Overview

This is our programme for 2024. You can download the festival brochure and the weekend timetable in PDF format. Tickets for 2025 are available here.

Overview

09:45-10:00 Saturday 19 October

Battle of Ideas 2024 Welcome Address

10:15-11:45 Saturday 19 October

Will a new Race Equality Act improve race relations?

What do women need to be free?

Neurodiversity to gender dysphoria: a problem of over-diagnosis?

Demographic change: will we run out of workers?

Podcast live: Heretics with Andrew Gold – Rosie Kay on cancellation, cancer, comeback

Elections, riots and distrust: what’s the state of democracy?

Are cultural boycotts killing artistic freedom?

Can schools fix ‘Broken Britain’?

Mainstream media and the crisis of trust

12:15-13:30 Saturday 19 October

From social media to AI: a tech moral panic?

The politicisation of maternity

Podcast live: Last Orders – the latest nanny state news

The rise and fall of the ivory tower

The queering of society

Equality law: freedom’s friend or foe?

Assisted dying on the NHS?

Britain isn’t working: the rise of joblessness

Letters on Liberty: Freeing Sex from Libertines and Puritans

From smoking bans to junk-food restrictions: where’s the evidence?

13:45-14:30 Saturday 19 October

Putting your life on (meno)pause

Working to rule: humanity and the history of the algorithm

Podcast live: The Booking Club with Jack Aldane – Geoff Norcott on the British Bloke Decoded

OBR: independent oversight or anti-democratic quango?

The women who wouldn’t wheesht

Labour’s curriculum review: what can we learn from Scotland?

Book launch: The Power of Nuclear: The rise, fall and return of our mightiest energy source

14:45-16:15 Saturday 19 October

Is Western civilisation under siege?

Could AI break the productivity impasse?

Islam vs Islamism vs Islamophobia

Gender wars: no end in sight?

The wellbeing industry: is it doing us any good?

Podcast live: Americano – Trump vs Harris eve-of-election talk

Decolonised or patriotic curriculum?

Academic freedom: (still) under threat?

Gen Z: how to become a dissenter

Letters on Liberty: IN DEFENCE OF A NEW SUBURBIA

16:45-18:15 Saturday 19 October

Is anti-extremism a threat to liberty?

Free Speech Nation with Andrew Doyle: LIVE (TV recording)

Running back to EU? Labour, Europe and the economy

Podcast Live: Chinese Whispers – China in decline?

(De)socialised on YouTube?

Identity politics and the rise of ethnic conflict

Debating Matters: ‘Smartphones should be banned in the classroom’

Balloon debate: who is the world’s greatest comic?

Genocide: what it is and what it isn’t

Letters on Liberty: IN DEFENCE OF PARENTAL AUTHORITY

18:15-20:30 Saturday 19 October

Festival reception and drinks 2024

10:00-10:45 Sunday 20 October

Meet the author: Ian Acheson on Screwed: Britain’s prison crisis and how to escape it

Why JS Bach still matters

Meet the author: Greg Lukianoff on The Canceling of the American Mind

Meet the author: Dr Az Hakeem on Detrans: When transition is not the solution

Meet the author: Jon Moynihan on Return to Growth: How to fix the economy

Meet the author: Christopher Snowdon on You Do Not Exist: An Introduction to Nineteen Eighty-Four

11:00-12:30 Sunday 20 October

From riots to shoplifting: dealing with lawlessness

Populism: a response to two-tier rule?

From WPATH to the Cass Review: the crisis in medical ethics

A sense of place: how to create community in a fractured world

Podcast Live: Planet Normal – Cancelling the past, censoring the present

Literary wars: the betrayal of Rushdie and artistic freedom

(Mis)information: the battle for free speech online

October 7, one year on: new world (dis)order?

Ballots betrayed? The crisis of political representation

Letters on Liberty: WHY CASH KEEPS US FREE

12:45-13:30 Sunday 20 October

From ‘powerhouse’ to populism: Germany today

Meet-Up: Young Free Thinkers mixer

Is nuclear the future of energy… again?

Could citizens’ assemblies save democracy?

War and civilisation: a brief history