Starcast
Join the waitlist
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
The Mattering Instinct: Why We Long to Matter | Rebecca Newberger Goldstein – EP 727
Coming soon to iPhone. Already have it? “Listen in Starcast” takes you straight there.
On this episode
About this episode
What if the most human thing about us isn’t happiness, survival, or even love but the relentless need to feel we matter?In this profound installment of the You Matter series on Passion Struck, MacArthur Fellow and National Humanities Medalist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein joins the show to unpack her groundbreaking book The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us (Liveright, January 13, 2026).A philosopher and novelist celebrated for Plato at the Googleplex and The Mind-Body Problem, Goldstein argues that this primal instinct is uniquely human. Rooted in self-reflection and our resistance to entropy, it propels our greatest achievements and darkest conflicts.…