Read more about the article How We Value Care Work in America
Top of Mind with Julie Rose

How We Value Care Work in America

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 economic health or productivity. And the vast majority is done by women. Meanwhile, the paid care sector has a critical shortage of daycare staff, home health aides and certified nursing assistants. America is in a care work crisis.

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November 25, 2024
Read more about the article America Has an Organ Shortage. Could Paying Donors Close the Gap?
Top of Mind with Julie Rose

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 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.

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November 11, 2024
Read more about the article Why We Choose to Lean into the Discomfort of Making this Podcast
Top of Mind with Julie Rose

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 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’ve found clarity about our own beliefs, empathy for the people around us, and also developed the skills to tackle tough conversations.

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October 28, 2024
Read more about the article What Will it Take to Rebuild American Trust in Elections?
Top of Mind with Julie Rose

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 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 and right, but a representative democracy like ours relies on all voters having a high level of confidence in the results of an election no matter who wins.

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October 14, 2024
Read more about the article Do Jury Trials Work the Way We Want Them To?
Top of Mind with Julie Rose

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 do generally don't give them quite as much power as America does. But juries are also becoming rare in the United States.

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September 16, 2024
Read more about the article Funny or Offensive? Why It’s So Hard to Draw the Line in Humor.
Top of Mind with Julie Rose

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 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 routine, you have to wonder - were the Greek philosophers right?

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September 2, 2024
Read more about the article The Changing Ways We Decide Who Gets into College and Why it Matters.
Top of Mind with Julie Rose

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 higher education. A lot of people think that's for the better, particularly since the tests have long been shown to disadvantage students of color and those with fewer economic resources.

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August 19, 2024
Read more about the article Why We’re So Anxious About Retirement in America – And How We Can Fix It
Top of Mind with Julie Rose

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 America was supposed to work. But 40 years ago, Congress shifted the US away from employer pensions and toward a do-it-yourself system based on 401K retirement saving plans. It’s not going well. In this episode we get to the bottom of why so many Americans are unable to retire comfortably and end up, instead, living in poverty or working well past age 70. And we’ll learn what we can do on an individual and national level to improve retirement in America.

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August 5, 2024