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The Front Row Podcast

Keith Yap

Front Row Interviews with experts to expand your mental map of the world.

Made in Singapore.
For Asia and the World.

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  • 23 episodes
  • fortnightly
  • Avg 1 hr 2 min
  • English

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  • S1 · E98
    Thursday · 1 hr 4 min

    #98 - Samuel Rhee : The Secret To Financial Security in 2026

    Samuel Rhee is Co-Founder, Chairman, and Group Chief Investment Officer of Endowus, the Singapore-headquartered digital wealth platform. He heads the Endowus Investment Office, where he is responsible for asset allocation and investment selection across the firm’s offerings, and he has built the company around a single conviction: that individual investors should have the same advice, access, and institutional-level pricing that sovereign wealth funds and university endowments take for granted. Under his leadership, Endowus became the first digital adviser for CPF investing in Singapore and the first scaled independent financial adviser in the region to return all trailer fees to clients. Before co-founding Endowus in 2017, Rhee served as CEO and CIO of Morgan Stanley Investment Management in Asia, capping nearly three decades of institutional investing experience across Singapore, Hong Kong, and London. He left at the height of that career to build what he describes as the second, more purposeful half of his working life. Born in Korea and raised in England before moving to Asia, he has called Singapore home for over twenty years. Rhee is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Longevity Steering Committee and a vocal advocate for financial literacy, evidence-based investing, and the elimination of hidden fees. This conversation matters because it comes from someone who has sat on both sides of the table: the institutional investor who had everything, and the retail client who discovered he had almost nothing. TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Trailer 0:26 Introduction 0:57 The Mistake Even The Best Investors Make 2:53 What Risk Actually Means 5:57 Taking Risk Without Being Paid For It 7:58 Why We Never Learn From Bubbles 12:40 Is AI A Bubble? 15:45 Walking Away From Morgan Stanley 18:12 Show Me The Incentives 22:35 Everybody Is Selling 23:01 Why Retail Investors Have No Bargaining Power 29:47 Why The Robo-Adviser Playbook Failed In Asia 35:02 Advice, Access, Cost 38:47 Where A Beginner Should Start 40:50 Spending, Saving, And Propensity 42:54 How Sam Would Invest $100 48:26 Greed, Fear, And The Missed Rebound 51:48 Bootstrapping Through The Funding Winter 56:11 Doing AI Without Firing People 1:01:06 Advice For Young People 1:03:55 Closing

  • October 5 · 57 min

    #97- OCBC Chief Economist Explains How The Global Economic Order Is Changing

    Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Selina Ling. Selena Ling is Chief Economist and Head of Global Markets Research & Strategy at OCBC, where she leads the team responsible for the bank's macroeconomic insights, forecasts, and trading recommendations across foreign exchange, interest rates, corporate credit, and macroeconomic commentary. Under her leadership, OCBC's research has been consistently highly ranked in industry surveys, and her analysis is widely quoted across print, television, and radio.Before joining OCBC in 2000, Ling worked in Singapore's public sector, with the Fiscal Policy Unit at the Ministry of Finance and the Economics Department at the Ministry of Trade and Industry. That vantage point, from inside the policymaking machinery and later from the markets, gives her an unusually rounded view of how Singapore's economic strategy is made and how it lands. She is Vice President and a council member of the Economic Society of Singapore, sits on the Board of Governors of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) and the Advisory Board of NTU's College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, and received the IBF Fellow Award in Financial Markets in 2017.In this conversation, part of my collaboration with RSIS, Ling examines how a world reshaped by war, pandemic, geopolitical rivalry, and the AI investment boom is rewriting the economic assumptions behind Singapore's success, and what it will take to stay resilient.TIMESTAMPS0:00 Trailer & Introduction 1:03 The External Conditions Behind Singapore's Rise 3:29 Why Singapore Never De-Industrialised 5:45 The Trading Order We Took For Granted 7:36 From Just-In-Time To Just-In-Case 10:46 Is This Just Trump? 15:28 How Wars Drive Inflation 18:59 Singapore's Healthy Paranoia 21:00 Is AI A Bubble? 25:27 Singapore's Big AI Bet 28:50 Trust As A Scarce Resource 31:03 Defence Spending Has No Free Lunch 34:17 America's K-Shaped Economy 39:39 Pragmatism Over Ideology 43:38 Weaponised Interdependence 46:45 Can ASEAN Truly Integrate? 49:28 Singapore's Biggest Structural Risks 52:47 Will AI Make Us Lazy? 54:33 Stay Intellectually Curious This is the 95th episode Of The Front Row PodcastA huge thank you to our amazing Front Row Friends for supporting and advancing the podcast: @marinama2728@deborahchoi1455@annkowong@yewchoutan5876Full transcripts of episodes can be found here: https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/Feel free to mingle in the comments below or head to...Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/Website: www.ykeith.comEmail: keith@frontrow65.coGet access to every episode by subscribing for free on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400

  • S1 · E96
    September 26 · 1 hr 21 min

    #96- Chairman Of Evercore Asia & Kallang , Keith Magnus On Leadership Lessons, Bringing Taylor Swift & Singapore's Reinvention

