What We Are Reading Today: ‘Father Time’ by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Father Time’ by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
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Updated 16 October 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Father Time’ by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Father Time’ by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

It has long seemed self-evident that women care for babies and men do other things. Hasn’t it always been so? But come the 21st century, increasing numbers of men are tending babies, sometimes right from birth.

How can this be happening? Puzzled and dazzled by the tender expertise of new fathers around the world—several in her own family—celebrated evolutionary anthropologist and primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy set out to trace the deep history of male nurturing and explain a surprising departure from everything she had assumed to be “normal.”


What We Are Reading Today: ‘How to Change a Memory’ by Steve Ramirez

What We Are Reading Today: ‘How to Change a Memory’ by Steve Ramirez
Updated 10 November 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘How to Change a Memory’ by Steve Ramirez

What We Are Reading Today: ‘How to Change a Memory’ by Steve Ramirez

As a graduate student at MIT, Steve Ramirez successfully created false memories in the lab. Now, as a neuroscientist working at the frontiers of brain science, he foresees a future where we can replace our negative memories with positive ones. In “How to Change a Memory,” Ramirez draws on his own memories—of friendship, family, loss, and recovery—to reveal how memory can be turned on and off like a switch, edited, and even constructed from nothing.

A future in which we can change our memories of the past may seem improbable, but in fact, the everyday act of remembering is one of transformation.

Intentionally editing memory to improve our lives takes advantage of the brain’s natural capacity for change.

In “How to Change a Memory,”  Ramirez explores how scientists discovered that memories are fluid—they change over time, can be erased, reactivated, and even falsely implanted in the lab. Reflecting on his own path as a scientist, he examines how memory manipulation shapes our imagination and sense of self.