Bloggingheads.tv (sometimes abbreviated "bhtv") is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast online to viewers. The site was started by the journalist and author Robert Wright and the blogger and journalist Mickey Kaus on November 1, 2005. Kaus has since dropped out of operational duties of the site as he didn't want his frequent linking to be seen as a conflict of interest. Most of the earlier discussions posted to the site involved one or both of those individuals, but since has grown to include a total of over one thousand individual contributors, mostly journalists, academics, scientists, authors, well known political bloggers, and other notable individuals. Unregistered users are able to view all of the videos which are contained on the site, while free registration is required to comment on the individual discussions, or participate in the forums. In April 2022, Wright announced that Bloggingheads will be ending, stating that "the era in which Bloggingheads makes sense is kinda over."

Format

Bloggingheads discussions are conducted via

webcam A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in videotelephony, livestreaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware or peripher ...

between two (or more) people, and can be viewed online in Flash format, or downloaded as

WMV Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: The original video compression technology ...

video files, MP4 video files, or MP3 sound files. New diavlogs are generally posted daily, and are all archived for future viewing. The diavlogs are generally broken up into a series of topics and subtopics a few minutes in length, links to which are placed below the video window to allow viewers to navigate to a given topic if they do not wish to view the whole discussion. Most of the discussions posted to Bloggingheads.tv involve well known (or semi-well known) journalists, bloggers,

science writer Science journalism conveys reporting about science to the public. The field typically involves interactions between scientists, journalists, and the public. Origins Modern science journalism dates back to '' Digdarshan'' (means showing the d ...

s, scientists, philosophers, book authors, or other specialists in segments of current world events. Many of the discussions are of a political nature or are related to the current political environment. Those with differing points of view are often matched against one another. Diavlogs involving guests appearing for the first time often take the form of an interview, more often than that of a discussion, with a longtime Bloggingheads contributor playing the role of interviewer.

Regular segments

Although most episodes and matchups do not occur on any kind of a regular basis, there are a few notable exceptions to this. There is a frequent diavlog matchup between the two co-founders of Bloggingheads.tv, Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus, generally related to politics in some form, that usually occurs on either Wednesday or Thursday. While some of the other diavloggers are frequently matched against each other (e.g. David Corn & James Pinkerton) there is usually not a regularly scheduled time at which they take place. "Science Saturday" was the name given to the weekly episode appearing on Saturday that was always science related. Its last episode was released on December 24, 2011. It usually (but not always) involved either one or both of the science writers

John Horgan John Joseph Horgan (born August 7, 1959) is a Canadian politician who served as the 36th premier of British Columbia from 2017 to 2022, and also as the leader of the British Columbia New Democratic Party from 2014 to 2022. Horgan has been the ...

and George Johnson. Many well-known people in the science community were a part of Science Saturday, including Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine, biologist PZ Myers,

Craig Venter John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1946) is an American biotechnologist and businessman. He is known for leading one of the first draft sequences of the human genome and assembled the first team to transfect a cell with a synthetic chromosome. ...

of the

Human Genome Project The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both ...

, aging researcher and biogerentologist

Aubrey de Grey Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey (; born 20 April 1963) is an English author and biomedical gerontologist. He is the author of ''The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging'' (1999) and co-author of ''Ending Aging'' (2007). He is known ...

, and philosopher David Chalmers, among many others. However, in September 2009, four high-profile science bloggers who had previously participated in Bloggingheads.tv discussions publicly distanced themselves from the site and stated they would no longer agree to appear in Bloggingheads.tv segments. The scientists – Sean Carroll,

Carl Zimmer Carl Zimmer (born 1966) is a popular science writer, blogger, columnist, and journalist who specializes in the topics of evolution, parasites, and heredity. The author of many books, he contributes science essays to publications such as ''The ...

Phil Plait Philip Cary Plait (born September 30, 1964), also known as The Bad Astronomer, is an American astronomer, skeptic, and popular science blogger. Plait has worked as part of the Hubble Space Telescope team, images and spectra of astronomical objec ...

and PZ Myers – all criticized what they claimed was a policy by Bloggingheads.tv to provide a platform for the anti-scientific ideology,

Creationism Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. Gunn 2004, p. 9, "The ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' says that creationism is 't ...

without an opposing point of view for balance. PZ Myers said: " loggingheads.tvwas setting up crackpots with softball interviews that made them look reasonable, because their peculiar ideas were never confronted." "The Week in Blog" was a weekly segment which normally appeared on the site on Fridays. Its last episode was released on March 7, 2012. The format was to discuss what has showed up on the past week on both liberal and conservative blogs, from both a liberal and conservative viewpoint. The three regular hosts of "TWIB" were Bill Scher of ''Liberal Oasis'', Kristin Soltis of the Winston Group, and Matt Lewis of ''

The Daily Caller ''The Daily Caller'' is a right-wing news and opinion website based in Washington, D.C. It was founded by now-Fox News host Tucker Carlson and political pundit Neil Patel in 2010. Launched as a "conservative answer to ''The Huffington Post'' ...

