Inside Asia Podcast

My guest this episode is Dr. Prabhavati Dwabha, the passion and vision behind Ramana’s Garden, which for the past 20 years has offered refuge for abused and abandoned children from all parts of India. Most know her as just Prabha, She’s American by birth but India has served as her adopted home for almost 40 years, and what she’s been able to achieve here over the course of four decades is something quite astounding. Prabha has succeeded where countless others would have thrown in the towel. What makes here different? Well, for one, she’s tenacious. Pitbull tenacious. Her life is defined by a determination to persevere against all odds. Ramana’s Garden is testimony to that fact. Where others flounder, Prabha just gets it done.

My guest this week is Edward Booty, Founder and CEO of Asia-based reach52, a company established three years ago to provide health screening and distribution services for remote communities in Asia using digital apps and mobile communications. First, fair warning: This week’s episode is less than cheery. It’s a cautionary note for what may lay in store for the world’s poor and under-resourced. While relatively wealthy nations reel from the sudden onset of Covid-19 and all attempts to contain the outbreak, billions of others - 52% of the world population in fact - resides in rural enclaves awaiting a pandemic that could kill in droves. To understand what’s at stake, we need to look at the numbers. From Southeast Asia, to Africa, and many parts of South America, healthcare infrastructure, including the most basic primary care services are woefully in short supply. According to the World Bank, average per capita healthcare spend for the poorest 30 countries is just $33. Quality care is a dream. Hospitals are

What are you doing – you alone – to safeguard your personal health and well-being? It’s a question that keeps popping up for me. Ultimately, who’s responsible for healthcare? Governments? Doctors? Pharmaceutical companies, perhaps? How about hospitals? This week’s guest, Dr. Bruce Lipton, offers some insight. His 2005 book, Biology of Belief unleashed a flurry of new questions and critique around the role of conventional science and the attempt by the pharmaceutical industry to kidnap and control the health destiny of each and every individual. Big stuff! Bruce is no stranger to controversy. In the fifteen years since his book’s publication he’s pursued his science and unraveled the mysteries of the human body, the behavior of the human cell, and the nature-born ability of each of us to manage our health by adjusting to the conditions of our respective environments. This is a conversation in three parts. First, Lipton explains the function of the cell the way Dylan puts words to music. In part two of the

This week I’m in conversation with Dane Chamorro, senior partner at Control Risks. The firms charter is to help organizations succeed in a volatile world, and nothing has created volatility more than the Coronavirus. Some of our listeners might recall the conversation I had with Ben Rolfe, in November last year. In the first half of our discussion, we celebrated his organization’s efforts to combat and largely eradicate malaria in the region. But we also discussed the inevitable rise of other infectious and contagious diseases. It’s a spooky harbinger of the dawning of Covid-19. We spoke again in February. This time from an isolation chamber at the Singapore Center for Infectious Diseases. Ben reached out while in confinement telling me how he had returned from a trip to Thailand, and not feeling well, presented himself to the authorities. From his hospital bed, he shares with us his front-line experience and the Singapore response to the outbreak. A week later, he was released. Hundreds of others haven’t b

My guest this week is Cary Horenfeldt, a self-styled digital payments expert. He’s an advisor to Bain & Company and consultant to an ever-growing FinTech community in Asia and beyond. Based in Singapore, Cary sees growing enthusiasm for digital payments. Regulators are relaxing rules, making way for new entrants, while merchants contemplate ways to drive sales across new payment platforms. The only real loser in this payments frenzy is cash, and no one seems too sad to see it go. So-called digital wallets are all the rage, accounting for 54% of all China e-commerce sales, which in turn, represent 620.5 billion dollars of a booming 1.2 trillion dollar marketplace. “Super Apps” created and supported by Chinese behemoths Alibaba and WeChat capture QR codes with the swipe of a smartphone, making payments quick, smooth and seamless. In less than 20 years, China has risen to become the world’s digital vanguard. It now leads the world in digital payments, and with only 56% smartphone penetration there’s still

