Even so, her full-time commitments as the project lead of local NGO Friends to Mankind, meant she had to put her podcast idea on the back burner.

Then, when some of her projects came to standstill due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the prolonged movement control order (MCO), it gave her the perfect opportunity to kickstart the podcast.

So, she launched Yuzu Media as part of Lemonaid, a company she founded alongside her partner Tim Fernandez back in 2020.

In essence, Yuzu Media is a platform that seeks to bring something fresh to Malaysians through its in-house YouTube podcast called The Woke Up Show, with Apshy as its host.

The Woke Up Show typically features three guest speakers and together, they explore current topics.

“Anyone is invited to join our sessions and nothing is off the table in terms of topics, as we want people to express themselves openly,” she states, hoping to bring together like-minded speakers in each episode.

“Even though none of us are experts, the idea is to do something different and allow our content to evolve and engage others as we progress,” Apshy explains to FMT, while noting that the Yuzu Media team began filming in April.

There are so far seven episodes posted on Yuzu Media’s YouTube page, with each episode going up every Sunday at 2pm.

As the team were weary about rising Covid-19 cases and the inevitable lockdowns that would follow, episodes one to six of The Woke Up Show were pre-recorded.

“By pre-recording six episodes, we were hopeful that we would be able to return to the studio to continue recording once cases had dropped significantly,” she shares.

Unfortunately, like many others, she was dismayed that the lockdown was extended and they were unable to return to the studio like she hoped.

She decided it was time to execute Plan B. This entailed recording future episodes via Zoom, the online peer-to-peer conference software.

With that, The Woke Up Show’s seventh episode was successfully conducted on Zoom. However, she was still plagued by worries that the show would lose its appeal.

To her surprise, things turned out much better than she imagined.

“I realised that the guest speakers felt more comfortable speaking on Zoom and were more relaxed as compared to when filming at the studio.”

She reckons that this was largely due to how most of her guest speakers were chiming in on the topics from the comfort of their own homes.

“I think it’s because they don’t have a director watching over them and three cameras pointed at their faces,” she says jokingly.

To ensure that their growing audiences enjoy high-quality recordings, Apshy reached out to the Zoom team to request for enhanced recording features.

“I even reached out to Zoom to enquire about their HD recording features and was quite surprised with the efficient reply and help.”

Since transitioning to Zoom, Apshy is now on a mission to maximise the software’s global reach by connecting with people from around the world, something that will add an edge to the show.

The Woke Up Show has posted videos discussing not only heavy topics but fun and enjoyable ones as well.

To date, the show’s episodes have covered the challenges of living in lockdown, the popularity of dating apps, cognitive dissonance, and female body positivity, to name a few.

Apshy says that when it comes to selecting the show’s topics, she does her best to be all-inclusive.

“It involves a lot of brainstorming and I also take note of subjects and themes that I have seen or heard people talking about. We also try to leverage off Malaysia’s current affairs and recent hot topics.”

More than anything, Apshy and the Yuzu Media team do their best to keep episodes as raw and unfiltered as possible, as they’ve realised this brings increased fan engagement.

“We strive to put up the raw conversations as we noticed people prefer that,” she says.

The Woke Up Show is relatively new and because of that Apshy hopes that they will be able to gain more attraction and popularity as they continue to post videos weekly.

“Our aim is to stir-up conversations among those who watch our show and to broaden their perspectives with alternative points of view. This way, we can also inspire Malaysians (and the rest of the world) to see things differently.”

If you’d like to check out Yuzu Media and The Woke Up Show’s episodes, head over to their YouTube channel, Instagram page or their Website.