Festival of Dangerous Ideas

From the inside, fighting Putin is the only option for Russian activists. From the outside, what are the strategic options for western countries against this authoritarian superpower? Do military action or economic sanctions work? Or do we need to consider less orthodox approaches? 
 
In this talk from 2014, in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the shooting down of MH17, Russian journalist & activist Masha Gessen and foreign policy analyst Tom Switzer test different ideas on how to deal with Putin.

We may not want to admit it, but there is a spectrum of perversion along which we all sit. Whether it’s voyeurism, exhibitionism, or your run-of-the-mill foot fetish, we all possess a suite of sexual tastes as unique as our fingerprints—and as secret as the rest of the skeletons we’ve hidden in our closets.  

In his 2012 talk Jesse Bering humanises so-called deviants while at the same time asking serious questions about the differences between thought and action. He presents us with a challenge: to understand that our best hope of solving some of the most troubling problems of our age hinges entirely on the amoral study of sex. 

Jesse Michael Bering is an American psychologist, writer, and academic.

A playerless piano performs a repeating piece of music in which every note of a scale is played on every beat of the bar. The melody is absorbed into chaos, as the words of Noami Klein and Waleed Aly speak of our interconnectedness and entanglements.

Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

On the precipice of a new age, what are the forces that will bring us together, and what is driving us apart? Simon Longstaff sits between Waleed Aly and Naomi Klein as they discuss the decline of meta-narratives in society and politics, reconciling coloniser and Indigenous histories and narratives, and trends of hyper-individualism and conspiracy. Neither are wholly optimistic nor pessimistic about the future that lies ahead.

Waleed Aly is a broadcaster, lawyer, academic and Walkley Award-winning journalist. 

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, New York Times bestselling author and Senior Correspondent for The Intercept. 

Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

CellF is a cybernetic musician and the world’s first neural synthesiser, created by Perth-based artist and researcher, Guy Ben-Ary. Its ‘brain’ is made of biological neural networks bio-engineered from the artist’s own cells, that grow in a petri dish and control in real time its ‘body’ – an array of synthesizers that play music live with human musicians. Revivification is a short piece that responds to S.Matthew Liao and John Rasko’s discussion.

Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

S. Matthew Liao is a philosopher specialising bioethics.

John Rasko is an Australian clinical haematologist, pathologist and scientist, pioneering in the application of adult stem cells and genetic therapies. 

Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

Tongues is an explicit, potent musical manifesto, exploring having your voice taken away, in response to Roxane Gay and Kate Manne’s discussion. Tongues is written and performed by Tanya Tagaq, a Canadian Inuk improvisational singer, avant-garde composer, bestselling author, and Saul Williams, Sumach Valentine, Jesse Zubot; published by Songs of Six Shooter B (SOCAN), Martyr Loser King (ASCAP), Warp Music Limited (PRS/ASCAP), Jesse Zubot (SOCAN). Courtesy of Six Shooter Records Inc.

Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

Roxane Gay and Kate Manne speak to this moment in time, the nature of progress, and their hopes and fears for the future. In a conversation moderated by Ann Mossop, they discuss modern feminism, online communication and social media, and the “lean white male” bodies that history has centred over those that exist on the periphery.

Roxane Gay is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.

Kate Manne is a philosopher and associate professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. 

Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

Toby Walsh is a leading researcher in Artificial Intelligence, ARC Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of AI at UNSW and CSIRO Data61, and adjunct professor at QUT.

Eleanor Gordon-Smith is a philosopher and radio producer currently at Princeton University, where she is a Graduate Fellow of the University Centre for Human Values.

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist. 

Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

During Sydney’s most recent lockdown, sound artist Alexandra Spence submerged a 15 minute-long piece of cassette tape in seawater. The cassette tape contained a field recording of waves, and a recording of Alex’s voice offering a non-definitive, and non-hierarchical list of things found in the Pacific Ocean. The resulting physical deterioration of the magnetic tape and degradation of the audio recording can be heard in this composition. ‘Within Salt’ is a short piece that responds to Lee Vinsel’s take on entropy and the breaking down of technology, along with Tyson Yunkaporta’s words on the importance of story and of preserving nature over data.

Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

Lee Vinsel and Tyson Yunkaporta speak with Ann Mossop about the passing age, apocalypses, and the cyclical nature of eras. Their conversation is anchored in language: both speak of systems, entropy, the roles of maintainers or custodians, and the machines and languages of capitalism. Tyson explains entropy by connecting an incident of Aboriginal people spearing Dutchmen centuries ago to the modern-day experiences of colonialism, and Lee speaks of entropy as the natural breaking down of systems.

Lee Vinsel is an associate professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech.

Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne.

Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

We hear the recorded sound of the invisible electromagnetic landscape that humans created unintentionally, allowing us to tune in to what our environment has to endure. Against a backdrop, we hear the voices of anonymous FODI listeners, recording their hopes and fears for the future of humanity, and a poem by Sylvie Barber and Simon Longstaff. Anthropocene is a response to Sam Mostyn and Peter Singer’s discussion.

A conversation between business sustainability advisor Sam Mostyn and moral philosopher Peter Singer, moderated by Simon Longstaff. Sam and Peter discuss the role of business in sustainability and climate action, the discrepancies between our values and monetary donations for global aid, and the ethics of responsibility we have toward the generation of humans who don’t yet exist. They touch on how the pandemic has highlighted gender and class divisions, along with the significance of community and care.

Sam Mostyn is a businesswoman and sustainability adviser, with a long history of executive and governance roles across business, sport, climate change, the arts, policy, and NFP sectors.

Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher, best known for his work on Animal Liberation and writings about global poverty.

Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

Sydney-based writer Tasnim Hossain records her written take on the meandering histories of Enlightenment discussed by Joya Chatterji and Stephen Fry, and the experimental sounds of the first known recordings of the human voice. Music is composed from sounds found in the archives of firstsounds.org, and recordings taken from a museum of mechanical music (fairgroundfollies.com).

Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

In a conversation moderated by Simon Longstaff, historians Joya Chatterji and Stephen Fry discuss whether the age of Enlightenment is truly coming to an end. They share varying Enlightenment narratives that cross geographical, cultural and class borders and challenge the attempt to define an era of history as linear, with a definitive start and end point.

Joya Chatterji is a Professor of South Asian History. 

Stephen Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director.

Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

FODI: The In-Between is an audio time capsule recording this moment in time. It asks: Are we in-between two eras? And if so, what does this mean about the past and the future? 8 conversations between 16 of the world’s biggest thinkers, featuring Stephen Fry, Roxane Gay, Waleed Aly, Peter Singer, Sam Mostyn, Slavoj Žižek, Naomi Klein and more . Accompanied by 8 short creative sound responses to the themes that will be released alongside each conversation.

Two new episodes dropping weekly. Subscribe now to join us at the in-between.

Produced by The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre and Audiocraft.

When it comes to good governance, conventional wisdom has it that less corruption would translate into more economic growth, a healthier body politic and reduced likelihood of conflict. But what if this isn’t always the case?

Although there are cases where corruption has promoted conflict, in other instances it has helped restore peace in a country. A more nuanced and less ideological view of "corruption" is needed if countries are to fight graft without undermining peaceful co-existence.

Elizabeth Pisani is a London-based journalist and epidemiologist, best known for her work on HIV/AIDS.