The Light Eaters

A Book Talk with Zoë Schlanger

Presented by the Garden Forum Collaborative

• Tuesday, December 16, 2025 – 7:00 pm–8:30 pm

Join the Garden Forum Collaborative for its inaugural lecture! The JC Raulston Arboretum has joined with the North Carolina Botanical Garden Foundation, Sarah P Duke Gardens, Durham Garden Forum, and Durham County Master Gardeners to bring you a night with Zoë Schlanger, author of "The Light Eaters."

"The Light Eaters" is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.

About Zoë Schlanger

Zoë Schlanger is a staff writer at the "Atlantic," where she covers climate change. She is the author of "The Light Eaters," a New York Times bestselling book about the world of plant-behavior-and-intelligence research, published by HarperCollins. Her work has appeared in "The New York Times," NPR, and "The New York Review of Books," among other major outlets. She was the recipient of a 2017 National Association of Science Writers reporting award for coverage of air pollution in Detroit, and a finalist for the 2019 Livingston Award for a series on water politics at the Texas-Mexico border. She is often a guest speaker at journalism schools. She lives in New York.

"The Light Eaters" is a "New York Times" bestseller that has been dubbed a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom. It is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence.

Cost

Free for JCRA Members and members of any Garden Forum Collaborative organization (North Carolina Botanical Garden, Sarah P Duke Gardens, JC Raulston Arboretum, Durham Garden Forum and Durham County Master Gardeners); $10 for all others.

Registration

Advance registration is required. Register online at https://go.unc.edu/lighteaters.

You will receive an email from the Garden Forum Collaborative (unc_botanical@learning-stream.com) with instructions on how to join the program online once registration is completed.

Location

Online.

Questions

Contact the JCRA Education Team at jcraprograms@ncsu.edu for more information about this program.