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PODCAST

The Midnight Citizen

Your late night broadcast from Birmingham, AL. mikesbonfire.substack.com Since 2010, Host Mike Boody has been giving you a unique blend of personal stories, takes on pop culture, and reflections on everyday life, all in a candid, free-flowing monologue-style. Recorded in the quiet hours, The Midnight Citizen offers an intimate, nostalgic listening experience—part memoir, part cultural diary, always honest and offbeat.

society & culture

All Episodes

01:34:42

Ep. 296 | "Good Luck in Your Future Endeavors"

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/08/07

Join Mike outside on a Friday night. This week, I’m sitting on the back porch of my folks’ house in suburban Birmingham, AL., gazing out into the serene channel of woods and darkness, wondering why my family chose to live here in the late summer of 1992. I guess I’ve never thought of it before, or, for that matter, why one of our neighbors, the heir to one of the state’s great Department Store fortunes, chose to build his dream house here back in the late 70’s — a dream house that was torn down a

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01:44:29

Ep. 295 | "Get a Real Job"

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/07/20

Join Mike outside on a Friday night.Hang out on the makeshift back patio with me while I reminisce on morning TV and what happened after that on those long hot days in the summer when you had nothing to do and all day to do it. Anyway, I was feeling real nostalgic today when I took a small break to take in a double feature — something I don’t get to do much these days when I’m driving for dollars and looking for more stable work. Later on in the night, I speculate on the identify of the mystery

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01:47:25

Ep. 294 | "Full Tilt Patriotic"

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/07/07

Join Mike in the studio late on a Saturday night.Tonight, check your commie cynicism at the door and give yourself a little permission to be a proud Ameri-CAN on this 4th of July weekend. Go on, now — call a ceasefire on the whole “Us vs. Them” thing. Just watch yourself a little “Back Up, Terry” and I promise, it’ll all feel right as rain…Now that we’re all feeling appropriately patriotic, join me as I check in on the newest branch of the armed services, the United States Space Force. Who are they

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01:32:49

Ep. 293 | "Pots-Secret"

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/06/29

Join Mike in the studio late at night.Tonight, to kick off 4th of July week, I bring to you some quotes from a barrage of great American patriots — George Washington, Justice Potter Stewart, Missile Command Champ and former Playgirl Centerfold Roy “Mr. Awesome” Schildt. From there, we get onto the idea of “underground” postal systems, which Thomas Pynchon talks about in his Crying of Lot 49, and how the Internet was kind of a natural successor to the Trystero system…until it got infiltrated by,

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02:04:59

Ep. 292 | "Live and Mercy"

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/06/16

Join Mike in the studio late (and LIVE!) on a stormy Saturday night…Tonight, on the eve of Fathers’ Day, and in the absence of having kids of my own, I pass onto you some sage advice handed down to me by my dad…or maybe it was the funny coach from Teen Wolf:“Never get less than 12 hours sleep…never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city……and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body.”Actually, I ignored an important “dad” rule this week that the

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01:56:05

Ep. 291 | "Millennial Falcon"

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/06/09

🗨️Listen and rate the show on Spotify! 🟢ᯤJoin Mike in the studio late on a Saturday night. Tonight, I’m wondering why my generation has gotten such a bad rap for so long. Is it really just our love for Avocado toast, or something much deeper? Maybe we’re all looked down on because all the 80s and 90s pop culture we’re so nostalgic for was kind of vapid and banal, or it’s simply the fact that we never claimed to not wanna sell out? Whatever it is, we’re tired of taking it, and I dedicate a large

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01:47:57

Ep. 290 | "Bully for Kilroy"

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/06/01

🗨️Be sure to rate the show and leave a comment if you can! It really helps the show!🟢ᯤJoin Mike in the studio late at night.Tonight, a real experimental episode as we cross over into June, and I do my first live show in over 2 years! Of course, you’re downloading it, but still… Witness the drama as I attempt to engineer a livestream while clumsily monologuing about bullies, 90s self-help videos for kids hosted by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Teddy Roosevelt, and memes from World War II featuring Kilroy,

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01:28:51

Ep. 289 | "Palindrome Days"

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/05/25

🗨️Don’t be shy! Leave a comment, tell me what you think! Listen and rate the show on Spotify! 🟢ᯤJoin Mike in the studio late at night. After fighting a long, drawn-out battle to some stubborn window blinds, I give in and just get on with the show. Starting with listener comments about their absolute worst job interviews. Then an update on my continuing job hunt gets me thinking about how my lifestyle lately is fitting for these palindrome days of May — the same forwards and backwards: ☕Drinking

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01:07:16

"Tetraphobia"

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/05/11

Join Mike back in the studio on a Saturday night. This week: some audience participation! What was your worst job interview ever? For me, it was that time I got detained for peddling coupon books in a federal building. I should’ve done more to heed the number 4, a bad sign for good fortune. The interviews lately haven’t been that bad on my most recent run of unemployment. I mean, there’s no job yet, but at least no police have been called. Meanwhile, I keep on yo-yoing around town, delivering food

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01:04:25

"Night Shift Intellectual"

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/05/04

Join Mike on a rainy night in the suburbs of Birmingham, AL, as he sits in his parents’ garage, freshly unemployed, and ponders the next big move.Really, instead of making any definite decisions, I get hung up on spotting “The Club” security bar on the steering wheel of somebody’s late model POS in a Walgreens parking lot — probably the first time I’ve seen one since the 90’s. Gets me thinking about why they stopped making them, or why they apparently still do, given their inherent security flaws —

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01:38:32

The Margaritaville HOA

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/04/20

Join Mike in the studio for another late night ramble. Tonight, we explore life after the rat race in Margaritaville, FLA, where a flock of 55-and-up Parrot Heads and coastal grandmothers are wastin’ away in an oasis by the sea. Also, Katy Perry and Gayle King go to space, and to all our chagrin, come back; meanwhile, back on Earth, I pay my taxes and cause a car accident, consider taking a job teaching homeschool for a Christian company that sounds like a soap opera, and check out the upcoming

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01:29:59

"Microwave Epiphany" | The Midnight Citizen | Episode...

