Understanding the Mattering Instinct with Philosopher Rebecca Goldstein EP 449
Best of Both Worlds Podcast
iHeartPodcasts
4.5 • 802 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2026
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In today's episode, Sarah and Laura chat non-fiction reading, and then interviews Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, a philosopher, writer, and expert on what it means to matter, and why humans instinctually feel pulled to feel like they matter - even to themselves!
They talk mattering projects from parenting and relationships to the pursuit of excellence. Rebecca's book is called The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us And Divides Us, and she has a substack called The Mattering Map.
In the Q&A, a listener wonders how Sarah is doing about a year after her heart episode and diagnosis.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Laura Vandercom. |
| 0:11.3 | I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. |
| 0:15.2 | And I'm Sarah Hart Unger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. |
| 0:20.6 | We are two working parents |
| 0:21.8 | who love our careers and our families. Welcome to Best of Both Worlds. Here we talk about how |
| 0:27.5 | real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out child care to mapping out |
| 0:33.0 | long-term career goals, we want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to Best of Both worlds. This is |
| 0:43.0 | Laura. This episode is airing in mid-March of 26. Sarah is going to be interviewing Rebecca |
| 0:49.5 | Newberger Goldstein, who is a philosopher and the author of the book The Mattering Instinct. So, Sarah, |
| 0:55.2 | what drew you to this topic? I've read a lot of psychology, but not a lot of philosophy, |
| 1:00.4 | but it just sounded really interesting to me. I mean, you hear people say, you know, |
| 1:04.4 | what matters? But then like, what is that really? And this book really kind of delves into, |
| 1:09.3 | well, what does that even mean? And it was a little |
| 1:12.5 | bit more jargony and technical philosophy that I'm used to, but it was also very readable and |
| 1:18.0 | really interesting. And I realized that I honestly hadn't read a lot of philosophy. So it was kind of |
| 1:22.8 | fun to just like delve into a different field. Not since Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. |
| 1:27.4 | I loved Zen and. |
| 1:45.5 | It's a fun book, you know? It was polarizing, though. Polarizing. I think I was in 10th or 11th grade, and half the class was like, this is terrible. And I remember being like an outlier. Yeah, and liking it. I really liking it. Interesting. Okay. So not a whole lot of philosophy happening in your life. |
| 1:45.8 | No. |
| 1:45.5 | And I was thinking back to like, I was like, Emerson, the Yeah, and liking it. I'm really liking it. Interesting. Okay. So not a whole lot of philosophy happening in your life. |
| 1:45.9 | No. |
| 2:01.0 | And I was thinking back to like, I was like Emerson, Thoreau. I mean, that was the philosophy. That was a philosophy. That was a long time ago. And Ms. Goldstein with the mattering instinct now. So we're on that. Yeah. Yeah, so what have you been reading lately then, if not usually philosophy? |
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