Philippe Legrain (2016) | Open the Borders

Philippe Legrain (2016) | Open the Borders

Author: Festival of Dangerous Ideas January 25, 2020 Duration: 33:30

We look back at Philippe Legrain's impassioned talk about immigration from FODI 2016. By flipping current assumptions on their heads, he builds a case for open migration and the potential it has to benefit a nation's society, economy and culture.

A Decade of Danger celebrates 10 years of The Festival of Dangerous Ideas and will highlight 10 unmissable speakers from across the festival's history. Sign up at festivalofdangerousideas.com to find out more about the lineup for FODI 2020.


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 | 06.5 | Tongues | B-Side [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 5:02
Tongues is an explicit, potent musical manifesto, exploring having your voice taken away, in response to Roxane Gay and Kate Manne's discussion. Tongues is written and performed by Tanya Tagaq, a Canadian Inuk improvisat…
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…