The Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI) is an annual event that brings leading thinkers and culture creators from around the world to the Sydney Opera House stages and online to discuss and debate the important ideas of our time.

Speakers at the festival are asked to present their ideas to create lively and thought-provoking discussions. Our aim is for audiences to leave each session having experienced the excitement of ideas brought to life, and with new food for thought.

About the 2015 Festival of Dangerous Ideas our curators have said:

Head of Talks and Ideas at the Sydney Opera House and co-curator of Festival of Dangerous Ideas Ann Mossop said, “From international affairs to the rise of robots, the Festival of Dangerous Ideas brings some of the world’s most exciting thinkers to the Sydney Opera House stages and online to throw down the gauntlet and challenge pre-conceived ideas about topics as diverse as incarceration, drug addiction, education and democracy. Whether they are ideas that people have been concerned about since the beginning of time, or ideas on the cusp of our consciousness, we’ll be exploring them at the Festival.”

Executive Director of The Ethics Centre Simon Longstaff and co-curator of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas said, “You could say that danger lies in the eye of the beholder – but that's only true to a degree. Some ideas are dangerous at their very core, despite where they sit on your radar. That the global stocks of nuclear weapons might be out of our control, that democracy is set for failure, that compassion is obsolete in a modern world, that capitalism is at war with our planet. There is no wishing away such ideas. They tug at the sleeve of our consciousness, they nip our conscience. So rather than retreat into comfort and certainty, let us face up to them – at FODI.”