Imagine ‘show and tell’, but about how humanity has gone wrong. A podcast about big ideas, weird history - and tat. Join Dr Kasia Tee and Dan Hancox as they get drunk in the gift shop with the Angel of History.
Find us also on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Christmas - It’s For The Kids, ft. Mr Beatnick (00:50:41)
Luke Skywalker, shut up and eat your jelly! As everyone knows, Christmas is like Cursed Objects Christmas, and so sure enough: it’s the long-awaited CO Christmas Special. REJOICE!
This year, we are talking about childhood experiences of Christmas, then and now. Starting off with toy crazes, from Optimus Prime to Cabbage Patch Dolls, and therefore, the true meaning of Christmas: supply-chain economics. “Kids used to be satisfied by a promissory bond!” Kasia rightly complains. We discuss our own childhood moments of WONDER and AWE, Dalmation-related magick, votive offerings to Father Christmas, and the varied acts of parental pageantry required by the season.
We learn that Wu-Tang Clan are not just for Christmas - Raekwon is a year-round commitment - ask whether Darth Vader is the original Grinch, why children are such sticklers for the rules (and such fans of Dostoevsky), and introduce perhaps correctly overlooked festive characters Krampus and Farmhand Rupert, Santa’s designated driver and NPC.
Have a wonderful holiday, love from Kasia, Dan, Nick and Archie - see you in 2026! x
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Christmas is a time of giving, so do please consider supporting our Patreon:
To access a back catalogue of over 30 exclusive bonus eps it is STILL ONLY £4 a month to sign up, and support your favourite cultural historians: https://www.patreon.com/c/cursedobjects
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Theme music and production: Mr Beatnick
Artwork: Archie Bashford
Lit up like a Christmas tree (00:55:25)
What would Christmas be without a tour of London’s lights? For the first of our free xmas podcasts, Kasia and Dan go UP TOWN for an outside (!!) walking tour through Covent Garden, Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus. Known as stressful hot-spots for holiday season breakdowns, these Central London capitalistic hell-holes must have some redeeming features, right?!
We find out what London’s markets were like in 1870, and why Covent Garden has become London’s epicentre of festive fun. And we ask: why have Germanic Christmas markets sprung up everywhere via American films that make Christmas seem more idyllic than it really is? Admiring the neat Bratwurst, surprisingly acceptable beer and very poor puns, we throw ourselves into the Leicester Square ‘experience economy’. Finally, given that they want us to look up and marvel at the Christmas lights (rather than be terrified of oncoming traffic), why has the City of London not just pedestrianised central London?
Christmas is a time of giving, so consider supporting our Patreon:
To listen to this episode and all the rest too - including a back catalogue of over 30 exclusive bonus eps - it is STILL ONLY £4 a month to sign up, and support your favourite cultural historians:
https://www.patreon.com/c/cursedobjects
The Princess Diana Memorial Beanie Baby (00:50:38)
Not the Queen of Hearts! Greetings, England's roses, and welcome back to the People's Podcast - this week, it's the original parasocial relationship: ROYALTY.
Kasia is being pursued by a stream of Lady Di-themed cursed objects, and with Dan explores the universe of royal tat, Diana standom, 90s tabloids and the media hysteria around her death and funeral, when Britain discovered EMOTIONS and behaved like honking loons. Some younger listeners may not realise that in the days before TikTok and BBC News 24, commemorative plates were the primary means of news dissemination, and mass-produced soft toys could be a profound avatar for loss.
So it's a wild ride in a white Fiat Uno, discussing dark souvenirism, the anatomy of a Beanie Baby, royal grief in Harvester, the hoarding of historic newspapers, a riot in Woolworths over Candle in the Wind '97, and er ... whatever happened to jacket potatoes?
Regular free and regular Patreon-exclusive episodes are back, baby!
To listen to this episode and all the rest too - including a back catalogue of over 30 exclusive bonus eps - it is STILL ONLY £4 a month to sign up, and support your favourite cultural historians:
https://www.patreon.com/c/cursedobjects
Art, Swings and Industry - King's Cross Magical History Tour (00:12:54)
"Escape to the King's Cross Riviera," said the sign on the construction hoardings - so we did! And it forced us to ask questions like: 'What if you threw a major urban regeneration zone and lots of people came, but then they wanted a branch of All Bar One when they got there?'
