The short classic, already covered in this podcast in English, but now read in Russian. A great starter story for new language learners. Or a timeless classic for those who speak Russian fluently, or even natively.

This reading pairs well with our sister website, LanguageThroughLiterature, where the story is spelled out in Russian, but every word is clickable for translation and pronunciation support — https://languagethroughliterature.com/?open=tolsty

A lot happens in this segment. This is the first podcast where we host a guest presenter on our podcast - Tom Besinger, a Russian Literature enthusiast who reached out to us and shared a tool he developed for language learners to read Russian in the original. He explain his site, called LanguageThroughLiterature and even shows how it works. Hint: It features Chekhov stories quite prominently and all our readings are connected to the equivalent entries on this site. LanguageThroughLiterature uses the Imperial Russian ranking system to gamify the learning experience, so we discuss the table of ranks and their modern equivalents. This leads us in to discuss the story "Fat and Thin", to pick apart the caricatured humor in the way the thin man reacts upon learning the high rank of the fat man.

Here is a link to the LanguageThroughLiterature site: https://languagethroughliterature.com/

A lighthearted humoresque telling us about a short encounter between two high school friends after many years of adult life. They recognize each other at a train station and are pleasantly surprised. But when they find out their ranks in the civil service, suddenly the jovial mood takes a turn!