The Shakers and Bingers love a bit of intellectually stimulating music too.

Check out the music selected for FBi's recent Out of the Box segment with Kara Kidman.

Out of the Box, Thursday 9 June 2011

PART ONE: RIP LABOR – WHAT NEXT? A NIGHT OF MAUDLIN, HILARITY AND PREDICTIONS

MICHAEL COSTA AND IMRE SALUSINSZKY

Former NSW Treasurer, Michael Costa and NSW Political Reporter for The Australian, Imre Salusinszky will discuss the foibles, failings and future of NSW Labor, Liberal and Green. In a lively evening of dinner, debate, wine and wagers, Costa and Imre will answer your questions, speculate, and stake their reputations on the next six months.

S&S's very own bookie will be along to take bets from the audience – bottles of plonk, packs of thin cigars and the odd tenner will be recklessly wagered on the developments of the next six months. Payouts will take place at the September twin event PART TWO: THE DAY OF RECKONING AND COMMISERATION.

Dr Paul Monk

on why your strategies fail and just about every forecast you make is wrong

About our speaker

Dr Paul Monk is Managing Director of Austhink Consulting. He is also an essayist on cultural and geopolitical affairs in the major media, public speaker and facilitator. His doctorate in International Relations was a study of the capacity of the United States government to learn and think in its Cold War counter-insurgency campaigns against Communism in South East Asia and Central America.
He has taught strategic studies and Chinese politics at university and is the author of Thunder From the Silent Zone: Rethinking China (Scribe 2005), which emphasizes the need for critical thinking in coming to grips with the rise of Chinese power in our time. It was shortlisted, in 2006, for both the Gleebooks Prize for non-fiction in New South Wales, and The Age Book of the Year in Victoria.

Roger Sandall on Communes

Putting the cult into culture...

About Roger Sandall
Roger Sandall is the author of The Culture Cult, a study of romantic primitivism and its effects. Roger studied anthropology at Auckland and Columbia Universities, has a degree in fine arts, and taught anthropology and film at the University of Sydney. His writing has appeared in numerous international publications including Commentary, The American Interest, Encounter, The New Criterion, The American, Sight and Sound, Quadrant, Art International, The New Lugano Review, The Salisbury Review, Merkur, Mankind, Visual Anthropology, and Social Science and Modern Society.

Sex, Science and Profits

Why publicly funding science and research is limiting our capacity to innovate

with

Dr TerenceKealey

Vice Chancellor University of Buckingham

Dr Terence Kealey is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham in the UK and a clinicalbiochemist specialising in human skin cell biology. In his first book The Economic Laws of Scientific Researchhe argued that, contrary to convention, governments need not fund science. Hissecond book, Sex, Science and Profitspresents an evolutionary and economic history of humanity, showing how theroots of barter, trade and contract are embedded in human nature and howmarkets work on the evolutionary principles of natural selection. Dr Kealey writes regularly for the Spectator and New Scientist.

The economist's debate: Is the Housing Boom a Bursting Bubble?

Join the Binge Thinkers for a debate with two diametrically opposed economists on Sydney's favourite topic - house prices.

Dan Denning is Managing Editor of Port Phillip Publishing and in-house sage at investment bulletin The Daily Reckoning and resource newsletter Diggers and Drillers. He started his financial career the old fashioned way: on the ground floor. Dan founded and edited a private financial newsletter on small-capitalization stocks in 1998, leading over 35,000 subscribers to profits in dynamic new American companies during the height of the bull market. In 2000, he became the editor of Strategic Investment, the flagship publication of internationally known Agora Publishing. His high-level, macro-economic and stock market forecasts are read by more than 35,000 high-dollar investors and fund managers in over 70 countries. His reporting and analysis for The Daily Reckoning is read by more than 350,000 people regularly. Dan is also a regular columnist for Money Week, a London-based financial publication, and his 2005 book The Bull Hunter was a best-seller.

Rory Robertson is Macquarie Bank’s Interest-Rate Strategist responsible for analysing the Australian, US and global economies, with a particular focus on the monetary policies of the RBA, the Fed and other central banks. He has spent more than two decades in the business of watching economies and markets, previously holding positions at the RBA and BT Australia's investment bank. In a decade and a half as a market forecaster, Rory has built his reputation as an authoritative central-bank watcher whose understanding of policy frameworks and economic fundamentals regularly generates useful insights on the outlook for interest rates, equity markets and exchange rates.  Along the way, Rory has developed an expertise on housing markets.  His famous 2008 peak-to-trough bet on house prices with doomsday economist Steve Keen ended with Dr Keen “legging it” about 230k from Canberra to Mt Kosciuszko in April this year, after house prices fell by only about 5% before rising to new highs (http://www.keenwalk.com.au).  Rory’s strong view on house prices remains that the extremists – in both directions – will continue to be wrong.