On Saturday, February 8, deaths attributed to the Coronavirus surpassed those from the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003. It’s the speed of the spread of this particular disease that’s cause for concern. Data shows that it took just 20 days, compared to 80 for SARS, to result in 800 deaths. But data can be misleading. Because the infectious footprint of the Coronavirus is so much larger than SARS with the Chinese city of Wuhan at the epicenter, it feels precarious. Against this backdrop, I received a message from Ben Rolfe. He was texting from an isolation room in Singapore’s National Center for Infectious Diseases, suspected of contracting the Coronavirus. Ben is one of a handful of experts in the region who track and tackle infectious disease. Regular listeners may recall our conversation last November. In that episode, entitled “Asian Contagion,” Ben celebrated the dramatic reduction in malaria across the region, but raised concerns about other forms of infectious disease provoked in part by rapid urbanization

This week, we’re back with a program favorite, Jim McGregor. For Jim, China has been a stomping ground for more than 30 years and he brings to our conversations the thing we appreciate the most – perspective. To truly understand China is to witness the country through the long arc of history. It’s as consistent as it is surprising. In certain instances, it takes a crisis to reveal the underbelly of a nation steeped in secrecy. This time, the crisis came in the form of the corona virus, striking at the heart of China’s Hubei Province, and resulting in the lockdown of Wuhan, one of the country’s most essential industrial centers. The number of infected has skyrocketed to more than 20,000 people in less than two weeks. Wuhan remains the epicenter of the outbreak, but cases are spreading throughout China and the world, with more than 25 countries reporting confirmed cases. The economic impact on China, and the rest of the world for that matter, has also raised concerns. Because of an over weighted dependency o

This week I’m in conversation with Elisa Mallis, Vice President and Managing Director at the Center for Creative Leadership. She’s talking about Corporate Boards in Asia and how the time has come to re-evaluate the role of the Board member in order to establish a new kind of leadership culture. The Center, better known by its acronym, CCL, has made its mark as one of the world’s preeminent leadership training and development firms. For decades, CCL has researched global leadership trends then tailored programs to equip executives in the art of change and adaptation. Elisa her colleagues have recently completed a year-long study covering six key markets spanning South and Southeast Asia. The results suggest that Asia’s Boards – by their own admission – are way behind where they need to be in order to lead their organizations through complex times. The world is faced with bold new challenges and what’s needed is a bold new response. So, say hello to the Board. While CEOs and their operating teams focus on day

This week I’m in conversation with Sasha Conlan, Founder and Owner of Singapore-based Sasha’s Fine Foods. We’re back in Singapore, and it’s that funny time of year where we find ourselves sandwiched between the Christmas season on the one end and Chinese New Year on the other. Over the course of my thirty years in Asia, I’ve come to appreciate this 4-5 week “in-between” period as a time to reflect all that has occurred and all that has yet to come. More often than not, food is involved. Whether we’re talking stuffed turkey or pork dumplings, the holidays mean food and lots of it for weeks on end.   My mid-riff is the only evidence on hand, but here’s the point: Whether American or Chinese, French or Indonesian, we all imbibe in the culture of food. Increasingly, however, the source of our favorite foods are less known to us. For most, plucking vegetables from the home garden or slaughtering the fatted calf are chores reminiscent of a by-gone era. Grocery stores are the modern-day go-to. The source of most

This week, I’m in conversation with Sriven Naidu. Sriven works in higher education and professional development consulting. He’s based in Singapore and has found a discernable increase in interest from corporations desperate to improve employee satisfaction, team performance, and commercial results. Week-in, week-out, we introduce topics that organizations in Asia (and elsewhere) are grappling with. This week, we take a look at mindfulness. The term means different things to different people, and in preparation for this program, I spent some time perusing a number of descriptors. Wikipedia’s defines mindfulness as, “the psychological process of purposely bringing one's attention to experiences occurring in the present moment without judgment.” What the heck does that have to do with the running and operating of a modern corporation, you ask? Well hold tight, because in this episode I tracked down someone who lives and breathes mindfulness at the organizational level. How can mindfulness help? That’s the que

