Podcast roadmap: A bit of time travel to Brisbane, 1989; having a family with a wrong sense of humour; five editors inside (or outside) your head; mothers being mortifying but quotable; Cantonese lessons on where to wash; ‘There’s nothing wrong with being gay – it just means something went wrong in the womb’; getting the balance of humour and sentiment right in writing; thinking your family members are freaks; laughing at funerals; being a Best Australian Essayist; ‘It’s not like I’m going to write about my mother and vaginal worms for The Monthly‘; David Sedaris; literary journals; a surprise interruption by David Marr; falling in love with Jeff Buckley; laughing at your own jokes.

Benjamin Law is the author of The Family Law. About 23 minutes.

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Produced by Rafiq Copeland. Music is Pompey.