CO is back, with a dream guest for Dan and Kasia: Professor Patrick Wright, author of On Living in an Old Country and The Village That Died for England, joins us for an urgent and timely conversation about Englishness, heritage, national decline, landscapes, Brexit and Reform, historical memory, and social and cultural disintegration.
This is a conversation about "the direly persistent English question" - one which will not go away.
"I don’t even have a history O’level - history came to me, rather than me coming to it,” Patrick tell us, taking us on a fascinating journey beginning in the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher appealed loudly to “tradition”, while ripping up norms that would ensure many things would never be the same. We discuss why politics often amounts to, in Patrick’s words, “conjuring with the bones of the dead”, and why the telling of our history is so often framed in terms of crisis: as Heritage in Danger.
How does the landscape shape our idea of the nation, and vice versa? We chew over some great symbolic moments - “radioactive anecdotes” like the felling of the Sycamore Gap Tree, the Crooked House pub fire, Foot and Mouth, Dutch Elm disease (“the whole landscape was like a cemetery”), and the elevating of HMS Mary Rose from the sea bed after 450 years.
Only 3000 people are invited to Davos, home of the World Economic Forum - and you’re one of them! Well, not really. But welcome anyway to this chocolate-box Swiss mountain town, transformed via "the Champions League of logistics" into a de facto military base for the world's economic, political and corporate superpowers.
Guiding us through this deeply cursed world is very special guest @caitlin.roisin.doherty , smuggling us in to encounter some profoundly cursed Davos freebies. Saudi Arabia-sponsored hand warmers? Meta-branded hot chocolate? Pinterest ramen? Ice cream with crickets in? These seemingly disparate objects are a window into the centres of elite power, ‘Great Reset’ conspiracies, the Epstein files, crypto and AI bubbles, and the mysterious technocrat that is Davos Man. How has Davos - the town, and the economic forum - changed, in a world where globalisation is allegedly in retreat? What has changed under the second Trump administration? When was peak Davos, and has it passed? Are Chinese capitalists inside or outside the tent? And what happens when the capitalist class run out of ideas about where to put their money?
🏊♂️ 💦 New year, new you, new Cursed Objects - let’s dive in! This week, Kasia breaks the ice and takes us on a plunge into the cursed and blessed world of wild, outdoor and cold water swimming – while Dan nervously dips a toe in to see if he can hack the chills and spills.
Wild swimming – or “swimming”, as it was sometimes known historically – has taken on an outsized and fascinating role in British culture in the last decade or so. How did we go from over 300 lidos dotted around the country to a situation where people are submerging themselves in urban rivers RIDDLED with e.coli, or indeed tragically drowning while swimming in unsupervised ‘unofficial’ spots?
We discuss the stunning mental health benefits of shocking your body swimming outdoors, especially profound in what Kasia calls “the hard floor of winter” – or in Dan’s case, shouting “WIM HOF!” and bellowing Daniel Bedingfield songs while having cold showers.
Episode out now on all platforms!
And a brand new CO strand - CURSED SIDE QUESTS - debuts on our Patreon this Thursday 🥳 sign up now!
🎄🎄THE CHRISTMAS EPISODE HAS LANDED 🎄🎄
REJOICE! REJOICE I SAY
Christmas - It's For The Kids 🎁
Starting off with toy crazes, from Optimus Prime to Cabbage Patch Dolls, we discuss 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
❄️✨New episode!! ✨❄️
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?
Find the episode in all your usual spots!
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.
That's right, Kasia and Dan are exploring the universe of royal grief tat (ft. this extraordinary IN MEMORIAM Diana Beanie Baby), Princess Di standom, 90s tabloids and the media hysteria around her death and funeral, when Britain discovered EMOTIONS and behaved like honking loons.
So it's a wild ride in a white Fiat Uno, discussing dark souvenirism, the anatomy of a Beanie Baby, mourning in Harvester, the hoarding of historic newspapers, a riot in Woolworths over Candle in the Wind '97, and er ... whatever happened to jacket potatoes?
🚨 In Cursed Objects news:
- We have a brand new episode out: “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?’
We go 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.
- AND if you missed it, go back and listen to our episode of punk, pubs and gentrification in Belfast with our pal Fearghus Roulston, which we’ve added a little clip of on this post.
- Finally - special thanks to @miraya_mccoy for a gorgeous shout out to the podcast on @writersmosaic 💗💗
NEW EPISODE - and just in time for COZY PUB SEASON - we take a trip to the Belfast punk scene via the pubs found in a pack of cards. Our pal Fearghus Roulston talks to us about the 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.”
Listen to the episode on Apple, Spotify, etc and if you enjoy it, consider supporting us on Patreon so that we can keep going to pubs for..errr research purposes 🍺
📣 NEW EPISODE!!! Baby on Board, ft. Charlotte Lydia Riley
“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?
Listen now where you get your podcasts!
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. THE ROLLNECK OF CONTRITION IS OUT NOW, wherever you get your podcasts.
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. Love you, sorry not sorry!!!! D&K xx
NEW EPISODE 🔊 War, Memory and Tat, LIVE - with very special guests @charlottelydiariley , @luke_a_turner and @k_h_clem - on your podcast feeds now!
It's another lively live show about all things war, conflict and museum shops - from Panzerfaust soft toys to Falklands knickers and controversial ‘vegan’ scones.
You have three more days to see our exhibition @peltzgallery ! Get down there 🫡
Our final event - with @charlottelydiariley@luke_a_turner and @k_h_clem - is next Wednesday 11th June on the theme of ‘war, memory and tat’. We have also moved to a bigger room G04 in Gordon Sq. The event is free, but you need to sign up in our bio ✨
