In her new book Alive: The Hidden Intelligence of the Living World, Melanie Challenger asks us to reconsider one of our most persistent assumptions: that living organisms are essentially machines, programmed by genes and directed by brains. Drawing on biology and philosophy, she explores the intelligence of bodies themselves, and the remarkable agency of organisms we have traditionally regarded as simple or passive.

Challenger will be joined by Natalie Lawrence, historian of science and author of Planta Sapiens: Unmasking Plant Intelligence and Enchanted Creatures: Our Monsters and Their Meanings. Together they’ll explore the increasingly porous boundaries human and non-human, and what the living world might teach us at a moment when artificial intelligence is forcing us to reconsider what intelligence means at all.