Yah Lah But

In Parliament this week, an epic 5-hour debate about how to save our hawker culture took place. PSP’s Leong Mun Wai and Hazel Poa put forth a slew of suggestions, which were hotly debated by both sides of the floor. At the end, the amended bill was passed unanimously, highlighting the pressing need to preserve our hawker culture, but will it be enough? Elsewhere, a Singapore PR made headlines when...

In a surprising move, the Ministry of Home Affairs is proposing a slew of legal amendments that will lessen the punishment for road traffic offences, even if they result in grievous hurt or death. Pretty unusual for a country that tends towards harsher punishments for many things! We discuss the MHA’s thinking behind this, and what signals it may inadvertently send. In other news, the days of indi...

People are calling the 2024 US Presidential Election the ‘Podcast Election’ for the role that long-form, unfiltered conversations played in shaping popular opinion. So is Lawrence Wong becoming our ‘Press Conference Prime Minister’? He has pledged to do more press conferences, not tied to any specific announcements, just to improve the government’s public communications. In a recent one, he weighe...

It happened. Trump is once again the US president-elect, and suddenly everyone’s an expert. Including us! Well, not really. We can’t claim to know the situation as well as political analysts, so for this episode, we drop casual observations with our guest host, comedian Rishi Budhrani. Also, we look at an AsiaOne survey on the least satisfying places to live in Singapore while asking “eh where ah”...

A Singaporean film about censorship, has been banned in Singapore by film censors. You can’t make this stuff up. We speak with actor and guest host Caitanya Tan about Daniel Hui’s film Small Hours of the Night, and what lines it could have crossed, because they’re not obvious. We also discuss the role that censors play in Singapore, and what exactly they protect Singaporeans from. Separately, a pr...

The weather’s been hot lately, but our studio got even hotter this week when veteran journalist and political commentator Bertha Henson dropped by with a delivery of flaming hot takes on the state of journalism in Singapore, Pritam Singh’s trial, our new PM, and the Oxley Road saga. But lest we bury the lede (journalism reference), we spoke with her about her new ebook, When Mama Fell, a manual on...

Imagine the Singapore zoo being attacked by Zombies. Now imagine talking animals trying to survive it! That's our adult-themed animated TV series called "Zombie Safari"! We chat with Munah Bagharib, who plays Grace the Flamingo as well as Jerrold Chong, one of the co-creators of the show and also a co-founder of Finding Pictures, the animation studio we worked with to bring the story alive. We tal...

38 Oxley Road is the house that just won’t fall. This episode we look at the latest exchange between Lee Hsien Yang and the Singapore government over the fate of his late father’s historical home. To demolish or not demolish? What are the options, what are the precedents? And why can’t we just get this over and done with? We also discuss a viral video of a wedding proposal gone wrong, where the mo...

Is the pandemic honeymoon truly over? Singapore tech giant Grab is ending hybrid work for its employees and summoning everyone back to HQ, continuing a trend we’re seeing across the world. We discuss what working from home means for employees, as well as employers in various industries. Heck we even talk about us, and how we pivoted from recording YLB from home, to our studio! Also, Singapore rece...

Somehow, NINE years after Mr Lee Kuan Yew left us, we’re still talking about his former house at 38 Oxley Road. This time it’s because his daughter Dr Lee Wei Ling recently passed away, leaving the house vacant and reigniting the debate over its fate. We look at claims that her brother Lee Hsien Yang has been making about the house and Singapore in general while in self-exile and… is it just us, o...

You held your breath waiting for us to discuss Pritam. Now you can exhale! With the trial of the year well underway, we take stock of all the revelations so far, and what is to come. Redactions, soft biscuits, Pritam’s hot lawyer…what’s next? In other news, a vice-principal has been outed for an extramarital affair with the mother of a student, and the evidence is…amusing to say the least. Are ung...

We all thought it was a done deal, but the Singapore Government has swooped in to block the sale of a majority stake of local insurer NTUC Income, to German company Allianz. Why? Well, buckle up–this episode gets pretty technical! We also look at the bigger questions Singaporeans are asking, like should we be grateful that such a bad deal got caught, or worried it almost went through? In other new...

