Cursed...ish
Cursed...ish is a podcast about misfortune, mystery, and the stories we tell when bad luck stops feeling random.
Have you ever thought, “I don’t believe in curses… but I feel cursed”?
A project that keeps going wrong. A string of strange coincidences. A disaster that, in retrospect, feels almost inevitable. That’s when people start reaching for a bigger explanation. It’s not just bad luck, but something more sinister.
Hosted by Daniel Stevens and Angela Mattes, Cursed...ish explores stories in which misfortune is framed as more than mere happenstance: as something malevolent, approaching the macabre with curiosity, skepticism, and the occasional dark joke. From King Tut and the Dybbuk Box to the Avada Kedavra, and even your favorite four-letter word, each episode pulls apart the history, folklore, and media hysteria surrounding the human impulse to explain chaos.
Sometimes a curse is a supernatural claim. Sometimes it’s a metaphor. And sometimes it’s just what people tell themselves when the universe keeps kicking them in the teeth.
Welcome to Cursed...ish.
Episodes
31 episodes
The Cursed Life of Robert T. Lincoln - Ep. 31
Some people seem to live charmed lives.Robert Todd Lincoln did not.In this episode of Cursed...ish, Angela and Daniel dig into the strangely cursed life of Abraham Lincoln’s eldest son, the only one of the Lincoln children ...
The Demon Core - Ep. 30
Some cursed objects are ancient, mysterious, and covered in centuries of folklore.And some are a softball-sized hunk of plutonium that very smart people kept poking at until it tried to kill everyone in the room.In this...
The Pella Curse Tablet - Ep. 29
What do you do when the person you're convinced is the one for you is about to marry someone else?If you are Degina, a woman living in ancient Macedon, you carve a curse into lead, roll it up, and place it in a grave so the dead can carr...
Cursed Colors: Green - Ep. 28
Green is the color of nature, luck, life, and fresh starts.But it's also the color of poison, decay, jealousy, sickness, toxic sludge, unlucky race cars, suspicious theater costumes, and one beautifully-deadly pigment some people decided...
The Mandela Effect - Ep. 27
Is it the Berenstein Bears or the Berenstain Bears? Did the Monopoly Man have a monocle? Was there ever a cornucopia in the Fruit of the Loom logo?And, most importantly, has reality always been this wrong?In this episode of Cur...
The Hands Resist Him - Ep. 26
Link to Cursed Painting - Open with Caution - https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSAq5NbAyoMu1Rb8ohN-tb2d5Wr...
The Basano Vase - Ep. 25
Some cursed objects come with centuries of documentation, terrified witnesses, and a long trail of bodies.The Basano Vase mostly comes with vibes.In this episode of Cursed...ish, Angela and Daniel investigate the legend of the Bas...
Cursed Creatures: Werewolves Part II - Ep. 24
The full moon is rising again, Accursed Ones.In Part 2 of Cursed Creatures: Werewolves, Daniel and Angela return to the woods to finish unpacking one of the most enduring monsters in folklore, mythology, horror movies, and our collective...
Cursed Creatures: Werewolves Part I - Ep. 23
In Part 1 of our Cursed Creatures deep dive, Cursed...ish heads into the woods under a full moon to ask a deceptively simple question: where did werewolf legends actually come from?Before silver bullets, full moons, and shirtless men cha...
Cursed Literature: The Curse of the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor - Ep. 22
Why can no Hogwarts professor survive more than one year teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts?In this very unofficial Harry Potter episode of Cursed...ish, Daniel and Angela return to Hogwarts to investigate one of the wizarding world’...
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The Curse of the Flying Dutchman - Ep. 21
What happens when a cursed ghost ship becomes both victim and warning?In this episode of Cursed...ish, Daniel and Angela set sail into the foggy, storm-tossed legend of the Flying Dutchman, the doomed ship said to be cursed to sail the o...
The Superdome Curse - Ep. 20
New Orleans has no shortage of haunted history, but the Superdome Curse is one of the city’s lesser-known legends hiding in plain sight. In this episode of Cursed...ish, Angela and Daniel head to the Big Easy to explore the eerie story connecti...
The Lottery Curse - Ep. 19
Winning the lottery is supposed to change your life for the better, but for some jackpot winners, sudden wealth has brought bankruptcy, betrayal, addiction, lawsuits, murder, and the uncomfortable realization that money can solve plenty of prob...
The 27 Club - Ep. 18
What happens when some of the most brilliant musicians in history all seem to meet the same tragic end?In this episode of Cursed...ish, Angela and Daniel dig into the legend of the 27 Club: the eerie cultural grouping of famous artists w...
Cursed Commerce: Lawn Darts - Ep. 17
For decades, American families gathered in their backyards to throw giant metal spikes through the air and called it wholesome fun. What could possibly go wrong?In this episode of Cursed...ish, Daniel and Angela trace the astonishing his...
The Curse of Pompeii - Ep. 16
In 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompeii and Herculaneum beneath ash, pumice, and deadly pyroclastic flows, preserving the final moments of two ancient Roman cities in horrifying detail. But was that the end of Pompeii’s misfortune, ...
Yosemite: The Curse of Tenaya Canyon - Ep. 15
Yosemite National Park is one of the most beautiful places in America, with towering granite cliffs, roaring waterfalls, Half Dome, El Capitan, and a valley so stunning it helped inspire the entire national park system. But tucked into that lan...
The Curse of the Hope Diamond - Ep. 14
The Hope Diamond is one of the most famous jewels in the world, but is it also one of the most cursed?In this episode of Cursed...ish, we follow the allegedly-cursed Hope Diamond from its origins as the Tavernier Blue to the Frenc...
Curse(d) Words - Ep. 13
A warning for delicate ears: this episode contains explicit language. We hope you’ll pardon us; when the topic is cursed words, some of those words do insist on showing up and being heard.On the 13th episode of Cursed…ish, ...
The Curse of Macbeth - Ep. 12
Why do theater people refuse to say Macbeth inside a theater? This week on Cursed...ish, we step into the blood-soaked, witchy world of Shakespeare’s most allegedly-cursed play: Macbeth, also known by the superstitious ...
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Cursed Cinema: Poltergeist - Ep. 11
Is the Poltergeist curse real, or is it just one of Hollywood’s darkest tabloid legends? In this episode of Cursed...ish, we dig into the alleged Poltergeist movie curse, from Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper’s
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Cursed Mythology: Cassandra - Ep. 10
In this episode of Cursed...ish, Angela and Daniel dig into the Curse of Cassandra, the Greek myth of a woman who could literally predict disaster and still got treated like she was being dramatic. From Apollo’s extremely petty curse ...
The Curse of King Tutankhamun: Part II - Ep. 9
In Part II of Cursed...ish’s King Tutankhamun coverage, Daniel and Angela pick up where the tomb story turns ancient history to archaeology and legend. From Napoleon’s role in fueling Europe’s obsession with ancient Egypt to the Rosetta ...
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