The End Of The World As We Know It (2014) | Tim Flannery, Elizabeth Kolbert, Steven Pinker &  Jaan Tallinn

The End Of The World As We Know It (2014) | Tim Flannery, Elizabeth Kolbert, Steven Pinker & Jaan Tallinn

Author: Festival of Dangerous Ideas January 3, 2021 Duration: 1:02:12

What does the future hold? A reign of world peace with stunning medical breakthroughs conquering death, illness and disease? Or a world where human beings have destroyed the web of living things and put our own existence at risk by playing with science we don't fully understand? Must we think in terms of these extremes to create a positive future or prevent disaster?

Join a panel of brilliant optimists and pessimists to understand some of the amazing risks and opportunities that lie before us.

Tim Flannery is an Australian scientist, activist, author and editor of over twenty books, former Chief Scientist at the federal Climate Commission, and currently leader of the independent Climate Council.

Elizabeth Kolbert is an American environmental journalist and author. She is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of several books, including Field Notes from a Catastrophe and The Sixth Extinction: An unnatural history.

Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist and one of the world's foremost writers on language, mind, and human nature. He is currently Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and his most recent book is The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why violence has declined.

Jaan Tallinn is a founding engineer of Skype and Kazaa, a co-founder of personalised medicine company MetaMed, and a co-founder of the Centre for Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge.


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]

Duration: 39:48
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…
David Simon (2014) | Some People Are More Equal Than Others [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:12
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]

Duration: 51:47
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…

«1...678910