The Wire's Creator To Speak At Sydney Opera House

David Simon, creator of iconic television shows The Wire and Treme, will headline this year's Festival Of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House.

The annual event looks to present challenging ideas from around the world and will this year also feature writer Dan Savage, who will created the LGBT It Gets Better campaign and will discuss modern monogomish relationships, author Hanna Rosin on whether the rise of women means the end of men, Peter Hitchens (the brother and sparring partner of the late Chris Hitchens) on the morality of drug use and convicted murderer Erwin James on the prisoner rehabilitation.

Simon will discuss whether some people 'are more equal than others'.

The festival's co-curator Simon Longstaff (he's also the Executive Director of the St James Ethics Centre) said, “Like most people, I live with some comfortable assumptions… such as, that it's cruel to flog people. But what if it's actually a kinder punishment than prison? Isn't economic growth supposed to be a good thing? And don't all homosexual people want the same rights as heterosexuals?

"The Festival of Dangerous Ideas is made for people who are prepared to have their comfortable assumptions put to the test; to have their beliefs about the world uncomfortably stretched – if not changed.”

The full list of speakers for this year's festival includes:

David Simon, Hanna Rosin, Evgeny Morozov, Vandana Shiva, Peter Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, Peter Rollins, Arlie Hochschild, Dan Savage, Kirby Ferguson, John Safran, Erwin James, Peter Moskos, Mustafa Bargouthi, Conrad Black, Malcolm Knox, Christos Tsiolkas, Patricia Edgar, Dennis Altman, James Fallows, Joe Hildebrand, James O'Loghlin, Julian Burnside, Chris Berg, Emily Maguire and Simran Sethi.

The festival will run from Saturday 2 to Monday 3 November with the timetable available here and ticketing info here.