    Keith Magnus is Chairman of Evercore Asia, Founding Chairman of The Kallang Group, and Chairman of the Families for Life Council. In this conversation, filmed live at an event in partnership with the National Youth Council, he traces a career shaped by crises: the Asian Financial Crisis, the dot-com crash, and running Merrill Lynch in Singapore through 2008.He explains why he left the big banks to start Evercore's Singapore office with little more than a mobile phone, and how a four-and-a-half-hour night of phone calls began The Kallang's turnaround. He also tells the full story of how Singapore persuaded Taylor Swift's team to base her Asian shows here: "Let us deliver Asia to you."The second half turns to what comes next: why live sport and entertainment are the anti-AI bet, what judgment still counts for when AI works at the level of a second-year associate, and why loneliness, more than healthcare or money, is the biggest challenge facing Singapore's ageing population.CHAPTERS0:00 Introduction1:20 Sick, On a Drip, Fighting for a Job6:45 Leading Through the Chase–JP Morgan Merger9:23 Who Are You Without Your Name Card?14:44 What 2008 Taught Him About Security17:36 Building Evercore Asia From Scratch23:13 Taking Back the Sports Hub26:41 The Nicoll Highway Test33:21 How Taylor Swift Came to Singapore39:54 Can Commerce and Community Coexist?45:31 Grit, Patience, and When to Walk Away51:24 What AI Means for Your Career56:00 Live Events: The Anti-AI Bet59:17 Integrity, Dignity, Empathy, Kindness1:05:27 Is Singapore Too Sterile?1:09:03 Delivering Hard Decisions Kindly1:10:44 Singapore's Social Cohesion Challenge1:21:38 Closing

  • September 19 · 1 hr 31 min

    #95- Professor Wang Gungwu : How China and America Emerged As Superpowers

    Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Professor Wang Gungwu. Wang Gungwu is an internationally renowned historian known for his scholarship on the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, as well as the history and civilisation of China and Southeast Asia. Across his illustrious academic career, Professor Wang has held eminent appointments at institutions around the world. He was Professor of History at the University of Malaya (1963–68), Professor at the Australian National University (1968–86), and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong (1986–95). He is currently Professor Emeritus at the Australian National University and University Professor at the National University of Singapore. In this conversation, we explore how geography shaped China and America, why China historically remained a continental rather than maritime power, the differences between Chinese and Western civilisation, modernisation without Westernisation, Huntington's “Clash of Civilizations”, the US-China rivalry, Singapore, identity, and what history can teach us about the world today. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Trailer 00:45 Introduction 01:39 Why China Never Built a Navy 06:52 Zheng He and the Fleet China Burned 13:06 Why China's Enemies Always Came by Land 15:05 How America Inherited Britain's Oceans 20:48 Is China Still a Civilisation? 31:00 Make America Great, Make China Great 32:24 America's One God vs China's Yellow River 43:25 Why America Preaches Universal Values 46:50 China's Choice: West One or West Two 50:58 Did China Modernise Without Westernising? 54:17 How Marx Gave China the Idea of Progress 59:48 US vs China: Where Huntington Went Wrong 1:05:23 Why China Has No Wish to Run the World 1:07:59 What China Admires About Singapore 1:11:23 Why America Feels a Duty to Convert the World 1:14:33 Being Chinese in Singapore: Multiple Identities 1:22:58 How China and the West Read History Differently 1:31:25 Closing This is Episode 95 of The Front Row Podcast. A huge thank you to our amazing Front Row Friends for supporting and advancing the podcast: @marinama2728 @deborahchoi1455 @annkowong @yewchoutan5876 FULL TRANSCRIPTS https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/ FOLLOW THE FRONT ROW Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/ Website: https://www.ykeith.com Email: keith@frontrow65.co LISTEN & SUBSCRIBE Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400

  • S1 · E94
    September 7 · 58 min

    #94- Prof Daniel Markovits on Why Meritocracy Is Broken

    Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Professor Daniel Markovits. This is the 94th episode of The Front Row Podcast. Daniel Markovits is the Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School and the founding director of Yale's Center for the Study of Private Law. He is the author of The Meritocracy Trap (2019), which argues that meritocracy, the system meant to replace inherited privilege with earned advantage, has become the main mechanism by which wealth and status are now passed between generations. The book drew responses from Michael Sandel, Thomas Piketty, and a wide readership beyond the academy, and in 2021 Prospect named him one of the world's top 50 thinkers. Markovits trained as a mathematician at Yale before a Marshall Scholarship took him to the LSE for econometrics and to Oxford for a doctorate in philosophy. He publishes across law, economics, and philosophy, with work appearing in Science, the American Economic Review, and the Yale Law Journal, as well as the New York Times and The Atlantic. His next book turns to demographic decline and what a good life looks like once growth slows. This conversation matters because Singapore has spent 60 years treating meritocracy as settled doctrine, and Markovits offers the clearest account yet of the flaws of meritocracy. TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Trailer 0:48 Introduction 1:32 What Meritocracy Actually Means 2:27 The Original Promise 4:43 Michael Young's Warning Nobody Heard 8:12 Training: The Ingredient Everyone Ignores 11:11 Why Merit Is A Sham 14:33 The Education Arms Race 17:10 Too Many Lawyers, Too Few Teachers 19:13 Plutocracy Or Meritocracy? 23:30 Should Harvard Become Less Elite? 25:58 How Singapore Pays Its Teachers 28:34 Meritocracy And Performance Legitimacy 33:24 Why Meritocracy Kills Birth Rates 36:14 The Dismantling Of The Middle Class 39:24 Concierge Doctors For The Rich 43:04 When Success Means Exclusivity 47:15 Will AI Deepen The Divide? 51:25 Sacred Versus Profane Education 53:41 The Finland Model 56:16 Advice For Insiders And Outsiders 58:14 Closing Full transcript at ykeith.com

