Episode
The Norwegian Cheese Fire Disaster of 2013 | Episode 103
- Published
- Feb 27, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3078
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Summary
You might think the worst thing cheese can do is cause indigestion, or elevated cholesterol, or the need to punch more belt holes - maybe even the occasional fart sneaks out. But on today’s episode, you will learn, as it turns out, we’ve catastrophically underestimated it. On today’s episode: we’ll visit a postcard perfect country that’s ridiculously beautiful from top to bottom, but on a map looks vaguely testicular and chewed; you will walk through the history of cheese before sampling a platter of the world’s most nauseating varieties; and not to spoil anything, but today’s story is going to spiral into a kind of three-fer episode of flame-fueled claustrophobia. And if you were listening on Patreon … you would hear a short story of how a spiky Asian football turned my stomach inside out; you would learn how we’ve been preprogrammed by invisible senses that tell us everything from how many fingers we have to how much vomit you might need to project; and you would hear the story of the gigantic wheel of cheese that haunted the White House for years. We start this episode talking about some of the funkiest edibles to be found anywhere in the world, and recapping how many of them have killed people on this show. I’ll be the first to admit we use a pretty broad definition of “edible”, but the food product headlining today’s story is as traditional and straight-forward as food gets. We’re going to spend some time with a cheese called Brunost that is so sweet and giddyingly bad for you, many people think of it as more of a kid’s treat. You’ve probably never had the chance to try it yourself, but one of my best friends in public school was from Norway, and we regularly used to steal it from his dad, and I admit that this may have played a small part in his parent’s divorce,…