Video Essays & Interview Podcasts

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, the war on drugs, the war on terror, and the war on immigration—have steadily altered the relationship between the citizen and the state. Each was justified as temporary. None truly ended.Drawing on constitutional history, crime data, and lived legal experience, this episode examines how fear replaced evidence as the engine of policy, even as violent crime fell dramatically across much of the country. The language of emergency survived the numbers that once justified it.We explore how punishment displaced treatment, how surveillance migrated downward toward the poor and powerless, and how federal authority expanded deep into local policing. From welfare drug testing to armored vehicles on city streets, the tools and posture of war became normal…

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 I ditched the factory smoke of Flint, Michigan, for a 2,000-mile cross-country bicycle odyssey that changed everything.Expect to hear about:• Why riding at dawn in the Mojave Desert is basically a 110-degree survival horror movie. 🐍• The "poor man's air conditioner" that totally blew my Michigan mind.• What happens when you’re 16, solo, and realize postcards have been lying to you about Los Angeles.It’s a story about "sea to shining sea" on two skinny tires, outlasting the factories that defined my youth. Hit play for the full "Rest of the Story."_____________________________________________________________________👉Subscribe to The Mitten Channel (https://www.radiofreeflint.media/) Join us for the full experience. Subscribe to The Mitt…

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, Arthur Busch (https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthurbusch/) examines what really gets damaged when public water systems fail—and why the law treats those harms very differently.The episode opens in Flint, Michigan, with the story of Lee Anne Walters and her twin sons, who lost developmental skills after drinking lead-contaminated tap water. Their experience illustrates what lead exposure looks like up close: not statistics or charts, but children who had to relearn colors, numbers, and basic coordination, and who continue to struggle years later. This is the most enduring harm of bad water—damage carried inside a child’s body and brain for life.From there, the episode draws a critical distinction between human damage and infrastructure damage. In Flint, the deepest injury is n…

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 Arthur Busch (https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthurbusch/) reads and expands on his essay Flint on the Brink: How Broken Systems, Billion-Dollar “Saviors,” and Flint-First Leadership Are Fighting for the City’s Future. The episode explores how decades of economic decline, segregation, and institutional failure have weakened Flint’s economy and its ability to govern itself and plan for what comes next.But Flint’s story is not only one of collapse. It is also a story shaped by powerful outside actors, fparticularly large philanthropic institutions that have poured enormous sums of money into the city. While philanthropy has funded important programs, cultural institutions, and physical improvements, it has also created an unhealthy dependence on a small number of private funders to support basic city fu…

Do federal officials enjoy absolute immunity from state criminal prosecution?In this episode, former prosecutor Arthur Busch dismantles the myth of “absolute immunity” for federal agents and explains how state and county prosecutors can and sometimes must bring criminal charges against ICE officers involved in fatal shootings. The episode walks through the Supremacy Clause test, the federal officer removal process, and why state convictions cannot be erased by presidential pardon.Busch uses the Minneapolis ICE shooting and the state prosecution of Derek Chauvin as reference points along with recent statements from Michigan officials and the legal precedent set by the George Floyd prosecution. This episode clarifies where criminal authority actually lives in America—and why the Constitution does not place federal agents above state law._____________________________________________________________________👉Subscribe to The Mitten Channel (https://www.radiofreeflint.media/) Join …

In November 1986, a well-known university provost in Flint, Michigan, was found raped and murdered in her bed inside a locked gatehouse on the grounds of one of the city’s most secure estates. There were no signs of forced entry, immediately suggesting the offender was not a stranger but someone with legitimate access and a trusted reason to be present. Investigators preserved a latent partial fingerprint from a bathroom faucet and collected biological evidence consistent with a sexual assault forensic examination, but at the time neither Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS) nor modern DNA profiling existed in a form that could identify a suspect. DNA analysis was still experimental, and national databases like CODIS—the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System—had not yet been created. When early leads failed, the case became a cold case homicide, its physical evidence carefully stored but scientifically dormant. Sixteen years later, advances in forensic science—including STR…

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, John D. Voelker—prosecutor, defense attorney, Supreme Court justice, and writer.The full episode examines what this case still teaches us about jury trials, reasonable doubt, and the uneasy line between truth and proof.Full episode coming soon."Photography by Jim Hansen, LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress."We would like to hear from you! Send us a Text. (https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/2027801/open_sms) 👉 Subscribe to Radio Free Flint Podcasts at The Mitten Channel (https://www.youtube.com/@TheMittenChannel?sub_confirmation=1) :• Don't miss our full investigative Podcasts:• Radio Free Flint: (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf7RggWQolcX9_omKfwl4OYF-WB6S4x2b) The community perspective on industr…

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 attorney, future Michigan Supreme Court justice, and a gifted writer who would later publish the landmark legal novel Anatomy of a Murder under the pen name Robert Traver.In this episode of Flint Justice, Arthur Busch examines:• the real Big Bay homicide that inspired the book,• how Voelker transformed a trial transcript into one of the most realistic courtroom novels ever written, and• what Anatomy of a Murder still teaches us about prosecutors, defense lawyers, juries, and reasonable doubt.This is not a story about tidy verdicts or cinematic courtroom speeches.It’s about ambiguity, discretion, community judgment, and the uncomfortable truth that justice is often shaped by what can be proven—not what actually happened.For lawy…

This is an original report from The Mitten Channel.We examine Michigan stories through research, lived experience, and careful analysis—connecting local events to larger questions about justice, history, and public accountability.This piece is part of our ongoing independent work.No sponsors. No talking points. Just the record.Read / listen here:👉 https//www.radiofreeflint.media

This is an original report from The Mitten Channel.We examine Michigan stories through research, lived experience, and careful analysis—connecting local events to larger questions about justice, history, and public accountability.This piece is part of our ongoing independent work.No sponsors. No talking points. Just the record.Read / listen here:👉 https//www.radiofreeflint.media

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 trial of aging itself. Every stumble, verbal slip, or moment of confusion by national leaders is clipped, replayed, and mocked. For older viewers, this coverage is not abstract or partisan. It is personal.This investigative audio essay examines how constant media focus on age and cognition quietly harms older adults, especially in aging, post-industrial communities. Drawing on research in psychology, aging, and media studies, it explores fear of dementia, stigma, loneliness, and how political spectacle fuels anxiety, withdrawal, and disengagement from democracy.As Michigan approaches critical elections, this episode asks a deeper question: What happens to a democracy when aging itself is treated as entertainment—and dignity is the cost?#TheAgeO…

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 Emergency Brigade.She dodged bullets for the UAW and helped spark a labor uprising that reshaped the American middle class.This episode begins with a cinematic reenactment of the Flint Sit-Down Strike and Genora’s electrifying moment on the picket line. From her kitchen-table organizing to the chaos outside the plants, Genora’s bravery becomes the doorway into a deeper story about labor, power, and the long shadow cast over America’s auto industry.🔍 What This Episode Explores• The Real Genora Johnson DollingerA young mother who stepped into leadership during a crisis — and became one of the most important (and overlooked) women in American labor history.• The Strike That Built the Middle ClassThe 1937 Sit-Down wasn’t just a labor dispute.I…