Bio
Contemplating the ever-replenishing tower of books at the Conversations desk.
RICHARD FIDLER is a writer and broadcaster. He’s the author of best-selling, award-winnning books that blend history with travel writing and mythology. For more than two decades now, Richard has presented the national radio show Conversations, an in-depth, hour-long interview program on ABC Radio. Several million Conversations podcast episodes are downloaded every month.
In 2026, Richard and his friend, author Kári Gíslason launched their Viking Lives podcast, presenting the great arc of Viking history through a chain of life stories.
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IN ANOTHER LIFE Richard was a member of the confrontational music/comedy trio The Doug Anthony Allstars (DAAS), which played to audiences all over the world: from the West End of London, to the streets of Paris and New York, to isolated mining towns in outback Australia.
Richard, Paul McDermott and Tim Ferguson were students in Canberra when they formed DAAS as a busking group.
They brought their act into small venues across Australia, where they frequently performed encores in the venues' toilets, cramming the audience into a tiny and oddly intimate space.
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Richard with Tim Ferguson & Paul McDermott in someone else’s library.
At Prague Castle during the Velvet Revolution era
DAAS on the set of Viva Cabaret, 1993.
Richard with Ira Glass at the This American Life studios, New York City
AFTER DAAS BROKE up in 1994, Richard went on to present several television programs for ABC TV, including Race Around the World and Aftershock, a series on radical emerging technologies.
Richard began on Conversations in 2005, collaborating with senior producer Pam O'Brien. Conversations was soon taken up by ABC Radio stations across Australia and across two networks, and has since become a national institution, generating millions of program downloads every month.
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AFTER DAAS BROKE up in 1994, Richard went on to present several television programs for ABC TV, including Race Around the World and Aftershock, a series on radical emerging technologies.
Richard began on Conversations in 2005, collaborating with senior producer Pam O'Brien. Conversations was soon taken up by ABC Radio stations across Australia and across two networks, and has since become a national institution, generating millions of program downloads every month.
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THE FINAL YEARS of DAAS passed in a blur of images: there were shows at the Barcelona Olympics, where they unrolled a huge, obscene image of the Olympic mascot to a screaming crowd in the Parc de la Ciutadella; there was a hail of rum bottles while they performed in an un-policed Australian mining town in the Great Sandy Desert. At the Belfast Festival they presented a parody of Satan worship, earning the outrage of both the Catholic and Protestant churches who failed to see the humour in the thing. There was a final TV series for Channel 4 in the UK, Viva Cabaret, hosted by Tom Jones.
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Frustrated by the lack of attention in Australia, DAAS caught a plane to Scotland, to the 1987 Edinburgh Fringe, where they took audiences outside the venue to a giant bonfire, where they successfully goaded them to burn their worldly possessions. The intensity of their performances generated strong word-of-mouth and their season sold out. Soon they found themselves on Friday Night Live for Channel 4, and on a New Year's Eve special DAAS Love for BBC TV.
Returning to Australia, the group featured on the ABC TV series The Big Gig and their own sci-fi comedy series DAAS Kapital, where Richard met his wife Khym. They were married in 1993 and have two adult children.
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RICHARD MAJORED IN history and politics at the Australian National University, but it was only while touring the world in the back of a tour van, that he began to read history closely; starting out in the 20th century and working his way backwards. In 1989-90 he was present in Berlin and Prague for the fall of communism, and was swept up in the revolutionary energy of the times. He would record his experiences there in his third book, The Golden Maze.
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