The Helix Center

The Many Minds of Memory

This roundtable explores memory as a dynamic, evolving process that shapes identity, consciousness, and our relationship to the past, present, and future. It considers ho

Ethics & AI

This roundtable examines justice in the age of artificial intelligence, exploring questions of fairness, privacy, and decision-making when algorithms have unprecedented a

How Deep Do We Go? Behavior, Mind, and The 4-Billion-Year History of Life

This roundtable explores the evolutionary and biological roots of consciousness and emotion, drawing on Joseph LeDoux’s work to reconsider how emotions arise from fundame

Living in the Anthropocene

This roundtable explores the conceptual foundations of our current planetary era and how emerging perspectives challenge traditional distinctions between humans and the n

Design in Nature

This roundtable examines the concept of “design” in nature, considering whether the apparent order, efficiency, and aesthetic coherence of natural forms can be understood

The Displaced and The Other

This roundtable examines the human experience of migration and displacement, both historically and in the present day, in the context of large-scale global crises affecti

The Library as Reality and Metaphor

This roundtable explores the significance of libraries across their many forms—physical, digital, and cognitive—as systems for organizing, preserving, and transmitting kn

Embodied AI

This roundtable examines the concept of embodied cognition and its implications for artificial intelligence systems that integrate perception, action, and interaction wit

Happiness

This roundtable explores the concept of happiness from philosophical, psychological, and ethical perspectives, examining how it is defined, measured, and understood acros

Understanding Genius II: Women

This roundtable will explore why women’s genius is often less readily recognized than men’s, using that disparity as a starting point to examine how historical definition

The Realm of Mystery

This roundtable will examine the philosophical problem of knowledge and ignorance, considering how we come to recognize the limits of what we know and how “known unknowns

The Changing Nature of Free Will

This roundtable will examine how advances in genetics and neuroscience, along with ideas from quantum mechanics, are reshaping conceptions of free will, individual choice

Music to Whose Ears II: Embodied Cognition

This roundtable will examine the role of the body in musical experience, perception, and cognition through dialogue between artists and scientists.

The Span of Infinity

This roundtable will examine the concept of the infinite across cosmological, mathematical, philosophical, psychological, and theological perspectives, and its implicatio

Women and Science

This roundtable will examine the gender gap in STEM, the challenges women face in advancing in scientific fields, and the cultural, psychological, and structural factors

From Children’s Sights to Our Insights: Ethiopian Children’s Drawings, Stories and Inner Lives

This roundtable will examine children’s drawings and narratives to explore development, representation, and the universal and culture-specific dimensions of inner experie

Ignorance and Curiosity

This roundtable will examine the role of curiosity and ignorance in driving scientific inquiry, including how we identify unknowns, generate questions, and apply these pr

Love, the Interrogative

This roundtable will examine the nature of love across different forms and perspectives, considering insights from history, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, poetry, and othe

Male-Male Competition: Globalization, War, and Violence

This roundtable will examine Darwin’s concept of male-male competition and its modern interpretations, including its relevance to human behavior and evolutionary biology.

Life and Movement

This roundtable will examine movement in life through evolution, coordination dynamics, social interaction, kinesthesia, and aesthetics, and how these perspectives help u