  • S1 · E93
    August 17 · 52 min

    #93-Former UK Secretary of State, Vince Cable On Why The West Needs To Engage With China and India Rationally

    Sir Vince Cable is one of Britain's most experienced observers of Asia's rise, having tracked China and India for over three decades from inside both business and government. As Chief Economist at Shell in the 1990s, he built the scenario work that helped shift one of the world's largest companies towards serious investment in China and India — at a time when both were regarded internally as too risky to touch. He later served as the UK's Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills from 2010 to 2015, leading Britain's trade engagement with Beijing and Delhi during the coalition government, and went on to lead the Liberal Democrats.His new book, Eclipsing the West: China, India and the Forging of a New World, argues that two Asian superstates will end three centuries of Western dominance by 2050 — and that the competition, unlike the Cold War, will be won or lost in economic rather than military terms. The book was named a Financial Times Best Book of 2025 for economics and shortlisted for the Westminster Book Awards.This conversation matters because Cable has sat on both sides of the West's China dilemma — as the minister championing engagement, and as a witness to Britain's turn towards securitisation — and he names, from the inside, the decisions he believes his country got wrong.This is the 92nd episode Of The Front Row Podcast.TIMESTAMPS:0:00 Introduction 0:52 Inside Shell: Seeing Asia's Rise Early 4:35 Persuading Shell to Bet on China and India 6:42 Selling Britain to Beijing and Delhi 8:48 Was the Coalition Naive? 11:05 Superstates, Not Superpowers 12:26 What China and India Have in Common 15:23 Two Models of State Capitalism 18:04 Thank You PlaudAI 19:45 The Reality of Doing Business In China And India 22:18 Why Britain Turned Against China 27:16 The Perception Gap with Southeast Asia 30:10 The Kindleberger Trap 33:06 From Returns to Resilience 35:10 Three Futures for the World Order 40:19 India: The Swing Superstate 45:11 The Case for Multilateral Optimism 48:27 What Britain Must Fix First 50:35 Advice for Young Southeast Asians A huge thank you to our amazing Front Row Friends for supporting and advancing the podcast: @marinama2728@deborahchoi1455@annkowong@yewchoutan5876Full transcripts of episodes can be found here: https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/Feel free to mingle in the comments below or head to...Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/Website: www.ykeith.comEmail: keith@frontrow65.coGet access to every episode by subscribing for free on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400

  • S1 · E92
    August 5 · 1 hr

    #92 -Professor Kumar Ramakrishna Explains The Rise Of Self-Radicalization

    Thank you for checking out my episode with Prof Kumar Ramakrishna. This episode is brought to you in partnership with the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies. For more information on the school and its programmes see here - https://rsis.edu.sg/publications/rsis-publications/annual-reviews/Professor Kumar Ramakrishna is one of Southeast Asia's foremost authorities on terrorism, extremism, and national security. He is Dean of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University, where he also holds the President's Chair in National Security Studies and serves as Research Adviser to the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research. He was first appointed Dean in January 2023 and re-appointed for a further term from January 2026, he has spent more than 25 years at RSIS and its predecessor, the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, which he joined in 2000.TIMESTAMPS:0:00 Trailer 0:42 Introduction 1:21 What the Pre-9/11 Security Mindset Missed 4:51 The Paradigm Shift After Ground Zero 10:01 Communists vs Jihadists: Two Kinds of True Believers 13:53 The Rational Logic of Suicide Bombing 18:07 Why Educated People Join Terrorist Groups 22:52 The Threats We Have Stopped Watching 31:13 Gaza and Singapore's Social Fabric 34:30 Understanding Hamas — and Iran 36:37 Singapore's Latent Fault Lines 39:46 Muscular Secularism 45:29 Securitising Of Identities 49:11 Inoculating Citizens Against Radicalisation 53:13 Family and Community as the First Defence 56:00 The Central Lesson: Sincerely Wrong 59:23 Advice for Fresh Graduates 59:47 ClosingThis is the 92nd episode Of The Front Row PodcastA huge thank you to our amazing Front Row Friends for supporting and advancing the podcast: @marinama2728@deborahchoi1455@annkowong@yewchoutan5876Full transcripts of episodes can be found here: https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/Feel free to mingle in the comments below or head to...Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/Website: www.ykeith.comEmail: keith@frontrow65.coGet access to every episode by subscribing for free on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400