In this brand new episode, Kasia and Dan are on an Outside Broadcast Adventure (OBA), captured live during the heart of the London summer in King's Cross, one of the capital's Regeneration Ground Zeroes, a bouji office and leisure district that has been transformed into shiny glass and steel towers in the last 20 years.
Kasia takes Dan on a public art walking tour, and they navigate the glitzy commercial areas, swish landscaped gardens and astroturf seating that have replaced the brick buildings stained with soot, heavy industry and brownfield sites - although clubs like The Egg are hanging on from its edgier era: the rogue nightclub you go to when all the others are shut.
We discuss Google's new side-scraper 'campus', how the knowledge economy and the creative industries became New Labour's engine of urban change, and how you bring joy and a settled identity to areas usually defined by transience, like major railway stations. Also, why are small children so interested in large infrastructure projects?
Regular free and regular Patreon-exclusive episodes are back, baby!
To listen to this episode and all the rest, in full - including a back catalogue of over 30 exclusive bonus eps - it is STILL only £4 a month to sign up, and support your favourite cultural historians:
https://www.patreon.com/c/cursedobjects
Belfast Pubs, Punk and Gentrification ft. Fearghus Roulston (00:56:04)
We are back with another brand new episode, another very special guest, the brilliant Fearghus Roulston, and another fascinating assembly of some very Cursed Objects subjects – histories of conflict, conviviality, getting pissed, listening to punk and misremembering our own lives and favourite counter-cultural spaces.
Fearghus wants to make it clear he is not a “Punkademic”, but that it’s fine if other people are. Drawing on his fascinating oral history work on the Belfast punk scene, we start with a pack of cards, a set of pubs, and the internationalism of the Titanic Museum. We discuss gentrification and tourism in Belfast since the Good Friday Agreement – pacification by Guinness? – “defensive planning”, defensive pubs, international Irish pubs, luxury hotels and student housing.
How does history get cleaned up for international capitalism? Can tourism embed peace, and can peace embed tourism? What happens when a city designs a version of itself just for the tourist gaze? What gets fetishised, or turned into tourist souvenirs?
Why are we all so emotionally drawn to these stories of unity and progress coming through sub-cultures? Fearghus has the answers: “Max Weber says that politics is drilling through hard boards, and I guess it’s nice to imagine change as not involving drilling through hard boards – as something that can happen in the back room of a pub.”
Fearghus Roulston is a history lecturer at Strathclyde in Glasgow. He’s working on a new book on temporality and the legacy of the Troubles. His last book, Belfast Punk and the Troubles: An Oral History, is available to buy here https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526182463/
And you can support this podcast by paying just £4 a month to become a Patreon subscriber - unlocking the 50% of episodes that are only available to Patrons, and earning Dan and Kasia's eternal gratitude: https://www.patreon.com/cursedobjects
So Scandilous - Fermenting Revolution in the Kitchen (00:16:30)
This week, Dan and Kasia forage for meaning in the fertile terrain of culinary "movements", globalisation, multiculturalism and identity, megabucks fine dining, and the desperate search for authenticity in food.
Earlier in the summer, Dan was sent to Oslo - for work, not as punishment - to explore 20 years of New Nordic Cuisine, a hugely ambitious attempt by 10 Scandinavian chefs to overhaul the way we think about, source, cook, serve and eat our dinner. How did they get on? What was wrong with Old Nordic Cuisine - a bit too elk-y? What do pansies taste like? Has New Nordic changed us for the better, pushing us all towards more sustainable and inventive food, or was this just a bunch of white bro-chefs smugly railing against globalisation, while charging €500 a head for dinner, with a business model built on unpaid internships?
And where is the IKEA meatball in all this, not to mention the McHerring Burger?
Kasia gets very excited about a surprise manifesto, and introduces Dan to the upsetting term 'glocalisation'; three-cornered leeks get a long overdue shout-out, and the gang get briefly side-tracked by a Danish rave boat and 'the N-Dubz bridge'.
Thanks again for your support while we a) put on a very successful two-month-long exhibition, and b) had a vital summer break in July and August. Regular free and regular Patreon-exclusive episodes are back, baby!
