Four talks. One day.
28 September 2025
Curious is where culture, creativity and ideas collide. It’s for minds that never stop asking questions about the world and ourselves.
Dive into the ideas shaping headlines, sparking debate and changing the way we live.
- Is this AI’s Black Mirror Moment? – Once the plaything of science fiction, AI has become all too real. Australia’s most beloved science communicator Dr Karl Kruszelnicki and experts Dr Micah Goldwater, Dr Jonathan Kummerfeld and Dr Anna Broinowski take us from hallucination in the algorithm to vulnerability in the human mind and unpack benefits and risks at this critical moment. Are we blindly racing headfirst into the chaos of AI before we have even recovered from the divisions and manipulations fuelled by social media?
- Is It Fascism Yet? – Professor Jason Stanley, an American expert on fascism who is leaving the US to move to Canada, and M Gessen, award-winning journalist who fled Putin’s Russia and now warns of echoes in the US, join acclaimed author Anna Funder for an urgent conversation on autocracy. Has the US shifted to authoritarianism and is there any way back? And what does this mean for Australia and the rest of the world?
- Live Journalism – FINAL TICKETS – For the first time, the Sydney Opera House will stage a live radio magazine show, hosted by crowd favourite Annabel Crabb. Crafted storytelling meets immersive sound design as Booker Prize-winning author Richard Flanagan, technology reporter Ange Lavoipierre, audio producer and writer Rachael Cusick follow their curiosity from the waters off Port Lincoln to the inner sanctum of Sydney’s psychic circles, and more… A rare fusion of storytelling, craft and the power of sound.
- Gender and Power – SOLD OUT – With ‘gender wars’ spreading across the western world placing lives at risk, M Gessen, one of the most insightful thinkers of their generation, examines the dark forces behind gender panic and why it has fallen on such fertile ground. Unrivalled in their ability to see connections others miss, M Gessen speaks to Dr Annamarie Jagose and examines the intersections of gender, control and power to delve into how movements for recognition, equality and tolerance are now perceived as threats.
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