Why Feeling Seen Shapes Who We Become
This week, we learned how the need to matter and the need to connect are deeply intertwined—and together they shape our inner lives and social worlds.
We’ve focused a lot on fine-tuning our New Year’s resolutions this week, hacking our habits and clarifying our personal and professional goals. But the fact is, we don’t just want to be productive or successful—we want to feel seen. To know that our presence makes a difference, that our lives count in the eyes of others. That longing quietly shapes how we choose friends, form groups, pursue meaning, and decide what’s worth our time and energy. This week, we heard from authors who go deep on the need to matter and connect.
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This Week on the Next Big Idea Daily Podcast
What makes you feel like you matter?
We’re all driven by a deep longing to feel that our lives count for something—that we matter. But how we pursue that sense of mattering shapes everything about who we are and how we connect with others.
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is an award-winning philosopher and author of both fiction and nonfiction whose work has earned her a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. Her new book is called The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us, and you can check out five of her big ideas on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Book Bite of the Week
Why do we click with some people and not others?
Humans are instinctively wired to sync with one another, and this invisible alignment of bodies, brains, and emotions shapes attraction, trust, and belonging. It can deepen connection and fuel cooperation, but it also makes feelings and behaviors contagious, giving each of us more influence over others than we realize. Kate Murphy is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Economist, and Texas Monthly, among other publications and her new book is called Why We Click: The Emerging Science of Interpersonal Synchrony. Check out her summary on the Next Big Idea app.
This week, Book of the Day is brought to you by How To Know Your Self: The Art & Science of Discovering Who You Really Are, by J. Eric Oliver — a transformative new understanding of what it means to be a person―what it means to have and be a “self”. Pick up your copy today.
This Week on the Next Big Idea Podcast
What happens when your entire staff is AI?
Evan Ratliff started a company last summer. He and his co-founders came up with a name, hired a team, built a website, and launched an app. They interviewed interns, planned a company hiking trip, and fielded inbound interest from VCs. Normal startup stuff. Except for one thing: All of Evan’s employees are AI agents. So are his co-founders.
He’s been documenting the journey on his podcast Shell Game — what works, what doesn’t, and what it might tell us about a future where AI employees are everywhere. Listen now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.
Happy Publication Week!
The second week of January saw a bunch of exciting new non-fiction, including Friction: A Biography by Jennifer Vail, Do More In Four by Jared Lindstrom and Joe O'Connor, The Mattering Instinct by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Exile Economics by Ben Chu, 99 Ways to Die by Ashely Alker MD, The Other Side of Change by Maya Shankar, The Score by C. Thi Nguyen, and The Cradle of Citizenship by James Traub. Congratulations to all!