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/04/13

Join Mike in the studio for another late night ramble. Tonight, it’s all about looking for a new business to get into, like maybe buyin’ a drone and selling my services as a “droneprenuer”. It seems to work for all those folks on Youtube infomercials, and as far as shady enterprise goes, it’s really no more sketchy than any other classified ad on LinkedIn.Later, I have a religious epiphany over a box of frozen ravioli, give my final thoughts on “The White Lotus”, and play you a clip of a white

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90:09

"Christy, the Night Manager" | The Midnight Citizen |...

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/04/06

Join Mike in the studio late at night for a free-flowing ramble. On this episode, he recounts the Friday night scramble of his first job — racing to close down the dollar theater lobby in time to make it to the video store before they locked the gates. Thankfully, Christy, the night manager, would keep the lights on just a little longer, giving rise to their own unofficial after hours film society.Also: Irishing up my coffee to make a toast to Val Kilmer, browsing the classifieds again in my

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89:41

"The Past Can Be So Hostile" | The Midnight Citizen |...

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/03/30

Join Mike in the studio late at night, where he recounts how he visited a place from his distant childhood this week — the atrium lobby of his dad’s old office building from the 80’s. Not having been there in nearly 40 years, he was prepared to receive nothing but warm, nostalgic vibes, but instead suffered the wrath of a hangry woman in scrubs. Later, I spend some time looking for a job in the jungle scam market of LinkedIn, check out the new trailer for “One Battle After Another,” ostensibly based

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107:04

"Memory Farm" | The Midnight Citizen | Episode 282

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/03/23

Join Mike back in the studio late at night, where he goes for a long memory jog trying to remember what that Disney movie “The Shaggy DA” was about. He could just Google it, but doesn’t want to farm out his memory to the phone. It’s something we should all resist. Later, I ask if there’s a statute of limitations on synchronicity. I wonder this as I drink a toast to George Foreman, who died Friday at 76, a few hours after my mom asked me if I wanted a Lean, Mean Fat Grilling Machine she had lying

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79:04

"The Facts Are So Disappointing" | The Midnight...

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/03/16

Join Mike outside late at night, where he’s stunned to discover that they finally caught Jack the Ripper…like, a month ago. Isn’t anyone on the same news cycle anymore? Anyway, he’s devastated to learn that the truth of Saucy Jack’s real identity is much dumber than any theory has ever suggested, which reinforces his Rule for Life #2: Never Solve Your Mysteries. Also, other rules for life, like Never Meet Your Heroes and Never Do Again What You Did Well 40 Years Ago, as demonstrated by Lucille Ball

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58:07

"Psycho Mormon" | The Midnight Citizen | Episode 280

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/03/09

Join Mike in the studio late at night, where he asks why he was such an a-hole to a nice young Mormon on his own turf. This snark-by-default has deep roots, perhaps, in growing up in the Southern Baptist MLM groove, where every interaction was a sales pitch, a chance to earn posthumous perks.Hear about what it was like growing up a Jesus Brat; how it was so hard to sell salvation in the South — a territory that had already been covered long before you got there. Also, why “cool” Jesus was another

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82:10

"Cringe Yellow" | The Midnight Citizen | Episode 279

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/03/02

Join Mike in the studio on a Saturday night, recalling the combo-pigment of “caution” orange and “piss” yellow that made the school bunch so special. Also, how do I know where JD Vance got his approach to foreign diplomacy? Because he grew up in my era, attending the same public schools that valued wrestling over civics. Speaking of bad education, we gotta get our kids out of this bad area — especially as the new SecEd Linda McMahon is invited to use the department as her own personal RAGE

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85:00

"The Elite, Secret Currency" | The Midnight Citizen |...

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/02/23

Join Mike in the studio late at night as he mulls over the optics of our new, modern chaos. Not to get too political, but if Satan wants to really torture us for all eternity, he’ll need to do some redecorating in hell. Also, why the movie Eyes Wide Shut (1999) is becoming more of a documentary; the secret currency of the rich explains why we all hate Valentine’s Day; and how AI has made us that old man at Wendy’s training his 16-year-old replacement.But some good news: The White Lotus is back on

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63:19

"Scream Into The Void" | The Midnight Citizen |...

The Midnight Citizen ·

2025/02/15

Join Mike in the studio late on a Friday night, where he screams all his innermost thoughts, desires, and shame into the void of a social media platform…and no, it’s not Substack. Also, what is it with Substack? Why do they only show people what you do when you say nice things about them? More paranoia linked to the tech industrial complex. Thanks for reading Mike's Bonfire! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Watch The Midnight Citizen Vlog every Monday on YouTube and

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