In this week’s episode I’m in conversation with Nick Fang, Managing Director of Black Dot, a Singapore-based media consulting and advisory firm. In our conversation we banter about the idea of what it means to design and imbed a national narrative. Nick has worked as a journalist, a presenter and a public commentator. Since leaving journalism, he’s dabbled in politics, served as a member of a local think-tank, and contemplated what we’ll call the evolving Singapore narrative. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves. Curious, isn’t it. We, as humans, are masters of the art of story-making. Just as we design tales to project to the world who we are and what we stand for, so do nations employ similar devices to align its citizenry to a common set of ideals or principals. Singapore has oftentimes been seen as a country small enough to test new ideas and approaches and demonstrate to the world what’s possible. It is exemplary in every way, but most notably in the roll-out of infrastructure, institutions and inc

In this week’s episode I’m in conversation with Ben Rolfe, CEO of the Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance. While most of us are out and about, getting on with living and working, a small but essential group of researchers are watching the way we live and work; studying disease patterns and contemplating the odds of epidemics. Communicable diseases come in all shapes and sizes. And while many are encouraged by human activity relating to how we eat, greet, wash and copulate, others are more insidious. But here’s some good news. Malaria is in retreat. That right. One of the world’s most debilitating mosquito-born diseases is whistling its swan song throughout much of Asia. China, it appears, hasn’t had a case in three consecutive years. And other emerging markets like Myanmar are seeing such vast reductions that it too hopes to declare victory in just a few short years. And It’s Ben’s goal is to create a malaria-free Asia by 2030.

My guest this week is young explorer and accomplished photographer, Alex Pflaum. In our conversation we turn back time and wander into the wily world of the ancient Silk Road, where Alex spends his time these days. He’s betting on a renaissance among budding Central Asian economies, not in trade, but in tourism.  At the time we spoke, Alex was working round-the-clock, finalizing the layout for his new book. Captured in his images is the awe-inspiring expanse of virgin landscape. There’s a raw beauty to it. Not for the feint-hearted, I thought, but for the last of us who find pleasure in remoteness. This is the Silk Road, after all. The very name conjures up images of camel convoys, Mongol hordes, boundless horizons, and of course, the Great Game, that period in the 19th century when British and Russian spies vied for territory and trade rights throughout Central Asia. But for Alex, the new Silk Road offers fresh opportunities for adventure seekers, eco-tourists and a few madmen as well.        

My guest this episode is Kyle Hegarty, Singapore-based entrepreneur with an expertise in sales training and development. For years Kyle has worked with multinational and Asia-based sales teams and culled from this experience a treasure-trove of tales on what it takes to do business in this part of the world. His new book, soon to be released, is titled, The Accidental Business Nomad: A Survival Guide for Working Across A Shrinking Planet. Kyle’s diatribe comes at an interesting moment. There are countervailing forces in play. On the one hand, global commerce and Internet access are bringing people closer together. On the other hand, some countries are starting to think that too much economic integration is a bad thing. The prospects of Recession are on the rise and leaders from the US to the UK are calling for protectionism to safeguard jobs and bolster homegrown businesses. Just as there’s no stopping the political winds from shifting, nor can one prevent the wings of commerce from beating. People are at

My guest this week is Gove Depuy, sustainability consultant, community-based planner, project leader and an advocate for bio mimicry. What are we talking about? Islands, and the growing idea that islands might serve as learning ecosystems for new ways of communing with the Earth we inhabit. It’s not an entirely new idea. In 1962, legendary author Aldous Huxley, wrote and published the book Island, as a utopian companion to his better known and more dystopian novel, Brave New World. Inspired by time spent in Bali, Huxley described a people living in harmony with nature. Today there’s a lot more traffic and a concerning amount of trash and plastic, but it’s still Bali – an island where animism and Hinduism blend to create a unique pact between humans in rhythm with the environment. I sat with Gove by the banks of one of Bali’s many picture-perfect rivers, adjacent to the Five Elements Retreat. It proved the perfect setting to talk about life in Bali, community-based projects, and ultimately, the promise of i