We never thought we'd be able to make a show that involved this much gore and dark comedy, but we just did! It's called "Zombie Safari" & it's Singapore's first adult-animated series about a Zombie apocalypse involving talking animals at a Zoo. We chat with Mark Wee, co-creator and one of the co-founders of Finding Pictures, the animation studio we worked with, as well as Jun Vinh, who played...

This episode we ask: when is a protest, a protest? A Spanish couple on their honeymoon here are providing a fascinating test case. They held up signs denouncing Singaporean Peter Lim’s ownership of football club Valencia, and were shocked when they were not allowed to leave the country. Even with our stringent rules, this feels like a stretch. Join us as we speculate on where the tipping point is,...

We’re horrified that a secondary one girl was beaten up by her own schoolmates at a HDB block near their school, resulting in a ruptured eardrum. We discuss with actor and friend of YLB Munah Bagharib what pushes young people to harm others, and why others are comfortable to watch. But it wouldn’t be YLB if we didn’t also speculate on wild ways to reform bullies! In less distressing educational ne...

Oh Iswaran, we wish we knew how to quit you. Just when we thought we’d packed the former Transport Minister off to prison and closed that chapter, details of his cell emerge… along with a photo of him in prison uniform!!!??? Okaaay, should we be seeing this? We discuss the treatment he will get in Changi Prison, the reasons behind it, as well as the ethics of the photo, which has now been publishe...

It seems we’re not done talking about former Transport Minister Iswaran yet! Just before entering prison, he announced he will not be appealing his one-year sentence. We examine his statement and try to read between the lines. Why the change of tone? How will Singaporeans view him now? Separately, the craze over Labubu dolls here has finally spread to… Taoism?? We discuss if their use in a recent...

The verdict is out! We break down former Transport Minister Iswaran’s jail sentence, and ask the tough questions. Who really won and lost? What else would we have learned if the case went to trial? What’s with Haresh and all his conspiracy theories? We also discuss how a food court ended up reproducing a local artist’s work without permission, and did they try to get around copyright concerns with...

In news that both sucks and blows, Dyson has become the latest tech company in Singapore to do a sudden round of retrenchments, giving the relevant union only a day’s notice! We discuss what the union can still do, as well as Dyson’s broader impact locally. Also, Singapore’s last kampung is back in the spotlight after property TikTokers reported the land to be valued at a whopping $70 million. Why...

Rishi steps up to the plate of guest host, bringing the Sindhi presence back onto the podcast! This week, we talk about the elephant in the room, the MRT East-West line disruption. As Singapore reels from the massive disruption, we sift through the chatter online and try to figure out: who’s to blame? Also, strangely enough, Rishi himself got in the news this week, where he trolled a scam caller f...

Just 2 days removed from F1, the trial of S Iswaran coincidentally begins…with a twist! The prosecution has amended charges of corruption against the former Minister, and he has pleaded guilty to the 5 outstanding charges. Is it over before it has even begun? What is happening here? At the same time, viral livestreamer iShowSpeed continues his whirlwind Southeast Asia tour in Singapore, crossing p...

Is it Bad Behaviour Week in Singapore? A condominium guard threw an order of bubble tea at a delivery rider who did not have the unit number, and a woman helped her driver to cut into a busy lane by getting out of the car and standing in the middle of the lane! What could they have been thinking, and why are such incidents so unsurprising these days? Back to weigh in on these incidents are Team YL...

We were thrilled to have Sergeant Gina, a paramedic who is also an Emergency Medical Service section commander, in the YLB studio. Dive into her inspiring journey with the SCDF, and how her grandmother motivated her to choose this career path. She describes the heart and soul of her lifesaving work, and tells us why, despite being a mother of four, she still volunteered her time and energy to go t...

From 2026, MOE is making it easier for students to qualify for Higher Mother Tongue classes. But why is studying your language at a more difficult level so desirable in Singapore? We ask former Higher Chinese student and now theatre practitioner (in both English and Chinese!) Jo Tan. Also, we discuss the growing trend of micro-weddings, and whether they address the problems of organising tradition...

What, another case of blackface in Singapore? We discuss a car dealership’s recent promo video that features a staff member in dark makeup. It directly references an African-themed meme so we ask: is this racism, or just cringe humour? How does this compare with other instances of blackface / brownface we’ve seen? Hear our takes on pigeons as we talk about a woman who has fed so many of them in Yi...