Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2016

By Ben Stephens.

Some ideas make you stop, check to see if you heard it right and double back to see where your bias sits in the realm of what was just proposed. You then either sit and listen or scream at #qanda and beg for Tony Jones to step in and shut that sh*t down. Either way, that moment can be a defining time in anyone’s life, when a long-standing position is shifted through reasonable debate and sound truths. It can be scary moment though, one best shared with close friends or maybe a room full of strangers at the Opera House. If you vibe towards the latter, then you are in luck my dear friend, as the good people at The Sydney Opera House have dropped the line-up of speakers for The Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2016, taking over the house for the first weekend of September.

Once again the list of speakers is varied, to induce possible moments of mind bending discussions across the two-day festival. Some say controversial, others just hold a weird grin and deep gaze, but Mr Andrew Bolt will be taking to the stage on the opening day to hold course on what it’s like to speak your mind as an Australian commentator, on topics such as racism, class war and global warming… you know, issues that really get a crowd riled up. This will be a time for Mr Bolt to let the audience in on what he thinks are dangerous ideas, if any.

Bolt isn’t the only one with a dangerous idea though, Annabell Crab (ABC) and David Marr (Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian) will be having an open chat titled ‘The Government we deserve?’, I’ll leave that up to your imagination as to what that one’s about. Advertising queen Dee Madigan will be talking about the fractured media environment and political propaganda, or at least the ideas surrounding them. Ex-punk rocker, Henry Rollins will be chatting worldwide injustices, while paying special attention to the ‘Blood Sport’ that is US Politics.

The festival has done a fine job and filled up the two days with workshops on asylum seeking issues to panel discussions about legalising drugs in sport, all these and more are likely to sell out, so be sure to snap those tickets up HERE.

Festival of Dangerous Ideas (#FODI2016) is on September 3 & 4 at The Opera House.