India's Circulating Libraries, Emotional Workouts, And Penang's Vanishing Shophouses episode artwork

EPISODE · Aug 28, 2026 · 17 MIN

India's Circulating Libraries, Emotional Workouts, And Penang's Vanishing Shophouses

from What's the Focus · host BFM Media

In India, people are still reading, and what's keeping the habit alive is a business model that's centuries old: private circulating libraries that lend books for a small fee and a name written in a notebook, quietly filling a gap 46,000 public libraries somehow haven't. We also look at the rise of the emotional workout such as grief cycling, rage yoga, angry weightlifting, and why the research on whether any of it actually works is genuinely split. And closer to home, a pre-war house was demolished inside George Town's protected UNESCO zone back in March, which raises an awkward question about what a World Heritage listing is actually worth. Though when much of the architecture in question is colonial, deciding what deserves saving turns out to be less straightforward than it looks.Image Credit: ShutterstockSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Aug 28, 2026

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India's Circulating Libraries, Emotional Workouts, And Penang's Vanishing Shophouses

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