To listen to them all (including a back catalogue of 30+ exclusive bonus eps), it is STILL only £4 a month:
https://www.patreon.com/c/cursedobjects
Baby on Board! Ft. Charlotte Lydia Riley (00:58:57)
“I have been objectified as a vehicle”. We are delighted to welcome back our most-returning guest, as the brilliant historian and author Charlotte Lydia Riley talks us through the cursed world of being pregnant in public; about the way pregnant women – and, in different ways, mothers! – are treated by a frequently confused society. Why is there so much twee culture surrounding pregnancy, and how has it become so common to infantilise expectant mothers? And what is the role of the pin badge, as a way of announcing who we are?
This takes us into discussing public information films, government propaganda, behavioural ‘nudge’ messaging (“don’t swim in gravel pits!”), ‘chivalry’ and how people behave around each other on trains and buses.
Also: what does it mean that Starmer's government is one of fare evasion officers, not bus conductors?
Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley is a historian of twentieth-century Britain at the University of Southampton, specialising in questions about empire, politics, culture and identity. She is the author of Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain and the co-author of Is Free Speech Under Threat? Listen to her first Cursed Objects episode here: https://www.cursedobjects.co.uk/episodes/rainy-empire-island
Also, thanks again for your patience while we a) put on a very successful two-month-long exhibition, and b) had a break over the summer. If you'd like to join our Patreon, it is still only £4 a month, and there are 30+ bonus episodes in there already - our next episode will be Patreon-only: https://www.patreon.com/c/cursedobjects
The Rollneck of Contrition (00:56:01)
Sit down please. We have something very serious to tell you. We have made a severe and continuous lapse in our judgement. We are sorry if you feel offended, for some reason. We are sorry if you feel like you've been scammed - please believe that that was never our intention. WE'RE SORRY, OKAY!!!!
After a summer taking some time to reflect on our mistakes and do the work, we are so back - talking public apology videos, Dapper Laughs, public accountability, crocodile tears, Blue Peter, Boris Johnson and why wearing a rollneck might be a sign that you have sinned.
One thing Kasia and Dan will never apologise for: being back (so back), with a bunch of great new episodes in the tank for the weeks ahead.
Thanks for your patience while we a) put on a very successful two-month-long exhibition, and b) had a break over the summer: especially huge thanks to our Patreon subscribers - you'll be getting regular Patreon-only episodes again now. If you'd like to join our Patreon, it is still only £4 a month, and there are 30+ bonus episodes in there already: https://www.patreon.com/c/cursedobjects
Also a small content note: this is a light-hearted episode, but some of the things the public figures are apologising for include rape jokes and visiting a 'suicide forest', which are rather more grim, in case you'd rather avoid.
War, Memory and Tat, LIVE - with Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley, Luke Turner and Kate Clements (00:58:44)
Coming to you LIVE from the Cursed Objects in Museum Shops exhibition, with three very special guests: Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley, Luke Turner and Kate Clements.
It's another lively live show, exploring war museums and their merch from several angles. How do war museums navigate ‘selling’ histories of death and destruction to their visitors? What can replica First World War trench whistles and Panzerfaust soft toys tell us about the changing relationship between the museum, its shop and its visitors? And what happens when museum shops themselves become sites of conflict, as in the recent ‘culture wars’ over the National Trust's ‘vegan’ scones?
This event was recorded live as part of the event series connected to the Cursed Objects in Museum Shops exhibition at the Peltz Gallery. The exhibition is FREE and runs until 26 June, Mon-Fri 10am- 8pm. For more information, see here. (You've still got a few days left to see it!!)
Our fabulous guests:
Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley is a historian of twentieth-century Britain at the University of Southampton, specialising in questions about empire, politics, culture and identity. She is the author of Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain and the co-author of Is Free Speech Under Threat?
Luke Turner is an author and editor. His most recent book Men at War: Loving, fighting, lusting, remembering 1939-1945 explores masculinity and sexuality within the memory of the Second World War. His first book, Out of the Woods, was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize. Luke co-founded the influential music website The Quietus.
Kate Clements is the author of Total War: A People’s History of the Second World War and The Royal Family in Wartime. She curated the award-winning Second World War Galleries at the Imperial War Museums, and is a former curator of the Churchill War Rooms. Kate is currently Curator of the Tower of London.
With thanks to Jade Bailey for her help on the recording.
This event was supported by the Centre for Museum Cultures, Birkbeck.
Millennium Tat: New Labour and the Neoliberal Gift-Shop (00:48:34)
Coming to you LIVE... we are joined by two very special friends of the pod – artist Darren Cullen (aka Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives) and journalist and author Imogen West-Knights – as they explore the spirit of the millennium via the museum gift shop.