  • July 31 · 1 hr 14 min

    #91- Chandran Nair - Southeast Asia's Wake-Up Call Has Arrived -

    Chandran Nair is the founder and CEO of the Global Institute For Tomorrow (GIFT), an independent pan-Asian think tank based in Hong Kong committed to understanding the dynamic relationship between business, society, and the state, and to reshaping the rules of global capitalism. A Malaysian with a background in chemical engineering and biochemistry, he spent the first decades of his career in sustainability, rising to become chairman of Environmental Resources Management (ERM) for Asia Pacific, one of the region's leading environmental consultancies. He is a member of the executive committee of the Club of Rome and a regular speaker at global forums including the World Economic Forum and APEC.Nair is the author of three books: Consumptionomics, The Sustainable State: The Future of Government, Economy and Society, and most recently Dismantling Global White Privilege: Equity for a Post-Western World, which the Financial Times selected among its best books of the season. Drawing on more than thirty years of lived experience in China, Africa, Europe, and Southeast Asia, he has become one of Asia's most vocal thinkers on the idea of a post-Western world — arguing that the deepest legacy of colonialism is the capture of the mind, and that Asia's future depends on building strong institutions and defining a value proposition for itself rather than for others.This is the 91st episode Of The Front Row Podcast TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Introduction 0:58 What The West Gets Wrong About China 6:07 China As A Civilisational State 13:18 Lee Kuan Yew's Warning Against Westernisation 16:08 The Capture Of The Elite Minds?21:24 Decolonising The Mind 34:25 How China Shapes The International Order 41:18 Why The West Fears China's Rise 45:50 Development, Not Sanctions: China In Africa51:31 Southeast Asia's Wake-Up Call 58:33 When The State Should Intervene 1:03:01 A Value Proposition For Ourselves 1:11:11 Advice For Young Graduates A huge thank you to our amazing Front Row Friends for supporting and advancing the podcast: @marinama2728@deborahchoi1455@annkowong@yewchoutan5876Full transcripts of episodes can be found here: https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/Feel free to mingle in the comments below or head to...Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/Website: www.ykeith.comEmail: keith@frontrow65.coGet access to every episode by subscribing for free on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400

  • S1 · E90
    July 20 · 1 hr 12 min

    #90 - How Deng Xiaoping's Visit To Singapore Changed China Forever - Professor Tan Kong Yam (In Partnership with RSIS)

    Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Professor Tan Kong Yam. This episode is brought to you in partnership with the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies. For more information on the school and its programmes see here - https://rsis.edu.sg/publications/rsis-publications/ For show notes and information on our collaboration, please go to ykeith.com/rsis GUEST DESCRIPTION:Professor Tan Kong Yam is Emeritus Professor of Economics at Nanyang Technological University and NTUC Endowed Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.He occupies an unusual position in the history of Singapore–China relations: he was in the room when Dr Goh Keng Swee first visited China. From 1985, when Deng Xiaoping invited Dr Goh Keng Swee to advise China on its economic development strategy, Tan served as Goh's chief assistant. Fluent in Mandarin, he sat close enough to Deng to take his own notes through the Sichuan accent, and travelled with the Singapore delegation through Beijing, Shanghai, and the coastal cities as the architecture of China's Special Economic Zones was being drawn. He went on to serve as chief economist of the Singapore government from 1999 to 2002, as a senior economist at the World Bank's Beijing office from 2002 to 2005, and as a member of the World Bank expert group advising the State Council on China's Eleventh Five-Year Plan. TIMESTAMPS0:00 Trailer1:18 Dr Goh's First Visit to China 5:30 The Chinese Psyche In PRC's Early Days 10:06 Dr Goh's Verdict On China's Potential 15:30 What China Was Like Post Revolution 17:30 Deng Visits Singapore 21:08 China As Yao Ming? 27:43 Fuzhou, A Young Mayor, And A Debt Repaid30:50 Why Xi's Generation Are Obsessed With Production 33:30 Prof Tan's Prediction 36:03 1989: When The Window Nearly Closed39:00 Lee Kuan Yew's Epiphany 42:50 Lee Kuan Yew Predicts China's Rise in 199549:44 What Singapore Understood That The West Did Not56:15 The Downside Of China's Ascendance 1:01:39 China's Capital Turns Towards ASEANThis is the 90th episode Of The Front Row PodcastA huge thank you to our amazing Front Row Friends for supporting and advancing the podcast: @marinama2728@deborahchoi1455@annkowong@yewchoutan5876Full transcripts of episodes can be found here: https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/Feel free to mingle in the comments below or head to...Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/Website: www.ykeith.comEmail: keith@frontrow65.coGet access to every episode by subscribing for free on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400

  • S1 · E89
    July 11 · 1 hr 11 min

    #89- Founder of Trip.Com on The Most Existential Challenge Of Our Time - James Liang

    Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with James Liang. James Liang is the co-founder and executive chairman of Trip.com Group, the online travel company he helped launch in 1999 as Ctrip and built into one of the world's largest travel platforms, listed on Nasdaq and operating in more than forty countries. A gifted student who entered Fudan University at fifteen before taking a master's in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he served as Trip.com's chief executive from 2000 to 2006, and then made an unusual move: he stepped back at the height of the company's success to pursue a PhD in economics at Stanford.That second career reshaped him into one of Asia's most prominent voices on demography and innovation. Now a research professor of economics at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management and a co-founder of the Yuwa Population Research Institute, Liang has published in journals including Nature and The Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has written widely on population, education, and entrepreneurship. His books include The Demographics of Innovation and, most recently, Innovationism: A New Philosophy for the Age of AI.This conversation matters because Liang makes the case that population and youth are the true drivers of the innovation race — that ageing societies risk surrendering their dynamism and, ultimately, their control over AI. Few can argue that thesis from the vantage point of a founder, an economist, and a demographer at onceTIMESTAMPS:0:00 Trailer0:53 Introduction1:29 Why Travel Beat China's Infrastructure Gap3:41 Surviving The Gladiator Economy6:01 Service As The Real Moat10:35 Go Global, Don't Diversify13:36 Why He Quit At The Top For A PhD16:54 Why Only A Founder Could Save It21:15 Working From Home Before COVID25:57 The Innovationism Formula29:31 Why Ageing Kills Innovation32:41 The Exam System That Broke Fertility35:49 Spend Five Per Cent On The Young44:46 What Singapore Keeps Getting Wrong50:16 The Forgotten Case For A Big Family53:56 Why Big Countries Win The Innovation Race56:55 US vs China: Competition Or War?1:00:34 Singapore's One Missing Variable1:03:06 Why AI Makes Innovationism Urgent1:10:36 ClosingThis is the 89th episode Of The Front Row PodcastA huge thank you to our amazing Front Row Friends for supporting and advancing the podcast: @marinama2728@deborahchoi1455@annkowong@yewchoutan5876Full transcripts of episodes can be found here: https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/Feel free to mingle in the comments below or head to...Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/Website: www.ykeith.comEmail: keith@frontrow65.coGet access to every episode by subscribing for free on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400

