Top of Mind with Julie Rose

Smartphones have become an essential part of daily life, but should they have a place in the classroom? Half of U.S. states have recently passed laws restricting or banning phones in schools, igniting a passionate national debate. Some parents say phones are vital for student safety and emotional regulation. Others argue they’re fueling a mental health crisis and stifling face-to-face connection....

For over 150 years, the U.S. has granted automatic citizenship to babies born on American soil, a principle rooted in the 14th Amendment and seen by many as key to equality and opportunity. But most countries don’t follow jus soli (“right of soil”), granting citizenship instead by bloodline. Critics, including President Donald Trump, argue birthright citizenship encourages illegal immigration and...

Alcohol is a deeply embedded part of American life—woven into celebrations, identity, and social norms. But from health warnings to sober-curious trends, new questions are surfacing about what we drink, how much, and why. In this episode of Top of Mind, we explore how cultural attitudes toward alcohol have evolved and why more people today are rethinking what it means to drink responsibly. We also...

School integration in America is widely viewed as a civil rights milestone— but decades later, U.S. schools are as segregated as they were in the 1970s. So, in this episode of Top of Mind, we look at the complicated legacy of school integration in America: who it helped, who it hurt, and what struggling schools need to thrive. Dr. Noliwe Rooks shares her family’s four-generation story with integra...

In this special bonus episode of Top of Mind, Julie Rose revisits the challenge of credit card debt - a topic that hits home for many of us – by sitting down with Thomas Nitzsche, a financial educator at Money Management International (MMI) and Susan, who shares her personal journey of paying off $80,000 in debt over four and a half years with help from MMI. While some feel skeptical of credit cou...

Credit card debt is at an all-time high in America. Half of all Americans with a credit card have carried a balance in the past year, and one in three have more credit card debt than emergency savings. And with interest rates soaring, that debt is becoming even more expensive. It’s easy to see credit card debt as a personal failing, caused by overspending. While that’s often true, nearly a third o...

In 2017, the US and a coalition of more than 80 countries ran ISIS out of its strongholds, killed the group's top leaders, and declared victory. But that wasn't the end. Instead, ISIS reinvented itself as an even greater threat to the United States homeland—and did so more successfully than any other foreign terror group. National security experts now say a 9/11-style attack is no longer the main...

Americans reported reading 12 books on average in 2022. That’s the lowest number since Gallup started polling on this in the 90s. Survey data from 2023 show nearly half of US adults didn't read—or listen to—even one book that year. It's no wonder; book reading has to compete with endless news feeds, social media sites, streaming services, and even podcasts for free time. Teachers are starting to w...

The current state of education in America is a troubling picture. Reading proficiency scores have reached historic lows. Chronic absenteeism is on the rise—more than a quarter of K-12 students miss at least 10% of the school year. And the achievement gap in test scores between the highest and lowest performing students has widened. On this podcast episode, we take a closer look at education reform...

More Americans use cannabis every day, or almost every day, than use alcohol on a daily basis. That's in large part because marijuana is a lot more accessible than it used to be. More than half of us live in a state where marijuana is recreationally legal.  Nearly 8 in 10 live in a county with a marijuana dispensary. But marijuana is still illegal in the eyes of the federal government, which means...

They started off as ideological enemies. Mark Rosenberg pioneered the public health approach to preventing gun violence and opened a branch of the CDC to fund that research. Jay Dickey, the "NRA's point man in Congress", pushed a ban on CDC funding for gun violence research that lasted 20 years – and got Rosenberg fired. On this episode of Top of Mind, we tell the unlikely story of their friendshi...

It’s been about two years since the public got a taste of ChatGPT for the first time. Now, artificial intelligence has seeped into nearly every aspect of our lives. You can use AI to check your grammar or to generate content for social media. Students use it to write essays. AI can also generate artwork, music or audio in seconds. We’re relying more and more on generative AI tools like MidJourney,...

