The Friday Podcast

We're living through the biggest technology shift since the smartphone. Qualcomm wants to be inside all of it, from the earbud in your ear to the data center rack. On his first visit to Jakarta, Don McGuire, Chief Marketing Officer of Qualcomm sits down with us to talk about Snapdragon, the AI shift he calls the biggest since the smartphone, and the deal that put a chip brand on the front of M...

Leila S. Chudori has spent years telling stories at the intersection of history, politics, and journalism. In her novel Laut Bercerita, she revisits the disappearance of student activists in 1998 through fiction rooted in real history. With its film adaptation set to premiere on October 29, 2026, we sat down with Leila to discuss the responsibility of telling sensitive stories, how journalism shap...

Membuat festival di kota besar saja sudah sulit. Membuatnya dari third city, dengan sumber daya yang serba terbatas, jelas bukan perkara mudah. "Specialist in hope". Selama masih ada kemungkinan kecil, akan tetap dikejar, walaupun harus merangkak. Prinsip itu yang membawa Partilibur dari tongkrongan di Lumajang, ke gigs kecil di kafe-kafe, sampai ke festival dengan 9 panggung di Batu, Ma...

There is a man in Indonesian comedy who is now spreading his wings to other ventures. In music he could've been the next big musical export from Indonesia but he chose to be a villain to some of the industries biggest name (Harusnya banyakin temen bang hip, malah nyari masalah 😔), and next he claims to be an action star and vouched that his scene is the one to watch in the upcoming movie GJLS...

Abigail Limuria has spent years facilitating people how to think about the country. So we opened with the question nobody asks her: who is she when nobody asks her opinion? Turns out the answer is the same person, just quieter. She doesn't stop having opinions when the mic goes off and after almost a year of protests, outrage, and demands for change, the one she keeps coming back to is that we...

Everyone says 'in this economy' like there was ever a good one, this is a conversation on tweaking our financial/success mindset in these modern times. We sit down with Hani Kusumowardhani, she’s a Chief Compliance Officer at a leading financial services company, and we expected to be told to save more. That's not what happens. She grew up without much of it but she put the extra effor...

Cara Riantoputra, CEO & Co-Founder of Teach First Indonesia, left a “great job” great pay, great culture, great trajectory because she realized none of it would matter if she disappeared tomorrow. So she built a movement instead: recruiting the country’s most competitive graduates to go teach in classrooms that don’t have any. Her argument is simple and uncomfortable: the best teachers rarely...

Indonesia is rewriting its own history for only the third time since independence and Prof. Susanto Zuhdi is the one holding it together. Now, at the center of a 10 volume, 123 writer rewrite of the nation's official history, he's fielding the hardest questions: what counts as fact, what gets left out, and questions about political interference conflict of interests. In this episode, he ta...

Today we have another podcast host as a guest, this time Tiara sits as the person who answers the question and not asking them. Tiara grew up asking the kind of questions most kids don't get real answers to. Almost a decade later, she's still asking just professionally now. In this episode we talked about what it's actually like to build a career around curiosity, the interviews that c...

22 years, 7 albums, same five guys (the only substitutions ever made were for medical reasons, not creative)In an industry where bands are becoming the exception rather than the rule, Tria Changcuters sat down with us to talk about what actually keeps a band alive that long. From a crowd that barely noticed them to strangers in London singing their songs back to them, Tria walks us through two dec...

Meet Deo Mario, founder and creative director behind Post and Beam System and the reason our podcast set has looked this good all season. Trained at Bauhaus in Germany, a school that never claimed to manufacture architects but simply triggered creativity and let you figure out the rest, Deo came home to a different reality, back then architects here are often seen as glorified draftsmen rather tha...

Losing someone doesn’t come with a manual, but a year later, Nehru’s found his own way through it. In this episode, Nehru talks about the hardest kind of loss: losing a partner, a friend, and the person who changed the direction of his career. There’s grief in the five stages he’s counted himself through, but there’s also Nehru’s particular gift for finding the absurd in the middle of it. These da...

Adriel Simorangkir traded a career in oil, gas, and renewable energy for something no engineering degree prepared him for: running Bimasena, one of Jakarta's most prestigious private members clubs, where world-altering conversations have happened quietly behind closed doors for almost 30 years."Exclusive and closed off is not our brand language anymore," he says, and that's exact...

