Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky misfits and problem solvers.

And sometimes anyway,

optimists.

I'm your host Andrew Heaton.

Optimist Prime.

Optimism might well be one of the most transgressive things

we can do.

There's something intoxicating about pessimism, maybe even comforting.

Whereas there's something oftentimes infuriating to people about optimism.

I once got disinvited from a speaking event because I kept

assuring the person organizing it that the world is in fact getting better.

We were at a dinner and he kept stating how dismal the world has become, how nobody reads anymore,

water's less wet than it used to be, the sun is less sunny and more moony,

whereas the moon has gotten fat and watches too much television, and everything's just going

to hell in a handbasket.

And I'm not understanding how comforted people are by pessimism thought I could make him feel better by bringing up pleasant

counterfactuals. Actually, literacy is at an all-time high. Poverty is at an all-time

low. There are fewer minatars afoot and any day now we might finally apprehend and

kill the guy who invented low-flow toilets. I thought foolishly that by giving

him these peppy counterfactuals I would cheer him up quite the opposite in fact.

The more I try to convince him the world is cusping the edge of utopia, the more despondent

and angry he became.

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