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:

Adam Phillips

Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller: Tales Out of Loneliness

Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood around 1900

Dorothy Parker

Tristan Tzara

Mike Tyson (interview at NYPL)

Aristotle, Metaphysics

Pierre Mac Orlan

Charlie Mingus

Melvin Gibbs

Laurence Sterne

Roland Barthes, Michelet

Van Cliburn

Werner Herzog

Patti Smith

Audio & Sound Engineering by sadie ibrahim, with additional sound engineering by Najeeb Jones.

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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