Mike Boody
Mike Boody shares the origins of his podcast name, the Midnight Citizen and his substack "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. Come on over to Mike's bonfire and bring your slim gems. And, uh, well, I wasn't, I did not get that vibe at all. I,Yeah, I think like I just I have that general anxiety that like, you know, just any anything I create is any name that I come up with has like some kind of a weird, you know, like S&M connotation. Like the Midnight Citizen sounds like. Well, for one, I initially like right after I came up with that name and put it out there years ago, I sort of thought that like that sounds like an underground, like right wing militia group. Um, you know, and I, I think you're, I think you're reading way too much into it. That's just me. I don't know. It's like, I doubt, I doubt everything that i do. So, you know, yeah, no, I, I just, the midnight, it sounds because there was a thing called midnight caller. Um, uh, it was eric begorzian was the actor, right? Don't you do midnight color is that somebody else? Well, uh, anyway, talk radio.Talk Radio. That was his play that he turned into a movie. It reminds me of that. You're up all night. You're talking about what's happening. You're keeping people on the straight and narrow and telling them what's happening in the world. Talk Radio was obviously… When I created the show, I was watching that movie a lot as well as pump up the volume. I just was really… just so incredibly sad that a lot of that was going, was going away. Yeah. Well, no, it's actually exploded. It has. I know. And I was thinking about that at the time where it's like, you know, you know, podcast, like I've been thinking about like, you know, when podcasting came around, you know, which is, was six years before that was around 2004. That was like a really exciting thing. And getting like,my first like getting the iPod and everything and being able to just, just for specifically for podcasts, I was like, this is fantastic because it's like taking this like talk radio. I mean, talk radio obviously still exists, but you know, if you weren't, you know, Howard Stern or at the time, you know, like air America had things you were like, you had to be like Rush Limbaugh. You had to be like some kind of like, you know, loudmouth conservative um uh be on talk radio anymore and just the audience had gotten so incredibly like it just it made me really sad like i was very young i was only like 23 or so but um when when podcasting came out but i it made me very happy to see like this medium suddenly like come out of nowhere where like anybody could suddenly do something like that umUm, it was, it was really cool, but, uh, obviously like my interest in it died down because like the, the dream sort of died very quickly. Like after it was introduced to the world, like people just started figuring out that like, Oh, since everybody can do it, you know, then there's like, it's, it's harder to kind of break through and it's like becoming oversaturated and everything. And, and then eventually, uh, when podcasting made a big comeback like when welcome to night veil came out and like uh um that show cereal came out right it was like great everybody loves podcasting again but it's still not the it's not like the podcasting that i like i liked and that i that i was really interested in i'm not interested in like these heavily produced radio stories that might as well just be on public radioRight. Yeah. And that's really around the time that I found the overnight scape and I would, you know, and I, I found the overnight scape underground, um, and, and met all you guys who were like sort of doing the exact same thing that it should have been all along. So, uh, it made me frustrated cause it's like all these years I could have been hearing, uh, you guys, I could have been hearing Frank, um, you know, it was a little frustrating. Um, and, sort of like, you know, what you hear people say, like after they, like when they, when they get clean or something off of drugs and alcohol, like all these years, like living this like fantastic clean life, you know? Oh my gosh. I'm finally sober. Yeah. Look at all that i've been missing out on. I know. Oh my gosh. The life, the world's changed. Um, not what it, yeah. I mean, I,Yeah. Well, at this point, I mean, it's been 20, uh, 21 years now, so yeah you can romanticize about it a little bit. Um, having that much time pass, uh, right. Yeah. I mean, it, it was cool. I mean, you didn't make any money, but, uh, you know, whatever yeah you have to, it's art. Well, again, I mean, you still aren't, really making any money you know but like the idea is is that there is so much money out there to be made in podcasting um by people selling things to podcasters but again it's the money yeah the money it's become like a pyramid scheme you know um and my thinking on it is is just like let those people flush themselves out of it um and uh you know like my my my friend um who uhlast summer he works for a production studio in town and i was helping him. They wanted to get into the podcasting space, like have like create a studio that they could then rent out to local podcasters. Um, and, uh, so i went down there and kind of helped him set it up and, uh, they're, they've been doing really well they've got people coming in but like uh they find that they have a client come in, record one podcast, maybe two podcasts, and they just drop off after that because it just is not the moneymaker that they think it's going to be. It's like everybody just kind of does it because it's what you're supposed to do to get your name out there. It's like social media in a sense where it's like, yeah, I have to have all these social handles so that I can be…out in the space and it's like, yeah, yeah, I, I, you know, it's, yeah, there's, um, what was it? I mean, it's like three million or something, uh, podcast now, but apparently the, the real number i'm told, at least from a little bit of research and, and other people who have done research is the reality is it's about
