Festival of Dangerous Ideas program launched

The annual Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI) has announced its 2015 program.

Presented by the Sydney Opera House and the Ethics Centre, the festival invites ‘thinkers and culture creators’ from around the world to debate important ideas. Sessions will be held at the Sydney Opera House from 5-6 September.

International authors attending this year’s festival include political commentators Tariq Ali and Naomi Klein; digital activism and hacker culture researcher Gabriella Coleman; philosopher A C Grayling; New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman; neuroscientist Marc Lewis; feminist journalist Laurie Penny; investigative journalist Eric Schlosser; Jon Ronson, author of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (Picador); and Sarai Walker, author of Dietland (Black Inc.).

Australian writers appearing in individual sessions include journalist Peter Greste, Nobel Prize-winner Peter Doherty, and authors Dennis Glover, Helen Razer, Michael Wesley and Miriam Lyons.

The program also features a performance from New York-based storytelling group The Moth and panels on topics such as cybersexism, Indigenous recognition, Australian satire, North Korea and incarceration in Australia and abroad. Other panellists include Frank Brennan, Clementine Ford, Peter Fray, Damon Gameau, Michael Kirby, Malarndirri McCarthy, James Colley, Kate McCartney, James Jericho, Rebecca Shaw, Jordan Shanks and Dan Ilic.

Five speakers from FODI—Tariq Ali, Naomi Klein, Marc Lewis, Jon Ronson and Eric Schlosser—will also appear at the Melbourne Writers Festival’s (MWF) ‘mini Festival of Dangerous Ideas’. Head of Talk and Ideas at the Sydney Opera House Ann Mossop said working with MWF was a great way to bring ‘some of the most exciting [FODI] sessions and speakers’ to Melbourne.

As part of the Sydney Opera House’s satellite events, a livestream of select FODI sessions will be available Australia-wide on 6 September.

For more information on the festival, visit the FODI website here.