  • S1 · E88
    June 29 · 53 min

    #88 : Why The US Chip Ban On China Backfired - Robert Wu

    Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Robert Wu. You can check out his awesome Substack here! https://www.baiguan.news?r=8th0v Robert Wu is the CEO of BigOne Lab, China's leading alternative data and research company, backed by S&P Global and used by institutional investors and corporations around the world to track what is actually happening on the ground in China's economy and tech sector. He is also the founder and co-editor of Baiguan, a data-driven newsletter on Chinese business and markets, and writes China Translated, a personal newsletter offering a practitioner's review of the events shaping China's economy, society, and technology sector Wu's career path into China-watching was unconventional: before BigOne Lab, he worked across sourcing, travel, and corporate restructuring in Myanmar, Switzerland, and Hong Kong. He later joined BigOne Lab as an employee and partner before taking it over in a buyout and becoming its CEO. He also writes for the opinion section of The New York Times.Through Baiguan, Wu has organised on-the-ground tours for foreign investors into China's robotics and manufacturing sectors, giving institutional clients direct exposure to the country's AI, EV, and advanced manufacturing ecosystems. His work sits at the intersection of data and narrative: translating the granular, often-overlooked detail of China's industrial policy and technology development for an international audience that, in his own words, still has a shockingly low level of understanding of the country driving the most consequential geopolitical shift of the century.In this conversation, Wu draws on years of on-the-ground research to unpack why the US-China tech rivalry is structurally locked in rather than easing, why China's EV industry is the template for understanding its semiconductor and AI ambitions, and what the real bottlenecks are in robotics, chips, and AI monetisation as China's next phase of growth takes shape.This is the 88th episode Of The Front Row PodcastTIMESTAMPS:0:00 Introduction0:31 Has US-China Détente Actually Changed Anything4:15 Did Export Controls Backfire On The US5:25 The Bifurcation Of Tech Ecosystems11:34 The EV Playbook For Industrial Policy12:20 Why Beijing Let Tesla In18:16 The Real Meaning Of Technology Transfer21:03 China's War On Involution25:57 How Chinese Tech Is Going Global31:30 The Manus Deal And The Trust Breakdown32:23 Open Source As China's AI Weapon34:59 The Monetisation Problem36:50 Lessons From The Manus Fallout41:46 Inside China's Robotics Boom47:17 What Foreign Investors Miss About Manufacturing50:26 Advice For The Next Generation52:40 ClosingA huge thank you to our amazing Front Row Friends for supporting and advancing the podcast: @marinama2728@deborahchoi1455@annkowong@yewchoutan5876Full transcripts of episodes can be found here: https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/Feel free to mingle in the comments below or head to...Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/Website: www.ykeith.comEmail: keith@frontrow65.coGet access to every episode by subscribing for free on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400

  • June 13 · 1 hr 2 min

    #87- Ex Straits Times Chief Editor on LKY's Ideas, Singapore's Literacy Paradox And Why You Must Read

    Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with former Chief Editor of Straits Times- Warren Fernandez. Warren Fernandez is a journalist, editor, and public intellectual whose career spans more than three decades at the centre of Singapore's media landscape. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the Straits Times — Singapore's flagship English daily — and is perhaps best known beyond journalism as one of the principal collaborators on several of Lee Kuan Yew's landmark books, including The Man and His Ideas and The Singapore Story. His close working relationship with Mr. Lee gave him an unusually intimate vantage point on Singapore's founding generation and the ideas that shaped the nation's development.After leaving the Straits Times, he served as Edelman's APAC CEO from 2022 to 2025. Fernandez joined the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), where he is now engaged in research on world order and the shifting dynamics of great power competition. He is also the author of What We Read and Why, an anthology in which leaders, educators, and young people reflect on their relationship with books and reading, making the case for literacy as both a life skill and a civic responsibility.In this conversation, Fernandez draws together threads from an exceptionally varied career: the craft of communicating ideas, the media's role in a small state, the mechanics of world order, and why the capacity to read carefully and think critically has never mattered more.YOUTUBE TIMESTAMPS0:00 Trailer0:00 Introduction0:53 Working on Lee Kuan Yew's Books4:10 LKY as a Force of Nature5:56 The Statesman Behind the Politician6:11 LKY as Communicator6:56 Singapore's Media Model9:03 Journalists and Power10:02 How to Prepare Like a Journalist12:00 LKY's Enduring Ideas13:15 The Transition to Digital Media16:38 The Real Value of Reading18:47 Reading and the Average Citizen21:01 Singapore's Literacy Paradox23:48 Use It or Lose It25:24 Reading as a Life Skill27:32 How to Build a Reading Movement29:46 AI, Sam Bankman-Fried, and the Case for Deep Reading32:15 Reading and Civic Duty34:00 How Top Leaders Read36:57 Young People Do Read38:54 A Masterclass on How to Read Today42:46 Reading and Geopolitics48:01 What Comes Next?49:37 Singapore's Value Proposition52:49 The GX World53:48 Three Imbalances Nobody Is Fixing58:29 Three Books Every Singaporean Should ReadThis is the 87th episode Of The Front Row PodcastA huge thank you to our amazing Front Row Friends for supporting and advancing the podcast: @marinama2728@deborahchoi1455@annkowong@yewchoutan5876Full transcripts of episodes can be found here: https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/Feel free to mingle in the comments below or head to...Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/Website: www.ykeith.comEmail: keith@frontrow65.coGet access to every episode by subscribing for free on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400

