The Most Important Website You’ve Never Heard Of

A place where opposing sides play nice

Jack Cohen
Aug 31, 2018 · 3 min read

A few days ago, after NYT Food Editor Sam Sifton recommended it in his latest newsletter, I read Meghan Daum’s article in Great Escape called Nuance: A Love Story.

In the piece, she mentions one of her most recently frequented and newly favorite websites: Bloggingheads.tv.

Prior to learning about this site via Daum, I had no previous awareness it existed. Once I landed on the homepage, it didn’t take long to realize this resource was one that was vastly underutilized and under-shared. It had the potential to be an eye opener for many, not only in my generation, but also amongst older and younger groups, as well.

The site, founded in 2005 by Robert Wright, Mickey Kaus, and Greg Dingle, facilitates informal video discussions (anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour long) between professors, scholars, and intellectuals from across the United States on a variety of cultural, social, and political issues that have, for the most part, been rid of all necessary nuance when covered in the mainstream .

Their founding mission statement, in part, reads:

“We hope to be in one sense an unusual expression of the Internet. Almost all blogs have a dominant ideology and a fairly homogeneous comments section to match. We pride ourselves on having a diversity of views in our diavlogs and an accordingly diverse comments section, where thoughtful disagreement is expressed in civil terms. (OK, usually thoughtful, and usually civil.)”

It goes on:

“[We hope] to help people see things from perspectives other than their own — and, in particular, from perspectives that, for whatever reason, they aren’t normally able to appreciate.”

And finally:

“There’s a third reason we do this: Because we don’t think it gets done much. Yes, “real” TV features some vibrant, high-level conversations about politics and ideas. But the economics of broadcast and cable TV seem to mainly encourage something else. “Dialogue” on television is often an exchange of rehearsed talking points, and interviews are often a series of canned questions, with little or no impromptu follow-up. For all of the unscripted talk shows on broadcast and cable TV, there’s very little true spontaneity.”

As Daums notes in her piece, “I was a particular fan of the monthly dialogue between the economist and professor Glenn Loury and the linguist and literature professor John McWhorter. Calling themselves ‘the Black Guys on Bloggingheads,’ they talked about racial politics with more candor and (ahem) nuance than I’d probably ever heard in my life.”

The importance of what this website showcases and represents cannot be understated. The content is long form, highlights and discusses opposing viewpoints in detail, addresses nuanced issues all from a place of knowledge, but, and arguably most importantly, while maintaining respect for the other side.

The homepage of the site (Source: Bloggingheads.tv)

I strongly urge you all to make time each week, if only for 30 minutes, to peruse this site, bookmark it, share it with your friends, bring it up during conversation.

This is the type of media that due to it’s lack of advertising or entertainment value often falls beneath our radar in a world filled with omnipresent media noise. That’s why it’s even more important to make the extra effort to support and promote this content.

Here are a few links to specific videos of their’s. They also link you to specific segments of the videos so you don’t have to watch the full length if you don’t have time.

  • A counternarrative for microaggressions (Link here)
  • Pleasure and addiction (Link here)
  • Is ‘white fragility’ a real thing? (Link here)

I’ll leave you with this parting thought: A healthy democracy thrives on a citizenry that embraces, appreciates, and discusses the nuanced complexities of life, not one that boils down all issues to their simplest forms.

Let me know what you think of the site!

See you tomorrow.

Jack Cohen

Written by

Working at FirstMark | Side hustle at www.jackcohen.com | Insatiably curious. 🌱 I (used to) write here daily. 👋🏽

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