Ending the 'Tyranny' of Pregnancy (2024) - Luara Ferracioli, Brigitte Gerstl, Mianna Lotz & Kathryn MacKay

Ending the 'Tyranny' of Pregnancy (2024) - Luara Ferracioli, Brigitte Gerstl, Mianna Lotz & Kathryn MacKay

Author: Festival of Dangerous Ideas February 5, 2025 Duration: 1:02:14

Since the dawn of time, our pro-natalist society has implemented certain systems, norms and lenses in which we view child rearing. These often oppressive and coercive conditions make it difficult for many to think about their reproductive options. But with the emergence of artificial wombs and womb transplants, what impact could this have on reproductive autonomy? And what ethical and political questions will follow? 

 

Brigitte Gerstl is the program manager for the uterus transplant program at the Royal Hospital for Women (RHW). Brigitte played a pivotal role in establishing Australia's first live donor uterus transplant research study program at the RHW, she is currently developing the deceased donor pathway within the program. In this role, she oversees patient screening, ethics, and governance, while also monitoring patient progress and clinical and psychosocial outcomes. 

Dr. Luara Ferracioli is Associate Professor in Political Philosophy at the University of Sydney. Her main areas of research are the ethics of immigration and family justice. 

Mianna Lotz is an academic, ethics advisor, and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie University where she specialises in and teaches ethics and applied ethics with a research focus on emerging reproductive technologies, adoption, surgical innovation, family ethics, and the welfare and rights of children and parents. 

Chaired by Kathryn MacKay, Senior Lecturer at Sydney Health Ethics. 


For more than a decade, the Festival of Dangerous Ideas has curated a space where provocative thinking isn't just welcomed, it's the entire point. This podcast is a direct line to that stage, offering an archive of talks that deliberately unsettle comfortable opinions and interrogate the stubborn problems we often agree to ignore. Each episode captures a live conversation from Australia's original disruptive ideas festival, presenting arguments that can be exhilarating, uncomfortable, and vitally important. You’ll hear from a compelling roster of festival alumni-including leading experts, intellectual troublemakers, and visionary authors-who share perspectives that conventional discourse frequently sidelines. The discussions here aren't theoretical exercises; they grapple with the pressing and difficult issues shaping our society and culture right now. Tuning in means granting yourself access to a decade-long tradition of intellectual courage, where the core assumption is that some truths are only reached by first entertaining a dangerous idea. It’s a chance to listen as boundaries are pushed, not for shock value, but for clarity. The result is a consistently challenging and refreshing audio experience that complicates simple narratives and expands what feels possible to talk about.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Festival of Dangerous Ideas
Podcast Episodes
FODI: The In-Between | 05.5 | Semi-Autonomous | B-Side [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 5:13
A text-generating AI that has been trained with FODI transcripts speaks in conversation with a deepfake AI about violence, conspiracy theories and what it means to be human. Our FODI-trained AI was created using Max Wool…
FODI: The In-Between | 04.5 | The Dancer | B-Side [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:49
Recording art for a post-human world, a machine attempts to describe a human dance. The piece responds to Eleanor Gordon-Smith and Slavoj Žižek's discussion, the power of words to create reality, and the experience of em…
FODI: The In-Between | 03.5 | Within Salt | B-Side [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 5:11
During Sydney's most recent lockdown, sound artist Alexandra Spence submerged a 15 minute-long piece of cassette tape in seawater. The cassette tape contained a field recording of waves, and a recording of Alex's voice o…
FODI: The In-Between | 02.5 | Anthropocene | B-Side [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 5:28
We hear the recorded sound of the invisible electromagnetic landscape that humans created unintentionally, allowing us to tune in to what our environment has to endure. Against a backdrop, we hear the voices of anonymous…
FODI: The In-Between | 01.5 | Light Shines | B-Side [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:56
Sydney-based writer Tasnim Hossain records her written take on the meandering histories of Enlightenment discussed by Joya Chatterji and Stephen Fry, and the experimental sounds of the first known recordings of the human…