Our Struggle

WE ARE BACK! After a dire situation earlier this month, Our Struggle returns, as lo-fi and perfunctory as ever! It's just us boys again this ep but be assured we have some VERY prestigious and intellectual guests on the horizon, so if you're one of those dweebs who listens to our show for so-called "literary criticism" and "thoughtful discussion of the work of Karl Ove Knausgaard" just hold on a l...

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 Twit...

IT'S THE RETURN OF THE WELSH WARRIOR! The Duke of Cardiff himself, prestigious CNN journalist James Griffiths is back on the pod and folks?? We got a little off topic!! But who gives a shit, you don't pay for this (yet) and what is a Knausgaard podcast without copious digression (the imitative fallacy can fuck right off)!!  Due what I am self diagnosing as fatigue from the J&J vaccine I am too tir...

Drew's cover of our theme song, Guided by Voices' "Game of Pricks", recorded from his desolate boarding school cloister in Pennsburg

Our Struggle returns, and this time with highly prestigious guest Christian Lorentzen! In addition to being our new token Gen X friend, Christian is a famous literary critic whose work appears regularly in Harper's, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and other high falutin venues. He has not only reviewed book 6 of My Struggle for TLS but SMOKED CIGARETTES WITH THE MAN HIMSE...

After a nearly two month hiatus, Our Struggle returns! Lauren and Drew are back and spicier than ever, delivering for you our timely review of KOK's new essay collection "In the Land of the Cyclops" (which to be clear neither of us have read) before getting on with struggle session 1.2 covering Karl Ove's My Struggle book 1 reflections on his diaper-laden domestic life in the aforementioned land o...

Happy Thanksgiving (and to our Romanian listeners: happy thursday!) Last week we welcomed our friend, Hong Kong-based CNN correspondent James Griffiths, to the pod for what may be our smartest episode yet. Apparently the scintillating genius of our show is what spurred James to finally crack open My Struggle: A Death in the Family, so we interviewed him about his journey down the K-hole. Did the b...

Future recipient of the Kamala Harris Grant for Literary Podcasts is back! In this episode we finally get into the belly of the mackerel with a scene-by-scene breakdown of the first 15 or so pages of Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle: A Death in the Family. This is a new thing we're trying because we realized we hadn't actually talked about MS yet. But please be assured the interviews with people...

The struggle continues in the third episode of OS as we attempt to bridge the America/Canada cultural divide in a conversation as wide-ranging as the breadth of the interior between Vancouver and St. Johns! Our guest is our new friend John Cullen, a Canadian, comedian and co-host of the Blocked Party podcast, which is by some metrics actually a more famous podcast than Our Struggle. John has done...

It's our sophomore slump! In the second episode of Our Struggle, we welcome guest Brendan O'Kane, a renown sinologist and literary translator who has not only not read Knausgaard but adamantly refuses to. Can we convince him that early modern Chinese literature and My Struggle have more in common than he'd think? 0:00 - More fish talk. Drew had a canned fish phase; we predict another salmon-heavy...

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 A...

IN this preview our friend Rob (a real Norwegian) teaches us how to say the great man's name in the AUTHENTIC style of the fjord peoples