Comedian Rishi Budhrani has started a podcast series combining politics and humour in the runup to the General Election on May 3.
The first season of The Rishi Report will consist of eight to 10 episodes.
The first two episodes featured Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung and Senior Minister of State Janil Puthucheary, both of the People’s Action Party (PAP).
They are available to stream on YouTube and Spotify.
Rishi’s team has also recorded episodes with independent political commentators and scheduled interviews with some members of the opposition parties.
“My aim by the end of the eight to ten episodes is to have a diverse series of guests from across the political spectrum leading up to the elections,” Rishi said.
In the first episode released on April 14, Mr Ong responded to a comment by former Member of Parliament Leon Perera who said that the opposite of a “conviction politician” is a “TikTok politician” – someone who chases likes on social media.
Mr Ong disagreed, calling it a false dichotomy.
“When you say something with so much conviction and you start persuading people, people will start following you, you will appear on TikTok with a lot of followers. Every politician must master the media of their time and now it’s TikTok and IG,” he said.
Rishi responded that he himself used to be politically apathetic, which is why he created the podcast series to get more people engaged in political conversations.
In addition to interviews, the podcasts feature game segments where Rishi and his guests try to craft punchlines from partially redacted headlines.
Another segment involves flashing photos of politicians and prompting guests to say the first word that comes to mind.
“It is not incredibly hard and there is no right or wrong. It’s just about being funny,” Rishi said.
A politics-comedy podcast is a passion project Rishi had long hoped to pursue but lacked the time and resources to bring to life until now.
“It’s us trying out something that I have always wanted to do but maybe didn’t have the time, the bandwidth or the budget in the past, and now I have an opportunity and things are coming together,” he said.
When asked about the saturation of political podcasts in the runup to the elections, Rishi said that he has no expectations and no worries about losing money or his audience because he never started the project with that in mind.
“It is purely a creative experiment that is self-motivated and self-funded through the multiple Punjabi weddings I have done over the years,” Rishi quipped.
The podcast is helmed by a team that includes Dora Goh, 34 – Rishi’s manager and the show’s producer – alongside an editing crew that handles the graphics, post-production and social media outreach.
Most of the interview questions are fielded by Rishi, who also does the research on the guests.
“It’s a lot of back end work, so I have got a very hardworking team managing that. I focus more on directly reaching out to the guests, connecting with them and inviting them to be on the podcast,” Rishi said.
He hopes the show offers politicians and other guests a chance to show a more personable side while keeping viewers informed in an engaging and entertaining way.
All episodes of the first season will be rolled out in the lead-up to polling day.
A post-election round-up episode may follow and there could be a second season later in the year.
Rishi’s interest in politics began in 2011 while sourcing material for his stand-up comedy shows.
“Singapore politics became relevant to me when I started creating jokes about it because that’s what the audience were enjoying and were laughing at,” Rishi said.
That same year marked Singapore’s 11th General Election – a watershed moment in the country’s political history. For the first time, the ruling PAP lost a Group Representation Constituency to the opposition.
“It all became talking points, joking points and I always feel that humour is a great way to digest it, peel off the layers and get people interested in the maybe not so exciting subject matter of politics,” Rishi said.
A graduate from Nanyang Technological University’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Rishi also hopes to become a better journalist and a better interviewer through The Rishi Report.
“Maybe it’s partially selfish but I’m hoping to become a better conversationalist and be more informed about everything that is going on in Singapore right now,” he said.
While entertaining guests at a Punjabi wedding and interviewing a political officeholder may seem worlds apart, Rishi notes that, at their core, both are essentially two human beings communicating with each other.
This is evident throughout the first episode of the podcast series where Rishi addresses Mr Ong as “bro” and “sir” interchangeably.
“It’s not meant as a term of disrespect and we often have the misconception that we need to revere our leaders and treat them like elders but if we treat them like a fellow human being and humanise them, I think they appreciate that,” Rishi said.
