Oz Veloshian

Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.

Welcome to Tech Stuff.

I'm Oz Veloshian, and today we're joined by Zachary Karabel.

He's an author, an investor, who has written widely on history, economics, and international relations.

But without further ado, Zachary, welcome to Tech Stuff.

Why, thank you, Oz.

What makes you an edgy optimist?

What makes me an edgy optimist?

Well, I'm not an optimist full stop.

So I wrote this column in 2011, 12, and 13 for Slate and The Atlantic and Reuters.

Right.

And I called it The Edgy Optimist.

And part of the point was that was, I thought, when we were beginning to descend into what I thought would be a more temporary nadir of pessimism and has remained a trough that we have...

only deep and none have yet to get out of.

This is the end of the first Obama presidency and beginning of the second, where all of a sudden the gold, well, it was 2008 financial crisis, but I feel like from the 90s to the 2008 era, things are pretty good.

We had a collective response to 9-11 that felt like we were coming together, and then we kept getting more and more dyspeptic and negative.

At the same time, because I had also thought about the context of the 1990s where everything was great and we were on the cusp of utopian realizations of wealth and connectivity and tech was going to liberate us.

People took the end of history seriously.

That if I was going to write a column that says, hey, we should be paying attention to the things that are good and not just paying attention to things that are bad.

It is likely, given my temperament, that if we were suddenly back in a 1990s moment where everybody was saying things are great, I would be the one saying, hey, wait a minute.