After a run of well-received episodes with prestigious guests and a Bookforum mention we are ready for our slow decline! It's just us boys on this pod, testing out our new mics and recording software, beginning to drift imperceptibly away from our lo-fi roots & thus our scruffy charm and ultimately, our integrity. But for now we're talking about trauma! As listeners who follow us on so-called Twitter probably know, Lauren was attacked on the Metro by a mentally ill man a couple weeks ago and wrote a very famous 4000 word essay about  it in the style of Knausgaard, kind of. ALSO: We finally return to the Book and finish Part One, a miracle praise Adonai.

HOUSEKEEPING: We have a google voice number now for you to leave messages for our eventual call-in episode.  It is 443-584-6486

cheat sheet:

0:00 - Lauren is eating a gluten free snickerdoodle; Drew reflects on his appreciation of the Steppe and its peoples.

9:30 - The trauma unpacking begins; Lauren ever so briefly lets down her defenses, reveals a crack in her facade or a chink in her armor, or is it a soft underbelly? At any rate vulnerability is definitely momentarily glimpsed. Drew interviews Lauren about her anti-trauma-essay and Lauren uses the phrase "brain colonized by X" about 8,000,000 times.

40:00 - Drew reflects on his recent trauma of being initiated into the "dripping wound" that is Twitter. We try to probe what exactly makes Twitter so alienating and upsetting - why is it not a utopian collaborative literary exercise? Something to do maybe with commodification or narcissism, two intimately linked phenomena of course....

57:00 - We have our first struggle session in a long time (bless me Father for I have sinned); Karl Ove takes Hanne to the DSA meeting; springtime arrives but not in an annoying way; Karl Ove attends his father's weird divorced Midsommar-like party/ritual and Part One ends. What a ride!

Thanks so much for listening! As always feel free to reach out with your questions, comments, and expressions of concern/solidarity at [email protected] or [email protected]. And do stay tuned for a special guest next week......

OUTRO: The Stranglers- Golden Brown