A 2024 Knight Foundation report found one in four college students think schools need to protect students by banning speech they may find offensive or biased, the largest share of students to answer that way since the survey first asked the question in 2016. 2024 also set a record for the number of attempts to disrupt or disinvite speaker, cancel performances, take down art exhibits and prevent th...

In his parting prescription for the country, outgoing US Surgeon General, Doctor Vivek Murthy writes that he is worried about how exhausted and alone Americans are. Public health experts say loneliness has become an epidemic. Research shows social disconnection is about as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and more harmful than obesity. But loneliness in America is hardly new. So...

Why is insulting someone’s intelligence such a potent put down? It’s more than saying someone lacks knowledge or book learning. It’s a statement of a person’s worth – of their potential to be successful. And for that, we can thank the IQ test. In this podcast episode, we explore how the IQ test was created and continues to shape our collective understanding of intelligence and disability. We hear...

More than a quarter of Americans are estranged from at least one family member. Parent/child estrangement is the most common – especially between dads and their kids. There’s a lot about modern American life that has made family estrangement more common, and younger generations are more willing to talk about it on social media. But reconciliation happens more than you might think. On this episode...

Can America guarantee free expression of religion in public as an officially secular, but culturally Christian nation? Expressing religious faith in public is both protected by law and socially acceptable. As a secular nation, the US has no official religion, but since two-thirds of American are Christian, most of the displays of religion in public places we see represent one faith. For example, C...

Trust in institutions like the media, the medical system, public schools, all branches of government, and science is at an all-time low. When it comes to vaccines specifically, fewer than half of Americans think childhood vaccines are "extremely important." That's the lowest level in 25 years. The pandemic sparked new vaccine hesitancy, driven by shifting health guidelines and vaccination mandates...

Care work is the labor essential to life. But two-thirds of caregiving goes uncompensated. What do we miss when we don’t value care work and how does this affect care workers? If we multiplied all the hours spent in a year on unpaid caregiving in America by the local minimum wage, it would be worth one trillion dollars. Yet none of it is accounted for in the official measures of the nation's econo...

There are more than 100,000 people on the waitlist for an organ transplant. Every day 17 of them die. Most organs for transplant come from deceased donors. But the organs in highest demand for transplantation are kidneys and livers – both of which can be donated while a person is still alive. So, we could save thousands of lives each year if more people were willing make a living organ donation. S...

Meet the teams behind Top of Mind and Uncomfy in this special crossover episode, where we share stories of sticking with a challenging perspective while working on the shows. We are exposed to a lot of nuanced viewpoints as we put podcast episodes together, which gives us the perfect opportunity to practice what we preach: choosing to lean into discomfort instead of lashing out or shying away. We’...

Only 44% of Americans say they have a "great deal" or "quite a bit of confidence" that the results of the 2024 election will be accurate. But party affiliation is a big part of the story. If you break down that 44%, only 1 in 4 Republicans have high confidence, compared to nearly 3 out of 4 Democrats. The reasons that so many Americans currently lack trust in elections differ on the political left...

Presidential elections in the US are twice as expensive as they were just a decade ago, and so are the most competitive Congressional races. Even state and local elections now routinely see record spending – typically from “outside groups” that have no restrictions on what they can raise or spend. The current state of money in politics is a rare point of bipartisan agreement in America. Overwhelmi...

A trial by jury is an important American right, enshrined in the 6th and 7th amendments of the constitution. But do jury trials work the way we want them to? Not all countries use citizen juries in their justice systems, and the ones that do generally don't give them quite as much power as America does. But juries are also becoming rare in the United States. Only 2% of criminal trials ever make it...

Why is it so hard to draw the line between what’s funny or offensive? We love to laugh and we prize a good sense of humor in ourselves and others. But the ancient Greeks – Aristotle and Plato – said humor was bad for society: they thought of it mainly as mockery and laughing was a loss of self-control. When you consider how quickly humor can go wrong in the hands of a bully or an edgy standup rout...