The Front Row Podcast

Arthur Kroeber has spent more than three decades trying to make sense of Asia’s most important economies — and helping the rest of the world understand them too. In 2002, he co-founded Dragonomics in Beijing, a research firm born out of his deep intellectual curiosity about China’s economic transformation. He went on to edit its flagship publication, China Economic Quarterly, for 15 years. When Dr...

Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Parag Khanna. Parag Khanna is Founder & CEO of AlphaGeo, the leading AI-powered geospatial analytics platform. He is the internationally bestselling author of seven books including MOVE: Where People Are Going for a Better Future (2021), preceded by The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict & Culture in the 21st Century (...

Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Gita Wirjawan. This podcast was recorded in front of a live audience at SCAPE Singapore. I would like to thank National Youth Council, the Singapore Global Network, *SCAPE and the Endgame team for helping us put this event together. Gita Wirjawan is an Indonesian entrepreneur, investment banker, and philanthropist. He is the Fo...

Today's episode is a short keynote episode brought to you by George Yeo. George Yeo is a Singaporean statesman, former Brigadier-General, and distinguished scholar. He served in Singapore's Cabinet for 23 years (1988–2011), holding key ministerial positions including Foreign Affairs, Trade & Industry, Health, and Information & the Arts. I consider him to be one of Singapore's g...

Hian is a founding partner of Openspace Capital, a leading multi-strategy asset management firm focused on Southeast Asia. Most notably, he was an early investor in some of Southeast Asia's most notable tech startups such as Gojek, Love Bonito and Lucence. Hian himself has extensive entrepreneurial experience. He founded and built Asian Food Channel, a 24-hour pay TV channel that was sold to U...

Professor Jochen Wirtz serves as Vice Dean of MBA Programmes and Professor of Marketing at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School. He holds several prestigious international appointments, including as an international fellow of the Service Research Center at Karlstad University in Sweden, an Academic Scholar at the Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures at Cornell University, an...

Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Gita Wirjawan. Here's what the podcast sponsor, Revolut is offering: 💰Get S$50 cashback when you sign up to Revolut Business at https://www.revolut.com/rb/tfr/ before 30 Nov 2025 and top up your account. T&Cs and end date apply. Gita Wirjawan is an Indonesian entrepreneur, investment banker, and philanthropist. He is t...

Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Kee Lock. Here's what the podcast sponsor, Revolut is offering: 💰Get S$50 cashback when you sign up to Revolut Business at https://www.revolut.com/rb/tfr/ before 30 Nov 2025 and top up your account. T&Cs and end date apply. This is the 57th episode Of The Front Row PodcastChua Kee Lock is the Group President and Chief Exec...

Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Patrick Mcgee. Here's what the podcast sponsor, Revolut is offering: 💰Get S$50 cashback when you sign up to Revolut Business at https://www.revolut.com/rb/tfr/ before 30 Nov 2025 and top up your account. T&Cs and end date apply.(This is also the first sponsorship I have taken since the inception of the podcast. Your su...

Thank you for checking out The Front Row Podcast and my interview with Kyle Chan. Here's what the podcast sponsor, Revolut is offering: 💰Get S$50 cashback when you sign up to Revolut Business at https://www.revolut.com/rb/tfr/ before 30 Nov 2025 and top up your account. T&Cs and end date apply. (This is also the first sponsorship I have taken since the inception of the podcast. Your suppo...

💰 Get S$50 cashback when you sign up to Revolut Business at https://www.revolut.com/rb/tfr/ before 30 Nov 2025 and top up your account. T&Cs and end date apply. This is a recording of a conversation I had with Prof Kishore Mahbubani at an event I co-organized with Bloomberg Singapore and Thinksuite. I hope you will enjoy the conversation as much as we did. Thank you Bloomberg and Thinksuite f...

Marc Levinson is an American economist, historian, and author celebrated for his accessible writing on economic forces and globalization. He’s authored seven acclaimed books, notably:The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, a groundbreaking history of containerization that reshaped global trade. It was shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sach...

