Festival of Dangerous Ideas

The Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI) is the original disruptive ideas festival that brings to light conversations that push the boundaries of conventional thought. It presents a line-up of international and local thinkers and culture creators, inviting the public to immerse themselves in conversations that encourage debate and critical thinking.

The Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI) was co-founded by The Ethics Centre (TEC) and the Sydney Opera House (SOH) in 2009.

In 2010, Ann Mossop joined the Sydney Opera House in as Head of talks and Ideas and became the co-curator of the second festival.  She oversaw all aspects of the Festival when it was part of the Sydney Opera House program and has remained one of the festival curators since then.

It was presented at Sydney Opera House for eight years and in its ninth year co-presented by The Ethics Centre with UNSW Centre for Ideas on Cockatoo Island.

FODI 2020 program was to be the 10th Festival of Dangerous Ideas

Due to take place at Sydney Town Hall – a nod to the traditional meeting and rallying place for communities, it was to feature sessions and performances that explored climate change, meritocracy, giving, tech, politics, capitalism and more but was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Speakers included Roxane Gay, Michael Sandel, David Wallace Wells, Edward Snowdon, Pasi Sahlberg/ Megan Davis, Peter Singer, Masha Gessen, Evgeny Morozov, Jane McAdam and David Sinclair.

You can see the full 2020 program here. You can find recordings of past talks here and here.

Speakers

2010. Alan Dershowitz v Geoffrey Robertson/Tariq Ali/Lenore Skenazy/Anne Manne/ Waleed Aly/ Cordelia Fine/P.W.Singer/ Christian Lander/ Clive Hamilton/The Sins of the Fathers: Should the Pope be held to Account/ Australian Husbands are the Worst in the World/Is Freedom too dangerous for kids?/ Are Children Worth it/ What we can Learn from Terrorists/ Zombie Economics/ Wired for War/ We are all Climate Change Deniers/ Art Doesn’t Make us Better People

2011. Julian Assange/Jonathan Safran Foer/ Slavoj Žižek/ Mona Eltahawy/ Marc Thiessen/ Samah Hadid/ Michael Kirby/Clem Bastow/ Catherine Lumby/Peter Hartcher/David Marr/Jon Ronson/Gabrielle Hamilton/ What we are and what we eat/ Wikileaks has not gone far enough/ Is torture necessary?/ All Women are Sluts/ Let us be realists and demand the impossible: Communism/ Hypocrisy Rhymes with Democracy/ The Media Have no Morals/ Australia is a Third Rate Country/ Psychopaths make the World Go Round/ Gays and Lesbians do not belong in the classroom

2012. Sam Harris/ Eliza Griswold/Pasi Sahlberg/ Germaine Greer/Jesse Bering/ Eva Cox/Matthew Liao/Tara Moss/Tim Harford/Gretel Killeen/ The Delusion of Free Will/We are all sexual perverts/ Abolish Private Schools/ Engineer Humans to Stop Climate Change/ Justice is more important than freedom/ All Women Hate Each other/ Let Banks Fail/ A foetus is not a Person/ The Devil is Real/ We are the Gods Now/ My Workplace is a Cult

2013. David Simon/ Hanna Rosin/ Arlie Hochschild/ Peter Moskos/ Vandana Shiva/ Erwin James/ Evgeny Morozov/Dan Savage/Judith Sloan/Christos Tsiolkas/Annabel Crabb//In Defence of Flogging/ Some people are more equal than others/ Growth=Poverty/ A killer can be a good neighbour/ The End of Men We Have outsourced ourselves/ Time to get soft on Crime/ To Die Rich is to Die Disgraced/ The Dark side of the Internet/ Life after Truth

2014. Salman Rushdie/ Elizabeth Kolbert/ Kajsa Ekis Ekman/ Steven Pinker/ Anne Manne// Pussy Riot/Zona Prava/ Masha Gessen/ Kajsa Ekis Ekman/ John Hewson/ Huw Price/ Emily Nussbaum/ Jaan Talinn/ Jane Caro/ Tim Flannery/ Surrogacy is Child Trafficking/ Freedom to Write/ We are the Asteroid/ The Narcissism Epidemic/ Stop Trying to Fix Human Nature/ The Price of Modern Life is Depression and Loneliness/ Human Existence Doesn’t Matter/ Some Families are Better than Others

2015. Naomi Klein/ Jon Ronson/ Peter Greste/ Laurie Penny/ Tariq Ali/Paul Krugman/ Damon Gameau/ Sarah Wilson/ Eric Schlosser/ Murung Xuecun/ Malarndirri McCarthy/ Suki Kim/ The Moth/ Johann Hari/ Journalistic Freedom/ So you’ve been publicly shamed/ The Twilight of Democracy/ Sugar is the New Tobacco/ Bad Ideas/ Capitalism vs the Climate/ Against Compassion/ The Right to Die

2016. Alicia Garza/Priyamvada Gopal/ George Packer/ Lee Vinsel/ Lionel Shriver/ Jesse Bering/ Andrew Bolt/ Molly Crabapple/ Henry Rollins/ Stan Grant/ Dee Madigan/ Raewyn Connell/ Sara Houbolt/ Cordelia Fine/ A.C Grayling/ Why Black Lives Matter/ India’s Age of Extremism/ America Comes Apart/ The Bamboo Ceiling/ Innovation Fetish/ Break A Rule a Day/ Suicide is Social/ Open the Borders/ Freaks Like Me/ Water Wars/ Don’t Trust the Scientists/

2018. Stephen Fry/ Niall Ferguson/ Pankaj Mishra/ Megan Phelps-Roper/ Ayelet Waldman/ Germaine Greer/ Mick Dodson/ Toby Walsh/ Zeynup Tufekci/ Rukmini Callimachi/ Seth Stephens-Davidowitz /Hamish Macdonald/ Dee Madigan/ Angela Nagle/ Sex Robots have no Taboos/ In praise of inequality/ Cancer on Democracy/ Everybody Lies (except the internet)/ The End of the World (as we know it)/ Choose China/ Privacy is Selfish/ Rehearsal for Fascism/ Kill all Normies/ Age of Anger

2020. Program Cancelled due to COVID-19. Roxane Gay/ Michael Sandel/ David Wallace Wells/E dward Snowdon/ Pasi Sahlberg/ Megan Davis/ Peter Singer/ Masha Gessen/Evgeny Morozov/ Jane McAdam/ David Sinclair