Something shifted in Singapore’s podcast scene, and the 2025 general election made it impossible to miss. When Workers’ Party candidate Harpreet Singh sat down with the independent show Yah Lah But, the hour-plus conversation drew close to 100,000 views in a fortnight — an enormous number for long-form audio in a country this size. An episode of The Daily Ketchup with SDP’s Chee Soon Juan pulled 126,000.
Singaporeans, it turns out, will happily give ninety minutes to a conversation that goes somewhere.
That appetite is not limited to politics. The best podcasts in Singapore now cover leadership and burnout, money and retirement, engineering teams, startup funding, and the arguments people have at kopitiam tables but rarely in public. Some are produced in professional studios. Others are two people and a microphone who happen to be very good at this.
This guide covers seven of them. It is written for the commute, the gym, the flight to anywhere — and for people who would rather finish one worthwhile episode than sample twenty. Each show is described honestly, including who it is not for.
How these seven were chosen
Four rules, applied to every show on this page.
1. Still publishing. A podcast that stopped in 2023 is an archive, not a recommendation. Every show here released episodes in 2026.
2. Genuinely Singapore. Either hosted from Singapore or built around Singaporean subject matter. International shows that happen to chart here were left out — there are already enough lists of those.
3. Checked at source. Every show was verified on its own website or its official Apple Podcasts or Spotify page, not on a directory that scrapes other directories.
4. Different jobs. Seven shows that all interview founders would be one recommendation repeated seven times. These span leadership, money, technology, politics, culture and recovery.
Nobody paid to appear on this list, and there are no affiliate links on this page.
1. The Limitless Podcast with Nick Jonsson
Listen: nickjonsson.com/limitless-podcast
Also on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube
Most leadership podcasts interview successful people about how they became successful. This one asks them what it cost.
Nick Jonsson is an executive coach, counsellor and psychotherapist based in Singapore, where he runs Limitless Executive Solutions. He is also an Ironman athlete and the author of Executive Loneliness. The show is built for a specific listener: the executive, founder or high performer who looks fine from the outside and is quietly coming apart.
Every guest gets the same question at some point — “What was your rock bottom moment?” The answers cover burnout, addiction, divorce, depression, career collapse and the isolation that tends to grow in step with seniority. Nick is not observing this from the outside. He has been through a version of it himself, and it shows in how he asks.
The show passed episode 340 in late 2026 and publishes weekly. Episodes run around 25 minutes, which is a deliberate choice — short enough for a commute, long enough to get somewhere real. Guests have included Jenn Lim of Delivering Happiness, Michael C. Bush of Great Place to Work, former Minneapolis police chief Medaria Arradondo and ex-Bayern Munich footballer Christian Lell.
Start with: Jenn Lim — What Comes after Happiness?, on finishing a book about happiness during the worst stretch of her life. Or Medaria Arradondo on leading when the entire world is watching.
Who it is not for: anyone after tactics, frameworks or productivity systems. This show goes in a different direction entirely, and it does not soften what it finds there.
2. Yah Lah BUT
Hosts: Haresh Tilani and Terence Chia, of the comedy house Ministry of Funny
The name is Singlish for “yes, but” — which is exactly the show’s instinct. Someone states the obvious position, and then the conversation gets interesting.
Tilani and Chia built it as a comedy project and it became something closer to civic infrastructure. The show describes itself as “the most uncensored conversations” coming out of a heavily censored country, and it has earned that more than once. Ahead of the 2025 general election it turned to politics seriously, interviewing candidates from across the spectrum at length.
Tilani’s argument for why this matters is simple: in parliament and in the press you see one version of a politician, and in a long conversation you see the person. Media scholar Cherian George told AFP that shows like this widened the opposition’s access to the public and nudged mainstream outlets to ease off their pro-establishment lean.
It is still funny. That is the trick — two comedians who did the reading.
Who it is not for: listeners who want neutral, balanced coverage. The hosts have opinions and share them, and episodes often run well past an hour.
They are available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.
3. The Daily Ketchup
A news commentary show from GRVTY Media, the Singapore outfit behind Millennials of Singapore. Johnathan Chua co-founded it and hosts alongside Daniel Lim, Jonathan Paul and a rotating cast.
The format is a panel talking through whatever is in the news — hawker subsidies, nuclear energy, job hunting, the Vietnamese matchmaking industry, parenting. It sounds like a group chat, which is the point, but the panel has usually done the reading and the disagreements between cast members are real rather than staged.
It also does serious interviews. Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam sat down for a full episode on capital punishment. During the 2025 election campaign, SDP leader Chee Soon Juan’s episode drew 126,000 views within weeks — a number his co-host attributed to pent-up demand for interviews that run long enough to say something.
Who it is not for: anyone who wants a tight twenty minutes. Episodes sprawl, and the casual register that makes the show readable also means it takes its time.
They are available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.
4. The Financial Coconut
Listen: thefinancialcoconut.com · also on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
Reggie Koh started this at his kitchen table in October 2019 and it has since grown into a small network — a flagship show, a long-running interview strand called Chills, and spin-offs in Mandarin and Malay.
What makes it useful is that the money advice is actually Singaporean. CPF, HDB, SRS, the local tax treatment, the specific trade-offs of retiring here. Most personal finance content a Singaporean encounters online was written for an American with a 401(k), and the gap between that and real life is where people make expensive mistakes.