My guest this episode is Rebecca Fannin, founder of Silicon Dragon Ventures and author of the new book, Tech Titans of China. She’s been on the program once before. Exactly one year ago we spoke about the rise of China’s tech giants, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, known collectively as the BAT. Four years earlier, Alibaba became the largest initial public offering in US history and true to investor expectations, the company under Jack Ma grew from strength to strength. Rebecca points out how few Westerners had heard of Toyota, Honda or Mitsubishi before the 1980s. It was on the back of the global oil crises that Japan offered drivers in the US and Europe a cheaper, more fuel-efficient solution. The rest is history. We may be looking at something similar this time around. Electronic Vehicles, or EVs are the next big thing in transportation and no effort or expense is being spared in China to become a world leader in EV design and manufacturing. In this episode we delve into the shocking growth of China tech an

My guest this week is Rob Garrett, Innovation and Impact Investment specialist and Managing Partner at Hezar Ventures. We hear a lot these days about the escalating global wealth gap. How the richer are getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Much of that wealth is acquired and accrued by family dynasties. Globally, something in the range of US$ 6 trillion is thought to be controlled by private family interests, with Asian families accounting for nearly a third of that. For historical and political reasons, Asian families are quiet about their money. How or where they invest is a private affair. But as my conversation with Rob reveals, opportunity, necessity and generational influence are converging. Profits are still important, but so is the positive impact of investments that generate environmental or social good. In this week's episode, we discuss the rise of the family office in Asia, the breadth and depth of family money influence in the region, and what now moves some of these organizations to co

My guest this week is healthtech advisor, novelist, and lucid dreamer, Tony Estrella. We live in stressful times. Maybe not more stressful than times of yore when our ancestors lived in fear of war, famine, or plague. But a particular form of stress brought on by always-on technology, chaotic schedules, and data overload. Our brains and our bodies can only withstand so much. And to manage that edge, the modern-day worker employs alcohol, exercise, or pills to calm the nerves and relax the body. It’s problematic and if you haven’t figured it out already, what the body really needs is a mental holiday. Short of throwing away your personal technology and escaping to a remote island, there is a more practical solution, and it’s available to you every day at no cost. What am I talking about? Sleep. So it is in this episode of Inside Asia that I turned to health industry expert and investment advisor, Tony Estrella.

My guest this episode is Oliver Tonby, Chairman of McKinsey & Company in Asia Pacific. As the firm’s top representative in the region, Oliver has developed a unique perspective on Asia, informed by access to the region’s presiding corporate and government leaders. In a newly released report entitled “Asia’s Future is Now,” he and his colleagues point to an unprecedented rise in Asia’s commercial, trade and infrastructure development. Nothing, so it appears, can keep Asia down. For decades, the region - largely powered by China - served as a low-cost manufacturing base, feeding the world’s insatiable appetite for consumer, luxury and electronic goods. From advanced clean-tech solutions to the latest in digital media applications, the region teams with innovation at all levels. Throngs of engineers and entrepreneurs are emerging from Indian, Southeast Asia and Chinese universities with a license to design and build. Western markets and corporations are witnessing the technicolor change and in Board rooms f

I have a very special guest this episode, our hundredth episode of Inside Asia! Anne Hockett is a healthcare professional and wellness advisor. She’s lived and operated across Asia for more than three decades and through her medical insight and devotion to the art of wellness, she offers a unique blend of Eastern and Western healing. In this week's conversation we discuss some of the apparent limitations of Western medicine and how the world is increasingly open to alternative methods. And we delve into the mind-body pattern and explore ways that story and metaphor help us detect and embrace our personal patterns of unwellness. Thousands have benefitted from her synthesis of knowledge, expertise and empathy. If I’m long-winded in my description and admiration for Anne, it’s due in part to the fact that she’s also my wife. I’ve had the benefit of watching her evolve as a practitioner and a human. Best of all, I’ve been on the receiving end of her love and support.