Five O’Clock with Theral Timpson

De: Theral Timpson
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  • Resumen

  • Wind down in the evening and contemplate big ideas on a variety of topics. The 5 O’Clock Podcast is long time biology podcaster Theral Timpson’s new show exploring music, culture, philosophy, science, and politics with the leading minds of today. Follow Theral also at his companion blog.
    Copyright 2023 All rights reserved.
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Episodios
  • Is Karl Marx Still Relevant Today? We Talk with Biographer, Jonathan Sperber

    Is Karl Marx Still Relevant Today? We Talk with Biographer, Jonathan Sperber
    Jul 13 2023

    Chapters:

    0:00 Marx is not our contemporary, but from a past world that no longer exists

    10:52 Two personal losses that shape the young Marx

    17:35 The early journalist who writes against communism

    21:45 In Paris, the communist is born

    24:30 Finding "the proletariat"

    31:00 Have Marx’s ideas had staying power?

    34:15 Pushing back on historicism

    37:13 Marx in today’s politics

    43:50 What to read?

    Who was Karl Marx, really?  Today’s guest says he was a product of the 19th century and not much more.  

    But tune into the current presidential race in the U.S., and you’ll hear his name bandied about right and left—primarily by Republican candidates using Marx as a bogeyman.  Democrats can seem a bit nervous when Marx’s name comes up.   How much is their platform influenced by the New Marxists of the 60s and the application of Marx's core ideas to race, gender, and sexuality?  Indeed, how much do we still use Marxian economic categories to see history through the lens of class struggle?

    Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life.  Jonathan’s aim in the book is to rethink the way we look at this famous thinker, activist, philosopher, journalist, economist, and author.

     

    “For a long time--and this reflects the impact of the Cold War and the massive political and military confrontations of the 20th century--people saw Marx as a contemporary.   He was either this brilliant thinker who understood perfectly the nature of today’s world and its future development, or he was this evil genius behind the most horrible mass murders and dictatorships of the 20th century.  If you liked Marx, he was Nelson Mandela.  If you didn’t like him, he was Sadam Hussein.  I think about him differently, someone more like Martin Luther,” says Jonathan at the outset of today’s program.

    Jonathan wants us to see Marx in context, as a person shaped by his time whose ideas were created for specific moments in the 19th century.   What events shaped the young Marx and turned him into one of Europe’s greatest agitators and activists and at one time, leader of the communist party?  What has been the staying power of Marx’s ideas, and how does he figure in today’s politics and political thought?
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    48 m
  • Robert Greenberg on the Story Behind Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto

    Robert Greenberg on the Story Behind Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto
    Jun 22 2023
    Welcome to our first episode of the 5 O’Clock Podcast.  I’m your host, Theral Timpson, and I'm delighted to share this journey with you. Music has the ability to stop us in our tracks, whatever we might be doing.  Perhaps you’re at your desk in the morning checking email and you turn on the radio, and suddenly you find yourself lost in the piece.  Or perhaps you are mourning a recent loss and only now do you fall to tears as you listen to a certain song.  Maybe it’s some jazz at night putting you in just that right  mood.   A while ago, I was driving down the freeway in my car, and a song came over the radio that so moved me, I had to pull over.  It was Tchaikovsy’s violin concerto.  The piece filled me with such joy that I was overcome and found myself contemplating my entire life.  How does music do this?  Was Tchaikovsky just an expert composer sitting at his piano every morning moving notes around as he sipped his morning tea?  Well, it turns out, no.  There was a story behind the piece.   When it comes to back stories on classical music, there is no one better to tell them than Robert Greenberg.  He’s a composer himself, a pianist, and what the professionals would call a musicologist.  In reality, he can talk about music and musicians like no one I’ve ever heard.  I discovered Robert over twenty years ago in the audio book section of the Los Angeles Public Library where I found one of his Great Courses series on Beethoven Sonatas.  When I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, I had the chance to hear him live on numerous occasions giving the introduction to concerts such as complete Schubert string quartet cycles.  I am thrilled to have him on our first program.   Back to Tchaikovsky.  What led to such an outpouring of joy and love in the violin concerto?  He was a homosexual living in tzarist Russia. He wrote this piece after fleeing his marriage of three weeks.  I give the popular story.  Robert has a seedier version.     Tchaikovsky was always living on the edge—this gave him material.  But music also gave him an escape.  Are there Tchaikovskys around today?  Do we give artists a pass and allow them to be asses because they create such beauty?  And, finally, how does music move us so profoundly?     Robert says we are hard-wired for it.  It can change our heartbeat and intensify the biological patterns at our core.  Yes, all this, but after learning of Tchaikovsky’s personal story, is there more?  
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    34 m
Política y Gobierno
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