Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Eyeglasses

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy podcaster Matt Gourley ('With Gourley And Rust', 'Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend', many other incredible shows) for a look at why eyeglasses are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Hey folks, this is episode number 48 of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. Four! Eight! And I have great news to share. Great news, right now. We are extremely close on the next Membership Drive goal. Less than $50 of support away. Also, when this episode aired and hit the feed, maybe that got us there. You know, I'm in the past talking, so you know, you can find out. That next goal that we are so very close to is digital art for every patron. The art is from top-notch illustrator Adam Koford. It celebrates all 50 episodes of this podcast.

It's going to be detailed. It's going to be fun. It's going to be a feast for your eyes. And every patron gets it if we hit that goal. I'm optimistic about us hitting that goal. The support in the past few weeks has blown me away. Really has. And if enough listeners come through, by which I mean if you come through and a couple other people do, you will join a tiny and wonderful group. A few weeks ago, I shared that less than 10% of listeners back this show. And when I say less than 10%, I mean a lot less than 10%. It's a very small group. So if we suddenly had 10% of listeners supporting the show, this membership drive would super

extra work out. We would knock out every goal and then some. I designed it to be achievable, and it totally is. Will we do that? I have no idea. Again, I'm in the past. I know very little about anything. Either way, we are so, so, so close to that digital art for episode 50. We are so close to turning that big milestone episode into

a party. I hope we get there. And in the meantime, please enjoy episode 48. Enjoy episode 48. Eyeglasses. Known for seeing. Famous for reading. Nobody thinks much about them, unless they're buying them. So let's have some fun. Let's find out why eyeglasses are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks! Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is.

My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. My guest today is Matt Gourley. I hope you know that name, Matt Gourley, because if you like comedy podcasting at all, he has probably contributed to your enjoyment of it. A short and incomplete list of the kind of stuff he's done includes the show's Super Ego, Andy Daly Podcast Pilot Project, Bananas for Bonanza, Bunch of Characters on Comedy Bang Bang, the amazing James Bond podcast James Bonding with Matt Myra. I also particularly want to highlight a podcast he makes called With Gorley and Rust. With Gorley and Rust is Matt Gorley and Paul Rust taking on a horror franchise every season. And that one is patron supported. Please give it a look if you have not before.

Also, oh yeah, there's another podcast Matt Gorley appears on every week. It's called Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. And the main host of that is, you know, Conan O'Brien, the legend. He's great. And if all that weren't enough, Matt Gourley has a band. He's a wonderful musician. The band is called Townland. You can find them on Instagram at Townland Band. Townland Band. Easy to spell. Easy to find in the show links for this. The point is, Matt is awesome. And also, as you can hear, he has a lot of taping to do, so I'm extra grateful that he made extra taping time and came and guested on this show, because I've gotten to do stuff with him before. He's just wonderful. So glad we're back to doing something again. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca

to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Chicory peoples. Acknowledge Matt recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech and Chumash peoples, and acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about eyeglasses. Eyeglasses is one of the patron picks for June, and thank you so much to patron Ian Alexander for the great suggestion of doing that. It led to a lot of history and technology and present-day strangeness that I am thrilled we got to talk about. So, please sit back or insert your contact lenses, you secret glasses-neater you. Either way, here is this

episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Matt Gourley. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Matt Gourley, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for doing this. And I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. I see you wearing the topic. How do you feel about eyeglasses? Well, this is the first time I think I've been wearing the topic of a podcast. And how do I feel about eyeglasses? I have no option but to feel about eyeglasses because I think I've worn glasses since freshman year in high school.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I got it all. I have astigmatisms. I have colorblindness, you know, that kind of common male colorblindness with red, green confusion. It's not like I see black and white. Luckily, I like glasses. I like them as an accessory. Sometimes I don't like them when I'm on the couch, like leaning on my hand, watching TV, they kind of get wonky and bent and are uncomfortable, but not enough to make me get LASIK. I never talked to anybody about the pillow and glasses experience.

