On Being a Talking Head

This week I had the chance to take part in my first “diavlog” at Bloggingheads.tv. I was fortunate to have as my counterpart Richard Amesbury, a scholar who has done some fascinating work about religion in human rights and the politics of New Atheism. We had a good conversation about those things, though I find myself wishing I could say most of it over again, a bit differently. It’s the reason, I guess, I write rather than TV-anchor or act. With writing, there is revision. There is silence and solitude. There is pausing and thinking. There is sharing with trusted friends, then revising again, in solitude, and sharing again.

That said, Bloggingheads does a great service by replacing the talking head with the talking person, such as we are.