Hey, it's Max. We're taking this week off, July 4th and all, but we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. In the meantime, here is an older one, a conversation that I had with George Saunders back in January. We talked in this little room in the back of a bookstore. It was a pretty good time, and it has really stuck with me. So we thought maybe if you missed this the first time around, you could get a second chance to listen to it. we'll be back next week

brand new episode. If you're looking for something to do in the meantime, I have two ideas. The first, you should go to atavist.com and check out the new story from the Adivist. It's called Love for My Enemies. It's complicated and fantastic. Check that out. And also, if you're so inclined,

go on iTunes, rate us, leave us a comment. It's actually super helpful for the show. It's a way

to support us, and we really appreciate it. Okay, here's the episode with George Saunders,

and we'll see you next week.

Hey! George Saunders and we'll see you next week. Hey, welcome to Longform Podcast.

I'm Max Lindy.

I'm here with my co-hosts, Aaron Lamer and Evan Ratliff.

Gentlemen, hello.

Another week, another chat.

Guys are really excited about this guest.

Yes.

Who do we have on this show this week?

You guys, George Saunders.

We had George Saunders. He and I talked in a very small office in the back of the McNally Jackson bookstore in New York City. Shouts to McNally Jackson. He was about to do an event with Ben Stiller, and there was like a line around the block. and we were in this little office

and people wanted to know

if they could get into the event

and the phone kept ringing

and I just kept picking it up

and hanging it up because I didn't think to unplug it and I kept trying to get George Saunders to pick up the phone and be like hi this is George Saunders I don't know if you can get into my event but he wouldn't do that there's a lot of there's a lot going on in this. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to assume that most people listening to this show are familiar with George Saunders, at least his fiction. If you're not, I do recommend Joel Lovell's profile of him this year for New York Times Magazine. It's very excellent. And he discusses that in the Joel level episode of this podcast.

Yeah. So Sunderer's mostly known for that short fiction, but he's also done a bunch of nonfiction, and he wrote a whole bunch of travel pieces for GQ several years ago. My favorite of them is called Buda boy, and it's never been online before. We talk about it a bunch actually in the episode, and he was gracious enough to give us the rights to reprint it on Longform.

So if you go to Longform.org right now, line before. We talked about it a bunch actually in the episode, and he was gracious enough to give

...