Latest / FOMO Sapiens with Patrick J. McGinnis
S15 E3 What Drives Every Human Decision You've Ever Made, with MacArthur Genius Rebecca Goldstein
In this episode of FOMO Sapiens, Patrick McGinnis sits down with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, MacArthur Fellow, National Medal of the Humanities recipient, and author of the new book The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us (Liveright, 2026), for one of the most philosophically rich conversations the show has had. Rebecca holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Princeton, has taught at Yale, Columbia, NYU, Dartmouth, and Harvard, and has spent more than 40 years developing a theory she calls the mattering instinct: the universal human drive to prove to…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.