216: Rebecca Newberger Goldstein KNOWS Philosophy, Emotion, Education, Humanities & What it Means to Truly Matter

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is an award-winning philosopher, writer, and public intellectual. She is the author of ten books of acclaimed fiction and non-fiction, including 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity and most recently, The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Princeton University and has taught at Yale, Columbia, NYU, Dartmouth, and Harvard. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, her work has been supported by the MacArthur "Genius" grant and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Whiting Institute, Radcliffe Institute, and the National Science Foundation. In 2015, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama. 

Described by recurring guest Erin Brockovich as "The best podcast and host ever," "ON THE KNOWS with Randall Kenneth Jones" is a premier podcast and media platform dedicated to exploring the intersection of professional success, personal fulfillment, and human potential. Through a series of 200+ high-energy conversations with celebrities, changemakers, and thought leaders, Jones delves into the minds of entertainment industry icons and beyond to extract actionable leadership and lifestyle insights. With its frequent focus on authors and books, the arts and humanities, the show skillfully balances the glamour of fame, success, and/or the power of influence with the humor and pathos of everyday life, creating a rich tapestry of human nature and shared experience. 

Host Randall Kenneth Jones is a bestselling author, speaker, and creative communications consultant. The announcer is the celebrated voice actor Susan Bennett, widely known as the original voice of Siri.

Often described as an "antidote to today's anxiety-ridden media landscape," ON THE KNOWS with Randall Kenneth Jones offers a fun yet meaningful spin on aging, legacy, lifelong learning, and "edutainment," by emphasizing creativity, connection, conversation, laughter, listening, kindness, and thought.

"ON THE KNOWS" is produced and edited by Kevin Randall Jones.

Best Quotes from Interview:

• "Every living thing is organically driven by a mandate that ensures it matters to itself—which is to say that it prioritizes its own surviving and thriving. In lifeforms as massive as blue whales and as scanty as a sliver of grass struggling up through a crack in the sidewalk, biology encodes the message of self-mattering."

• Excerpt from "Do I matter? This is the mother of our mattering questions. Ultimately, we want to know what matters because we desperately want our own lives to be driven by what matters. We want to know who matters because we desperately want to be numbered among the ones who matter."

• "I used to think I wanted to be famous, but now I know I just want to matter." Randall Kenneth Jones

• When it comes to our own mattering, we are staunch realists. We don't want feelings. We want the facts.

• “Some seek to demonstrate their mattering by diminishing the mattering of others, such as racism, sexism, classism, jingoism, elitism, ethnic biases, and other forms of mattering diminishment that we haven’t yet gotten around to naming.”

• Excerpt from "There just doesn't seem to be enough mattering to go around, and we scramble like children beneath a piñata."

www.OnTheKnows.com

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein www.RebeccaGoldstein.com
Randall Kenneth Jones: www.RandallKennethJones.com
Susan Bennett: www.SusanCBennett.com
Kevin Randall Jones: www.KevinRandallJones.com