Your Mind on Movies

Big Picture Science

Science, Technology

4.6 • 986 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

By one estimate we spend a fifth of our lives watching movies or TV. In fact, we consume entertainment almost as habitually as we eat or sleep, activities that receive scientific scrutiny and study. So why not consider the effects that watching movies and TV have on our minds and bodies too? When we do, we find that they are not mere escapism. A data scientist reveals why we are what we watch, and how scientists and filmmakers work, often with competing agendas, to create sci-fi entertainment. Guest: Walt Hickey - journalist, data scientist, and author of “You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything” Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake Originally aired January 8, 2024 Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.
0:05.5	Big news.
0:06.9	Tieri-on-Ree has joined Betway.
0:09.1	Kick off the season with up to 30-pound matched free bet if your first stacker loses.
0:13.9	18 plus decencies apply.
0:15.8	Bet the responsible way, gamblerware.org.
0:19.5	I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of safeguarding sound science, evolution edition.
0:24.7	Evolution is the unifying principle of biology, yet it still breeds controversy a century
0:30.4	and a half after Charles Darwin. Join us as we meet the passionate researchers and communicators
0:36.4	who are expanding our knowledge
0:38.1	and fighting to keep good science in our schools and politics.
0:42.8	Subscribe to Safeguarding Sound Science on Apple, Spotify, Amazon,
0:47.4	or wherever you like to listen.
0:49.3	Music By some estimates, we spend a fifth of our lives watching TV or movies.
1:04.0	That's almost 11 years of Breaking Bad, Bridgerton, and this.
1:17.5	To put it another way, you could watch the extended version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy more than 8,000 times and still have time to make popcorn between viewings.
1:23.5	We consume entertainment almost as habitually as we eat and sleep, activities that receive intense scrutiny and study.
1:29.3	So why not also examine the effects that watching movies and TV have on our minds and bodies?
1:35.3	Your body is reacting to this, whether that's how your nervous system is reacting, whether that's how the chemical reactions inside of your body are functioning.
1:48.6	Your body goes on a full fundamental experience, and it takes it very, very seriously.
1:50.8	Don't move from the edge of your seat.
1:57.8	You'll laugh, you'll cry in this feel-good star-studded episode of Big Picture Science from the SETI Institute.
	...

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