It stinks. Don't like it. It really does. You get a mark on one side of your nose. Yeesh. Forget it. You know what? You just made me think, I'm going to go grab all my glasses and throughout this interview

we can just work through them. Oh, incredible. Go for it. I'll be right back you can edit this pause out if you want okay i got all my glasses and my cat joined me too so we're we are set and thank you for putting glasses on the cat that's really on theme on brand gets me in the zone i like it yeah but i you brought in like a handful how many are there as of now well i think i still have all my old glasses for some

reason i keep all my old glasses and cell phones because there's nothing more of a marker of an era of your life like i can look at a certain cell phone and go that period of my life or glasses and go like that period of my life so i and go like that period of my life. So I have five glasses right now that I could theoretically still wear that are like up to date prescriptions, but I only wear three of the five really. And that's, that's nice variety. I feel like I do one all the time and I I've had glasses since like age seven or eight. So I really just got locked into like, like there, I feel like other kids had the thing of, do I look cool in these or not? I have to make decisions. And I

was just like, I need to see. So we're doing this. And, and, but I think I just do one all the time and then have a backup usually. That's good. That makes it easier. I think. Yeah. I have definitely have the pair I wear the most. And then the other two that I wear kind of like split the time with them. They're, they're a third of the time between the two of them. Not to go way deep on this, but what prompts switching pairs? Is it a style thing? Yeah, I guess it is. It's a combination of, oh, I've been wearing this one for a long time, but sometimes, you know, like whatever you're wearing that day, some glasses just go better with that. And especially these that I, the ones I'm wearing right now, by the way, are not the ones I normally wear. For some reason I've had these on lately, but these are

my normal glasses and they're kind of like almost clear framed, yellow, clear framed things. But sometimes like if you dress up a little bit, you might want to go a little more formal and that's what these are i call these my like they're like my al franken glasses a darker frame there yeah then i have these um which is great for a podcast you can't see any of these but these are like what indiana jones has in temple of doom they are like that great yeah yeah they're very 90s yeah like a brown a brown roundish frame yeah way into it and then i have just some classic warby parkers two-toned here yeah and then this this these i bought because they're like almost kind of like alec guinness or gary oldman and tinker taylor soldier spy like i might wear these with a suit they're kind of 70s british but i never wear them i've never worn them in public because look at them they look weird i feel like

with glasses as people too like we'll put on something that's two percent different and feel strange you know what i mean like i like they're two percent different and i know what you mean it is a big flip yeah yeah And I have no problem wearing something a little weird, but I have to feel comfortable in it because I don't want to walk around all day thinking people are, I'm going to be looking at people like, are you looking at me weird? Which this just ruins your day. You just have to feel at home and in your glasses and your clothes. Yeah, that's right. One last thing you mentioned movie characters wearing them and got to talk about James Bond with Matt Gourley a little bit.

Sure. I always liked the parts in, and I know Pierce Brosnan's not your favorite, but I always liked the Pierce Brosnan parts where he puts on glasses because information is being talked about. I love that. He goes into Clark Kent mode. Yeah. mode yeah because and i feel like bond doesn't do a lot of like spycraft or detective work that often you know like it's a lot of going into a casino and telling people he's james bond but once in a while he's like a schematic oh okay let me get these out you know it's great yeah and the more rugged the james bond you might see them in sunglasses but you'll never see them even

undercover like connery and craig are never just wearing eyeglasses. Pierce Brosnan would, Roger Moore would, and then Lazenby. I can't remember. I think even when he goes undercover as this like really nerdy genealogist, he still ain't going to put on glasses. Those are two just like classically nerdy. Connery and Lazenby, if they put on glasses as Bond, they would have started punching themselves yeah just broken mirrors across monaco or wherever yeah

well and uh and from here i think we can get into the stuff about eyeglasses and on every episode our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And that is in a segment called I can see clearly now the stats have come. I can see all numerals in my way. And that name was submitted by Laura Hottie, and specific to the patron pick topic, too. We have a new name for this every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SipPod on Twitter or to SipPod at gmail.com. But we got stats and numbers here, and the first number is 75.7%.

