Data expert Walter Hickey explains the power of entertainment to change our biology, our beliefs, how we see ourselves, and how nations gain power through entertainment.

Anyone who has ever watched or read something profound and moving knows that entertainment can 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 You Are What You Watch, Walter Hickey, Pulitzer Prize–winner and former chief culture writer at acclaimed data site FiveThirtyEight, proves how what we watch (and read and listen to) has a far greater effect on us and the world at large than we imagine.