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Why nobody answers «bene»
Matteo's complaint is a real cultural difference and worth naming, because it catches English speakers in both directions. Asked how things are going, the English-language default is a brief positive — fine, good, not bad — and anything more is reserved for people who have earned it. The Italian default is a qualified answer: tutto sommato bene, insomma, non c'è male, un po' così. The qualification is not pessimism or complaint. It is a signal that the question was taken seriously and that the conversation is open. Answer bene and stop, and the likeliest reading is not that you are well but that you do not want to talk — which is why Matteo pushes. The register of hedging in this lesson is the machinery for doing it properly: you can say almost nothing definite while sounding entirely open, and Italians do this with great fluency. It has a second use that Block B will need, because the same phrases are how a difficult thing gets said at work without anyone losing face — diciamo che è complicato is a sentence with a great deal inside it.