Ep 11. Benjamin Law on hunger + how to pimp instant ramen

Hello and welcome back to Dish, I’m your host Kate Gibbs. This is episode eleven. This is a kind of prepping-you-for-the-next-season episode as it was recorded as borders were closing in Queensland amid Covid and what is strange listening to it is how very little things have changed - even with vaccinations on the way now. This is BENJAMIN LAW - author, writer, host of Radio National’s Stop Everything - on the show today. He talks about racing through the border to get to his family and trying to have family meals while actually physically separated. 

You probably know Benjamin as that really bright commentator on pop culture, race, sexuality, and now I have him talking about food. He espouses instant ramen - especially pimped - tray bakes as well as eating out, and details his tips to failsafe hosting. He covers congee as well as corn flakes, and his “zero fuck meals”. 

We talk hunger. Benjamin appeared on the SBS show Filthy Rich and Homeless and he reveals what that was really like and how it has changed the way he eats. This son of a restaurateur talks about physical hunger but also our innate hunger for warmth and security, what it’s like to live precariously, hand to mouth, and the shock and trauma of that.

I hope you enjoy this episode with Benjamin Law. Here he is …

Episode links: 

Every week Benjamin is on Radio National hosting the pop culture show Stop Everything.

He writes the back page of Good Weekend every week.

Edited the anthology Growing up Queer (2019)

Website - benjamin-law.com

Instagram - @mrbenjaminlaw

Twitter - @mrbenjaminlaw

Benjamin Law is also the author of The Family Law (2010), Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East (2012), the Quarterly Essay Moral Panic 101 (2017) and editor of Growing Up Queer in Australia (2019). Benjamin created and co-wrote three seasons of the award-winning SBS TV series The Family Law, based on his memoir, and wrote the sold-out mainstage play Torch the Place for Melbourne Theatre Company (2020).