SOCIETY

March 2013

The Green Light: Philippe Sands and Anna Funder

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Professor of International Law Philippe Sands (author of the acclaimed Torture Team) tells Anna Funder how Donald Rumsfeld, with his acceding signature, pushed the United States...

March 2013

Why we lie. Dorothy Rowe with Leah Giarratano

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From everyday fibs to grand-scale public deception, renowned psychologist Dorothy Rowe explores the reasons we lie and constructions of truth. Presented by the Perth Writers...

March 2013

Choosing Between Progress and Planet. Andrew Charlton

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Witnessing at first-hand the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Conference and wondering what went wrong, Andrew Charlton realised the truth of a colleague’s words: “The...

March 2013

Birds of a Feather. Jonathan Franzen and Sean Dooley

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World-renowned author Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections, Freedom) is a renowned bird-watcher and conservationist, as is Sean Dooley (The Big Twitch). In this Melbourne Writers...

March 2013

The Case for Perfection. Julian Savulescu

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The current possibilities for using genetics and other biotechnologies to enhance human cognitive and physical performance are real and significant. Julian Savulescu, a world...

March 2013

Why we still need feminism. Sophie Cunningham

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Writer and feminist Sophie Cunningham has watched with growing frustration as women are increasingly marginalised: in the arts, in the media and in public life. In this provocative...

March 2013

Cities for people: A lecture by Jan Gehl

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"Jan Gehl is our greatest observer of urban quality and an indispensable philosopher of cities as solutions to the environmental and health crises that we face" according...

March 2013

I shall not hate. Izzeldin Abuelaish

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This Sydney Writers' Festival session features one of the most extraordinary human stories you're likely to encounter. Izzeldin Abuelaish is a Palestinian doctor and...

March 2013

How food shapes our lives. Carolyn Steel, State of Design Festival 2011

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At the State of Design Festival 2011, Carolyn Steel’s keynote address highlights how feeding cities arguably has a greater social and physical impact on the planet and us...

March 2013

Alain de Botton on the pleasures and sorrows of work. With Michael Leunig

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Part 1 | Part 2Characteristically lucid, witty and inventive, Alain de Botton discusses his new book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, firstly addressing the audience, then...

An incurious encounter takes flight

The Insult

By Peter Robb

It was getting dark and the plane for Darwin was almost full. Well back in Economy, the two seats between me and the window were empty. The doors were about to close. I was reading my book, and hoping to spread out later. Eric Ambler was made for moments like

Harry Vanda & George Young

By Shane Maloney

At 13, Johannes Hendricus Jacob van den Berg began teaching himself guitar in the basement of the tenement where his family lived in The Hague. But no sooner had he formed a youth-club band than his parents announced they were emigrating to Australia. Their only son dut

'Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Battle for Supremacy in the 21st Century' by Hugh White

By Hugh White

Monsoon melds two very different books into one. One book is a geopolitical treatise, conceived on a grand oceanic scale. It argues that global power shifts mean the Indian Ocean is becoming again the fulcrum of world power and will be the main theatre of strategic rivalry in the twenty-first century. The other book is a travelogue that takes the reader on a

'Hand Me Down World' By Lloyd Jones

By Delia Falconer

“I was with her at the first hotel on the Arabian Sea. That was for two years. Then at the hotel in Tunisia for three years. At the first hotel we slept in the same room. I knew her name, but that is all. I did not know when her birthday was. I did not know how old she was. I did not know where she came from in Africa … We might be from different countries but the world we came into contained

Tom Hooper’s 'The King’s Speech' and Derek Cianfrance’s 'Blue Valentine'

Failure to Communicate

By Luke Davies

“Do you know any jokes?” asks a speech pathologist of his newest patient, a stammerer. “Timing is not my strong suit,” the uptight patient replies. It’s the early 1930s and the Australian pathologist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), known for his unorth

Aravind Adiga on VS Naipaul’s 'The Masque of Africa'

Magical Thinking

By Aravind Adiga

For over 40 years now, VS Naipaul has met, interviewed and annoyed people in dozens of countries to produce a body of travel writing that challenges the basic tenets of a liberal world view. Multicultural democracies such as India and the UK treat binary disti

Robert Manne on John Howard’s 'Lazarus Rising'

Man of Wood

By Robert Manne

Having wrestled with this long and boring book for six entire days, I was astonished when I finally realised how little I had discovered about John Howard or his government. Apart perhaps for Howard’s version of his testy relationship with Peter Costello, there is in

High Priest

By Amanda Lohrey

The Moorilla estate is set on a peninsula of sandstone cliffs that juts out into the Derwent estuary on Hobart’s northern fringe. Framed to the south-west by the looming grandeur of Mt Wellington and to the east by Mt Direction, the slopes of the peninsula are planted with grapevines, and a cluster of modern buildings perch atop the rise. It is here that the visionary project, the Museum of Old