The Helix Center for Interdisciplinary Investigation

Where Disciplines Converge
and Ideas Emerge

A university without walls – drawing together Nobel laureates, MacArthur Fellows, and pioneering thinkers from every discipline for unrehearsed intellectual exchange.

Since 2012, The Helix Center has hosted more than 500 of the world's most distinguished scholars, scientists, artists, and public intellectuals for free interdisciplinary roundtable discussions at the The Marianne & Nicholas Young Auditorium on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Every event is free, open to the public, and archived on our website.

Watch our latest Roundtable

Attend or Stream an Upcoming Roundtable

Sat
Mar 7th
2026
  Attend
  Stream

Where Have All the Isms Gone?: On the Evolution of Knowledge

Not very long ago the History of Ideas had been organized according to movements within each field. In Anthropology, for example, Malinowski was associated with Functionalism, Levi-Strauss with Structuralism, etc. Post-structuralism and postmodernism each in their turn at first appeared as “the next big thing.” These terms are familiar to many of us today and have been... read more! »

Recent Roundtables

Sat
Feb 21st
2026
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Why We Write

A naïve and perhaps mischievous take on the query “why we write” is to claim that what we write already asserts why we write. On this view “It was lunchtime and I had a sandwich at Joe’s” directs you ostensively to information about my afternoon meal. “Do I need to spell it out?” goes the... read more! »
Sat
Oct 4th
2025
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See Memory

An Afternoon of Art, Neuroscience & Storytelling Join us for the New York premiere of the newly expanded 2025 edition of See Memory—the Bronze Telly Award–winning, hand-painted short documentary that premiered on PBS this spring. Created by filmmaker and visual artist Viviane Silvera, See Memory brings the invisible workings of memory, trauma, and healing to life through over 40,000 individually painted... read more! »
Sat
Sep 20th
2025
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Resurgence of Freud

For most of the 20th century Freud’s thoughts were foundational in understanding mental functioning while also offering the consensus approach to treating mental conditions, from neurosis to other more severe psychopathologies. With the advent of psychotropic medications and advances delving more deeply into the brain’s biology, the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and his followers lost much... read more! »

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