Mike Boody Mike Boody shares the origins of his podcast name, "Mike's Bonfire," and expresses confusion over multiple branding efforts, highlighting the anxiety surrounding content creation. The conversation shifts to the impact of AI on education, content creation, and the ethical dilemmas surrounding its use in writing and research. They reflect on the challenges of monetizing content while staying true to creative principles, considering alternative funding models like microtransactions and the potential of platforms like Substack. The Midnight Citizen Mike's Bonfire https://youtube.com/live/-SkjPOfe0uE Bad AI Transcript hey everybody, this is Bob, and i'm talking to mike Booty, your midnight Citizen. uh also also that's up already, Mike's Bonfire, which i think is a very inspired name, actually. I love the, you know, whenever i saw that, I was like that's that is darn interesting. I don't know why, I mean, why wouldn't no i mean, but i'm like, yeah, I can see that. No, having some knowledge of you and your style. Definitely. Yeah. It's fitting. What do you think? Where'd you come up? Why'd you come up with that? Well, I'm going to preface it with like saying that all branding is probably about to change because I've been doing the podcast. Like I've had that name now for 15 years and I did a show recently where I gave some, I gave it, I gave the origin of it. And I think like I'm, I'm,I've moved past it. I'm sort of ready to try something else out, um, to, to try a, so you'll be the podcast formerly known as the midnight. Yeah, no, I'm thinking of like just doing a little symbol and, uh, all that and coming up with a very specific name to pronounce the symbol, like duck sound or something. But, um, but yeah, and, and I, and Mike's bonfire was created completely separate of the podcast. It was a place to, um, like a sub stack that I created to do more writing and all that. But I have not done much writing consistently at all over there. So it's just become the podcast. And so now, now I feel like it's just confusing to people that I got to go to Mike's bonfire. And then I watched the midnight citizen and like, what else, like what else, what other kind of branding is he going to throw at me? So one of those things that I constantly feel anxiety about is just like having, you know, everything is just so, um,different and uh and i and i do think about static radio kind of constantly because you guys have why same name since you've had the same name since 1999 yeah and i wish i wish i would have changed it it's a fantastic name and i know and it's like i've i've gotten some feedback from people in like the last few weeks since i've talked about changing it and people are like you know feel free to do that but like i'm fine with what you've got it doesn't bother me at all yeah i i think it's, I mean, either one of them are good. I did. I do really do like, uh, Mike's bonfire. It's not yeah a typical naming convention and, but yeah, it, it, I, you know, it totally fits the persona. Yeah. Initially it was like, uh, the, the bonfire aspect, uh, was, you know, like when you create a sub stack, you're supposed to have like an introductory post that just introduces yourself to like, you know, breeders andmy idea of like the bonfire was like, I was trying to write at the time, like a serialized novel. And I'd gotten about like, you know, 20 pages through the first chapter. And, uh, my idea was to put it out there. And so to emulate what Tom Wolf had done with the bonfire, the vanities were serialized that novel and Rolling Stone, um, in the eighties. And so that was like, my idea was like, you know, this is like my, my bonfire. Um, and, so that was kind of the thing. And it just sounded like kind of a cool name, but it, to me, to be honest with you, it sounds like also like kind of pervy, to be honest. Like, it sounds like I'm like, I'm like a, I'm like a weird. I didn't think of that at first.