gifts for 'the man in your life'.

If you're enjoying Cursed Objects, please support our Patreon - regular bonus episodes coming after S2 finishes: patreon.com/cursedobjects. You can also follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK.

Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford

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-loving 14-year-olds? Also, why won't the corporate world leave rap music alone - and what do they get out of co-opting the "cool" of Black culture?

If you're enjoying Cursed Objects, please support our Patreon - regular bonus episodes coming after S2 finishes: patreon.com/cursedobjects. You can also follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK.

Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford

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, and what are the most useless niche pieces of kitchen equipment?

If you're enjoying Cursed Objects, please support our Patreon - regular bonus episodes coming after S2 finishes: patreon.com/cursedobjects. You can also follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK.

Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford

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 going.

Thanks so much to Alice for joining us - check out her excellent podcast Historical Friction and her legendary Uncomfortable Art Tours.

If you're enjoying Cursed Objects, please support our Patreon - regular bonus episodes coming after S2 finishes: patreon.com/cursedobjects. You can also follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK.

Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford

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 mystical and the metaphysical, with help from Frankfurt School philosophers Theodore Adorno and Walter Benjamin - who had more to say about horoscopes than you might think.

If you're enjoying Cursed Objects, please support our Patreon - and get access to bonus eps and extra content: patreon.com/cursedobjects. You can also follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK.

Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick

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 that decade, Topshop Metallica T-shirts, 'cool' and 'phoneys', 9/11, TMZ, Closer, Heat and Perez Hilton, and how capitalism tries to imbue mundane individuals with great meaning to sell us crap we don't need.

If you're enjoying Cursed Objects, please support our Patreon - and get access to bonus eps and extra content: patreon.com/cursedobjects. You can also follow us on twitter and instagram @CursedObjectsUK.

Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick

Artwork: Archie Bashford