“There is an attempt to normalize hatred and to somehow treat it if it were an anthropological given--as if it were a spontaneous outbreak of emotion...I really resist that narrative. It’s not natural and it’s not individual...it’s something that is collectively produced.”

“That memory is a species of morality is one of the more unassailable pieties of our age.” - David Rieff

“The way in which one experiences the present has an effect on the way one reads art from the past.” - Christopher Knight

“Art is long, it’s never not been with us for some reason. It’s the most advanced operating system our species has ever developed to examine consciousness, the invisible world, the visible world, each other--whatever--and it won’t go away until everything it’s meant to address has been addressed.” - Jerry Saltz

“I believe that the heart and soul of colleges and universities is the study of enduring questions from a variety of points of view.” - Michael Roth

“When people are scared and they think things are falling apart, they get more conservative and they’re willing to trade civil liberties for someone taking control.”

“What is ultimately at the core of American exceptionalism - a definition of freedom as 'freedom from restraint' rather than a recognition of mutual dependence with other human beings.”

“There isn’t really a ‘normal’, because normal was the destruction of the planet and the myth of control. I think that, hopefully, a ‘new normal’ will be a world that affirms kindness, cooperation, and generosity rather than cruelty, selfishness, and violence.”

On episode 053 of The Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by Yale professor, historian, and author Greg Grandin.

On episode 052 of The Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by author Viet Thanh Nguyen.