Night School

We try to understand "emotional intelligence" this week as Vizla helps us go through Daniel Goleman's classic book. What does it mean to understand and express out emotions wisely? Where does patience and resolve come in? Tune in to find out!

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This week, we critically explore the cultural significance of bookstores. What are they good for? Do they play a role in cultivating a more critically-informed culture? Or are they just another form of inconspicuous consumerism? How do we tell the difference between enterprises that aim to curate certain critical discourses from purely for-profit initiatives? Owners of two different types of independent bookstores join us this week to help us think through these questions and more.

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We consider the margins of the New Economic Policy now after some decades of hindsight into its gains and losses. What are the narratives and experiences that tend to be overlooked when considering its impact on Malays? Featuring special guest Professor Maznah Mohamad.

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Knowledge production occurs in a political economy that limits discourse to certain rigid epistemic and class presumptions. In this panel, we speak of different ways that this can be undone. We consider the impact of colonial history, the gap between modernity and tradition, and the ethics of discovering.

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Ecological collapse, mass extinction and increasing inequality. These are just a few in a long list of crises that face today's youths. How does one be young in a world that seems so rapidly falling apart? Tune in this week to find out.

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Vizla Kumaresan, clinical psychologist and co-host of Digital Desires, joins us to explain the whys and hows of therapy. Among other things, we look into the relationship between emotional health and well being, as well as what makes therapy a unique experience.

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Joyce Liu visits us all the way from Taipei to share the history of cultural studies in Taiwan. She locates the emergence of the field as a reaction to Martial Law and the need for knowledge production to be in tune with democratisation and popular struggles.

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Every year, Parti Sosialis Malaysia organises a conference where everyone is invited to debate the major topics confronting the left and the world more broadly. Comrades Arul and Sharan join us to talk about this year's conference programme and the issues they aim to address.

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Given the global resurgence of right-wing politics into the mainstream, Sharaad and Fuad ask: what kind of future will liberalism have? We consider some of liberalism’s limits and problematic assumptions as well as the key questions to ask, in hoping for a better future.

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How do we affirm life in a world that's breaking down? How do we stay hopeful while politics, nature and the economy are falling apart? What role could ugly emotions - fear, pessimism, resignation, anxiety etc - play to refine our ideals?

ILHAM plays host to this live edition of BFM Night School which reflects on those questions and more to understand the uses and abuses of feelings amidst precarious times.

Inequality is widening and nuclear warfare is likelier than ever, intensifying fears as all sides evoke their insecurities for privilege and attention. Our era of digital hyper-connectivity has also amplified exclusion and inequality. Our political vocabulary is increasingly dominated by emotional wounds and appeals to injury.

Join us as we think through the ways we can grapple with the challenging present without losing our sense of curiosity and connection.

Panelists:

Diana Wong is a sociologist who has published extensively on gender justice, migration, labour, war and historical memory.

Diana Lea Baranovich is an Associate Professor at the Department Of Educational Psychology And Counselling in University Malaya.

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