You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything

(Hardback)

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In YouAre What You Watch,Pulitzer Prizewinning author and data expert Walt Hickey explains the power of entertainment to change our biology, our beliefs, how we see ourselves, and how nations gain power through entertainment.

Virtually anyone who has ever watched a profound movie, a powerful TV show, or read a moving novel understands that entertainment can and does affect us in surprising and significant ways. But did you know that our most popular forms of entertainment can have a direct physical effect on us, a measurable impact on society, geopolitics, the economy, and even the future itself In YouAre What You Watch, Walter Hickey, Pulitzer Prize winner and former chief culture writer at acclaimed data site FiveThirtyEight.com, proves how exactly how what we watch (and read and listen to) has a far greater effect on us and the world at large than we imagine.

Employing a mix of research, deep reporting, and 100 data visualizations, Hickey presents the true power of entertainment and culture. From the decrease in shark populations afterJawsto the increase in women and girls taking up archery following The Hunger Games, You Are What YouWatch proves its points not just with research and argument, but hard data. Did you know, for example, that crime statistics prove that violent movies actually lead to less real-world violenceAnd that the international rise of anime and Manga helped lift the Japanese economy out of the doldrums in the 1980s Or that British and American intelligence agencies actually got ideas from the James Bond movies

In YouAre What You Watch,readers will be givena nerdy, and sobering,celebration of popular entertainment and its surprising power to change the world.

Reviews

Pulitzer Prize winner Hickey presents a refreshing analysis of media consumption A worthy, fun dissection of pop culture thats full of infographics and data.Library Journal, starred review
"Hickeys argument is cogent and original and couched informally, with palpable enthusiasm. He enlivens his research with witty opinions, amusing digressions, and arresting visuals... Hickeys lighthearted approach will prove especially enticing for fellow data heads and devotees of pop culture.Booklist
The trivia surprises and the bounty of colorful charts and graphs offer fun insight into popular culture. This is a blast. Publishers Weekly
Every page is lovingly written, reported, charted, and graphed in a way that only Walt Hickey could do.Nate Silver

Author Bio

Walt Hickey is Insiders senior editor for data. Formerly, he was chief culture writer at FiveThirtyEight. He also writes Numlock News, a daily stat-based newsletter full of stories about everything from solar-powered helicopters to Facebooks AI. He won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting for a story he edited about escaping aUyghur work camp in China.