Moby with Dr. Moran Cerf

What do you do when you realize you have everything you’ve ever wanted but still feel completely empty? What do you do when it all starts to fall apart? The alluring power of fame, the crippling power of addiction, and the enthralling power of creativity were all forces that conspired to manipulate, mold, and potentially destroy Moby as a musician and human. To celebrate the launch of the second volume of his extraordinary life story (Then It Fell Apart) and the twentieth anniversary of the hit album Play, Moby recounts his journey into the dark heart of fame. A scientific twist is provided by neuroscientist Moran Cerf during the program’s Q&A.

Please note: While a few acoustic songs may be played, this is not a concert.

A book signing of Then It Fell Apart will take place post-program.

About the Speakers

Moby was born in Harlem in 1965. He is a singer-songwriter, musician, DJ, and photographer. The first volume of his memoirs, Porcelain, was published by Penguin in 2016.

Moran Cerf is a professor of neuroscience and business at the Kellogg School of Management and the neuroscience program at Northwestern University. As a member of the Institute on Complex Systems, and visiting faculty at the MIT Media Lab, his research uses methods from neuroscience to understand the underlying mechanisms of our psychology. He has discussed aspects of his research on behavior changes, emotion, decision-making and dreams with actors Giancarlo Esposito and Jake Gyllenhaal on stage at the Rubin.

Recently his focus has been on the neural mechanisms that underlie decision making, thereby offering a new perspective on predicting future choices and investigating how much free will we have in our decisions. In his work, Professor Cerf studies patients undergoing brain surgery by recording the activity of individual nerve cells using electrodes implanted in the patient’s brain, offering a novel way to understand our psyche by observing the brain directly from within.

Dr. Cerf holds a PhD in neuroscience from Caltech, as well as an MA in Philosophy and a BSc in Physics from Tel-Aviv University.

Dr. Cerf is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor at the American Film Institute (AFI), where he teaches an annual screenwriting class on science in films, and is a consultant to various Hollywood films and TV shows, such as CBS’s Bull and Limitless, USA Network’s Mr. Robot and Falling Water, and more. Most importantly, he is left-handed.