Richard Fidler outlines some of the tensions that come into play when bringing someone’s life story to a listening audience, and he compares it to the freedoms and constraints involved in writing biography for a reader.

Richard Fidler hosts Conversations on ABC Radio, an hour-long interview show. His guests have included astronauts, authors and scientists, but the program often features remarkable people unknown to the wider world. More recently he's written several historical books, Ghost Empire, and Saga Land (co-written with Kari Gislason), which contain short biographies of historical figures from Byzantium and medieval Iceland.