Bloggingheads.tv (sometimes abbreviated "bhtv") was a political, world events, philosophy, and science

video blog A vlog (), also known as a video blog or video log, is a form of blog for which the medium is video. Vlog entries often combine embedded video (or a video link) with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in one ta ...

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 Robert Michael "Mickey" Kaus (; born July 6, 1951) is an American journalist, pundit, and author, known for writing Kausfiles, a "mostly political" blog which was featured on ''Slate'' until 2010. Kaus is the author of ''The End of Equality'' an ...

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, video telephony, live streaming and social media, and Closed-circuit television, security. Webcams can b ...

between two (or more) people, and can be viewed online in

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * The Flash, several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Barry Allen ** Wally West, the first Kid Flash and third adult Flash ...

format, or downloaded as WMV 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 originated in weather and other natural history obs ...

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 David Corn (born February 20, 1959) is an American political journalist and author. He is the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for '' Mother Jones'' and is best known as a cable television commentator. Corn worked at ''The Nation'' from 1987 to 200 ...

& 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 (August 7, 1959 – November 12, 2024) was a Canadian politician and diplomat who served as the 36th premier of British Columbia from 2017 to 2022 and the ambassador of Canada to Germany from 2023 to 2024. He led the Briti ...

and George Johnson. Many well-known people in the science community were a part of Science Saturday, including

Michael Shermer Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of '' Skeptic'' magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientif ...

of Skeptic Magazine, biologist

PZ Myers Paul Zachary Myers (born March 9, 1957) is an American biologist who founded and writes the '' Pharyngula'' science blog. He is associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota Morris (UMM)

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

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 a ...

, aging researcher and biogerentologist

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

, and philosopher

David Chalmers David John Chalmers (; born 20 April 1966) is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist, specializing in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York University, as well ...

, 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 an American 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 ...

, Phil Plait 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 faith, religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of Creation myth, divine creation, and is often Pseudoscience, pseudoscientific.#Gunn 2004, Gun ...

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 political commentator Tucker Carlson and political advisor Neil Patel in 2010. Launched as a "conservative answer to ''The Huffington ...

''. Original host Conn Carroll of

The Heritage Foundation The Heritage Foundation (or simply Heritage) is an American Conservatism in the United States, conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1973, it took a leading role in the conservative movement in the 1980s 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 (United States), Democratic Party and Modern liberalism in the United States, liberal American politics. The site publishes blog posts, polls, election and cam ...

), Amanda Carpenter, and

Nate Silver Nathaniel Read Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, political analyst, author, sports gambler, and poker player who Sabermetrics, analyzes baseball, basketball and Psephology, elections. He is the founder of ''FiveThirty ...

(of

FiveThirtyEight ''FiveThirtyEight'', also rendered as ''538'', was an American website that focused on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States. The website, which took its name from the number of electors in the U ...

) among many others.

History

On November 1, 2005, the site launched, with Robert Wright and

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 television in the United States, cable and Satellite television in the United States, satellite television network, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a Non ...

founding chairman

Bob Rosencrans Robert Morris "Bob" Rosencrans (March 26, 1927 – August 3, 2016) was a cable television industry pioneer who helped create C-SPAN, an American public affairs television network. In addition, he helped launch the television networks BET and ...

, 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 to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible de ...

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 was most recently 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 ...

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 and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...

) 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 24, 2007, Bloggingheads.tv entered into a relationship with ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', whereby selected video segments from the Bloggingheads site would appear in the "Videos" section on the Times website, under the Opinion subsection. 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. 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 political commentator. Sullivan is a former editor of ''The New Republic'', and the author or editor of six books. He started a political blog, ''The Daily Dish'', in 2000, and ...

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

Iraq War The Iraq War (), also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a prolonged conflict in Iraq lasting from 2003 to 2011. It began with 2003 invasion of Iraq, the invasion by a Multi-National Force – Iraq, United States-led coalition, which ...

, 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 Francis Yoshihiro Fukuyama (; born October 27, 1952) is an American political scientist, political economist, and international relations scholar, best known for his book '' The End of History and the Last Man'' (1992). In this work he argues th ...

talked about his book ''America at the Crossroads''; the Israeli journalist

Gershom Gorenberg Gershom Gorenberg () is an American-born Israeli journalist and historian specializing in Middle Eastern politics and the interaction of religion and politics.The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'' columnist Joel Achenbach on an article of his about global warming deniers (among other topics);

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

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

;

(of

FiveThirtyEight.com ''FiveThirtyEight'', also rendered as ''538'', was an American website that focused on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States. The website, which took its name from the number of electors in the U ...

); and

, director of the

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

References

External links

*
New York Times Article on the operation of Bloggingheads.tvAssociated Press article in the NY Sun on the BloggingHeads.tv setup
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220811023250/https://www.nysun.com/article/43354?page_no=1 , date=August 11, 2022

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