Professor Tansen Sen is a renowned historian of India–China relations and Asian interconnections. He is Professor of History at NYU Shanghai and Director of the Center for Global Asia. His research spans Sino-Indian interactions, Buddhism across Asia, and maritime networks that shaped the region’s history. He is the author of Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations...

Cheong Yip Seng is the former Editor-in-Chief of The Straits Times , Singapore’s flagship English daily, where he led the newsroom for over two decades. Joining the paper as a young journalist, he rose through the ranks to shape its editorial direction during some of Singapore’s most pivotal years. Under his leadership, The Straits Times navigated the complexities of reporting in a young nation, b...

Stephen Witt is a Los Angeles–based investigative journalist and author whose work appears regularly in The New Yorker. His latest book, The Thinking Machine (April 2025), chronicles the extraordinary rise of Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang—from immigrant dishwasher to leader of the world’s most valuable company. Stanford’s former computer science chair Bill Dally remarked: “Without Jensen we’d be...

🎙️ Guest: Ooi Kee Beng | Political Historian & Executive Director, Penang Institute Ooi Kee Beng is a political historian, writer, and the executive director of Penang Institute. He has spent years studying the process of nation-building in Asia and is the author of In Lieu of Ideology: Dr Goh Keng Swee's Intellectual Biography . In this episode, we explore the ideas of Singapore’s founding ec...

🎙️ Guest: David Fishman | Principal, The Lantau Group David Fishman is a Principal at The Lantau Group, a boutique strategy and economic consultancy focused on the Asia Pacific energy sector. He specializes in regulatory and economic intelligence for the Chinese power sector—including solar, wind, coal, nuclear, hydro, grid transmission, and power markets. His project portfolio spans renewable tar...

🎙️ Ambassador Chan Heng Chee is a prominent Singaporean academic, diplomat, and political scientist, known for her distinguished career in both academia and public service. She served as Singapore's Ambassador to the United States (1996–2012) and earlier as Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1989–1991), concurrently holding the roles of High Commissioner to Canada and Ambassador t...

Jamus Lim is an Associate Professor of Economics at ESSEC Business School and a Member of Parliament in Singapore. With a PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and experience at the World Bank and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority , his work spans international economics, political economy, and development. In this episode, we discuss how Singapore and other NIEs succeeded and what the p...

Professor Elizabeth Ingleson is a historian of capitalism, US foreign relations, and US–China relations — a timely and critical intersection she explores in her acclaimed first book, Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade, published by Harvard University Press in 2024.In the book, she unpacks a pivotal shift in the 1970s: when the old dream of American companies...

Professor Joseph Chinyong Liow is one of Singapore’s leading scholars on international affairs, known for his incisive analysis of Southeast Asian politics. He is serving as the Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), where he now holds the prestigious Tan Kah Kee Chair in Comparative and International Politics. He was the former Dean...

Cedric Chin is the CEO & Founder of Commoncog. Commoncog is a publication dedicated to accelerating business expertise. Commoncog asks two questions: a) what is business expertise? b) what do we know about accelerating it? In this conversation, Cedric and I dive into how Asian tycoons are made and the essential skills business operators must master in Southeast Asia. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Trailer...

Karthik Nachiappan is a Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore. His work focuses on India’s foreign and economic policy, particularly in trade, technology, and global governance. He is the author of Does India Negotiate? (Oxford University Press)In this episode, we talk about the policy interests of India, the role it seeks to play on a glo...

Professor Euston Quah is a prominent Singaporean economist and the Albert Winsemius Chair Professor of Economics at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), where he also serves as Head of the Economics Division. Known for his work in cost-benefit analysis, environmental economics, and policy economics, he has advised various government agencies and chaired national committees in Singapore. His res...

Grace Shao is a Financial/tech journalist turned analyst based in Hong Kong. On her Substack, she writes about AI and its relationship with energy, big tech, and society. She can be found at: https://substack.com/@gshao TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Trailer & Intro 01:30 Understanding the Chinese Internet Ecosystem 06:06 The Evolution of Chinese Entrepreneurs 08:21 China's Smartphone Revolution 10:45...