what is the BOB show
From 2010 to 2024 I co-hosted the BOB Show with Bob Dobbs, the media scholar Donald Theall called "the new McLuhan." I'm re-airing the archive here on Salus of the Wake because it was recorded years ahead of its time, and 2026 has finally caught up to it.
In this episode, Bob sits down with Dr. Eric Dodson, existential phenomenologist and my old professor from West Georgia's famed humanistic psychology program. Recorded January 2011, it maps the world you're living in right now: the post-literate, "iconographic" mind (the meme-and-feed consciousness, named before TikTok existed), the post-information society where facts stopped moving people and violence became an identity quest, Baudrillard as "nothing but McLuhan," Finnegans Wake as the only map that never expires, and the prophecy that the user would become the content…and the king. Fifteen years early. Listen and check the date.
episode 4
The BOB Show archive continues, and this may be the most prophetic hour of the whole run. Recorded January 2011: Bob and Dr. Eric Dodson on play, Homo Ludens, and infinite games — and then Bob unveils his theory of the "discarnate experience": the psychic hit of feeling an invisible audience receive you, the real drug underneath all media. Before the creator economy had a name, Bob explains why everyone secretly wants to be ON there, why the anchors are addicts, why the talent shows and call-in lines were dispensaries, and why the era's violence comes from people starving for the host's chair. Also: the true meaning of "the medium is the message" that almost everyone gets wrong, and the line that should hang over every psychology department — "the unconscious is our technical environment." Fifteen years early. Every word of it now describes your phone.