  • June 3 · 1 hr 6 min

    #86- Ha-Joon Chang : Why We Need A New Global Economic Order

    Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Hajoon Chang. Ha-Joon Chang is a South Korean economist and one of the most widely read critics of neoliberal orthodoxy working today. He is currently a professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He is best known for his book 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, published in 2010, which challenged the foundational claims of free-market economics with rigorous historical and empirical argument. His earlier work, Kicking Away the Ladder, demonstrated how today's rich countries used protectionism and industrial policy to develop — before turning around and telling developing nations to liberalise.Chang's research spans developmental economics, the history of economic thought, and the political economy of globalisation. He has been a vocal proponent of what he calls "non-mainstream" economics: not a single doctrinal school, but a pluralist approach that draws on institutional, Keynesian, and developmentalist traditions to analyse how economies actually grow and change. In this conversation, Chang offers a sweeping critique of neoliberalism's track record on growth and inequality, a dispassionate assessment of Donald Trump's industrial policy ambitions, and a pointed analysis of the AI boom as a speculative bubble shaped by concentrated wealth rather than genuine demand. TIMESTAMPS:0:00 Trailer 1:08 Introduction 1:54 Growing Up in South Korea's Economic Miracle 4:36 Why Ha-Joon Chang Is Not "Heterodox" 4:58 The Gwangju Massacre and the Limits of Neoclassical Economics 10:45 How the Neoliberal Turn Happened 18:32 The Real Cost of the Free-Market Experiment 25:20 Why Singapore Works 29:58 Trump's Industrial Policy: Will It Work? 37:50 The Three Elements of Good Industrial Policy 40:54 The Right Lessons From China 44:44 How Bad Is Inequality in the US? 53:18 The AI Bubble 58:36 AI as Public Infrastructure 1:00:48 How to Build a More Just World 1:06:14 Closing

  • S1 · E85
    May 22 · 34 min

    #85- GovTech CTO on The Secret Behind Singapore's World Class Digital Infrastructure

    Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Chang Sau Sheong. Sau Sheong Chang is the Chief Technology Officer of GovTech Singapore, the government agency responsible for Singapore's national technology infrastructure and digital public services. In this role, he oversees the development and maintenance of platforms that underpin daily life for millions of Singaporeans — from SingPass, the national digital identity system, to Parents Gateway, CDC vouchers, and the Culture Pass.Sau Sheong brings an unusual combination of deep private-sector experience and long public-service commitment to his work. He began his technology career at the National Computer Board in 1997, left in 1999 to found his first startup, and spent the intervening decades in startups and large technology companies before returning to public service — first as one of the earliest Smart Nation Fellows, and subsequently as a full-time GovTechie.In this conversation, recorded at a community event co-organised by SuperAI, Carta, and Singapore Global Network, Sau Sheong speaks candidly about Singapore's 40-year arc of digital transformation, the buy-versus-build dilemma at the heart of government technology strategy, GovTech's adoption of AI tools including Claude Code for classified systems, and what the AI disruption actually looks like from inside one of the world's most advanced digital governments.TIMESTAMPS:0:00 Introduction1:58 Why Singapore's Digital Edge Isn't an Accident5:45 How GovTech Attracts World-Class Engineers6:33 From Startup Founder to CTO: Sau Sheong's Journey9:44 The Projects Behind Singapore's Digital Infrastructure12:32 Buy vs. Build: The Government's Hardest Dilemma18:39 How GovTech Is Adopting AI19:05 Claude Code for Classified Systems24:54 How GovTech Prioritises AI Deployment Across Agencies28:35 AI Anxiety: Advice for Young Professionals34:13 ClosingThis is the XX episode Of The Front Row PodcastFull transcripts of episodes can be found here: https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/Feel free to mingle in the comments below or head to...Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/Website: www.ykeith.comEmail: keith@frontrow65.coGet access to every episode by subscribing for free on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400

