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Tubbythumping
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"Quirky" supermodels appear -- millions flee
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BY DAVID FUTRELLE | From morning to night -- or at least the portion of the day during which I am tethered to my computer pretending to work -- my ears are filled with the insistent murmurs of smooth-talking strangers wishing me the best. "Get motivated and stay motivated," the voices importune. "Look at your job with fresh eyes. Beauty is all around you! Almost every problem is an illusion! If you believe you can, you probably can! The negative stops here!"

Several weeks back, you see, I discovered something called Positive Talk Radio -- in particular, a small AM station here in Chicago called WYPA, "Your Personal Achievement Station," featuring a steady barrage of self-help sermons delivered by the likes of New Age health guru Deepak Chopra, firewalker Tony Robbins and Mormon motivator Steven R. Covey. Much to my surprise, and against my better judgment, I've found myself hooked.

Entering into the world of Positive Talk Radio is like entering into a brighter, cleaner, simpler world -- a world in which the key elements of happiness and success can be boiled down into a few unremarkable precepts on a neatly numbered list. It's a bit like having your own personal trainer -- and in some ways better, because your new radio friends don't force you to wear ridiculous Spandex outfits, eat tofu or do deep knee bends. No, all they want you to do, besides listen, is buy a lot of tapes.

WYPA is part of a small network of Positive Talk Radio stations stretching from coast to coast -- from KBPA in San Francisco to WVPA in Washington, D.C. The brainchild of John Douglas of Douglas Broadcasting, the stations offer nearly identical selections from most of the big names in the self-help "audiobook" business -- not just Chopra, Covey and Robbins but Leo ("Love") Buscaglia, Napoleon ("Think and Grow Rich") Hill, even Deborah ("You Just Don't Understand") Tannen. It's "just like a music station," KBPA general manager Bran Holton explained when Positive Talk Radio hit San Francisco last fall. "But instead of hit music, we play hit ideas."

The comparison to Top 40 radio is a natural one: None of the various snippets of tape the station plays are longer than a pop song, and they seem to have been picked utterly and completely at random, ranging from New Age affirmations to hints on how salesmen can firm up their sales. The clips blend into one another, one soft voice giving way to the next with no more than a brief snippet of music to mark the boundary line; only afterwards does the DJ tell you whose voices you've been hearing.

For those paying close attention the experience can be a little disconcerting. One moment you may be listening to a meditation on the educational value of failure; the next you may find yourself listening to detailed hints on how to maximize space in your kitchen ("Purchase bins to organize cleaning supplies by task"). One moment the soft voice of Deepak Chopra urges you to be "passive and accepting" -- then, just as you've gotten settled in an appropriately docile position, the stentorian voice of Napoleon Hill demands that you become "master of your fate, the captain of your soul."

But it's not likely many of the station's listeners get tangled up in such seeming contradictions -- because so few of them, I imagine, give the station anything approaching their full attention. Positive Talk Radio seems to work best on an almost subliminal level, as a sort of psychological Muzak. It's not something you actively listen to; it is, rather, an experience -- you lower yourself into it as you might lower yourself into a warm bath. When you emerge at last after a prolonged soak you may not be any wiser, but you'll most likely feel at least faintly refreshed.

I've been listening to the station religiously, several hours every day, for several weeks now, finding it a vaguely soothing (and only mildly distracting) presence in my working day. But when I sat down to write this piece, I found myself unable to recall anything in specific I had learned from the whole Positive Radio experience. I vaguely recalled Chopra mumbling something about spicy foods (I think he was against them), Arianna Huffington comparing the world to a giant labyrinth, Hill railing against those who drift though life. A handful of catch phrases seem to have insinuated themselves into my brain -- "nice guys finish rich," "everyone deserves a fresh start." Beyond that, nothing.

And so I forced myself to pay close attention, listening to every word and taking copious notes. I discovered soon enough that the main reason I had remembered so little was that there was so little to remember. For the most part, the station's "hit ideas" are little more than platitudes. "What people really want is not always what they seem to want," one slick guru announces, as if he's discovered a secret hidden to everyone else. "Our decisions are influenced by our values," reports another. By "failing to plan," says still another, you are "actually planning to fail."

If I had to boil down the essence of the message to a few simple principles, as the station's various speakers are wont to do, they would be:

1) Don't worry.
2) Be happy.
3) Buy a lot of tapes.

Some more cynical sorts -- negative thinkers, let's call them -- have accused Positive Radio of being little more a marketing ploy, an endless infomercial designed to appeal to an audience lulled into acquiescence by the station's soothing voices: One minute Deepak's hypnotizing you into passive acceptance; the next a persuasive announcer is inviting you to buy a tape promising to deliver up "the 10 tactics that will enable you to achieve your lifelong goals." The cynics have a point. Most of the station's material is taken from the archives of audiobook distributor Nightingale-Conant, and the company's tapes are regularly flogged on the station.

But to dismiss the station's slick positivity as little more than cheap hucksterism is to miss the point. Positive Thinking has been around a lot longer than Nightingale-Conant -- think of the Mind Cure mania of the 19th century, the novels of Horatio Alger and of course the original Positive Thinking man himself, Norman Vincent Peale -- and most of its acolytes are as sincere in their beliefs as any born-again Christian. Indeed, some have even suggested that positive thinking may well be our country's most signal accomplishment in the philosophical realm. At the turn of the century, philosopher William James offered a surprisingly positive take on what he called America's "religion of healthy-mindedness." Indeed, he argued, the pervasive American belief in the "conquering efficacy of courage, hope, and trust" was in fact our "only decidedly original contribution to the systematic philosophy of life."

Like most high-minded types who find themselves fascinated by simple-minded notions, James felt obliged to note, with an almost visible flush of shame, that "the verbiage of a good deal of the mind-cure literature ... is so moonstruck with optimism and so vaguely expressed that an academically trained intellect finds it almost impossible to read it at all." Still, James noted, Mind Cure seemed to work. And while to cynical scientific sorts Mind Cure enthusiasts might seem to be "deluded victims of their imaginations," the real point, to James, was that the Mind Curers "seemed to themselves to have been cured."

Talk of the New Age aside, the central tenets of positive thought have changed little since James' day. Despite the station's promise to offer up "a fresh new way of thinking for a fresh new way of life," much of the advice dispensed so freely on WYPA (insofar as it has any content at all) reflects some old-fashioned ideas indeed -- in particular, the mind-over-matter philosophy of the Mind Cure movement. "The thoughts you hold about yourself and your life determine the quality of your human experience," one particularly soothing voice virtually whispers in my ear. "If your thoughts are small and narrow, your experience will be unsatisfying. If you expand your thoughts, your experience can reflect the true beauty of life."

Can it really be so simple? So far, Positive Talk Radio hasn't exactly taken Chicago radio by storm -- it ranks 40th out of 50 local stations, with its cumulative weekly listeners numbering only in the tens of thousands. It may take a little more than positive thinking to make WYPA a real success.
SALON | April 8, 1998

David Futrelle, a regular contributor to Salon, lives happily in Chicago.