Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Sunday 24 March
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
A co-presentation with Melbourne Conversations.
It used to be that the ability to tell the truth was the keystone to an honourable life, but in the last 20 years that has changed. Today, your integrity is as dependent, if not more so, on your ability to recognise lies.
Award-winning journalist Christine Kenneally will look at the nature of contemporary misinformation – and discuss tools to detect when someone in the media is lying, and when they are not.
Additional performance by Mark Jones and The Beautiful Lies.
Christine Kenneally is an award-winning journalist and author who writes for the New Yorker, the New York Times, Slate, Time, New Scientist, the Monthly, and other publications. Her book, The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, is published by Penguin. Before becoming a reporter, she received a PhD in linguistics from Cambridge University and a B.A. (Hons) in English and Linguistics from University of Melbourne.
She recently published an expose in the Monthly about the ‘forgotten children’ – now the subject of the recently announced Royal Commission into Child Abuse.
Directions
Please enter via the Rail Gate Entrance – Poplar Road, Parkville – and present your booking form. The Sermon takes place in The Leopard Lodge, which is just to the left as you enter.
You won’t be able to access the Secular Sermon via the Main Zoo entrance at Elliot Avenue. Likewise, entry to the Sermon does not permit entry to the Zoo itself, but any attendees who’ve paid for entry to the Zoo can enter the Sermon between 2:45-3:00pm.
By public transport
The Rail Gate Entrance is adjacent to Royal Park railway station, on the Upfield line. The 55 tram also stops near the gate (Stop 25).
By car
Parking at the Zoo is available - $2 for 5 hours.
The School of Life Melbourne Secular Sermon Series
Now, it’s not just religious folk who can get life lessons (and a good stirring of the soul) from a regular Sunday sermon.
London’s School of Life offers good ideas for everyday life – and its hugely popular Secular Sermon series arrives in Melbourne in 2013, curated by theatre producer Stephen Armstrong.
Join some of Australia’s (and the world’s) most maverick cultural figures as they explore the values we should live by, in hour-long theatrical events that will make you think, reflect and even laugh.
Subjects range from vengeance and lying, to humour and the virtues (or otherwise) of being ‘ordinary’. Expect persuasive polemics delivered with particular passion, communal singing … and possibly even sticky buns with fellow ‘parishioners’.
Whimsically pitched, but with a serious purpose, the Secular Sermons will pop up in cultural venues all around Melbourne.
The School of Life Sermons are a co-presentation between Melbourne Conversations, the City of Melbourne’s free public talks program, and The Wheeler Centre with generous support from the Trawalla Foundation.
Featuring
Christine Kenneally
Christine Kenneally is an award-winning journalist and author who has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times, Slate, Time, New Scientist, Scientific American, the Monthly, BuzzFeed and other publications. She writes about identity, culture, and science, and her stories have covered death in 20th century orphanages, brain surgery, emergency communications, and animal thought.
She was a senior contributor at Buzzfeed News for 4 years, working on an American orphanage story. Published in August 2018, the story was viewed more than six million times in six months and was nominated for a National Magazine Award and two Deadline Awards. Her books, The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures and The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, are published by Penguin and Black Inc.
Before becoming a reporter, Kenneally received a Ph.D. in linguistics from Cambridge University and a B.A. (Hons) in English and Linguistics from Melbourne University. She was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, and has lived in England, Iowa, and Brooklyn.