  • S1 · E84
    May 20 · 1 hr 14 min

    #84- Kishore Mahbubani: How The Future Of Global Order Will Look Like

    Kishore Mahbubani is one of Asia's most prominent public intellectuals — a former diplomat, academic, and author whose career spans decades at the intersection of geopolitics, philosophy, and statecraft. He served as Singapore's Permanent Representative to the United Nations on two occasions and as President of the UN Security Council, before becoming the founding Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS. He is the author of several widely read books on the shifting global order, most recently Has China Won? In this conversation — filmed live in front of an audience of young leaders curated with the National Youth Council — Mahbubani ranges across the Iran-Israel war and the misreading of Persian civilisational logic, the structural weaknesses of multilateral institutions and who is actually responsible for them, the enduring miracle of ASEAN in the world's most diverse region, and the iron law of geopolitics that makes the US-China contest essentially mechanical. He closes with a characteristically optimistic verdict on Singapore's place in history and what the next generation of leaders must understand to navigate the crossfire that is coming. Chapters 0:00 Trailer1:08 Introduction1:42 Singapore's Sixty Years of Peace3:05 The MacDonald House Incident5:00 How Singapore Repaired Relations With Indonesia7:46 The Iran-Israel War8:48 How Israel Sold Trump a Quick War11:27 Why Iran Didn't Surrender12:26 The Strait of Hormuz as a Weapon14:38 Gaza and the Two-State Solution16:00 How Gaza Damaged the West's Standing18:26 Israel's Military Dominance Won't Last Forever21:09 How Young Singaporeans Should Read the Crisis21:42 Don't Get Emotional — Get Rational23:24 Who Actually Weakened the UN24:09 The Hypocrisy of Western Complaints About the UN29:30 How Singapore Can Use Multilateral Platforms31:56 The Iron Law of US-China Competition33:57 How China Found Its Weapon36:02 ASEAN's Imperfections — and Why That's Fine39:37 ASEAN Outgrew the EU42:09 Q&A43:17 The Case for the UN Veto45:15 Why the UK Should Give Its Seat to India47:30 Sunrise vs Sunset Organisations — BRICS and the G752:15 ASEAN's Limits — and Its Quiet Power56:02 The Long-Term Fallout From the Iran War58:20 Is International Law a Sunrise or Sunset Trend?1:02:46 Singapore's Founding Realist Principle1:04:32 The Malacca Toll, the UAE, and the GCC1:09:32 One Piece of Advice for Young Leaders1:10:04 The Singapore Miracle in World History1:13:00 Prepare for the Crossfire1:13:51 Closing This is Episode 84 of The Front Row Podcast. Full transcripts are at ykeith.com/tag/podcast/ Join the conversation in the comments, or find us here: Instagram: instagram.com/frontrow.65LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/keith-yapWebsite: ykeith.comEmail: keith@frontrow65.co

  • S1 · E83
    May 12 · 41 min

    #83- Expert Investor : "This Is Southeast Asia's AI Endgame" (Dimitra Taslim)

    Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Dimitra Taslim.Dimitra Taslim is seasoned tech investor and currently, serves as a Venture Partner at Granite Asia. Before Granite Asia’s spinout and rebrand from GGV Capital Asia, Dimitra was part of the investment team at GGV Capital, where he helped source and support investments across emerging Asian markets. His work at Granite Asia reflects the firm’s broader thesis of supporting ambitious Asian founders through long-term capital, operational support, and access to cross-border networks.Dimitra brings a blend of investor and operator experience. Prior to venture capital, he worked in private equity and growth investing in London, and also founded a digital wealth startup. His background gives him a strong focus on execution, operational scale, and founder-market fit — especially in businesses solving infrastructure and productivity challenges in Asia.This is the 83rd episode Of The Front Row PodcastFull transcripts of episodes can be found here: https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/Feel free to mingle in the comments below or head to...Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/Website: www.ykeith.comEmail: keith@frontrow65.coGet access to every episode by subscribing for free on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400

  • May 4 · 30 min

    #82- NUS Longevity Expert : The AI Revolution in Healthcare Has Arrived

    Dr. Dean Ho is currently Provost’s Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering, Director of The Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM) at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and Director of The N.1 Institute for Health (N.1) at the National University of Singapore.His central argument is that medicine has always been built on population averages — and that this is no longer sufficient. With AI and digital twins, he believes we now have the tools to treat every patient as a sample size of one.The conversation spans three registers: oncology (a blood cancer patient who entered the trial at eighty and is still thriving four and a half years later); commercialised drug combination design (Kyan's 91% predictivity vs a competitor's 52%); and personal healthspan (Dean ran an IRB-approved trial on himself tracking sleep, gut, metabolism, and supplementation).The through-line is a simple but radical idea: a single annual health snapshot tells you almost nothing. Dynamics — how your body changes hour to hour, day to day — is where the signal lives.TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Introduction1:31 We Are Stories, Not Snapshots4:10 Why Population-Level Medicine Falls Short6:00 The Cancer Patient Who Defied the Odds9:15 Why Lower Doses Can Work Better10:45 Becoming the Test Subject12:00 One Day of Metabolic Data12:40 Sleep, Gut Health & the Delta Trial13:25 Singapore's Edge in Medical Innovation15:23 AI Regulation: The FDA Paradox16:22 What's Broken About the Old System18:12 Scaling N=1: The Real Bottleneck19:48 Why Doctors Resist — and Why They Shouldn't20:40 The Economics of Personalised Treatment21:30 Drug Combinations: 91% Accuracy vs 52%23:20 Advice for Healthy People24:08 Resting Heart Rate as a Sleep Signal27:49 The One Habit Change That Moves the Needle30:00 ClosingFeel free to mingle in the comments below or head to...Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/Website: www.ykeith.comEmail: keith@frontrow65.co

  • S1 · E81
    April 20 · 1 hr 13 min

    #81- Obama White House Fellow : America Must Rethink Its China Strategy Now. Here's How - Zhengyu Huang