Hmm. And 75.7% is the stat from 2010, but it's the percentage of American adults who wear vision-correcting eyeglasses at least some of the time. So slightly over three quarters, which I did not expect. Yeah, that seems high to me. Because you see, maybe it's because people switch to contacts a lot of the time or something, or they only use them for reading or something. But I really thought, I don't think I thought I was in like the vast minority of people wearing glasses or something, but I thought it was not most people. Yeah, I didn't know. I mean, we should just unite as a voting bloc. And really, like we could just have the country our way. Forget Republican Democrat. It's, you know, visually challenged versus the 2020s. Did you ever wear contacts

or flirt with contacts? I wore contacts some in college. And then at my like first job out of college was as a production assistant. And the hours were long in a way that made me not want to wear contacts anymore. I get that. You know, like every time I'd want to switch out of them, somebody's like, we need a coffee from 10 miles away. And I would go and I'm stuck, you know, and there's nothing worse if you've been all day in contacts and you want them out. My, I can't do it. I, I'd worn them for acting and stuff when I couldn't have glasses or I tried them for a while and my eyes just itch and burn all day and I just gave up. I think the last time I wore contacts was, and they like funded it, it was a web series that was sci-fi and somebody specifically said the phrase like there aren't glasses in the future.

Yeah, it does seem like you can't have glasses or bald people in the future. Like those things would have been solved. Oh yeah. Yeah, I'll bet Picard is turning down offers all of the time they're like we can do this in two seconds it's this machine i'm holding it's this size this size being my hand making a very small thing anyway they've solved baldness but there is a certain faction that got grandfathered in as like wow wow, that's really vogue to have a bald head by choice like this, you know, and glasses. Right.

Yeah. When the next number here is $10 US, $10. And that's the approximate lowest cost of making eyeglasses frames. You can do it for about $10. Apparently, this is L.A. Times business columnist for about $10, apparently. This is LA Times business columnist David Lazarus says if you look at various estimates and shopping websites, you can get a pair of acetate frames, which is three pieces of plastic, a few screws and bits of metal to hold it together. You can get like a basic set of frames for plastic frame glasses for

$10 if you go cheap. Oh, that's retail. Wow. Okay. Yeah, that is pretty cheap. Yeah. And the lenses are more, but that's like, that's an element of glasses that often costs a lot. And also you can get maybe a wobbly bad version, who knows, but you can get a version for 10 bucks.

I know. And have you noticed lately the, the upgrades on lenses are like like like 1950s car color paints and things like that and clear coats and stuff because there's now blue blocker versions for computer screens plus non-glares plus anti-scratch and you really can get up to like 500 just for a pair of lenses these days it's crazy oh yeah well i don't know how strong your prescription is, but mine is, is pretty strong. It's like minus six and a half each side. And, uh,

and so they offer me an upgrade where it's, Oh, it'll be a thinner lens. And it's a lot of money. But if I don't do that, then I have like, you know, entire storm windows in front of me.

It's really, and your eyes are magnified, like through a fish bowl. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like a cartoon turtle, basically basically that's what happens yeah yeah yeah and you're right like i i couldn't find like solid research on it but people are offering like blue lenses for if you do computer work all the time and there's all kinds of options for that yeah yeah i know i i waffle with it myself

and and it's interesting that we're doing this episode because it is time for me to go back and get a new eye exam and get new glasses and stuff. So I've been putting it off. The dentist and the eyeglasses were the two things during the quarantine that I just let go. Yeah. That was, that was scary when it was dentist time and the pandemic was still going. I was like, okay. Yeah okay yeah i mean i just stopped brushing my teeth all through quarantine i just went completely i'm not doing any of this amen right it was always hogwash don't need it yeah big toothpaste you don't you're not gonna get me next number here and it's actually it's handy that you have a stack of glasses in front of you because the next number is three and three is the amount of numbers that are printed on the inside of a

glass's arm for most glasses really so if you look and i i checked mine before taping so i had to jump on you it's it was inside like the the ear bit of one of the arms but there's usually a set of three numbers mine are 51 18 145 and that's the dimensions of your eyewear in millimeters oh so the first number is how wide the lenses are at the widest point second number is the bridge between like the sides of the lenses and then the last number is how long the arm is okay Okay. And not all of them have it, but a lot of them have very small print three numbers in there. I've got three out of five have them. The Indiana Jones ones clearly do not have room for them because they're so thin. And then these Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ones just say, frame France.

And that's it. And they're just like, look look here in france it's all about the look we don't go by numbers we do it by our gut and by our heart yeah i want that to be an explanation for a lack of numbers from now on like well france hey Hey. And then they bicycle away. Like, nope, forget it. But yeah, it's just a fun Easter egg you can do with your glasses at home. Check for the little measurements stamped on the inside of the arm is what that earpiece bit is called. That's the technical term.

