Life: A Survival Guide

Christine Jackman & Mary Hoang

Coronavirus’s "new normal" has presented us with a great mental health challenge. How to cope with danger, doomscrolling, restrictions and constant uncertainty? 

Mary Hoang, psychologist, founder of The Indigo Project and author of Darkness is Golden, turned to art and music to gain comfort, meaning, and a deeper understanding after the death of her father. Journalist Christine Jackman charted her journey to manage the stress of a high-pressure job in her book Turning Down the Noise, a personal account of how silent contemplation practices helped her find peace in just being still. 

Join these two curious and practical writers for real-life tips and insights into finding strength in times of hardship.

White Feminism

Koa Beck

Please be aware this talk contains adult themes and is recommended for audiences ages 15+

Modern-day feminism appears harmless, commodified, and obsessed with individual success. Women's empowerment looks like receiving male privileges, which repeats patterns of patriarchy, capitalism and greed. 

Koa Beck, former editor of Jezebel and author of White Feminism, explores gender and race in history to reveal how the fight for equality has shut out Indigenous and transgender women as well as women of colour. 

Join Koa to explore how white feminism maintains white supremacy, classism and transphobia - and how we can push back. This will be a radical, rousing call to enter a new era of the movement. 

How Smart is Artificial Intelligence? 

Kate Crawford

In the last ten years, Artificial Intelligence has become interwoven with everyday life. We're constantly tracked for corporate data collection. Almost every relationship or exchange is watched and evaluated. Unregulated facial recognition systems assess mental health, employability, and potential to commit a crime. 

But these interactions are built upon the politics of extraction: mining natural resources, exploiting workers, and harvesting data. Though the traditional image of robots pretends a veneer of objectivity, AI is actually built upon subtle systems of power, which can reproduce racist, misogynist and ableist judgements. 

Join author and academic Kate Crawford to explore how is AI reshaping the world. Where are the boundaries of history, ideology, politics and prejudice? And how does machine classification entrench inequality?