Speaking Bluntly (2024) - Antoinette Lattouf, Andy Mills & Josh Szeps

Speaking Bluntly (2024) - Antoinette Lattouf, Andy Mills & Josh Szeps

Author: Festival of Dangerous Ideas May 15, 2025 Duration: 1:03:13

Journalists play a vital role in a democracy, holding power to account. The traditional model of journalism sees journalists as disinterested seekers of the truth, striving for 'objectivity' and suppressing their own opinions. But as newsrooms and editorial pages previously staffed only by white male journalists have evolved, and as the internet has driven the rise of opinion journalism, we are faced with two important questions: Does it matter who journalists are? And does it matter what they think? At a time when media business models are in crisis, how should we think about bias, representation, truth and opinion? What happens when journalists themselves become 'the story'? And if we can't talk about these thorny questions in the media itself, can the media do its job at all? 

Antoinette Lattouf is a broadcaster, columnist, author, speaker, human rights advocate, mental health ambassador who dabbles in satire and is terrible at reverse parking. She is the creator and co-host of The Antoinettes podcast, a weekly commentary and comedy podcast. She is also the co-host of news and analysis podcast The Briefing. The multi-award-winning journalist is the co-founder of Media Diversity Australia – a not-for-profit organisation working towards increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in the media.

Andy Mills is an American reporter and podcast producer who co-created The Daily at The New York TimesReflector and several documentary series including Rabbit Hole and The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.

Josh Szeps is one of Australia's most influential and innovative interviewers. In New York, he was a founding host-producer of the revolutionary US streaming news network, HuffPost Live. He won a Webby Award while the organisation won a Pulitzer. Josh also appeared regularly with Al Roker as a contributor on the NBC TODAY Show. On his return to Australia, he co-anchored the national morning television show, Weekend Breakfast, and became a fixture of ABC Radio Sydney. Afternoons with Josh Szeps launched in 2021, a three-hour daily talkback radio show. In 2024, Josh left the legacy media to wrestle freely with ideas in a spicier way. Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps took off as a podcast, Substack publication, live touring enterprise and YouTube channel.

Chaired by Louise Adler, Director of Adelaide Writers' Week, who has spent over 30 years in the culture business and continues to be committed to the dissemination of dangerous ideas.


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
Helen Razer (2015) | Against Compassion [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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Compassion has become a commodity whose possession marks us as a better person, or better than other people. Writer and commentator Helen Razer diagnoses society with compassion fatigue – and the physical burn out, traum…
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Society preaches forgiveness for the rich and retribution for the poor. Entrenched inequality and its companion, poverty, are the dark side of the American dream for a citizenry united by name, but not by rules. Is the d…
Tim Harford (2012) | Make More Mistakes [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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In a complex and fast-moving world, if we want to move ahead we need to rethink the conditions for making progress in science, business and society in a fundamental way. We need to realise there is no 'right way', lose o…
Anne Manne (2014) | The Narcissism Epidemic [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:03
The stories of Anders Behring Breivik and Lance Armstrong may seem to have little in common, but each shows the consequences of the epidemic of narcissism that marks our age. Our lives no longer centred on social and fam…
A. C. Grayling (2016) | Closing The Modern Mind [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:57
The tumultuous 17th century Enlightenment created the modern mind. What were the radical forces that shaped this intellectual world view we still share? And how is this under threat today? A.C. Grayling is the Master of…
Christopher Hitchens (2009) | Religion Poisons Everything [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:20
We take you back to the unforgettable Christopher Hitchens. Hitch was the opening speaker at the very first Festival of Dangerous Ideas in 2009. Erudite, acerbic and incisive as ever, Hitch's talk - the original dangerou…
Dee Madigan (2016) | The Propaganda Machine [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 31:23
Enjoy Dee Madigan's talk on political advertising from FODI 2016. This detailed look at how political propaganda gets made will enlighten, disgust and entertain in equal measures. A Decade of Danger celebrates 10 years o…
Evgeny Morozov (2013) | The Dark Side of the Internet [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 45:35
Revisit Evgeny Morozov's prophetic talk about the future of technology from FODI 2013. It warns of the growing influence of tech corporations in our everyday lives and describes - with eerie accuracy - the world we live…
Philippe Legrain (2016) | Open the Borders [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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 soc…

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