Barbara Ehrenrech on the ‘epidemic of wellness’

Barbara Ehrenreich is a prolific thinker and writer. In 2018 we spoke before a live audience at Seattle First Baptist about her book ‘Natural Causes: an epidemic of wellness, the certainty of dying, and killing ourselves to live longer.’. At age 76, Barbara Ehrenreich has decided she is “old enough to die.” And that means opting out of medical screenings and annual exams. “I refuse to accept a medicalized life,” she writes in her new book, Natural Causes. Although the subject may seem grim, she’s hilarious! The best-selling author with a Ph.D. in cellular immunology comes down hard on the national obsession with wellness. Her previous books cover living on minimum life (‘Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America’ - a memoir of Ehrenreich's three-month experiment surviving on minimum wage jobs.), religion (‘Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything’), and the harm that comes with the positive thinking movement (‘Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America’). During the 1980s and early 1990s, she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America.