The show is at its best on the big structural questions — whether CPF arrangements work for the middle class, what the Budget actually changes for a household, whether a property decision stacks up. Episodes bring in named guests with real expertise rather than generic motivational talk about compound interest.
Who it is not for: anyone looking for stock tips or a get-rich-quick angle. The orientation is long-term and the tone is more patient than exciting.
They are available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.
5. Work It (CNA)
Hosts: Nat Fetalvero and Gerald Tan, a career counsellor
CNA’s workplace show, and the most practical thing on this list. Each episode takes one work problem and works it through with someone who deals with that problem professionally.
The questions are unglamorous and exactly the ones people actually have. What to do first after a retrenchment. Whether to disclose a mental health condition to an employer. How a manager should handle a harassment complaint when the person harmed does not want action taken. Whether agentic AI is going to take the job or change it. Recent graduates taking roles outside their field.
Episodes are short, which suits the format — one question, one expert, a usable answer. Tiffany Ang co-hosted for several years before handing over to Fetalvero, so older episodes in the back catalogue have a different pairing.
Who it is not for: senior leaders. The centre of gravity is early and mid-career, and executives will find much of it pitched below where they sit.
They are available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.
6. Tech Lead Journal
Henry Suryawirawan is an engineering leader in Singapore who started this show on a premise most engineers eventually run into: great technical leadership takes a set of skills nobody ever wrote down, and the coding ability that got you promoted is not one of them.
He has been working through that gap for several hundred episodes, with guests who are serious practitioners rather than conference-circuit names — people writing the books on microservices, code review, team topologies and engineering management. Episodes close with a segment where the guest distils three pieces of hard-won advice, which makes the back catalogue genuinely searchable.
The website is a real asset too. Full show notes and transcripts for every episode, with timestamps, so you can find the eight minutes you need without listening to the hour.
Who it is not for: non-technical listeners. The show assumes you know what a deployment pipeline is and does not stop to explain.
They are available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.
7. BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech
Jeremy Au is a Singapore-based VC and former founder, and BRAVE has become the default listen for anyone building or funding a company in this region. It passed episode 700 and reports tens of thousands of monthly listeners.
The value is regional specificity. Southeast Asia is not one market, and advice imported from Silicon Valley tends to break on contact with six countries, six regulators and six consumer cultures. Au’s conversations deal with what that actually means — fragmented markets, local hiring, whether founders should leave for the US, why professionals are moving back to Singapore, Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City.
The interviews are candid about failure, which is rarer in startup media than it should be. There are also solo episodes where Au argues with the received wisdom of his own industry, including why advice from successful founders is often quietly self-serving.
Who it is not for: people outside tech. The vocabulary assumes familiarity with funding rounds and cap tables, and the show does not slow down for anyone.
They are available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.
Why the format suits this country
Singapore is small, dense and heavily mediated. People are physically close together and conversationally careful. The podcast turned out to be an unusually good fit for that combination.
Part of it is practical. Commutes here are long enough for an episode and short enough that you finish one. Part of it is that long-form audio does something the local media environment had not been doing much of. Reporters Without Borders ranks Singapore 126th of 180 countries on press freedom, and AFP found that opposition politicians were turning to independent shows precisely because the format gave them room to be asked hard questions and answer at length. One opposition leader said he had never been offered a long-form interview by mainstream media in three decades in politics.
The same dynamic shows up well outside politics. A country where people do not readily discuss burnout, debt, a failing marriage or a business that is quietly going under now has shows where other people discuss exactly those things, at length, in accents the listener recognises.
That is the common thread across this list. These seven shows are not better produced than their international equivalents. They are better at being specific to here — and specificity is what makes a conversation worth an hour of your attention.
Common questions
What is the most popular podcast in Singapore?
There is no single public ranking, since Apple and Spotify charts move daily and measure different things. By audience reach and cultural footprint, Yah Lah BUT and The Daily Ketchup are consistently the most visible homegrown shows, and CNA is the largest publisher by volume.
Are these podcasts in English?
All seven are. Singapore’s podcast scene also has substantial Mandarin and Malay output — The Financial Coconut alone runs shows in both.
Which Singapore podcast is best for the commute?
Work It and The Limitless Podcast, both of which run short enough to finish in one trip. Yah Lah BUT and The Daily Ketchup will take you two or three.
Is there a Singapore podcast about burnout and work stress?
The Limitless Podcast is the closest thing to a dedicated show on it, covering burnout, isolation and recovery among senior leaders. Work It handles the earlier-career version — workload, difficult managers, deciding whether to leave.
Do Singapore podcasts cover local politics honestly?
Independent shows have become a real venue for it. Candidates across parties gave long interviews during the 2025 election campaign, and several of those episodes reached six-figure view counts.
Where can I listen?
All seven are on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Most also publish full video on YouTube, which is how a large share of Singaporean listeners actually consume them.
Beyond listening: working with Nick Jonsson
A podcast can name the thing you have been carrying. It cannot sit across from you.
If an episode of Limitless landed closer to home than you expected, that is usually the signal that the conversation needs to become a real one. Nick Jonsson works privately with CEOs, founders and senior leaders in Singapore and internationally, on executive loneliness, burnout, resilience, addiction and recovery, and building a way of leading that does not quietly cost you everything else.
First conversations are confidential and carry no obligation.
Or follow Nick on LinkedIn for weekly insights on coaching, leadership, wellbeing, and performance.