Festival of Dangerous Ideas

In the West, slavery is often seen as a dark part of the colonial past. Although it’s illegal in all countries, it remains alive and well—and is growing dramatically. Impervious to recession, it forms a thriving part of the globalised sex industry run by organised crime. International trafficking of women and children for sex is a multi-billion dollar business that won’t be anywhere near ‘abolition’ until those who make money from its operations and buy its services think again about what being complicit in slavery means.   Lydia Cacho is an award-winning investigative journalist, writer and activist. Her reporting focuses on violence against women in her home country of Mexico. Her latest book is Slavery Inc.: The untold story of international sex trafficking. 

Is innovation overvalued? It is the dominant ideology of our era. But what if building, maintenance and repair prove much more important to our daily lives than the vast majority of technological innovations?  Co-founder of The Maintainers, a research group focused on maintenance, repair, infrastructure and mundane labor, Lee Vinsel is an Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Stevens Institute of Technology. His research focuses on science and technology policy, and his first book examines the history of government regulation of the automobile in the United States, from the birth of the internal combustion engine to the Google Car. His work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Guardian, Le Monde, Fortune and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 

One of the last bastions of acceptable discrimination is against fat people. Health arguments reinforce the social and cultural pressure to avoid fatness at all costs. But is it possible to imagine things differently and help women to escape from the complex web of body image, food and weight concerns?  Sarai Walker received her MFA in creative writing from Bennington College. As a magazine writer, her articles have appeared in Seventeen and Mademoiselle. She served as an editor and writer for Our Bodies, Ourselves, before moving to London and Paris to complete a PhD. Her first novel, Dietland, was published in 2015, and takes on the beauty industry, gender inequality and our weight loss obsession.

With ‘normal’ education on hold, a mountain of public debt, high levels of long-term unemployment and the mental health effects of isolation yet to fully emerge, the legacy of COVID-19 disproportionately falls on the shoulders of one demographic above all others … the nation’s youth. Hear from three of Australia’s most dynamic youth voices as they discuss present and future concerns. These young voices deserve a seat at the table, given it’s their future with which we keep gambling with. Daisy Jeffrey is a National Organiser of School Strike For Climate Change. She is working with school and university students across the world who are asking politicians to take our future seriously. Audrey Mason-Hyde is an activist, poet & public speaker. In 2017, Audrey created a talk for TedX Adelaide about their experience of gender.  Dylan Storer is a young journalist that grew up in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia. He’s passionate about equity, justice and youth leadership on the issues of our time. 

As lockdowns and quarantines continue, some of us may feel like we're losing our grip on reality. Misinformation and conspiracy theories spread worldwide and algorithms continue to serve up our own custom-made versions of the internet. Are we just a few lines of code away from being a conspiracy theorist? Hear about technology’s role in the spread of COVID-19 related misinformation and how the most damaging culprits are simple voice notes and text messages. Conspiracy theories have gone mainstream. Can you spot them? Claire Wardle is a leading expert on user generated content, verification and misinformation. She is co-founder and director of First Draft, the world’s foremost nonprofit focused on research and practice to address mis- and disinformation. Ariel Bogle is an award-winning technology reporter at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). 

In stripping away so much of ordinary life, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a lot about us – not all of it pretty. It’s also confronted us with brutal ethical choices. Who deserves to be saved when you're running out of ventilators? How much are we willing to give up so others can get by? Who gets to decide and what beliefs are shaping their decisions? Step back from the day-to-day dilemmas of the pandemic to understand the crucial lessons and hidden costs of our choices. Matt Beard is an Australian moral philosopher at The Ethics Centre and a regular writer on philosophy and ethics. Eleanor Gordon-Smith is a writer and radio broadcaster working at the intersection of academic ethics and the muddy chaos of life between real humans. Bryan Mukandi is an academic philosopher and health humanities researcher, with a background in the practice of medicine in a resource-poor, sub-Saharan African context.

COVID-19 has highlighted the particular vulnerability of the aged. However, as we find out more about the ageing process, we are uncovering new ways to treat it. One revolutionary approach is to look at ageing as a disease and tackle its causes. With breakthroughs in genetics and emerging technologies, scientists have been able to make animals live longer. If this works on humans as well, will we hold the keys to postponing ageing and keep major diseases like Alzheimer’s and cancer at bay?   David A. Sinclair, Ph.D. is one of the world’s most famous scientists and entrepreneurs, best known for understanding why we age and how to reverse it. He is a New York Times bestselling author and a tenured Professor of Genetics, Blavatnik Institute, Harvard Medical School, co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging Research at Harvard, Professor and Head of the Aging Labs at UNSW, Sydney, and an honorary Professor at the University of Sydney.

#BlackLivesMatter has become the call to action for a generation of US human rights activists to denounce the violence and prejudice still experienced by African Americans. In the wake of the violent deaths of African Americans George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and many others call for change is insistent and consistent. So what does need to change in politics, in the media and in everyday lives to transform race relations and ensure justice and recognition for all? Introduced by news and political journalist, Stan Grant. Alicia Garza is an American civil rights activist and writer known for co-founding the international Black Lives Matter movement.

Why are young people worse off than their parents? Why is the gap between older and younger Australians – in terms of work, wealth and wellbeing – growing wider? Is Australia cheating the young? Jennifer Rayner was born into aspirational Australian suburbia during the Hawke years and came out of age in the long boom of the Howard era. Her lifetime tracks the yawning inequalities that have opened up across the Australian community in the past 30 years. She has worked as a federal political adviser, an international youth ambassador in Indonesia and a private sector consultant. She holds a PhD from the Australian National University.

Globalism is a Western construct which may not survive in its current form. Asia’s rising powers are starting to look past global institutions to construct alternatives which could see what we know as the global community become obsolete. Michael Wesley deconstructs our current realities as finite as “just because globalism is so basic to how we live doesn’t mean it’s inevitable and here to stay”.  Michael Wesley is a Professor of National Security at the Australian National University. He is currently the Director of the Coral Bell school of Asia Pacific Studies in the college of Asia and the Pacific at the ANU. He consults extensively for the Australian government. His latest book Restless Continent: Wealth, Rivalry and Asia's New Geopolitics was released in 2015.