Listen now | Bob and former Bloggingheads.tv staffer and contributor Aryeh Cohen-Wade reflect on the legacy of Bloggingheads.tv, the pioneering website Bob co-founded in 2005. Bob and Aryeh discuss how the site and the technology that powered it anticipated modern trends in online media. They also consider whether Twitter still has any use for journalists, the pros and cons of Substack, and whether Culturally Determined should pivot back to video.Recorded October 28, 2025Links Included:Max Read on his Substack statsAndrew Thompson on the economics of Substack and money vs. attentionhttps://components.news/the-desire-distribution/MeaningOfLife.tvhttps://meaningoflife.tv/Follow Bob on Twitter: https://x.com/robertwrighterFollow Aryeh on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/aryehcw.bsky.social
Thanks Bob and Aryeh for this fascinating history of Blogging Heads and Meaning of Life/Blogging Heads TV. I found out about Bob through Serene Jones, the outgoing President of Union Theological Seminary who knowing me to be an atheist mentioned that Bob was an agnostic who would be teaching at Union in the coming academic year. I then read all Bob's books and was fascinated to discover his Meaning of Life TV, a place where you could see and here some of the most important intellectuals of the day that provided a unique view of these important minds as flesh and blood human beings. This direct video exposure to important thinkers simply was not available anywhere else when Bob started Blogging Heads and Meaning of life TV and I am very grateful for the exposure to those thinkers against home I could compare my own thoughts values and ideas.
The amazing people Bob has had on is truly remarkable and many of them have gone on to
internet fame and fortune such as Kat Rosenfield, Matt Lewis, Glenn Loury, John McWhorter Evan Thompson and have enjoyed just as much the others who didn't but provided great ideas like Missouri philosopher Dan Kaufmann (who had a falling out with Bob) and the many others in his diverse group of guests. I especially enjoyed Bob's well deserved skewering of the obtuse and overrated closet behaviorist Daniel Dennett.
One of Bob's best performances.
I also enjoyed Aryeh's own talks and clever quirky sense of humor. I couldn't help but get a kick out of how well Aryeh trolled Mickey's sometimes idiotic and reliably boneheaded posts on Twitter. I also enjoyed some of the conversations with Mickey which displayed so much of the thoughtless, cruel, embarrassing and often hypocritical approaches of the right especially on immigration (a subject Mickey should stay away from given his own immigrant refugee family origins).
Bob deserves great credit for exposing many great guests to the public on video whom we would never otherwise have had a chance to see.
Thanks Bob and Aryeh for this fascinating history of Blogging Heads and Meaning of Life/Blogging Heads TV. I found out about Bob through Serene Jones, the outgoing President of Union Theological Seminary who knowing me to be an atheist mentioned that Bob was an agnostic who would be teaching at Union in the coming academic year. I then read all Bob's books and was fascinated to discover his Meaning of Life TV, a place where you could see and here some of the most important intellectuals of the day that provided a unique view of these important minds as flesh and blood human beings. This direct video exposure to important thinkers simply was not available anywhere else when Bob started Blogging Heads and Meaning of life TV and I am very grateful for the exposure to those thinkers against home I could compare my own thoughts values and ideas.
The amazing people Bob has had on is truly remarkable and many of them have gone on to
internet fame and fortune such as Kat Rosenfield, Matt Lewis, Glenn Loury, John McWhorter Evan Thompson and have enjoyed just as much the others who didn't but provided great ideas like Missouri philosopher Dan Kaufmann (who had a falling out with Bob) and the many others in his diverse group of guests. I especially enjoyed Bob's well deserved skewering of the obtuse and overrated closet behaviorist Daniel Dennett.
One of Bob's best performances.
I also enjoyed Aryeh's own talks and clever quirky sense of humor. I couldn't help but get a kick out of how well Aryeh trolled Mickey's sometimes idiotic and reliably boneheaded posts on Twitter. I also enjoyed some of the conversations with Mickey which displayed so much of the thoughtless, cruel, embarrassing and often hypocritical approaches of the right especially on immigration (a subject Mickey should stay away from given his own immigrant refugee family origins).
Bob deserves great credit for exposing many great guests to the public on video whom we would never otherwise have had a chance to see.
Thank you Bob for many decades of great work!