Critical Currents
Critical Currents
Podcast Description
Democracy thrives on open dialogue, diverse perspectives, and the courage to engage across differences. As we bear witness to social, political, and cultural ruptures that threaten to pull us apart, how can we still find common ground? How can we truly listen to each other and nurture our sense of solidarity?
Critical Currents explores the discourses, movements, and cultural shifts shaping democratic life and collective action today. In an era of uncertainty, this podcast cultivates thoughtful dialogue and a deeper understanding of the forces that bind—and divide—us.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast explores discourses, movements, and cultural shifts affecting democratic life and collective action, focusing on themes such as political divides and the role of art in social justice. An example episode features Lynne Thompson discussing her journey as a poet and how her work addresses political tensions and cultural heritage.
Democracy thrives on open dialogue, diverse perspectives, and the courage to engage across differences. As we bear witness to social, political, and cultural ruptures that threaten to pull us apart, how can we still find common ground? How can we truly listen to each other and nurture our sense of solidarity?
Critical Currents explores the discourses, movements, and cultural shifts shaping democratic life and collective action today. In an era of uncertainty, this podcast cultivates thoughtful dialogue and a deeper understanding of the forces that bind—and divide—us.
In this episode of Critical Currents, interviewer and cultural curator Paul Holdengräber joins hosts Ziyan Xie and Dani Taylor to explore how words, silence, and misunderstanding shape human experience. Renowned for staging encounters that are as much performance as dialogue, Holdengräber calls himself a “curator of public curiosity.” The conversation drifts through pockets and portals, digression and discomfort, improvisation and euphoria. Along the way, Holdengräber reflects on storytelling, collectorship, cultural institutions, and on conversation itself as an act of risk: nerve-wracking, intimate, semi-private, yet always alive with the possibility of surprise and obsessions. With wit, humor, and an untethered spirit, Holdengräber reminds us that the point is not to make a point, but to open the realm of thought. This episode is both a dance and a pause, a reminder that when we truly listen, anything can happen.
MENTIONED:
Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller: Tales Out of Loneliness
Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood around 1900
Mike Tyson (interview at NYPL)
Critical Currents is a collaborative production of the Wende Museum, Thomas Mann House, and dublab, with episodes airing from the heart of Downtown Los Angeles at the dublab studio. New episodes release monthly throughout the spring and fall, available on all podcast platforms.
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Disclaimer
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