Hello there. Today I'm talking to the data journalist Walt Hickey.

He's taken his mathematics degree and a passion for numbers and applied it to news reporting.

More specifically, he's carved out a curious niche in the world of culture, applying statistical analysis to Raiders of the Lost

Ark or asking deep algorithmic questions about Pokemon.

He's got a new book out and it's called You Are What You Watch.

We'll be talking about what he's done there a little bit later.

But first, let's learn how Walt got started and the influential role played by a fictional mathematician from the film Jurassic Park.

I have seen you referred to as Walt and Walter. Do you have a preference?

No, we count both. Yeah, I basically have gone by Walt professionally a bit. It was easier to get some URL and usenames early on in my career, but I go by either. All right. What do I call you? I'd say you're Walt on the book. Yes, we'll go with Watt. Where in the world were you born? Yeah, I'm from the United States. I grew up in New York, just north of the city. and yeah, high school in New Jersey, college in Virginia.

And I've been in Queens ever since in New York City. So, yeah. What was Walt or Walter the

little boy like? Were you already until the numbers and the stats and the data?

I had a knack for them. I definitely was good at it. I think, you know, as I was growing up, I was pretty

good at math, and I never really kind of saw that necessarily as a career. And then I saw

Jurassic Park, and I saw that there was this extremely cool representation of a very

interesting dynamic and kind of fun mathematician in there.

And all of a sudden I was like, all right, maybe this is a job.

Maybe I can do this.

And obviously I'm not, you know, Torren Parks these days and, you know, evaluating the

viability of a dinosaur-based entertainment thing.

But it definitely got me pursued and interested in how to, you know, this could potentially be a thing that I actually

do. So I majored in it in college and kind of the rest is history. Well, let's go into Jurassic Park

for a minute then, because I did read this section early in your book where you talk about

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