You’re bound to have harboured a thought, at some stage in your life, that you’ve been too afraid to pursue any further.

It’s not you, it’s society — from a young age it’s been drilled into your mind that you can’t just go around proclaiming that we are all sexual perverts, that foetuses aren’t really people and that ANZAC Day should probably be tossed on the scrap heap.

But it turns out there really is a time and place for everything. And if there isn’t you can just make one, which is a bit like what the Sydney Opera House has done with their seductively salacious Festival of Dangerous Ideas.

It might sound like the title of Lemony Snicket’s latest narrative, but these narratives are as unsuitable for children as they are for the water cooler. This year you can bring Australia’s racial tensions to the fore with Alec Doomadgee, look beyond the delusion of free will with Sam Harris or pick a whole myriad of contentious bones with flagrant feminist Germaine Greer.

Offensive, suggestive, audacious, but overall, inspired. 

Festival of Dangerous Ideas
28 – 30 September 2012
Sydney Opera House
Court more controversy with a ticket multipack and save up to 25%