Top of Mind with Julie Rose
Society & Culture
About
Tackling tough topics in a way that will help you feel more empathy and empower you to become a better citizen, kinder neighbor, and more effective advocate. For people who are turned off by the divisive nature of the news, but still want to engage with important issues. Hosted by journalist Julie Rose, Top of Mind is a production of BYUradio.
Episodes
- Are America’s Kids Okay? How We Can Do Better
America’s kids are facing serious challenges, from rising anxiety and depression to falling behind in school and growing up in increasingly complex family situations. But there’s also hope. In this episode of Top of Mind, we’ll hear from e…
- Why Primary Elections Matter More Than You Think
Most Americans focus on the general election in November. But what if the real decision is happening months earlier? In this episode of Top of Mind, we take a closer look at primary elections, the often-overlooked part of the political pro…
- Are Routine Traffic Stops Helping or Hurting Public Safety?
Getting pulled over is one of the most common interactions Americans have with police, but do routine traffic stops make our communities safer? In this episode, we explore the real impact of traffic enforcement through powerful personal st…
- Justice in Healthcare: Who Deserves to Be Healthy?
Who deserves to be healthy—and who’s responsible for making that possible? In this episode of Top of Mind, we explore one of the toughest questions in modern healthcare: how we decide who gets care, compassion, and lifesaving treatment. A…
- Can We Repair Historic Injustice?
Can a nation truly heal from historic injustice, or does there come a point when it’s simply too late? In this episode of Top of Mind, we explore what it really means to repair the harms of slavery, segregation, and systemic racism — not j…
- Should Christians Support the Death Penalty?
The death penalty - maybe more than any other question of crime and punishment - poses a conundrum for America as a majority Christian nation. Since colonial times, Christian ministers and believers have been among the strongest supporters…
- How Work Became Our Identity in America
Americans work more hours than people in nearly every other wealthy country—are we better off for it? In this episode of Top of Mind, we unpack the deep roots of the American work ethic and why so many of us feel overworked, burned out, an…
- The Risks and Rewards of Doing Family History
Family history can sometimes feel distant, irrelevant, or even risky. Why look back when the past may hold stories we’d rather not claim? In this episode of Top of Mind, we explore why learning about our ancestors matters—how their stories…
- Why We Feel Disgust—and What It Reveals About Us
Disgust is one of our most primal emotions—hardwired into the brain, yet shaped profoundly by culture, upbringing, and personal experience. While we often associate it with spoiled food or foul smells, disgust reaches far deeper into the h…
- What We Get Wrong About Autism — Told by Autistic Voices
What if the world believed you couldn’t understand it—while inside, your mind was full of thoughts, poetry, and frustration you had no way to express? In this episode of Top of Mind, host Julie Rose sits down with Emily Grodin, who spent 2…
- The Power of Nostalgia: How Community Traditions Shape Who We Are
What makes you nostalgic for home? In this episode of Top of Mind, we explore the surprising science behind place attachment — why certain places feel like home, and why traditions, parades, festivals, and quirky community rituals bring us…
- Is Higher Education a Good Investment for American Taxpayers?
Confidence in America’s higher education system is slipping, even as the government spends nearly half a trillion dollars a year on it. The average US taxpayer invests $1,700 a year in higher education – whether you went to college or not.…
- How Small Acts of Service Saved a Life and Changed a Family (#LightTheWorld)
From a small town in Wasatch County, Utah, comes the remarkable true story of the Karren family — a journey through illness, unlikely connections, and the quiet evidence of God in the details. On Memorial Day weekend 2020, Brady Karren sud…
- Is There a Right Way to Grieve?
Why are we so uncomfortable with grief? In this episode of Top of Mind, we explore America’s fear of grief and mourning and what we lose when we rush people to “move on.” Writer Jacqueline Dooley shares how she keeps her daughter’s memory…
- What Does It Mean to Be Patriotic in America?
American patriotism is at a historic low. Gallup polls show fewer and fewer Americans say they feel “extremely” – or even “very” proud to be American. When you dig into the polling data on patriotism, you find significant differences depen…
- Wrongful Convictions: How Innocent People End Up Behind Bars
What happens when the justice system convicts an innocent person? Anthony Graves spent 18 years in prison—12 of them on Texas death row—for a crime he didn’t commit. His story is one of unthinkable injustice, unbroken faith, and a determin…
- Why are Americans Having Fewer Kids?
