The Mitten Channel
The Mitten Channel is a Michigan podcast and media network created by former Genesee County Prosecutor Arthur Busch.
We produce original programs that blend legal expertise, investigative storytelling, and deep Michigan history — including true crime analysis, environmental investigations, employee rights, and rich biographies rooted in Flint’s working-class culture.
Our mission is to preserve Michigan stories, examine the systems that shape our communities, and give voice to the people who define our industrial past and future.
Mitten Channel Podcast Shows: Radio Free Flint, Flint Justice, The Mitten Works, Mitten Environmental and The Mitten Biography Project
To listen to full audio podcast interviews visit https://www.radiofreeflint.media
Radio Free Flint is a production of the Mitten Channel where you can find podcast shows Mitten Environmental, Flint Justice, The Mitten Works.
Episodes
131 episodes
How A Flint Attorney Helped Strike Down Virginia’s Poll Tax And Changed American Voting Rights
A Flint lawyer helped end a Jim Crow relic—and the hometown paper barely noticed. We sit down with Robert Steiger, a retired civil rights attorney whose argument before the Warren Court contributed to striking down Virginia’s poll tax. From Det...
Cold Case: How AFIS And DNA Unmasked A Hidden Killer
Margarette Eby was murdered in 1986. In an investigation led by Genesee County (MI) Prosecutor Arthur Busch and the Michigan State Police, two cold case rape-murders were solved using the most advance forensic science available.Ke...
John Prine’s America, Hymns for the Working Class
A vanished hometown. A son who came back different. An elder on a quiet porch waiting for someone to say hello. We follow John Prine’s trail from Maywood, Illinois, to the coal seams of western Kentucky and the factory streets of Michigan, mapp...
Saigon’s Baby Airlift: A Flint Medic’s Story
Remastered edition: re‑edited and shortened for clarity and pace.A cargo aircraft built for tanks, not toddlers. A city collapsing in April 1975. And a young Air Force medic from Flint who boarded anyway.In this Radio Free Fli...
A Flint Athlete’s Journey From High School Stardom To Optometry
Remastered edition: re-edited and shortened for clarity and pace.We trace Jeff Natchez’s path from Flint open gyms and sandlots to a Detroit Tigers draft pick, rookie ball under a young
Joe Ryan III: From Flint to Hollywood — The Sound of a New Generation
Flint, Michigan, has given the world legendary athletes—now meet one of its rising musical icons. Joe Ryan III is a producer, songwriter, composer, engineer, and DJ whose creative reach spans television, film, and the global mus...
Can Minnesota Prosecute an ICE Agent?
Do federal officials have “absolute immunity” from state criminal law? No. But they do have a powerful defense described as the Supremacy Clause immunity. This legal doctrine can block a state prosecution when a federa...
A Republic at War With Itself: Militarized Policing and the Slow Erosion of Civil Liberties
Over the past thirty-five years, the United States has quietly transformed its criminal-justice system into something resembling a permanent domestic battlefield.In this episode, we trace how successive “wars” at home—the war on crime, t...
Flint on the Brink: Who Governs After Collapse—Broken Systems, Billion-Dollar Philanthropy, and Flint-First Leadership
Flint on the Brink is a clear-eyed examination of an American rust-belt city struggling to decide who controls its future.In this episode, former Michigan prosecutor and legal educator
Bad Water, Kids, Big Money, and Lawyers
When water systems fail, the damage is not the same for everyone. In Flint, the deepest harm lives in children’s brains. In other cities, the damage is buried in pipes, mains, and hydrants. In this episode, <...
Leaving Flint to See America on a Schwinn Bicycle
I Left My Blue-Collar Hometown On A Schwinn And Learned How The "Other Half" Actually LivesHave you ever felt that crushing pressure to leave home just to "figure out your future"? 🤔 In this episode, I’m looking back at 1970, when...
