Loved this podcast.
https://radioopensource.org/write-like-the-russians/
Here is the description of the podcast:
“The literary master George Saunders shows us this hour, for starters, how to recognize a masterpiece in a mere short story. He’s also going to spell out how a handful of Russians—led by Dostoevsky, then Tolstoy, then Anton Chekhov—reset the standard of high art in the short story. George Saunders won high honors for his bestselling novel of three years ago, Lincoln in the Bardo (with Honest Abe in a sort of limbo, to grieve again with his son Willie, who died in the White House). Saunders is a triple threat: a writer first, but famous too as a reader of the classics and teacher of a celebrated writing course at Syracuse University, from which his new book is drawn. It’s called A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, “in which four Russians give a master class on writing, reading, and life.”
What got me was a line in the short story they read out:
https://www.livrosgratis.com.br/ler-livro-online-149659/the-student
Later
10 April 2021
Kim Hill
https://pca.st/episode/491a912d-2a79-48d0-b530-2250da82de7e
Enjoyed listening to it all again, different interviewer