''. Original host Conn Carroll of

The Heritage Foundation The Heritage Foundation (abbreviated to Heritage) is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that is primarily geared toward public policy. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the presi ...

stepped aside in early 2009. Guests who appeared on the show are Armando Llorens (of

Daily Kos Daily Kos ( ) is a group blog and internet forum focused on the U.S. Democratic Party and liberal American politics. The site includes glossaries and other content. It is sometimes considered an example of " netroots" activism. Daily Kos was ...

), Amanda Carpenter, and

Nate Silver Nathaniel Read Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes baseball (see sabermetrics), basketball, and elections (see psephology). He is the founder and editor-in-chief of '' FiveThirtyE ...

(of FiveThirtyEight) among many others.

History

On November 1, 2005, the site launched, with Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus as the only two initial participants in the video discussions. The site has since featured more than one thousand other diavloggers. On October 18, 2006, a site redesign was launched, with a revised home page and improved functionality: ability to comment on diavlogs was added, and to participate in forum discussions. In January 2007, it was announced that cable TV pioneer and

C-SPAN Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...

founding chairman Bob Rosencrans, with a loose network of others, would become an

angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownersh ...

of Bloggingheads.tv. The infusion of cash kicked off a dramatic expansion of the site's content, and a corresponding growth in viewers. On March 24, 2007, in a diavlog between

Garance Franke-Ruta Garance Franke-Ruta is the executive editor of GEN by Medium. She has worked as Washington editor of Yahoo News and editor in chief of Yahoo Politics, Voices columnist and politics editor of ''The Atlantic'' Online, national web politics editor ...

and Ann Althouse, Althouse became quite animated and angry (to the point of yelling) over a comment Franke-Ruta made (in reference to an earlier controversy involving Jessica Valenti and former US president

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again ...

) referred to as an on-air "meltdown" by some. This led to many blog posts and news stories in the following days on both the initial controversy and Althouse's on air behavior. On October 13, 2007, a conversion to Flash format from the initial Windows Media format took place. On October 24, 2007, Bloggingheads.tv entered into a relationship with ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', whereby selected video segments from the Bloggingheads site would appear in the "Videos" section on the Times website, under the Opinion subsection. On December 13, 2007, a site redesign took place which removed the familiar green pages in favor of a more " Web 2.0"-look, featuring more user generated content, new navigation, new forum software for the "comments" section, and other updated features. In 2008, several new segments and diavloggers were added or made more regular, including "Free Will", "This Week in Blog", and "UN Plaza". Other updates and tweaks to the site, such as the addition of the MP4 video format were also gradually phased in. In April 27, 2022, during an appearance on "the DMZ," Wright announced that Bloggingheads will be ending, with the remaining segments moving to their own independent platforms.

Media recognition

Traditional media outlets, such at ''The New York Times'' and others, have written mostly favorable reviews of Bloggingheads.tv. Stories are also often written about individuals who take part in the video discussions, as they are often well known individuals in the scientific, academic, journalism, or blogosphere community. The majority of coverage of the site, however, has been in the form of blog coverage sometimes on the form of the blog of the person participating in the Bloggingheads discussion, and sometimes in the form of other blogs. Some events and personality appearances on Bloggingheads.tv have led to larger than usual amounts of media coverage, such as the March 24, 2007 Ann Althouse controversy described above, and the appearance of

Andrew Sullivan Andrew Michael Sullivan (born 10 August 1963) is a British-American author, editor, and blogger. Sullivan is a political commentator, a former editor of ''The New Republic'', and the author or editor of six books. He started a political blog, ' ...

on December 26, 2006 and January 1, 2007, when he discussed in the most clear terms up to that point his reversal of viewpoint on the

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, and his plea of apology for supporting it in the first place.

Contributors to Bloggingheads.tv

Apart from the regular contributors, a host of well known occasional guests have appeared, usually in the form of being interviewed. Among others, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama talked about his book ''America at the Crossroads''; the Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg discussed his book ''The Accidental Empire'' (about the history of the settlements); ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'' columnist

Joel Achenbach Joel LeRoy Achenbach (; born December 31, 1960) is an American staff writer for ''The Washington Post'' and the author of seven books, including '' A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea'', ''The Grand Idea'', ''Captured by Aliens'', ''It Looks Like a Pr ...

on an article of his about

global warming deniers Climate change denial, or global warming denial, is Denial (Freud), denial, dismissal, or doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change, including the extent to which it is Attribution of recent climate change, caused by hum ...

(among other topics);

on his book ''The Conservative Soul''; biogerentologist

on how to defeat the "disease" of aging; philosopher David Chalmers;

(of FiveThirtyEight.com); and

, director of the

, who spoke of future scientific innovations he is currently pursuing.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://bloggingheads.tv
New York Times Article on the operation of Bloggingheads.tvAssociated Press article in the NY Sun on the BloggingHeads.tv setup
Television channels and stations established in 2005 American entertainment websites Video hosting Internet properties established in 2005 Web syndication Internet television channels Video podcasts Political podcasts Educational podcasts Science podcasts American political blogs Science blogs Video on demand services 2005 podcast debuts