Super cool data about movies (that are not reviews!)

11/04/24 • 39 min

When we think of data and movies the first (and maybe only) thing that comes to mind for many of us is movie reviews. But there is so much more we can learn about movies and ourselves if we just think outside the box a little bit and apply data and scientific thinking in creative ways. We talk with Walt Hickey, author of the book You Are What You Watch: How TV and Movies Affect Everything, about all kinds of exciting applications of data to track how movies affect us physically and emotionally, the value of exporting (and importing) culture internationally, whether superpowers predict evilness, how the plots of many movies have changed over time, why we like what we like, and how movies can change our entire life trajectory. Plus, prepare to learn why we should all watch Titanic again, as well as maybe consider (gasp) ignoring reviews of movies altogether.

Relevant materials and links mentioned:

Buy Walt's book
Subscribe to Numlock
Check out Sherwood News
More about Walt
Follow Walt on X

Previous Episode

Why can't we agree on crime statistics?

Crime data is all over the news these days and, at least in the United States, it seems like you can tell any story you want to about whether crime is going up or down and whose fault it is. How should we be thinking about this data to figure out of what's really going on? We speak with Jeff Asher, crime data analyst and co-founder of JH Datalytics, which recently launched the Real-Time Crime Index, about where crime data comes from, why everyone seems to be disagreeing about it, and how to think and talk about it more clearly.

Materials referenced in the show:

Jeff's company: https://www.ahdatalytics.com/
Jeff's substack: https://jasher.substack.com/
Real-Time Crime Index: https://realtimecrimeindex.com/
One of Jeff's articles about the crime data mess of a few years ago.

Andrea is here and on Instagram.

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Next Episode

The (often) false promise of personal fitness data

Science journalist and athlete Christie Aschwanden takes us inside the not-so-scientific world of the fitness and health data that's tracked by various apps we probably own and/or are tempted to buy, and she helps us more carefully discern what's actually useful to follow and what we're better off ignoring. Plus -- an existentially (and scientifically!) important discussion about the power of uncertainty (and why it doesn't have to feel bad).

Christie's Scientific American podcast is Uncertain. Her book is Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn About the Strange Science of Recovery. You can read more about her and by here on her website.

Follow AJR, your host, at @jonesrooy on Instagram and find out more here.

We are proud to be part of the Daily Tech News Show network of podcasts.

Subscribe and leave a review!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.