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The Codcast

CommonWealth Beacon•commonwealthbeacon.org
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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.
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Episodes

We have a problem in aisle 5

EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT IT’S LIKE these days to be inside a supermarket, but few people know what it’s like to be in the shoes of the essential workers who keep those stores running. On the Codcast, Boston-based Stop and Shop employee Jose Lopes and Whole Foods worker Dan offered their assessment of the risks they face these days working at grocery stores during the coronavirus pandemic. (Dan has asked that his last name not be used.) Lopes unloads groceries from trucks, and spends the second part o...

Apr 13, 2020•28 min

Is transportation still a priority?

Joined by Rep. William Straus, cochair of the legislature's Transportation Committee and Jim Aloisi, TransitMatters board member and formed Secretary of Transportation

Apr 06, 2020•27 min

Anita Walker betting culture is good for your health

With a portion of the state’s casino revenues, the Massachusetts Cultural Council is testing whether arts and culture can be prescribed just like medicine. The organization is running three pilot projects where health providers, counselors, and social workers prescribe cultural activities for those with whom they work. The goal is to see whether going to the zoo, visiting a museum, or attending the symphony can have beneficial health impacts. Anita Walker, the executive director of the Cultural ...

Jan 20, 2020•28 min

TransitMatters 2019 Retrospective

SOME OF THE STATE’S leading transit advocates are calling for extending the life of the existing MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board for six months to a year and making buses free across the state. On the TransitMatters Codcast hosted by CommonWealth magazine, Jim Aloisi, the former transportation secretary and TransitMatters board member; Josh Fairchild, the co-founder and president of TransitMatters; and Stacy Thompson, the executive director of Livable Streets, looked back at 2019 and fo...

Jan 06, 2020•35 min

Saving Hampshire College

Can Hampshire College rise, if not from the dead, from the higher ed death watch list? Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen has predicted that as many as half of all US colleges and universities will close or go bankrupt over the next decade, and a year ago it looked like Hampshire would be one of them. The Amherst college, founded in 1970 with a commitment to rethinking traditional liberal arts education, said it was in dire financial straits and would be seeking a “strategic part...

Dec 16, 2019•34 min

Atrius Health reaching back to its managed roots

There’s a back to the future feel to some of the changes taking place in US health care, and Atrius Health, which provides care to some 740,000 patients, is a leading player in that effort in Massachusetts. After years of soaring health care costs, there is growing interest in moving away from the fee-for-service model that has long dominated care, where providers are paid for each patient interaction or procedure. The trend now is toward giving health providers a set budget to care for patients...

Dec 09, 2019•28 min

What's behind the split within the Mass. GOP

There is a struggle going on for the soul of the Massachusetts Republican Party between Trump loyalists who control the party apparatus and a more moderate brand of Republicanism espoused by Gov. Charlie Baker. The state party is headed by Jim Lyons, a social and economic conservative who said in a recent email to state Republicans that President Trump’s economy is working for Massachusetts residents. “We learned on Election Day that even here in ‘blue’ Massachusetts, voters in our targeted area...

Dec 02, 2019•26 min

Is Walsh preparing to go ‘bold’ on transportation?

The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce’s “City to City” program sets out to take Boston civic and business leaders to other cities so they can expand their thinking on challenges at home by learning about policies and practices elsewhere. Walsh, who was part of the program’s trip earlier this month to Los Angeles, has clearly taken that mission to heart. Appearing on The Codcast, Walsh repeatedly pointed to the “bold” move taken by Los Angeles leaders, who brought a countywide ballot question to...

Nov 25, 2019•43 min

Anderson: No revenue shortage for transportation

FOR THE Massachusetts High Technology Council, blocking a transportation revenue package is a two-step process. The first step, which proved successful last week, was convincing House leaders to put off any action on a revenue package until next year. Chris Anderson, president of the council, argued on the CommonWealth Codcast that delaying action at least until January will give lawmakers more time to better understand the state’s revenue and political picture.

Nov 18, 2019•25 min

Monica Bharel, realistic optimist

Monica Bharel, the state’s public health commissioner, is definitely a glass-half-full type of person. On the Health or Consequences edition of the Codcast with Paul Hattis of Tufts University Medical School and John McDonough of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Bharel went through a series of major challenges facing her agency and in each instance ended her discussion on an optimistic note.

Nov 11, 2019•32 min

MassINC Insights, Part 2: The education funding debate, explained

In this second installment of MassINC Insights, we hear from the journalists and thought leaders of MassINC about the education funding debate. As lawmakers on Beacon Hill approach agreement on a school finance package, MassINC members dig in to the history of Massachusetts school funding that’s led up to this landmark bill. Plus, a piece of the legislation calls for schools’ accountability for the funding they receive. After the many years MassINC researchers have spent looking into accountabil...

Nov 07, 2019•15 min

Biz officials: New transportation funds needed

The derailment on the Red Line in June may have been a turning point. After Gov. Charlie Baker visited the crash site, he decided it was time to accelerate repairs on the MBTA and greenlight more shutdowns of the system to speed up projects. The derailment also galvanized the debate over new transportation revenues – for the MBTA and the state as a whole. The state’s business organizations weighed in last week on the new revenue issue. Several wanted no part of a tax increase and there was scatt...

Nov 04, 2019•31 min

MassINC Insights

This week on The Codcast, we bring you an episode of MassINC Insights, the first installment in a series of conversations with the journalists, researchers, and pollsters of MassINC, The MassINC Polling Group and CommonWealth. The nonprofit consistently leads the way in producing nonpartisan research and independent reporting that make serious waves in the Bay State. And today, we're pulling back the curtain on the organization, asking our talented team about the transportation funding debate, w...

Oct 30, 2019•10 min
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