NOTE TO LISTENERS: DREW'S AUDIO GETS BETTER IN THE SECOND HALF I PROMISE

Call this episode the opposite of Norwegian cuisine because boy is it SPICY! In the pilot episode of Our Struggle we put the following institutions on blast: quinoa, Sweden, the New Yorker, and august literary critic James Wood (for being a beautiful genius :) ). This is a jam-packed episode that is sure to make you laugh AND make you contemplate your mortality. - so will James Wood give it a positive review? (Please come on the pod Professor Wood.)

Please feel free to reach out with your thoughts on the show. You can email us at knauscastpod at gmail or tweet at us/DM us on Twitter at OurStrugglePod. We also have an obligatory newsletter: subscribe to it at ourstruggle.substack.com.

cheat sheet:

2:28 - Lauren and Drew introduce themselves and talk about their reasons for starting the pod. Do we, in this moment, need Karl Ove Knausgaard more than ever? Our answer is yes, if only because of the fate currently befalling the overly hydrated quinoa eating Swedes.

10:57 - Our friend Robert Rust, a real Norwegian, calls into the show to teach us how to say the great man's name in the AUTHENTIC style of the fjord peoples. My pronunciation is perfect and Drew's sucks

22:32 - We get pretty deep into Norwegian cuisine. If you're like Karl Ove and fish makes you nauseous - maybe skip this section!

36:10 - Finally we start building out a theoretical framework for KOK with the help of close personal friend of the show James Wood. We discuss Wood's 2012 NEW yORKER essay on Karl Ove. Why is death so crucial to storytelling? Are contemporary novelists willfully avoiding the ultimate fact (their own demise) in their writing? Why do Lauren and Drew keep connecting quinoa with mortality?

INTRO MUSIC: Guided by Voices - Game of Pricks

Production by Lauren Teixeira, the Man of the show