What can Australians do to make the world a better and fairer place? Delivering this year's Gandhi Oration is Chief Advocate of World Vision Australia Tim Costello.

People are hedonists, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. This view is central to much of psychology and it fits many people’s own sense of why they do what they do. But what about our appetites for spicy foods, hot baths, horror movies, sad songs, BDSM, and hate reading? It runs out that people often seek out pain and suffering—in pursuits such as art, ritual, sex, and sports, and in longer-term projects, such as training for a marathon or signing up to go to war. 

THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT Fiction creates new worlds for us to inhabit and understand, whether these are anchored in the past, the future or float freely in the imaginary. Margaret Atwood’s rich body of work takes us into many different places but the dystopian futures she creates, where the problems we face now come to their logical conclusions, are some of her most compelling work.

Listen to Stephen Fry deliver a masterclass on the lost art of fabulous disagreement at the 2018 Festival of Dangerous Ideas.

Hear AI expert Toby Walsh predict the exact year machines will be as intelligent as humans.

Hear technology sociologist Zeynep Tufekci share how big tech is exploiting your data.

The Festival of Dangerous Ideas presented this year for the first time in conjunction with UNSW Centre for Ideas, asked some fascinating questions.

Ten years after the biggest financial upheaval since the Great Depression, much has changed.

Susie Latham responds to new government funded programs that train state workers to surveil children for signs of emerging terrorism.

"Consciousness is an intellectual illusion created by us because we're so darn reflective." – Daniel Dennett

Listen to Australian of the Year and UNSW Professor of Science unpack the world of quantum computing for Sydney Science Festival. 

He's been at he forefront of environmental activism since the 1970s, so what has he learned? What has been achieved and where should efforts be focused now?