What The Intercept Is Reading

Nonfiction

“ Proof: The Uncertain Science of Certainty Book ,” Adam Kucharski (2025)

My summer reading was a little unusual this year, because I’m in the middle of writing a book, which is orienting my reading choices (alongside my nagging insecurities, etc.) The book I’m writing is about how our discourses around uncertainty (“these uncertain times” and so on) can risk distracting from some of the more pernicious certainties grounding this grim conjuncture — so I’ve been trying to keep vaguely abreast of the “uncertainty” literature circulating.

Most of it is the very sort of thing I’m arguing against — overtures to unending doubt, which fail to look at what gets held certain, which world-ordering structures get to resist doubt (e.g. borders , property relations, gender binaries