As soon as there was life, there was danger. Fear, on the other hand, is a recent invention.

So says the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science, neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, and child and adolescent psychiatry, at NYU, Joseph LeDoux. In his new book, Dr. LeDoux explores a question that has long puzzled neuroscientists—what is consciousness? He believes that this holds the key to understand emotions like fear, and how to treat emotional disorders..

In a mind-opening conversation with prize-winning science writer, Claudia Dreifus, Dr. LeDoux, the author of Anxious and The Emotional Brain, speaks on his newest book, The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four Billion Year Story of How We Got Our Conscious Brains.

Tickets from $35

A book signing follows the event.