Conversations

Staff writer at The New Yorker, Patrick Radden Keefe tells the story of Zac Brettler, who inexplicably changed from a charming and hilarious boy into a money- and status-obsessed young man, who mixed with gangsters and shady businessmen.
Patrick's new book begins with the description of a scene that was picked up by a surveillance camera in London in the early hours of a November morning in 2019.
The footage showed a grainy image of a shadowy figure, anxiously moving about the balcony of a luxury apartment. 
That young man's name was Zac Brettler. 
He was 19 years old, and hours later his body was discovered on the banks of the River Thames. 
Patrick Radden Keefe’s investigation explores Zac’s secret life posing as the son of a Russian oligarch, and delves into the true identities of the wealthy gangsters who were there in his final hours.
Further information
London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City, and a Family's Search for Truth is published by Pan Macmillan Australia.
This episode covers grief, fantasy life, con artists, London underworld, Boris Johnson, family tragedy, luxury, Holocaust survivors, rabbi, Mill Hill school, young men, making money, raising boys, Roman Abramovich, oligarch, plutocrat, MI6 and true crime.

The philosopher argues that as a culture, we'd be happier and saner if we re-examined our view of love, because our romantic notions can actually work against the relationships we want most. (R)
Alain De Botton's novel from 2016 called The Course of Love challenges many assumptions about falling in love and what comes next.
Alain first tackled the subject when he wrote Essays of Love in his early 20s.
The episode of Conversations was first broadcast in 2016
The producer was Michelle Ransom-Hughes and the Executive Producer was Pam O'Brien.
To binge even more great episodes of the Conversations podcast with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

The renowned physician discusses the role of trauma in our lives, showing up as addiction, chronic disease and mental illness, and how recognising his own led to true healing. (R)
Dr Gabor Maté was born in Budapest to a Jewish family, just before Nazi tanks rolled into the city.
His mother risked handing him to a stranger on the street to try and get him to safety.
Many years later, after establishing himself as a successful physician in Canada, Gabor looked at the problems in his work and marriage and wondered if they were linked to that early trauma.
He uses his own experiences as a test case for the effects of trauma on the body and the body-mind connection. 
Dr Mate is internationally renowned for his ideas around the lifelong impact of trauma.
He believes it is contributing factor to rates of addiction, chronic disease, and mental illness, as well as ADHD.
His views are sometimes described as unorthodox by his critics, but Dr Mate argues that understanding trauma of all kinds allows for real healing, as has happened in his own life.
Further Information
The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Dr Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté is published by Penguin Random House.
This episode of Conversations was first broadcast in 2025.
To binge even more great episodes of the Conversations podcast with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

Diana Nguyen's mother would walk out of her performances at interval in protest of her career, but Diana forged on and in the process healed this mother-daughter relationship. (R)
Diana Nguyen knew she was born for a life on the stage when she discovered dancing while staying in a nunnery as a child.
Her love affair with the arts, however, fractured her relationship with her mother, who had escaped Vietnam by boat and wanted her eldest daughter to be 'more' than a performer.
But a trip to her motherland helped heal this mother-daughter relationship, and after years of walking out of her performances in protest, Diana finally saw her mum from the stage as she took her bow.

At 48, Bill Hayes moved to New York. He took up photography, and never anticipated the surprise of falling in love with his neighbour, Dr Oliver Sacks,  a neurologist, a naturalist and a university professor. (R)Doctor Oliver Sacks became famous for writing case histories of his patients in books, including The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, and An Anthropologist on Mars.
At 75 years old, Oliver had never been in a relationship, until he fell deeply in love with his neighbour Bill Hayes, who was decades younger than him.
Bill and Oliver lived together until Oliver Sacks died in 2015, in his early eighties.
Further information
Bill's memoir Insomniac City was published in 2017 by Bloomsbury.
This conversation was recorded at the 2017 Sydney Writers' Festival.
The producer was Nicola Harrison and the Executive Producer was Pam O'Brien.