Rob Walker is the former Consumed columnist for the New York Times Magazine and the author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are. In an informal conversation, Mr. Walker and Bobbi Patterson of Emory’s Department of Religion will discuss one of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism—that suffering is caused by desire—and the complexity of navigating a culture in which “desire” is manufactured by product designers and advertising agencies, and driven by our own consumerism. In his book, Rob Walker describes an important new cultural shift in which people create their own brands and even adopt products not just as consumer choices but as conscious expressions of their identities. Copies of the book will be available for purchase before and after the lecture. (Sales of the book benefit the Carlos Museum.)