{"id":10801,"date":"2009-11-06T11:38:08","date_gmt":"2009-11-06T18:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/?p=10801"},"modified":"2009-11-06T11:38:08","modified_gmt":"2009-11-06T18:38:08","slug":"bright-sided-how-the-relentless-pursuit-of-positive-thinking-has-undermined-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/2009\/11\/06\/bright-sided-how-the-relentless-pursuit-of-positive-thinking-has-undermined-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Bright Sided: How the Relentless Pursuit of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><ul class=\"inline-playlist playlist\" title=\"\"><li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/download\/DailyDigest-110609\/2009_11_06_ehrenreich.mp3\">Listen to this segment <\/a><\/li><\/ul><ul class=\"inline-playlist playlist\" title=\"\"><li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/download\/DailyDigest-110609\/2009_11_06_uprising.mp3\">Listen to the entire program<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" width=45% align=right src=\"http:\/\/www.chicagoreader.com\/imager\/our_oppressive_optimism\/b\/original\/1215465\/1e15\/BrightSidedMagnum.jpg\" alt=\"bright sided\" \/>Tragedy struck the nation&#8217;s largest military base yesterday in Fort Hood, Texas when an Army Psychiatrist shot 43 people, killing 12 and wounding the rest. He was about to be deployed to Iraq. Already the resulting media blitz is focusing on the greater need for mental health counseling for the extremely high rates of depression, suicide, and violent outbursts among troops strained by repeated deployments to the wars of the past 8 years. But it&#8217;s not just troops. Studies attempting to measure happiness globally found that Americans rank surprisingly lower than expected. The United States as a whole consumes more antidepressants than any other country. And yet, ours is a nation that is pioneering the industry of positive thinking whose hallmarks include for purchase DVDs, seminars, life coaches, and mental training. Can we overcome war, hunger, ill-health and joblessness simply by &#8220;thinking positive&#8221;? In fact, how does the concept of positive thinking actually distort our ability to heed the warning signs of looming natural disasters, terrorist attacks and shooting rampages? Best selling author and analyst Barbara Ehrenreich attempts to answer these questions in her new book, &#8220;Bright-sided: How the Relentless Pursuit of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p><em>GUEST: Barbara Ehrenreich, author of more than a dozen books, including the bestsellers Nickel and Dimed, and Bait and Switch. She is a frequent contributor to Harper&#8217;s and The Nation<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tragedy struck the nation&#8217;s largest military base yesterday in Fort Hood, Texas when an Army Psychiatrist shot 43 people, killing 12 and wounding the rest. He was about to be deployed to Iraq. Already the resulting media blitz is focusing on the greater need for mental health counseling for the extremely high rates of depression, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}