Festival of Dangerous Ideas

Why is the right to doctor-assisted dying supported by so many and legal for so few?  Helen Joyce became international editor of The Economist in January 2014 having previously served as International Education Editor and Sao Paulo bureau chief. Before joining The Economist she worked as editor of Plus, an online magazine about maths published by the University of Cambridge, and was founding editor for The Royal Statistical Society's quarterly magazine, Significance. 

Edward Snowden has been condemned as a traitor and celebrated as a patriot. In his mind, he is simply a man of good conscience who has followed in the footsteps of family members who have faithfully served the people and Constitution of the USA since the War of Independence. This was the motivation behind his revelation of US secrets. Governments are now armed with technology that enables them to pry into every aspect of our lives…all in the name of security. Snowden asks us to consider the possibility that we may have more to fear from our own governments than from any external threat – and that our liberties have already been lost.

No one has a monopoly on truth when it comes to the past and present lives of Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Conservatives tend to deny that Indigenous peoples should have special status in the Constitution. Progressives tend to turn a blind eye to the profound dysfunction that plagues so many Indigenous communities – and refuse to accept that Indigenous people want and deserve all of the benefits of the modern world. Marcia Langton is a fearless truth-teller who challenges the dangerous orthodoxies of a society that seems incapable of making peace with the truth of its own past.

Why has humanity still not worked out how to make nuclear weapons safe?  As an investigative journalist, Eric Schlosser continues to explore subjects ignored by the mainstream media and gives a voice to people at the margins of society. He’s followed the harvest with migrant farm workers in California, spent time with meatpacking workers in Texas and Colorado, told the stories of marijuana growers and pornographers and victims of violent crime, gone on duty with the NYPD Bomb Squad, and visited prisons throughout the US. His most recent book, Command and Control (2013), examines the efforts of the military, since the atomic era began during World War II, to prevent nuclear weapons from being stolen, sabotaged, or detonated by accident. Command and Control was a New York Times Notable Book, a Time Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book, was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize (History) and also received the Gold Medal Award (Nonfiction) from the 2013 California Book Awards. 

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.