Inside Anatomy of a Murder
This is a short excerpt from an upcoming episode of Flint Justice.In this preview, Arthur Busch explores the real Michigan homicide case that inspired Anatomy of a Murder and the lawyer behind it, J...
John D. Voelker and Anatomy of a Murder: Law, Doubt, and Justice in Michigan
In 1952, a saloon killing in a small Upper Peninsula town became one of the most important—and controversial—criminal trials in Michigan history.The lawyer who defended the accused was John D. Voelker: former county prosecutor, defense a...
The Age of Anxiety: Political Media, Dementia, and the Boomer Fear
The Age of Anxiety: Political Media, Dementia, and the Boomer FearIn Michigan living rooms—from Flint to Saginaw to small towns up north—older Americans watch political news that feels less like reporting and more like a public tr...
Inside Detroit’s 99th Thanksgiving Parade:On-the-Ground Coverage by Arthur Busch
Join Arthur Busch on location in downtown Detroit as he takes you inside the magic of the 99th Annual America’s Thanksgiving Parade. In this special field-report episode, Arthur walks Woodward Avenue, captures the sights and sounds of th...
She Dodged Bullets for the UAW — and Her Legacy Still Haunts the Auto Industry
In 1937, a 23-year-old Flint woman stood between General Motors security, Flint police gunfire, and the workers fighting for their lives inside Fisher Body.Her name was Genora Johnson Dollinger — and she did more than rally the Women’s Emer...
When Flint Fought Back: Genora Johnson and the Strike That Changed America
In 1937, a 23-year-old Flint woman stood between General Motors security, Flint police gunfire, and the workers fighting for their lives inside Fisher Body. Her name was Genora Johnson Dollinger — and she did more than rally the...
DETROIT RISING: A Photo Tour of Motor City's Amazing Comeback | The Mitten Channel
Welcome to the Detroit comeback. With a voice as warm and familiar as the streets themselves, we take a tour of the Motor City's stunning revitalization. From the iconic RenCen and the architecture of the Whitney Building to the v...
Flint’s 1937 Sit-down Strike Saved Wages, Work, and Democracy
The Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936–37 wasn’t just a labor dispute — it was a turning point in American history. In this short documentary segment, former Genesee County Prosecutor Arthur Busch breaks down what really happened inside the F...
The Michigan Murderer: John Norman Collins and the Ypsilanti Terror
He was handsome, popular, and lived the perfect fraternity life in Ann Arbor. But behind John Norman Collins’s all-American image lurked one of Michigan’s darkest secrets.In the late 1960s, a series of brutal murders terrorized the colle...
Flint’s Coney Island Legacy: The Immigrant Story Behind a Michigan Icon
Few Flint residents know that one of the city’s most beloved traditions began with immigrants from a tiny mountain village in North Macedonia.In this episode of Radio Free Flint, host Arthur Busch welcomes Karen...
Why I Leave Michigan Every Winter (And What It Says About Us)
What’s a “Snowbird,” really—and why do millions of Americans and Canadians head south every winter? In this video essay, Arthur Busch—former Genesee County Prosecutor and host of Radio Free Flint—shares why he became a Snowbird a...
The Golden Age: Flint Community Schools
Good school districts are more than a function of how much money they collect from taxpayers. Schools must connect with the community where they are located in ways that go beyond math, science and reading. Flint, Michigan a...
Electronic Drone Musician Hauras: A Song for Flint, Michigan
Our guest is musician Howard Ryan, a native of Wisconsin who now lives in San Francisco, California. Ryan, also known as Hauras composed a song, "Flint, Michigan," intending to make a social statement about the problems of the beleaguered rust ...
Conservation and Sustainable Food Growing in Michigan
Our guest is Daniel Moilanen, a Fenton-area native now living in Flint, and the Executive Director of the Michigan Association of Conservation Districts (MACD).Under Dan’s leadership, Michigan’s soil conservation districts ...