New Labour were great proponents of the culture industries, and made admission to the UK’s national museums free in 2001. Did this and grand projects like the Millennium Dome change our relationship with museums? The podcast also explores how the contents of the museum gift shop have changed in the 21st century – and what this might tell us about the evolving nature of consumer capitalism.
This event was recorded live as part of the event series connected to the Cursed Objects in Museum Shops exhibition at the Peltz Gallery. The exhibition is FREE and runs until 26th June, Mon-Fri 10am- 8pm. For more information, see here. (You've only got two weeks left to see it!!)
About the speakers:
Darren Cullen is a satirical artist, illustrator and writer, the creator of the ‘hell’ bus targeting oil companies’ greenwashing, and better known as Spelling Mistakes Costs Lives. In 2019 he co-curated the Museum of Neoliberalism, which was open until 2024.
Imogen West-Knights is a freelance journalist and novelist, focusing on culture and politics for the Guardian, NY Times, FT, Slate and others. Her Guardian Long Read on the inside story of the Millennium Dome was published in 2020.
With thanks to Jade Bailey for her help on the recording.
This event was supported by the Centre for Museum Cultures, Birkbeck.
Live show #2: Exhibitionary complex (00:54:07)
Back by popular demand, our second-ever live show!!
Dr Kasia Tee and Dan Hancox take you behind the scenes of their recently opened exhibition ‘Cursed Objects in Museum Shops’ at the Peltz Gallery. What does the history of neon signs, Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa and Lewis Chessmen socks have in common? As ever, expect the answer to be how life under late capitalism is producing some highly questionable tat.
Sound production by the amazing Jade Bailey.
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If you missed this event, don't worry - we have two more coming up!
Millennium Tat - Wed 28 May, 7-8.30pm
Join Dan and Kasia and two special guests - artist Darren Cullen and writer Imogen West-Knights – as they explore the spirit of the millennium via the museum gift shop. Book your place here.
War, Memory and Tat - Wed 11 June, 7-8.30pm
Join Kasia, Dan and three special guests – historian Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley, author Luke Turner and curator Kate Clements – as they explore the presence of war in the museum shop. Book your place here.
We hope to see some of you IRL in the next two months! And don't worry, the actual full podcasts are going to keep on coming - there will be recordings of the above on your feeds soon, and a new flurry of fresh episodes...
For more Cursed Everything:
https://www.patreon.com/c/cursedobjects
Cursed Objects in Museum Shops - live exhibition extravaganza (00:14:02)
To celebrate the launch of our first ever IRL exhibition, Cursed Objects in Museum Shops (2 May-26 June), we have several events coming in May and June. All of them are FREE, all are at Birkbeck Uni, 5 mins from Euston/King's Cross, but booking a place is essential - for full details, see our vibey new website, cursedobjects.co.uk
Exhibition private view - Thu 1 May, 6-8pm
Book your place here.
Cursed Objects Live #2 - Thu 8 May, 7-8.30pm
Back by popular demand, this is our second-ever live show, for Birkbeck's Arts Week! Book your place here.
Millennium Tat - Wed 28 May, 7-8.30pm
Join Dan and Kasia and two special guests - artist Darren Cullen and writer Imogen West-Knights – as they explore the spirit of the millennium via the museum gift shop. Book your place here.
War, Memory and Tat - Wed 11 June, 7-8.30pm
Join Kasia, Dan and three special guests – historian Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley, author Luke Turner and curator Kate Clements – as they explore the presence of war in the museum shop. Book your place here.
We hope to see some of you IRL in the next two months! And don't worry, the actual full podcasts are going to keep on coming - there will be recordings of the above on your feeds soon, and a new flurry of fresh episodes... now that we have a moment to breathe, and the exhibition is finally in place.
For more Cursed Everything:
https://www.patreon.com/c/cursedobjects
Big in Japan (00:50:09)
The Simpsons are going to (have just been to) Japan! And they’re here to tell you about what they did on their holidays – to discuss sustainable Japanese craft techniques, heated toilet seats, and a proliferation of cheap disposable plastic. Here are some of our key findings:
Don’t mistreat the indigo vats.
Japanese culture is trending.
£4 bowls of ramen! (Four pounds Jeremy, that’s insane.)
You can find William Morris paper cups in the 100Yen store.
