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Staff writer Zoë Schlanger is the proud owner of a petunia that glows in the dark. But she doesn’t just appreciate the novelty houseplant as work of science. Zoë sees its glow as a way to help us appreciate plants as more alive, more vital, and more complex than we humans typically do. Because in recent years, some scientists have reopened a provocative debate: Are plants intelligent?
They’ve devised  experiments that break down elements of this big broad question: Can plants be said to hear? Sense touch? Communicate? Make decisions? Recognize kin? 
Schlanger is the author of the upcoming The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life in Earth. How could a thing without a brain be considered intelligent? Schlanger has spoken with dozens of botanists, from the most renegade to the most cautious, and she reports back on the state of the revolution in thinking. 
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Writer Gary Shteyngart set sail on the inaugural voyage of the biggest cruise ship ever built—the Icon of the Seas—in search of the "real" America. (And maybe to throw a great suite party along the way.) What he found instead, like many a great novelist before him, was a far more isolating experience. Shteyngart recounts his "seven agonizing nights" aboard a giant floating mall full of memorable characters, bad entertainment, even worse food—and the ever-present desire to keep up.
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The Stormy Daniels case may have a less serious fact pattern. But it might turn out to be the one chance to hold Donald Trump accountable for election interference. Atlantic staff writer David Graham explains the importance of the case and how Trump might actually be enjoying this new form of courtroom campaigning.

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Is having a Birkin bag ... a right? Earlier this year, two California residents filed a class-action lawsuit against the French luxury design company Hermès. Their grievance was that although they could afford a coveted Birkin bag made by the company, they could not buy one.
We talk to Atlantic staff writer Amanda Mull about the lawsuit and the current state of the luxury market. What do we actually want from luxury these days? Is there even such a thing anymore as a rare luxury good? And what handbag is Amanda carrying?
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Where were you for the 2017 total eclipse? Where will you be this year? And where will you be for the next one in 2045? Hanna talks to Atlantic staff writer Marina Koren about the eclipse as a peculiar event: a beautiful if not slightly unsettling moment that is also a strange marker of time.
And we hear from retired astrophysicist Fred Espenak who's seen more than 20 total eclipses in his life and wonders which eclipse might end up being his last.
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Atlantic political reporter John Hendrickson has had a stutter since he was a kid. Recently he heard Donald Trump make fun of Joe Biden’s stutter, and he noticed that the audience laughed.
Hendrickson’s working theory has been that disability is apolitical, and he wondered what Trump supporters actually feel about him making fun of people with disabilities. We go to a Trump rally in Dayton, Ohio and poll the crowd. 
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