What We Are Reading Today: The Universe Within by Neil Shubin

What We Are Reading Today: The Universe Within by Neil Shubin
Short Url
Updated 12 March 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: The Universe Within by Neil Shubin

What We Are Reading Today: The Universe Within by Neil Shubin

Neil Shubin’s “The Universe Within” takes an expansive approach to the question of why we look the way we do.

Shubin turns his gaze skyward, showing us how the entirety of the universe’s 14-billion-year history can be seen in our bodies and pointing out  how the evolution of the cosmos has profoundly marked our own bodies.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Gaslighting’ by Kate Abramson

What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Gaslighting’ by Kate Abramson
Updated 04 November 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Gaslighting’ by Kate Abramson

What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Gaslighting’ by Kate Abramson

“Gaslighting” is suddenly in everyone’s vocabulary. It’s written about, talked about, tweeted about, even sung about it.

It’s become shorthand for being manipulated by someone who insists that up is down, hot is cold, dark is light—someone who isn’t just lying about such things, but trying to drive you crazy.

The term has its origins in a 1944 film in which a husband does exactly that to his wife, his crazy-making efforts symbolized by the rise and fall of the gaslights in their home. Kate Abramson examines gaslighting from a philosophical perspective, investigating it as a distinctive moral phenomenon.