Now 40 percent faster!
May 22, 2010
Bloggingheads.tv is the site that lets you watch hour-long one-on-one video chats between a pretty big selection of bloggers, columnists, journalists, scientists, lawyers, and other internet hipsters.
Some of the chats feature like-minded people going back and forth (Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam or Michelle Goldberg and Rebecca Traister). Others are online cage matches (Dean Baker and Megan McCardle or Glenn Greenwald and Lawrence Lessig (OK, well maybe I exaggerate)).
The format gives a nice feel for the personal styles of people who I generally only know through their writing. Something like the in-between-the-songs commentary you get at some live music events.
I also like the brief table of contents that appears just below the talking heads. It lets you skip to what look to be the most interesting bits.
And the feature I like most is that bloggingheads gives the option to run the video at 1.4 times the normal speed. Everyone is still completely understandable, but an hour goes by in about 43 minutes.