    In this episode, I sit down with Zheng Yu Huang — technology executive, White House Fellow, and author of Rethinking China — to examine what he argues are dangerously flawed assumptions driving US policy towards China, and what a more clear-eyed strategy would look like. Huang's career is unusually well-positioned for this conversation. After Stanford and Harvard Business School, he rose to Managing Director at Intel — one of the youngest to hold that title — where he negotiated directly with the Chinese government on IP frameworks. He then served as a White House Fellow under President Obama, becoming the first person of mainland Chinese origin to hold that distinction, and led an interagency task force to restore Haiti's telecommunications network following the 2010 earthquake. He later founded a financial services data firm that grew to 300 staff and a $100 million valuation, and served four years as President of the Committee of 100, the prominent Chinese American organisation co-founded by IM Pei and Yo-Yo Ma. In this conversation, we cover the $600 billion IP theft figure and where it actually comes from, the human cost of the China Initiative, the real lessons of the China shock, what war-game projections say about a Taiwan contingency, why the US is losing ground in Southeast Asia, and what a results-focused China strategy would look like. This is Episode 81 of The Front Row Podcast. Full transcripts: ykeith.com/tag/podcastInstagram: instagram.com/frontrow.65LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/keith-yapWebsite: ykeith.comEmail: keith@frontrow65.co TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Trailer0:55 A Drive-By Shooting on My First Month in America5:29 Why America Is Still the Land of Opportunity9:24 Negotiating IP With Beijing at Intel16:27 What the White House Fellowship Taught Me About Power23:49 When US-China Relations Broke27:49 The Consequences of Getting Your Assumptions Wrong33:14 Why Southeast Asia Is America's Blind Spot34:41 The Real Reason the US Pivoted to Securitisation35:43 The China Shock Was Never Really About China41:15 The $600 Billion Number That Isn't Real46:26 How the China Initiative Destroyed Innocent Lives52:59 Compete or Cooperate? The AI Question58:03 What History Tells Us About US-China-Taiwan1:00:57 What China Gets Wrong About America1:06:10 Focus on Results: A New China Strategy1:08:32 America's Real Domestic Challenges1:11:59 One Final Piece of Advice

  • April 11 · 54 min

    #80- SMU President, Lily Kong: Why Singapore Must Reinvent Universities Now -

    Professor Lily Kong — President of Singapore Management University — is one of Singapore’s most distinguished geographers. Trained as an academic, she built her career studying the intersections of culture, religion, and urban space, producing work that bridges rigorous scholarship and real-world policy impact. In recent years, her focus has shifted toward the future of higher education. Through public lectures and her latest book, she argues for a reimagining of the university in an era shaped by rapid technological change and demographic shifts. At SMU, she leads a community of 13,000–14,000 students and has helped shape the university’s identity around entrepreneurship, interdisciplinarity, and applied learning. She is also a leading advocate of the “60-year university” — the idea that universities must evolve beyond four-year degrees into lifelong partners supporting individuals throughout their careers. In this conversation, she brings a geographer’s lens to some of Singapore’s most pressing questions: How geography and constraints have shaped Singapore’s education system What universities must do as AI reshapes the labour market Why whole-person development — mind, body, and relationships — must take center stage ⏱ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 – Introduction00:26 – The Geographer’s Lens03:21 – Prisoners of Geography: Singapore’s Hard Truths07:29 – Smallness as Strength and Constraint08:52 – Eastern vs Western Universities: Singapore’s 50-Year Journey12:49 – Why Research and Innovation Are Under-Valued15:48 – Research That Changes Lives18:15 – Demographics Is Destiny: The Ageing Society19:41 – The 60-Year University23:17 – Rethinking How Universities Deliver28:08 – AI and the Accelerating Half-Life of Knowledge29:21 – What Universities Must Do in the Age of AI 35:51 – Integrating Mind, Body, and Soul36:37 – Why Campus Life Matters More Than We Think39:53 – Reimagining the Humanities43:35 – Is the University a Scam?48:31 – SkillsFuture and the Lifelong Learning Challenge51:46 – What Lily Kong Is Telling Policymakers53:46 – Advice for Fresh Graduates This is the 80th episode of The Front Row Podcast. 📄 Full transcripts: https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/ 📲 Connect with me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/ Website: www.ykeith.com Email: keith@frontrow65.co 🎧 Subscribe for free: Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400

  • S1 · E79
    April 2 · 1 hr 3 min

    #79- Professor Selina Ho : ASEAN'S Playbook For An Evolving Global Order

    Professor Selina Ho is Vice Dean (Research and Development), Dean’s Chair, and Associate Professor in International Affairs at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on Chinese politics and foreign policy, with a particular interest in how China wields power and influence through infrastructure and water disputes in Southeast Asia and South Asia. Her work sits at the intersection of comparative politics and international relations. Her book, Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia, is widely regarded as a definitive text on the Belt and Road Initiative in the region. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 — Trailer 00:52 — Introduction 01:21 — Why Southeast Asia Matters to Both Superpowers 04:25 — Will Trump Turn His Back on the Region? 09:41 — The Fear of US Abandonment 14:17 — How Southeast Asia Actually Sees China 18:37 — Chinese Influence vs. Chinese Dominance 21:37 — Wolf Warrior Diplomacy in China 29:11 — The Belt and Road 33:47 — When China Owns Your Power Grid: The Laotian Lesson 37:44 — China Wants Regional Dominance 40:16 — How ASEAN Elites Actually Respond to Chinese Influence 43:06 — What Regional Decision-Makers Really Think 47:31 — ASEAN Centrality 51:52 — Why ASEAN Is Strong on Trade and Weak on Security 55:15 — Building an ASEAN Identity 01:00:19 — What Singapore Should Do With Its 2027 ASEAN Chairmanship 01:01:46 — Advice for a Fresh Graduate Entering the Working World This is the 80th episode of The Front Row Podcast. 📄 Research Paper “Elite Perceptions of a China-Led Regional Order in Southeast Asia” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/18681034241294093#table2-18681034241294093 📜 Full Transcripts https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/ Connect & Follow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/ Website: www.ykeith.com Email: keith@frontrow65.co 🎧 Listen & Subscribe Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400

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