Hello, this is Everything Else, the FT Culture podcast. I'm Al, Food and Drink Editor.

And I'm Gris, commissioning editor on the Arts Desk. This is our season finale, and we have something

a bit different for you. It's a personal essay by the American writer Alexander Chee from his new collection,

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel.

Okay, so this is our final episode of 2018.

That's right. Any highlights from the series?

Many highlights, yes.

Any favourite moments?

Well, what I've noticed looking back over the season is, like, what a broad church.

Everything else is.

It's an extremely broad church.

We've lived up to the title.

We've started off with the World Cup.

We've had Simon Sharma talking about Trump and satire. We've talked about the banking crisis with the Lehman trilogy, loneliness. We've had a guilty feminist. We've had, I think, the greatest novelist of our time at the moment, Sally Rooney. We've had John Cooper Clark, Phil Wang. I think it's been a plethora of things. And most importantly, of course, there's been love in the air.

I fell in love with Matthew McFadden and Stephen Mangon.

You were already in love with Stephen Mangon, although you refused to interview him.

And you got married.

That's right.

Yeah.

Love is a theme.

Love and, well, we talked about loneliness. The love podcast.

The love podcast. Yeah, I mean, a low light for me, I think, is Stephen Mangan suggesting that maybe I don't exist. That was tough to listen to. Yeah. But, you know, we move on. Okay. So who was your favourite guest to interview?

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