It’s the official Christmas plant, and today we learn all about the poinsettia from a man who has grown them for more than 30 years.

It’s been almost 30 years since I first met Ben Bodkin. High school classmates, college roommates, and now adult friends and professional colleagues, this episode was supposed to be a rip-roaring blast from our shared past. Instead, a story of miracles and gratitude broke out.

Today, we talk to Ben Solis, reporter at Gongwer News Service. As part of a questionable, new-employee hazing process, our friend Zach Gorchow assigned poor Ben to follow every minute of this redistricting process and write about it. Now, Ben is quite an expert on it all.

53 years ago, Michigan was shaken by the gruesome murder of a family of six in their Northern Michigan, lakeshore cottage. Today, it remains one of Michigan’s most mysterious cold cases.

It’s a Halloween episode murder mystery, and it’s the Cold Oatmeal Podcast.

With agility and cunning, Kurt has evaded us these past many years, but no longer. As many know, Kurt is routinely named Michigan’s most effective lobbyist in the MIRS News Capitol Insiders Survey. Today, his stature grows even larger, because at long last, Kurt Berryman is our guest.

Short’s Brewing Company is a Michigan treasure. Joe Short is its founder, and today he helps us kick off season five of the Cold Oatmeal Podcast.

Today, we come out of our summer podcast siesta for a special one-time-only, news-breaking episode.

We have a new colleague joining the Resch Strategies/Cold Oatmeal team, and today you get to meet her… or him.

It’s the season finale, and we go out big!

Tim Skubick, Michigan’s Senior Capitol Correspondent and host of public television’s “Off the Record,” is our last guest of season four. Tim has more than 50 years in covering Michigan’s political beat.

Andy Arena has a nearly 25-year career as one of this country’s top FBI agents, with assignments in LA after the riots of ’92, organized crime, counterterrorism following 9/11, and public corruption in Youngstown, OH and Detroit.

He’s retired from the Bureau now and leads the Detroit Crime Commission, a non-profit founded to support the work of local law enforcement organizations. Naturally, he had time to come to Lansing to talk to us.

Never underestimate the power of a podcast because today we make dreams come true. Peter Ruddell has long dreamt – quite publicly really – of being on the Cold Oatmeal Podcast. Today, we make it happen.