Alex O'Connor

Why do things exist?

We have swallowed wholesale this idea that everything can be reduced to scientific explanations.

I just don't think that's true.

There are very few things that people can be certain of.

Pay attention when you are convinced that you know why you're doing something.

What is a good life?

I would ask what they mean by good.

That it comes to an end.

Jay, nice to meet you.

My childhood is a bit unusual given the line of work I found myself in.

I grew up just sort of south of Oxford city centre in a place called Blackbird Lees.

When I think of my childhood, what I remember is like acting up at school.

In secondary school, kind of not showing up for class.

I used to skateboard and I used to sort of wear jeans and the wrong shoes and have arguments with the teachers, that kind of petty stuff.

I used to like playing music, so I'd skip class to be in the school recording studio, that kind of stuff.

And somebody asked me recently, I was doing a talk with some school kids, and one of them asked, do you think your upbringing has affected your worldview?

And that's a difficult question to answer because we never know for sure.

Someone asks, why are you an atheist?

There's one sense in which you could say, because I don't believe that the contingency argument is sound.

And there's another in which you could say, because my parents got divorced when I was eight.