Past Programs
Community and Society - 2008
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2008 Boyer Lectures - A Golden Age of Freedom, Lecture 2: Who's afraid of new technology?
09/11/2008
Rupert Murdoch asks the question, who's afraid of new technology?, in the second program of the 2008 Boyer Lectures. Technology has helped transform the world. Some say it has turned it upside down. Rupert Murdoch argues that we must not be prisoners of the past - modern day Luddites - if we are to succeed in the golden era.
The great divide
26/10/2008
Underneath the economic storm clouds lies a nation deeply riven. The richest country in the world is experiencing inequality in wealth and opportunity on a scale that rivals any other time in the past century. But is it as simple as redistributing wealth? Ironically, it may just be the American Dream that gets in the way.
The Republic - are we there yet?
21/09/2008
It has been nearly ten years since the republic was seriously discussed. Most thought it dead and buried. But with the political elevation of Malcolm Turnbull, the republican heart has quickened. Leading Australian historians Henry Reynolds and Mark McKenna kick start the debate in an engrossing conversation that cuts to the core of our national identity.
Saving the Enlightenment
07/09/2008
We are children of the Enlightenment, that fruitful period of the 17th and 18th centuries that gave birth to our modern ways. Surely now we have come this far there is no turning back? Not according to the five distinguished speakers on this forum. The ideas of the Enlightenment need to be protected, they say, lest they be dismantled bit-by-bit in a new climate of fear. Join us for the 2008 CIS Big Ideas Forum.
Climate change update - Tim Flannery
31/08/2008
The response to climate change has focused largely on what we can do to reduce the production of emissions. But leading environmentalist Dr Tim Flannery reminds us that we should not lose sight of the tree fix. Farms and forests could become 'enormous engines of planetary cleansing'. Join us for an update on the science of climate change and some solutions based on the force of nature.
The freedom paradox - Clive Hamilton
24/08/2008
We have never been so rich, healthy and free. But discontent is all around. Has something gone awry? Clive Hamilton calls it the freedom paradox. We are certainly liberated, but to what end? The civil and sexual revolution, Hamilton postulates, has been hijacked. Is there any turning back? An unflinching assessment of postmodern times from the man who brought us Growth Fetish and Affluenza. Recorded at Sydney Ideas, at the University of Sydney.
Unfinished business - Mick Dodson
17/08/2008
The Prime Minister has put unfinished constitutional business back on the agenda. It might be 108 years late in coming but official recognition of Indigenous Australians is drawing serious attention. So what is at stake here? In this powerful presentation, recorded at the National Archives of Australia, Indigenous leader and rights advocate Mick Dodson argues for an overhaul of a document frozen in time and almost impossible to change.
By 2020 only the rich will be at home in Australia
03/08/2008
Are you feeling flush with funds after the decade-long commodities boom? Or is the cost of housing, groceries and petrol making you feel like a pauper? Today a flashpoint between those who believe we have never had it so good and those who reckon the dream has become a nightmare. The third Intelligence Squared debate spares no argument in its quest for the truth about debt stress.
Lessons from financial history - Professor Niall Ferguson
11/05/2008
Join us for a fresh look at the way finance works. Professor Niall Ferguson's analysis draws on the work of the French Naturalist Jean Bapiste de Lamarck - the idea that organisms alter and adapt in response to a changing environment. He applies this framework to our current, uneasy financial climate and asks: are we on the brink of a great dying?
Massey Lectures 2007: The City of Words, Lecture 5,The Screen of Hal
27/04/2008
In his final lecture, Alberto Manguel examines an unfinished novel by Jack London. In The Assassination Bureau, a shady organisation believes it can purify society by killing off 'undesirables'. Manguel compares London's dark creation with our world of interconnected multinational corporations who, he says, hide behind a screen of countless anonymous shareholders, threatening the planet and our very humanity.
For copyright reasons this series is not available as a podcast
Massey Lectures 2007: The City of Words, Lecture 4, The Books of Don Quixote
20/04/2008
Alberto Manguel's focus today is on one of the most cherished stories of the western canon. In the 17th century a returned Spanish soldier turned writer dreamed up a bookish and impoverished old gentleman who decides one day to become a knight errant. What can Don Quixote tell us about the quest for a peaceful civilisation?
For copyright reasons this series is not available as a podcast
Massey Lectures 2007: The City of Words, Lecture 2, The Tablets of Gilgamesh
06/04/2008
Living together with our differences is understood as a practical project, mostly civic and political. But can stories, in all their variety, play a part? In the 2007 Massey Lectures, writer Alberto Manguel takes a fresh look at living peacefully together, using the best that poets and writers have had to say about the matter. In his second lecture Manguel revisits the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh; a story of how a city was made magnificent and just.
For copyright reasons this series is not available as a podcast
The 2008 Manning Clark Lecture: Julian Burnside QC
23/03/2008
It is a lecture that packs some punch. And this year is no different. The ninth Manning Clark lecturer is controversial barrister and human rights advocate Julian Burnside QC. His running battle with the previous government was played out in our newspapers and broadcast media. In this lecture Burnside returns to those points of contention, which include anti-terror laws, children in detention, and compensation for the stolen generations. Hear a forthright case for the rule of law, not the rule of men.
Does Secularism Provoke Religious Extremism?
24/02/2008
Collectively they are known as the new atheists. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Michel Onfray and AC Grayling, among others, all wish to rid the public square of a meddlesome god. According to them, religion causes more problems than it solves. It should become a quiet relic of history, laid to rest with other pre-scientific age superstitions. But for some the challenge is not ineradicable religion but aggressive secularism. Tom Frame, in this powerful and provocative public lecture, questions the defiantly atheistic direction modern secularism is taking, which he believes is a recipe for disaster. Does secularism, as we know it now, provoke religious extremism? Join us for the Annual Acton Lecture on Religion and Freedom.
