Oz Veloshian

They're not quite as great as you think.

So I did that a little bit as I wanted to reserve the right to be edgy in the face of other people's optimism.

I have not yet needed to do that because there has been no collective outbreak of a surfeit of optimism.

How have you managed to stay, albeit an edgy one, an optimist despite the chaos of the last few years?

So first of all, I think there's a bit of a temperament reality here, which is we do the cliche all the time, cup half full, cup half empty.

Some people see clouds, some people still see silver linings.

So I think...

Honestly, there is a pure temperament aspect to it.

There are just some of us who are more likely to look at the bright side.

That's always what my dad says when I'm feeling sorry for myself.

He's like, maybe it's your temperament.

And then there are those of us who constantly intone the Monty Python end of the meaning of life, always look on the bright side of life in the ironic sense as opposed to the English sense, right?

Because England doesn't have any optimists.

So there's the temperament part.

But I'm also aware of the fact that the temperament part means that you should always surround yourself with people of different temperaments as a reality check.

I try, given my inherently things are going to work out, human beings have a narrative of crisis followed by repair.

And that's certainly, I think, been the story of humanity writ large, not necessarily individual nations and definitely not individual people.

I mean, there are a lot of just really bad stories about individual people and individual nations that don't end well.

Not for one minute do I think that everything turns out okay.

It's more of the grand scheme of things.