The Front Row Podcast

Front Row Interviews with experts to expand your mental map of the world. Made in Singapore. For Asia and the World.

The Front Row Podcast is a society podcast hosted by Keith Yap, with 96 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Keith Yap hosts The Front Row Podcast, a society show with 96 episodes published.

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  Episode #96

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

  Sep 26, 20261h 22mS1

  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

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  The Front Row Podcast

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

  Sep 18, 20261h 32m

  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

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  Episode #94

  #94- Prof Daniel Markovits on Why Meritocracy Is Broken

  Sep 7, 202659 minS1

  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

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  Episode #93

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

  Aug 17, 202652 minS1

  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

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  Episode #92

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

  Aug 5, 20261 hourS1

  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

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