Tune into spirited debate, local stories, and insightful analyses. 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 faces a critical housing shortage, necessitating the construction of 222,000 new homes by 2035 to address widespread cost burdens among renters and prospective homeowners. Juana Matias, Secretary of the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, emphasizes that achieving this goal requires a mul...
The American Dream, defined as the ability for children to earn more than their parents, has shifted from a near-certainty for those born in 1940 to a coin-flip for those born in 1990. Raj Chetty, a Harvard economics professor and director of Opportunity Insights, utilizes large-scale tax and social network data to map...
The "OB3" federal legislation threatens to dismantle key components of Massachusetts' health policy, specifically targeting Medicaid and the Health Connector. Starting January 2027, new work requirements for the Medicaid expansion population will impose significant administrative burdens, potentially causing widespread...
Massachusetts is aggressively integrating generative AI across state agencies to improve service delivery and operational efficiency despite restricted budgets. Commonwealth Secretary of Technology Jason Snyder emphasizes a "human at the helm" philosophy, ensuring that all AI-generated outputs undergo human review befo...
Data privacy is a critical civic issue requiring legislative action to curb the unchecked collection and monetization of personal information by tech corporations. Kade Crockford, Director of Technology and Justice Programs at the ACLU of Massachusetts, argues that the current surveillance model—where companies track u...
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