Welcome to our weekly roundup!

Highlighting the different posts we had this week and previewing what’s to come this weekend.

Kazakhstan Tourism

How times have changed. In 2006, Kazakhstan was… not pleased with Borat.
Now they’ve adopted his catchphrase as their tourism slogan. The most interesting part?
How they pivoted so fast this time around. Read more about it here in The New York Times’s
latest piece below.

Daily Dose with Marat Birimzhan

In case you missed it, since gaining its independence from the USSR in 1991,
Kazakhstan’s become one of the most successful former Soviet states.
First, with petrochemicals, and now with agrobusiness.

Check out our latest Daily Dose with Marat Birimzhan here. We look at how Kazakhstan
is restructuring its economy amidst Covid and replacing oil and gas with food exports.

You can also check out our full interview with Marat in Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Coffee & Conversation with Dhiraj Mukherjee

Is there still room to innovate like we used to? Is there any low-hanging fruit left? It’s
not just an abstract question. Take Shazam. It anticipated smartphones and adapted to
ride the wave. In hindsight – perfect timing. Would the equivalent still be possible today?
Find out more in our latest episode with Shazam co-founder Dhiraj Mukherjee here.

Sneak peek of our weekend posts

Saturday

Halloween’s become a major worldwide holiday, worth $9 billion in the US alone in 2019.
But Covid-19 has turned this year into its own horror movie. But we’ve been here before.
This is a sequel of 1918. With so many celebrations canceled, where does that leave us?

This article takes an interesting look at how similar this year’s Halloween celebrations
could be to Halloween in 1918, and what was done then, to cope with the situation.