Raised in a Jewish Orthodox family, philosopher and novelist Rebecca Goldstein gave up on the idea of God in her teenage years, after she read Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not A Christian. She then became ‘a quiet atheist’, so that she wouldn’t upset her religious parents. Meanwhile, Goldstein has become a vocal humanist. She found solace in philosophy and philosophical fiction, having a particular soft spot for Plato and Spinoza – her twitter account name is ‘PlatoOnBookTour: Plato reacts to the 21^st century.’ She is one of three philosophers who ever got the US National Humanities Medal. A visiting Professor at New York University and New College of the Humanities in London, Goldstein will be giving a talk on Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away, and discussing post-truth at HowTheLightGetsIn Festival in London on 22^nd September. In this interview, she explains why we should think more about what really matters, the ways in which mattering is a more helpful philosophical concept than meaning, and how thinking that some are better than others because of their talents is dangerous.