Makna Talks Specials kali ini, Iyas mengajak Reza Chandika untuk berbincang santai tentang sebuah tema yang sampai kapan pun akan selalu relevan: persahabatan. Bagaimana sebuah hubungan yang #TerlanjurNyahhman bisa bertahan melewati berbagai fase hidup, tanpa harus selalu hadir di setiap percakapan, namun tetap ada saat dibutuhkan. Episode ini dipersembahkan oleh Grab. --------------- Thank you fo...

Pasrah itu sering disalahartikan sebagai menyerah. Bagi Kanjeng Gusti Mangkoenagoro X, pasrah adalah cara memahami proses, tentunya sambil tetap berjuang. Di usia 24 tahun, Kanjeng Gusti Mangkoenagoro X kehilangan ayahnya, lalu mewarisi tanggung jawab memimpin Mangkunegaran yang sudah berdiri 269 tahun. Bukan karena kompetensi, katanya, tapi karena garis keturunan, justru di situ, beban sekaligus...

Who doesn’t know Abah Pican by now? The man is everywhere on your feed, and IYKYK the same man who single-handedly took down the entire Makna Talks team in a battle of wits during Arisan. Today he’s here to talk candidly about the slow realization that ambition without boundaries is just burnout with better branding, and how walking away from a stable career (with zero savings, mind you) led him t...

What does it feel like carrying one of Indonesia’s most respected last names? Having a last name like Habibie means people usually have an opinion about you before you even walk into the room. This is not a talk about politics or history in the traditional sense. It’s a talk about finding a sense of self while honoring the responsibility of "giving back" a value passed down from her gran...

Saykoji has always been heavy on the mic, but he decided he didn’t want to be heavy in life. Witnessing an Indonesian hip-hop legend conquer morbid obesity is the kind of bars we love to see. He didn’t just change for the scale, he did it to be there for his family and to have the energy to enjoy the world he’s spent decades building. In this episode, we sit down to talk about not just his view an...

After a long hiatus, we are back for a brand new season! Starting with a conversation that reflects exactly why we do what we do. Laras Faizati joins us for a dialogue that goes far beyond the headlines. We unpack her personal journey, the immense weight of speaking up, and the raw realities she has navigated along the way. But as the conversation unfolds, it becomes clear that this isn’t just one...

Most spaces are built for transactions, GAFOY was built for transitions. We’re moving past the "mall" era and into the age of the lifestyle ecosystem. From immersive workshops to vibrant pop-ups, they're creating a space for the urbanites of Jakarta to gather, exchange ideas, and find inspiration. In this episode, we sit down with the minds behind Nika, Mamitoko, and Kirin Bar to discuss their jou...

Being 50 isn’t a bonus chapter, for Anton Ismael, it’s a whole new canvas. From capturing spontaneous frames to founding Kelas Pagi and building his creative compound Third Eye Space, Anton has always treated art not as a result, but as a record of life itself. In this special episode, we sit down with Anton to talk about what it means to create after decades of doing it. How does perspective shif...

Meet Tanya Gromenko, the woman behind SGB VA (Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming a Virtual Assistant), a platform that’s helping thousands take control of their careers and work from anywhere. More than just a course, SGB VA is a gateway to freedom, where anyone with a laptop and WiFi can learn to earn up to 18 million rupiah a month, connect with global clients, and redefine what a career looks like....

Long before social media turned everyone into a storyteller, one man made millions laugh with nothing but a keyboard and his truth. not through a video or a meme, but through his words. His book Kambing Jantan, born from a humble blog, became a phenomenon that redefined how Indonesians saw storytelling. Raditya Dika, writer, comedian, and filmmaker became a household name not because he chased fam...

What makes someone leave the comfort of home, travel thousands of kilometers, and discover a new life in a land he never expected to love so deeply? In this episode, we sit down with Kristian Hansen, a Danish traveler who has spent years exploring Indonesia, not as a tourist, but as someone who wants to understand its heart. Through his journey, Kristian has captured raw stories of people, culture...

It’s no secret that we’ve leveled up our set (and we know you guys love it too). Well, today we’re sitting down with the man behind this beautiful space, the mind and maker himself, Eko Priharseno, the creative force behind Sawdust and a driving figure in Indonesia’s evolving design scene. We talked about how Indonesian design has finally found its momentum, what it means to keep pushing the indus...