Festival of Dangerous Ideas

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.

The latest science suggests that it is too late to prevent human-induced climate change. Technological optimists are now turning their minds to mitigation through techniques of geo-engineering, like giant space mirrors or seeding the oceans with iron to prompt carbon-absorbing algal blooms. But projects to alter the entire planet will expose all life to massive risk. So, why not address the source of the problem and engineer humans to reduce our environmental impact and adapt? Genetic engineering could make us smaller or reduce our appetite for meat. Doses of Oxytocin could make us more sympathetic and cooperative. Such possibilities are criticised as extreme, but are they any more so than re-engineering the planet? S. Matthew Liao is a professor of philosophy at New York University.

Recorded in 2011 and the beginning of the Arab Spring, Mona Eltahawy reflects on the hunger for freedom and democracy unleashed within Arab populations living under dictatorship. This is considered alongside questions about whether Saudi Arabia's oil makes Western support for freedom and democracy melt away, and whether the west can't afford to prefer Arab democrats to Arab dictators. Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning columnist and international public speaker, renowned for her commentary on the 'Arab Spring'.

Will we run out of water – and if so, when? Will the Earth suffer? Explore how water drives modern conflict and is not about to stop. Alok Jha is the science correspondent for ITV News in the UK. Before that, he did the same job at The Guardian for a decade, where he wrote news, features, comment and presented the award-winning Science Weeklypodcast. He has also reported live from Antarctica and presented many TV and radio programmes for the BBC. Alok's latest book The Water Book looks into water, a profoundly strange substance that defies the normal rules of chemistry, and how it has shaped the Earth, it's life and our civilisation.

In the late 90s, political theorists, economists and politicians were talking confidently about the “end of history” and the undisputed triumph of liberal "democratic" capitalism. Communism was written off as dead and buried. But after 9/11, the GFC, the Arab Spring, and the protests spreading over Europe, the ideological gloss of capitalism may be beginning to fade. If the alternative is Putin's muscular Tsarism or China's authoritarian capitalism, then renovating the idea of communism may matter profoundly. For philosophical rock star and brilliant iconoclast Slavoj Zizek, it is something that we should demand, no matter how impossible it seems. The only true utopia today is that things can go on indefinitely the way they are.

Compassion has become a commodity whose possession marks us as a better person, or better than other people. Writer and commentator Helen Razer diagnoses society with compassion fatigue – and the physical burn out, trauma and psychological depletion is real. Helen Razer is a writer, broadcaster and commentator who is now chiefly engaged in the work of writing on social and cultural matters. She works with Crikey, The Saturday Paper and a range of publications who permit her to say terrible things. Her fifth book, A Short History of Stupid, remains a best-seller and was recently shortlisted for the NSW State Library's inaugural Russell Prize.

Society preaches forgiveness for the rich and retribution for the poor. Entrenched inequality and its companion, poverty, are the dark side of the American dream for a citizenry united by name, but not by rules. Is the divide fair, the result of natural winners and losers, or is it built into the system? We know that inequality is bad for the rich as well as the poor, and that more equal countries are healthier and happier, but this knowledge won't bring change by itself. What can be done when those with the power to change the divide are those that benefit most from it? As long as the more equal won't let go, the less equal will suffer. David Simon is a journalist, author, and television writer/producer best known as the creator and showrunner of HBO series The Wire and Treme. He spent twelve years on the crime beat for the Baltimore Sun. He also worked on the adaptations of his books Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood for NBC and HBO respectively.