by Aseem Gupta | Apr 1, 2026 | Society, Culture & Demographics
In September 2016, a 24-year-old university student named Kwon Dae-hee walked into a plastic surgery clinic in Gangnam, Seoul. He wanted a V-line jaw. Not a medical necessity. Not emergency surgery. A sharper, narrower, more sculpted face — the kind seen on K-pop...
by Aseem Gupta | Mar 21, 2026 | Society, Culture & Demographics
Canada Lost More Than A Hockey Game The moment was almost too perfect in its cruelty. February 22, 2026. Italy. Olympic gold medal game. Canada versus the United States. Hockey’s oldest continental rivalry on the biggest winter-sport stage in the world. After three...
by Aseem Gupta | Sep 17, 2025 | Economics, Markets & Money
You wake up, check your phone, buy breakfast, pay rent, complain about prices, think about your salary, avoid your bank balance, wonder why houses cost so much, and hear someone on the news say the economy is “strong” even though everything feels expensive. That is...
by Aseem Gupta | May 21, 2025 | Narrative, Media & Storytelling
Disney live-action remakes are easy to mock. They look like the safest possible products: familiar titles, familiar songs, familiar characters, familiar marketing hooks, and a built-in audience of parents who grew up with the originals. From the outside, the strategy...
by Aseem Gupta | Sep 8, 2024 | Urban Planning & the Built Environment
Dubai looks impossible. A city of glass towers, artificial islands, luxury malls, global banks, five-star hotels, packed airports, and supercars where there was once desert, creek, heat, trade, and hardship. It is one of the few places on earth where the skyline...
by Aseem Gupta | Apr 6, 2024 | Economics, Markets & Money
Canada used to sell a simple promise. Work hard. Find a decent job. Buy a home. Raise a family. Live in a safe neighborhood. Save a little. Retire with dignity. It was not a fantasy. For much of the postwar era, this was the basic middle-class bargain in Canada. The...
by Aseem Gupta | Mar 27, 2024 | Economics, Markets & Money
Switzerland looks like a country designed to lose. It is small. It is landlocked. Much of it is mountainous. It has no ocean ports, no vast oil fields, no great mineral empire, and no single language holding the country together. It sits in the middle of Europe,...
by Aseem Gupta | Mar 21, 2024 | Business, Innovation & Industry
For decades, ESPN was one of the best businesses in television. It did not merely show sports. It sat at the center of the cable bundle. If you were a serious sports fan, you needed ESPN. If you were not a serious sports fan, you often paid for it anyway because ESPN...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 20, 2024 | Geopolitics, States & Global Power
On June 23, 2016, Britain voted to leave the European Union. The promise was simple, emotional, and politically explosive: take back control. Control of borders.Control of laws.Control of money.Control of trade. For many Leave voters, Brexit was never just an economic...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 5, 2024 | Business, Innovation & Industry
For a long time, Disney did not feel like a company. It felt like a childhood memory machine. A Disney film was not just another movie on the release calendar. It was an event. A Disney character was not just a piece of intellectual property. It was a companion. A...
