Concrete Playground

The Festival of Dangerous Ideas is really more like the Festival of Ideas Slightly More Radical Than One Would Normally Bring Up in Polite Society, Addressed By the Minds and Working Belief Systems of People Known to be Really Quite Smart. But, admittedly, the 'Festival of Dangerous Ideas' is a catchier title.

Presented by the St James Ethics Centre in conjunction with the Sydney Opera House, the festival is looking to build on its successful debut last year. At the head of the table is Tariq Ali, British-Pakistani commentator and author of both histories of the Middle East (Clash of Fundamentalisms, Bush In Babylon) and fictions (the Islam quintet), who will ascertain 'What we can learn from terrorists', while two of the world's most highly regarded legal minds, Alan Dershowitz and Geoffrey Robertson, steer their small talk into a moral, ethical and political quagmire to determine whether the pope should be held to account for sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

Christian Lander will be making a return visit to our shores to discuss Stuff White People Like (this time without just white people in on the conversation), journalist David Marr and Sydney Festival director Lindy Hume may cut quite close to the bone when they consider the proposition that 'Art doesn't make us better people', and Ross Gittins will probably face stunned silence when he suggests that economic growth should be stopped.

Not getting invited back to their next P&C luncheons are Anne Manne (who asks 'Are children worth it?'), Andrew Leigh ('Canberra is the best city in Australia') and Marcus Westbury ('What's so special about opera?'). An open soapbox competition and an IQ2 debate round out the cantankerousness.