A good loquat is hard to find.
Kasia wants to meet everyone’s siblings.
HUGE NEWS: Cursed Objects in Museum Shops, our first ever IRL exhibition, opens VERY soon. 2 May - 26 June, the Peltz Gallery near Euston station; details here.
CURSED OBJECTS LIVE: 8 May 2025, tickets are free, but you need to sign up via our Patreon - only £4 a month! And you get 30+ free bonus episodes - with a lot more new bonus episodes to come (just as soon as the exhibition is in place, and we get a chance to breathe).
VISIT OUR NEW WEBSITE! https://cursedobjects.co.uk/ - designed by Sophie Monk.
YESisode - Yoko Ono fridge magnet (00:50:34)
YES you can! SI se puede! Say YES to adventures. Say YES to life. Say YES to your boss (however dumb and awful their suggestion!). This week, Kasia and Dan are taking on 21st century positivity culture, YES men and women, Dice men, negative Nancies, toxic white-collar culture, wellness gurus, FOMO, JOMO, YOLO and YOKO (Ono). When did it become culturally hegemonic that you have to say yes to everything? Smile through the pain baby!
""“You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.” - Wayne Gretzky" - Michael Scott" - Dan and Kasia"
Sign up to our Patreon NOW to get first ticket news about the live events around our upcoming Cursed Objects exhibition at the Peltz Gallery in May and June!
Theme music: Mr Beatnick
Artwork: Archie Bashford
Straight off the Dome ft. Imogen West-Knights (00:59:35)
Roll-up, roll-up for the biggest tent of all! We’re launching into 2025 with a very special guest, Imogen West-Knights, and an absolutely vast cursed object, containing lots of smaller ones. That’s right, we’re turning the clock back a full quarter of a century to revisit the universal mockery, dodgy sponsors, New Labour hubris, sweet childhood memories, general hilarity, bomb threats and national self-loathing that all came messily, hilariously together to fill the Millennium Dome.
At the time, it was viewed as the white elephant that would stomp over all other white elephants, the most embarrassing of political failures – but Imogen’s obsessive reporting on the Dome’s history has turned up a more interesting verdict altogether. Was this the ultimate symbol of the early Blair years, for better and worse? What was the Dome Minister’s deep connection to the 1951 Festival of Britain? What was it actually like to visit the Dome as a child in 2000? Should we all be a bit less cynical about massive projects like this? Just how tacky was it in the end? And what was the true spirit of the Willennium - sorry, millennium?
Thanks so much to the brilliant Imogen West-Knights for sharing her worrying level of expertise on the Dome with us – you can read her 2020 Guardian Long Read on the Dome here. And buy her excellent debut novel Deep Down here. She is on BlueSky @ImogenWK.
Big thanks to Cursed Objects listener Tilly Hawkins for also suggesting the 'Been there, DOME that' badge for our upcoming installation at the Peltz, and to H.O.M.E for providing a studio - check them out if you're a creative looking for a space to work in London.
Theme music: Mr Beatnick
Artwork: Archie Bashford
Cursed Objects on Location! At a Haunted Seaside Hotel (00:18:10)
It's a Spooky Christmas special! This week's Cursed Objects is a little bit less Stuart Hall, and a little bit more Derek Acorah, with an episode recorded on location in St Leonards, from the musty heart of a crumbling royal seaside hotel, ft. spluttering pipes, ancient heaters that smell of burning dust, random insects, rotting sash windows, damp everywhere and a fascinating history. Queen Victoria herself signed the visitors’ book, as Princess of Prussia, no less.
Dan and Kasia lean into the weird muzak and faded 1920s glamour and ask, what the hell is going on on the 3rd floor? Could it be MURDER, or HAUNTING? What music do you imagine freemasons listening to? Will Kasia lick the Grade II listed staircase? Will Dan ride down the bannisters? What do Morrissey and Chris Rea have to do with all this?
Theme music: Mr Beatnick
Artwork: Archie Bashford
Happy Trad-mas ft. Mr Beatnick and Archie Bashford (01:14:02)
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
UNLOCKED - Magna Darta dart board (01:02:33)
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
Subversive Coffee (00:14:39)
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 (00:17:16)
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
Every Breath You Take ft. Dr Alice Bell (01:08:56)
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 (00:14:30)
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 (00:46:42)
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 (00:18:40)
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 (00:22:11)
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
