I'm Alan Olga and this is Clear In Vivit, conversations about connecting and communicating.

When Rex was four years old, I was cooking dinner one night and he asked me if God was real.

And I said, well, what do you think?

And he said, I think that for real God is pretend and for pretend God is real.

And I was just kind of stunned.

It came out from him like, that Chris and I said, what do you mean?

And he said, God isn't real, but when we pretend he is.

I thought about that for weeks after he said it.

That's God Herschelbitts.

And the weeks he spent mulling over four year old Rex's theory about God, as well as other

questions and observations from both Rex and his younger brother Hank, inspired a book.

It's engagingly titled, Nasty Brutish and Short, Adventures in Philosophy with My Kids.

You know, I love your book because you start off with things your children have said,

questions they've raised or complaints they've had.

And you turn it into philosophical discussions that go pretty deep and you go 360 degrees

around the subject.

I love that.

When did you know you wanted to do that?

So I think the idea for the book came a little bit in stages.

Not long after we had our oldest son Rex, I noticed that I would talk about him in class.

Like if I was leading a conversation about say punishment, I teach philosophy in a law

school.

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