Mysterious Universe

American culture is everywhere, shaping everything from entertainment to fast food—but could its most profound influence be something far more unsettling? Across the globe, from Hong Kong to Japan, Western mental health concepts are spreading, often replacing traditional ways of understanding distress. Depression, PTSD, and eating disorders are appearing in regions where they were once rare, raising the question: is this organic, or is something more deliberate at play? In this episode, we dive into the unsettling case from Japan, where pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline saw an untapped market for antidepressants and set out to change the nation’s perception of sadness itself. Through marketing, media manipulation, and cultural rebranding, they turned “feeling down” into a medical condition overnight—selling billions in pills along the way. Could this be an example of a memetic virus, an idea so powerful that it rewires an entire society’s approach to mental illness? Then, for our Plus+ members, we uncover