Counterfeit People (2024) - Lizzie O’Shea, Patrick Stokes & Emily van der Nagel
Release Date: 05/15/2025
Roxane Gay (2024) - How to Have Dangerous Ideas
Festival of Dangerous Ideas
Drawing from her experience as an author and cultural critic who consistently challenges predictable opinions, Roxane Gay urges us to embrace the danger and discomfort of dissent. But in an age of polarised opinion warfare, this comes at a personal and professional cost. Courage is an essential ingredient in this strategy, but it can only take you so far. When the tide of viral criticism, is both toxic and overwhelming, it can seem rational either to give up on nuance or withdraw. What does it take to stand your ground and fight for complex and difficult ideas? Roxane Gay’s...
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The Anatomy of Evil (2024) - Stan Grant & Simon Longstaff
Festival of Dangerous Ideas
Humanity has demonstrated, time and again, a horrific tendency to destroy its own kind – often to eliminate difference and impose uniformity of identity. At its worst, this tendency has led to the destruction of whole peoples – the crime against humanity of genocide. However, in our politically charged climate, the term genocide carries a massive moral weight, and we must be cautious about where to apply it. If we’re too restrictive, it will make us blind to evil in the world. But if we’re too loose, it will desensitise us to its significance. Philosophers Stan...
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John N. Friedman (2024) - The Fading Dream
Festival of Dangerous Ideas
Economist John N. Friedman has made a career researching the causes of inequality and its long-term consequences for children in the US. His findings are grim. Social mobility is in sharp decline. Where you live and go to school increasingly determines your success and future. Friedman explores how policy can harness schools, neighbourhoods, universities, and social capital to reverse this trend, and revive a fading “American Dream” of progress and social mobility. And what this could mean in a country like Australia. John N. Friedman is the Briger Family...
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Todd Fernando (2024) - The Next Frontier
Festival of Dangerous Ideas
The concept of success and excellence is fraught with tension between communities within Australia. For non-Indigenous Australians, excellence is almost exclusively an economic concept, founded on stolen and inherited resources and privilege. While for Indigenous people, aspiring to this definition of excellence can involve assimilation and the abandonment of culture and values. With the equality gap widening, the stakes for Indigenous Australians to succeed is higher than ever. Wiradjuri man and academic, Todd Fernando argues we need to forge new...
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Saree Makdisi (2024) - Tolerance is a Wasteland
Festival of Dangerous Ideas
For some, the image of Israel, as a shining example of liberal democratic ideals has been broken by the Netanyahu Government’s actions in Gaza since 7 October, 2023. Yet, for others, the positive image projected by Israel has always been a convenient myth, allowing dominant powers within the international community to turn a blind eye to decades of Palestinian suffering. Academic Saree Makdisi argues that we are living in a culture of denial. He says much of the West is complicit through the act of self-deception. Makdisi offers a possible...
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David Baddiel (2024) - The God Desire
Festival of Dangerous Ideas
Is God a story we’ve just told ourselves to satisfy our own desires? Comedian and author David Baddiel knows God doesn’t exist, but wishes he did. As Baddiel wrestles with his understanding of God and spirituality as a Jewish atheist, his bold thesis uncovers how religion services the deepest needs of humanity. This session is in conversation with Simon Longstaff and is the inaugural John Caldon Provocation, an annual event at FODI to honour the legacy of businessman John Caldon and his special brand of curiosity. David Baddiel is an accomplished comedian,...
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Coleman Hughes & Josh Szeps (2024) - A Colourblind Society
Festival of Dangerous Ideas
Are we too focused on race? Have recent anti-racist movements like Black Lives Matter abandoned the ‘colourblind’ spirit of the original civil rights movement? In this live FODI edition of Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps, writer and podcaster Coleman Hughes articulates his vision for a future where individuals are judged by ‘the content of their character’, not the colour of their skin. He argues for a society that embraces a colourblind ethos, aiming to dismantle divisive narratives and foster a more inclusive...
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Jen Gunter (2024) - Lifting the Curse
Festival of Dangerous Ideas
Being open about the female body has always been taboo, risky and dangerous. So, by smashing ancient menstrual taboos, and demolishing dangerous pseudoscience, the Internet’s OB-GYN Jen Gunter has long been on a mission to destigmatise the myths and misogyny surrounding women’s health. Gunter urges women to seize control, reminding them that it shouldn’t be an act of feminism to know how their body works. Jen Gunter is an internationally bestselling author, obstetrician, and gynecologist with more than three decades of experience as a vulvar and vaginal diseases expert. Her...
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The Pitchforks are Coming (2024) - Myra Hamilton, Carl Rhodes & Jordan van den Berg
Festival of Dangerous Ideas
Ordinary citizens are starting to realise that their dwindling share of our common wealth is no accident, but the inevitable result of the current system. As life becomes more precarious, has the time come when the ‘discontented majority’ will flex their muscles and seize, by whatever means, a fairer share of the economic and social pie? Or will the world’s wealthiest 1% step back from the precipice by realising that inequality is as much of a problem for them as it is for everyone else? Myra Hamilton is an Associate Professor in Work and Organisational Studies at...
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Speaking Bluntly (2024) - Antoinette Lattouf, Andy Mills & Josh Szeps
Festival of Dangerous Ideas
Journalists play a vital role in a democracy, holding power to account. The traditional model of journalism sees journalists as disinterested seekers of the truth, striving for ‘objectivity’ and suppressing their own opinions. But as newsrooms and editorial pages previously staffed only by white male journalists have evolved, and as the internet has driven the rise of opinion journalism, we are faced with two important questions: Does it matter who journalists are? And does it matter what they think? At a time when media business models are in crisis, how should we think...
info_outlineThe late philosopher and scientist, Daniel Dennett talked about ‘counterfeit people’ as one of the great dangers of AI – but are we now willing to court the same dangers through our adoption of multiple identities across the metaverse. Moving from the confinement of physical reality to the landscape of the metaverse, where looks, preferences, and genders are limitless, we can each acquire many digital selves. Is a ‘virtual you’ a truer reflection of your deepest self – revealing desires and aspects that otherwise remain hidden? What is the human cost of leaving the physical world behind? What are the ethical implications of living without boundaries in a digital space where the borders between morality and legality, in the ‘real world’, begin to dissolve?
Lizzie O'Shea sues companies and governments that do the wrong thing. She has run major cases against major technology companies on behalf of thousands of people who have been harmed by them. She is also a founder and the chair of Digital Rights Watch, which advocates for human rights in online spaces.
Patrick Stokes is associate professor of philosophy at Deakin University, and a writer, radio producer, and media commentator on philosophical matters. He is currently engaged in a three-year Australian Research Council-funded project, ‘Digital Death and Immortality.’
Emily van der Nagel is a Lecturer in Social Media at Monash University. She researches social media identities, platforms, and cultures, with a particular focus on digital intimacies. Her book, Sex and Social Media, co-authored with Katrin Tiidenberg, takes a feminist, sex-positive approach to how social media platforms shape and restrict sex. Emily is currently working on a research project about how Australians use social media to create and subscribe to content on OnlyFans.
Chaired by Professor of Evolution at UNSW Sydney and a popular science author, Rob Brooks.