I'm Alan Alder, and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

We do have the capacity because of our very developed brains for self-reflection. We can sort of step out of

ourselves, look at ourselves, see how much attention we pay ourselves and ask the question,

why am I worth it? Given how much attention I seem to be paying myself, I seem to think

I'm the most important thing in the universe. And short of lunacy, most of us realize we're not, right?

I mean, that's real lunacy to think yet you are.

Some people are lunatics, right?

But we in some sense want to justify all of the attention we pay ourselves.

But we have so many different ways of doing it,

and we really clash over the different ways that we do it. But we have so many different ways of doing it, and we really clash

over the different ways that we do it. That's Rebecca Goldstein, a philosopher and novelist,

she's been pondering what she calls the mattering instinct. When she was writing her early novel,

The Mind, Body Problem, her editor didn't quite understand what drove her main character.

Thinking it over, Rebecca realized that her character was really driven by the need to matter.

In the 40 years since, she's talked with dozens of people about their own need to matter.

And she tells their stories in her new book, The Mattering Instinct.

This is a very, very interesting subject that you've raised here. The Mattering Instinct.

And apparently, the longing to matter is our most important instinct.

I have been thinking about it for a very long time talking to people just because it's just

the best conversations I could have, you know, and it would introduce me to such amazing,

unlikely mattering projects that people have.

For example, I was once waiting for a friend in the lobby of a Manhattan

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