On this date in 1999, Alex O’Connor — writer, podcaster, debater and secular activist — was born in England. His father is of Irish descent. Alex’s parents separated when he was 9 and he grew up in Blackbird Leys before graduating with a B.A. in philosophy and theology from St. John’s College-Oxford in 2021. His mother had received a cancer diagnosis earlier.
O’Connor first established an online presence by uploading videos on skateboarding to YouTube. By age 17, he was making videos on his channel CosmicSkeptic, commenting on philosophy, religion and political topics like the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He started the Within Reason podcast in 2019 and interviewed Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.
Guests from the conservative and religious side of the spectrum such as Ben Shapiro and Peter Hitchens also appeared. Hitchens famously stalked off one show and claimed it was because he didn’t like O’Connor personally. In January 2025 O’Connor was featured in an episode of the American political debate series “Surrounded” on which he he debated 25 Christians on the existence of God and the veracity of the resurrection of Jesus.
He attracted legions of fans as a wunderkind without advanced degrees who attracted members of the Gen Z demographic (born roughly from 1997-2012), the first generation to have a pervasive social media presence. As of this writing in 2026, he had nearly 1.9 million YouTube subscribers and over 373 million page views.
He has held the No. 1 position in podcasts about religion and spirituality. “He achieved this through a decade of hard work building a platform as a teenage atheist whose videos resonated with those growing up alongside him, posits reviewer Samuel McKee. “Everywhere he goes, an audience made up predominantly of young men is eager to introduce themselves, take photos and ask questions … and can seemingly recall everything he has ever read in an instant, and his breadth of reading seems vast.” (The Freethinker, Sept. 30, 2024)
“He is not the brash, arrogant man of New Atheism past. He seems as surprised as anyone at the place he has been given and works as if to prove that he belongs,” says McKee, adding that O’Connor’s willingness to change his mind and his genuineness are critical to his appeal.
His teenage atheism has softened. “I still don’t know if God exists. … I don’t know. It would maybe be a copout if I was intentionally like calling myself one just for like better PR or something. But if anything, it has the opposite effect because I get a lot of flak for being too, you know, firm in a position. As I like to say, ‘I will die on this fence.’ I think it is the most reasonable position to hold, especially because there are so many levels of agnosticism.” (“Why I’m an Agnostic,” YouTube, August 2025)
He says he’s in “an odd spot of being really besotted with Jesus of Nazareth as a person, and being absolutely fascinated by who he historically was and why he had such an effect on the world.” But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t continue to have serious issues with biblical inconsistencies and in particular the God and beliefs and claims portrayed in the Old Testament.
“Maybe the contradictions in the Gospels are best explained by the fact that certain troublesome passages were added in later. Maybe some of the weird things Jesus said or did were explained by the fact that he never actually said or did them. And so, if I meet a Christian who believes all of those things, I can still say I think they’re wrong. But if you ask me whether I personally read these texts and go, ‘Is it all bullshit?’ I have no idea. I don’t know.” (Cherwell, May 29, 2025)