Americans are having fewer babies than ever before. The fertility rate in the United States has dropped to an all-time low of 1.6 births per woman. In response, the Trump Administration has urged Americans to have more children and propose…
- Too Hot to Handle? America’s Deadly Heat Problem
Extreme heat kills more Americans most years than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes combined, but we don’t give it the same emergency treatment. The government doesn’t name heatwaves like it does storms. And extreme heat doesn’t qualify for…
- Does America Have a Balance of Power Problem?
How is the balance of power supposed to work when a U.S. President aggressively pushes for more? In his first 100 days of his second term, President Donald Trump issued more executive orders than any president in history, and the Supreme C…
- Can Free Housing Solve Homelessness? The Housing First Experiment
Is Housing First a viable solution or just repeating the past? What actually works to end homelessness? Communities across the U.S. have debated and tested solutions, from housing first to human first, permanent supportive housing, transit…
- Feeling Unheard by Congress? Here's What You Need to Know.
It’s easier than ever to connect with our representatives in Congress, so why doesn’t it feel like they’re listening? The 1st Amendment guarantees the right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Given how frustrated Ame…
- Should Kids Have Smartphones in the Classroom?
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 par…
- Who Counts as American? The Birthright Citizenship Debate
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…
- Rethinking Drinking: America’s Evolving Relationship with Alcohol
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 o…
- The Unfinished Business of School Integration in America
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 integr…
- BONUS: The Credit Card Debt Conversation - A Closer Look at the Role of Credit Counseling
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…
- Making Sense of America’s Credit Card Debt
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…
- ISIS and the New Threat of Radicalization in America
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 Unit…
- Americans Are Reading Fewer Books Than Ever. Does That Matter in 2025?
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…
- America is Rethinking Public Education. What Will the Future of School Look Like?
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…
- Is Marijuana Legalization Working Out Like We Thought it Would?
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 recr…
- An Unlikely Friendship and the Fight to Make America Safer
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 CD…
- Is AI Killing Our Creativity?
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 med…
- Free Speech on Campus: Protect Students or Speech?
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 th…
- How Do We Solve Loneliness in America?
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 show…
- Does IQ Really Matter?
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 t…
- The Surprising Truth About Reconciliation After Estrangement
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 estrangeme…
- Christian or Not? Unpacking America's Religious Identity
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 n…
- The Pandemic Shook America's Trust in Vaccines—and Taught Us Something About Building Trust in Institutions
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 "ext…
- Why It's So Easy to Ignore Caregivers (Especially Moms) and How to Change That
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 caregi…
- America Has an Organ Shortage. Could Paying Donors Close the Gap?
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…
- Why We Choose to Lean into the Discomfort of Making this Podcast
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…
- What Will it Take to Rebuild American Trust in Elections?
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…
- What Can We Do About America’s Money in Politics Problem?
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”…
- Do Jury Trials Work the Way We Want Them To?
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…
- Funny or Offensive? Why It's So Hard to Draw the Line in Humor
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…
- The Changing Ways We Decide Who Gets into College and Why it Matters
For a century, the ACT and SAT played a central role in filtering college applicants. Most colleges and universities stopped requiring standardized test scores during the pandemic; that change has turned into a permanent shift across highe…
- Why We’re So Anxious About Retirement in America – And How We Can Fix It
Most Americans are anxious about when – or even if – they’ll be able to retire. And we’re not wrong. Social Security is on shaky footing. Half of Americans on the cusp of retirement have no money saved for it. This isn’t how retirement in…
- American roads are dangerous. How can we make them safer?
Compared to other wealthy nations, America has twice as many traffic deaths per capita. And in recent years, pedestrian and cyclist deaths have spiked. Experts say road design plays a big part in this. The most dangerous roads are “suburba…
- Inside the Changing Role of Fathers in America
What does it mean to be a father in 2024? In the US, the “primary breadwinner dad” is increasingly rare, while the "primary caregiver dad” is becoming more common. And dads are generally doing a lot more childcare and housework than their…