The Codcast

In 2015, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found that white households in Boston had a median wealth of $247,500, while Black households had a median wealth of close to $0. That was more than ten years ago. Now, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has released a new report examining the wealth gap across Massachusetts. Have things improved? What trends do we see in the new report? And how has the...

Organized labor has been out in force on ballot measures — recently literally trying to secure bargaining power through the ballot — and that means manpower, mobilization, and money funneling toward a set of policy measures that the Legislature has waved away. This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith looks at unions and direct democracy with two guests. Nick Juravich,...

Gov. Maura Healey is all-in on artificial intelligence, but she's also trying to get a handle on soaring energy costs and a growing backlash to the very structures supporting the AI boom — data centers. This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporters Jennifer Smith and Jordan Wolman discuss the governor's new executive order trying to make data centers greener and more responsive t...

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 te...

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 , Scott discusses how the broader health care crisis is impacting long-term care. Guest: Adam Scott, president and CEO of Hebrew SeniorLife Hosts: Paul Hatt...

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...

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 watershe...

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 studen...

The traditional even-year July 31 deadline that marks an end to formal legislative business looks a little different this time around, but lawmakers still used the date to finish off a flurry of significant action. In a special bonus episode of The Codcast , CommonWealth Beacon senior reporters Jennifer Smith and Chris Lisinski catch you up on why the significance of the deadline has changed, what...

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 CommonWealt...

America's health system is uniquely expensive and uniquely underperforming. On this month's edition of Health or Consequences , John McDonough of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health discusses his upcoming book, America's Wrong Turn: U.S. Health Care in the Neoliberal Era , and traces the political and economic forces that reshaped American medicine. From the Chicago School an...

Across Massachusetts and the country, the number of journalists is declining rapidly. Unsurprisingly, so is the number of local news publications. This trend is leaving many residents of the Bay State without a reliable source of information about the communities in which they live. To help unpack this trend and explore what can be done about it, CommonWealth Beacon's editor, Laura Colarusso,...

This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporters Hallie Claflin and Jordan Wolman discuss Wolman’s latest piece on how utilities are spending millions on natural gas infrastructure in 10 communities that have gone “fossil fuel free.” They zero in on the state’s Gas System Enhancement Plan, which is now under heavy scrutiny for ballooning spending that has delivered few additional benefits a...

New Mexico is making waves, and generating questions from curious onlookers, by offering universal child care to all families. How is it funded? Is it truly universal? Are there enough caretakers to keep up with demand? And with our astronomically high child care costs, could Massachusetts achieve something similar? Jacob Vigil, the chief legislative officer of New Mexico Voices for Children, join...

Patrick Gilligan has a lifetime of experience in health care. One year ago, he accepted the role of CEO of Point32Health, a regional nonprofit health insurance provider. On this month's edition of Health or Consequences , hosts John McDonough and Paul Hattis ask Gilligan to take a deep dive into the current state of health insurance. Are patients getting what they're paying for? How are he...

Gov. Maura Healey’s administration estimates that the state will need 222,000 by 2035 to deal with existing needs and population growth. Her new housing secretary, Juana Matias, says we can meet that goal, and joins CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith to talk about chipping away at decades of sluggish housing production. Matias, who was a state representative and regional administration at...

For generations, it was virtually guaranteed that American children would out-earn their parents. But as Raj Chetty explains in this special live episode of The Codcast, recorded at the recent WBUR Festival, that dream is fading. What factors are contributing to economic stagnation? How can we increase upward mobility? How do these trends vary across neighborhoods, race, gender, and immigration st...

Matches in the world’s biggest sports spectacle will kick off this week across North America. With Boston as one of the host cities — seven matches will be played at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, which will be renamed Boston Stadium for the World Cup tournament — Massachusetts will be in the spotlight as it hosts thousands of international fans and will need to safely move people between the cit...

Massachusetts has been busing students between neighborhoods and school districts for 60 years, but segregation within the school system persists – and in some places it’s actually gotten worse over recent decades. This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks with Dan O’Brien, professor of public policy and urban affairs and director of the Boston Area Research Initi...

On this month’s edition of Health or Consequences , hosts John McDonough and Paul Hattis are joined by Victoria Pulos, a health law attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, to discuss the fallout of OB3, or the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” for Massachusetts residents. Who is likely to lose coverage? How has the state responded to federal cuts? And if Democrats win the midterms, can any...

Dave Denison was the first editor of CommonWealth Magazine and oversaw the publication of its first issue 30 years ago, in the spring of 1996. Mirroring similar publications in other states, CommonWealth’s mission was to dive deep into how policy actually impacts people, no easy task in a state where politicians held their cards close. Today, Laura Colarusso, editor of CommonWealth Beacon , helms...

Defining the middle class is harder than it might seem – it might mean owning a home, having steady work, keeping a pot of savings, or the kids and white picket fence vision of the “American Dream.” Historian Andrew Seal, whose research and writings focus on how the middle class thinks of itself, joins CommonWealth Beacon senior reporter Jennifer Smith on The Codcast to interpret recent Bay State...

Massachusetts’s extreme housing crunch is no secret, but who is actually in charge of fixing it? This week on The Codcast, state Sen. Julian Cyr and Local Journalism Project executive director Janet Lesniak join CommonWealth beacon reporter Jennifer Smith to talk about the role of employee housing on the Cape and Islands – how sustainable is it to expect small businesses to become landlords for th...

What does the latest executive order aimed at changing how people cast their votes mean for Massachusetts? Two lawsuits are currently working their way through District Court in the state challenging a directive from President Trump that the US Postal Service only deliver mail ballots to voters on a federal citizenship list. Celia Canavan, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Massac...

Policymakers in Massachusetts are increasingly eager to impose tighter restrictions on how young people use social media like Instagram and TikTok, repeatedly slamming the platforms for exploiting minors and fueling malaise. This week on The Codcast, we take a look at how the research of brain development overlaps with social media use, what regulatory attempts in other states and countries could...