THE CODCAST
Tune into spirited debate, local stories, and insightful analyses with The Codcast. Hosted each week by a CommonWealth Beacon reporter, the half-hour policy podcast delves into the heart of Massachusetts’s most pressing and intriguing topics.
Hear newsmakers, historians, and policy experts tackle statewide housing struggles, immigration policies, little-known histories, surprising political fights, and even take to the sea to visit rising offshore wind turbines.
Massachusetts’s dwindling maternity care
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Hallie Claflin talks with Alecia McGregor, assistant professor of health policy and politics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Katie Murphy, president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association. They dig into the consequences of recent maternity unit closures in Springfield and Methuen, discuss where Massachusetts stands in terms of maternal health care access, and detail what power the state has, if any, to regulate health service closures and consolidations.
🔉 Listen nowHow New England’s largest nonprofit senior care and housing provider is handling immigration and Medicaid changes
We all need care as we age. Adam Scott leads New England’s largest nonprofit provider of senior care and living communities. He says demand is rising as the Commonwealth’s average age continues to increase. This week on Health or Consequences, John McDonough of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute talk with Scott about how the broader health care crisis is impacting long-term care.
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How do all-party primaries change politics? Just look to California
Massachusetts voters will decide in November whether to make big changes to the state’s primary elections. But it’s not a first-in-the-nation experiment: several other states, including California, already have similar systems in which all candidates appear on the same primary ballot and the top two advance to the general election, even if they’re from the same party. This week on The Codcast, Chris Lisinski interviews Andrew Sinclair, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California about how the Golden State’s primary framework came to be, what the effects have been, and what lessons Massachusetts might take.
🔉 Listen nowDesperation and a double bind for Quabbin towns
For the towns around the Quabbin Reservoir, managing worsening drought seasons comes with a bitter irony: they surround the essential clean water source for distant Greater Boston, and that means harsher water restrictions than the populous downstream cities. This week on The Codcast, Jennifer Smith talks with fellow CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jordan Wolman about his coverage of Quabbin watershed communities and their push for more state support.
🔉 Listen nowWhat Massachusetts’s new ICE law protects, and what it doesn’t
When it comes to rebuking federal immigration actions, states’ options are limited. This week on The Codcast, Jennifer Smith and Iván Espinoza-Madrigal of Lawyers for Civil Rights discussed the PROTECT Act’s new limits on ICE enforcement, the fallout from the Temporary Protected Status termination for Haiti, and the federal lawsuit challenging the state’s in-state tuition law for immigrant students — and what, if anything, Massachusetts can actually do about any of it.
🔉 Listen nowSpecial episode: Unpacking the Legislature’s July 31 flurry, and what comes next
Beacon Hill made it through the traditional end-of-formals deadline with less chaos and upheaval than 2024 and 2022. But in the process, lawmakers left many big decisions for another day.
🔉 Listen nowWhat it’s going to take to keep New England’s lights on
Rising power demand, ambitious clean energy targets, the rise of artificial intelligence, and skyrocketing electricity prices are colliding to create a profound moment of disruption in New England’s ability to plan for the needs of the future while keeping the lights on today. Dr. Vamsi Chadalavada, president and CEO of ISO New England, the operator of the region’s energy system, joins CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jordan Wolman to discuss how he’s balancing it all.
🔉 Listen nowA new book details how neoliberalism hurt America’s health care
America’s uniquely expensive, uniquely underperforming health system didn’t just result as an accident of history, John McDonough argues in his new book, but was the predictable result of a specific ideological turn taken in the early 1980s — the start of the neoliberalism era.  
🔉 Listen nowNavigating Massachusetts news deserts
While several hyperlocal newsrooms have launched in communities across the state, there is an information gap forming: Many Bay State residents live in news deserts.
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