{"id":11285,"date":"2013-07-02T13:49:15","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T20:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/?p=11285"},"modified":"2013-07-02T15:23:10","modified_gmt":"2013-07-02T22:23:10","slug":"why-does-the-world-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/02\/why-does-the-world-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Does the World Exist?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Jim Holt&#8217;s enjoyable book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Why-Does-World-Exist-Existential\/dp\/0871403595\"><em>Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story<\/em><\/a>, he recounts conversations with a wide variety of thinkers, from physicists and biologists to writers and philosophers, who have struggled with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/30\/why-is-there-something-rather-than-nothing\/\">the Primordial Existential Question<\/a>. You probably know <a href=\"https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/28\/a-universe-from-nothing\/\">my take on the issue<\/a>, but Jim and I sat down <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lfla.org\/event-detail\/833\/Jim-Holt-and-Sean-Carroll-\">at the LA Library<\/a> a few weeks ago to chat about this and related issues. I think it&#8217;s safe to say we at least had a few laughs. Here&#8217;s the complete video; audio is also available as a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lapl.org\/collections-resources\/e-media\/podcasts\/aloud\/why-does-world-exist\">podcast<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/68101888\" width=\"600\" height=\"337\" frameborder=\"0\" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/68101888\">Jim Holt and Sean Carroll<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/aloudla\">ALOUDla<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Jim Holt&#8217;s enjoyable book, Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story, he recounts conversations with a wide variety of thinkers, from physicists and biologists to writers and philosophers, who have struggled with the Primordial Existential Question. You probably know my take on the issue, but Jim and I sat down at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","category-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11285"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11290,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11285\/revisions\/11290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}