Okay. Yeah. Oh, wow. And the last number here before the takeaways, last number is 1,928. 1,928 pages is the length of the letter that Google wrote to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office because they wanted to trademark the word glass. Oh, for their Google glasses. Yeah.

For their Google glass. Back when they were doing this, they wanted to trademark the word glass itself. And they were rejected. The nerve. But they tried. Wow. Good. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow, the nerve. Man. That was like some, who was it? Some celebrity. Was it Paris Hilton that wanted to trademark? What was her phrase? Like hot?

That's hot? Or is there like a- I think that's hot was her phrase? Like hot, that's hot. Or is there like, I think that's hot was her. Yeah. Just about anything people did. Yeah. Yeah. Gutsy. But Google trademarked the phrase Google glass, but they were hoping it would become so popular that people are going around saying like, Hey, I'm on glass or I'm using Glass, you know, and so they wanted to trademark that. Oh, my God. Can you imagine? Like, our world got dark for a while, but it could have been much worse. Yeah, when Google Glass runs wild and everybody's using it. Yeah, exactly.

Totally plausible. I think it just didn't happen to happen. That's the only reason I can figure out. Imagine if the January 6th can figure out yeah imagine if the january 6th insurrection happened but all the people were wearing google glass like just be so dystopian i don't even know how to process it oh man one thing i think about with that insurrection is that i proposed an emoji of the bison and then there was that shaman guy with a big bison hat head on when he was in there.

So him and Google Glass is very past and future to me. I don't like it at all. It was already bad. And now, forget it. Well, those are the stats and numbers this week. And now we got three main takeaways about glasses. Let's get into takeaway number one. got three main takeaways about glasses let's get into takeaway number one before we had modern eyeglasses we had a bunch of strange workarounds

because people have always needed them and and there's just a bunch of you know weird stuff people did in history before we developed the first like modern glasses in the 1300s. It is a strange that evolution didn't figure out sort of like consistently good eyesight that it's weird to me that 75% of people need glasses. Now that we've got glasses, it's probably not going to happen because you can still find a mate with bad eyesight, you know maybe maybe that's why because you bet your eyesight was so bad that it kept perpetuating this bad dna yeah it really it really seems like we're past the point of uh genetically everyone being some sort of astronaut in terms of their eyes that that's i think that that door is closed to us now. And that's okay.

Yeah, that's true. As a completely biased person, I think it's good. I think it's good we're past it. Yeah, and especially in the distant past, we just don't really know what people did if they were profoundly nearsighted or if they couldn't see well. I think they just fumbled around. But there's one great source for this episode is a great New Yorker piece by Patricia Marks. It's titled Four Eyes. And she cites historians who say the first like solid historical record of eyeglasses is a sermon by a Catholic monk in the city of Pisa in 1306. And he wrote about someone wearing occhiali, which I think is an Italian word for it.

So we around then probably had early glasses. And she says by the 1400s, craftsmen in Florence were turning out what are basically real eyeglasses today. They're more antique looking, but that's the general idea. So we've had that for, you know, several centuries. But before that, people were just kind of trying to think of stuff to do. several centuries. But before that, people were just kind of trying to think of stuff to do. And one fun example is there was an ancient Roman guy named Seneca the Younger, who lived 4 BC to 65 AD. And supposedly he read all of the books in Rome by viewing them through a glass globe of water. And the glass globe of water enlarged the lettering on the pages. and the glass globe of water enlarged the lettering on the pages okay yeah i wonder if they ever then tried to do a kind of like facially supported mini aquarium in front of each eye

that kind of would allow you to do that but i guess it has to be closer to the object not to the eye that would make everything even more blurry yeah oddly that's that was kind of the first system most people used was why don't i put magnification on the thing i'm reading yeah and then i'll just adjust my head to like put it where it is and then the rest of daily life when you're not reading i think you're just stuck yeah that was kind of the first system that makes sense and and yeah and you have to get a globe of water. I don't want to deal with that. I'm busy.

No way. If I'm thirsty, yes, I'll do it. Otherwise, no. But then I drink my eyesight improvement. Oh, man, what a world. Man, I would totally forget and drink my thing. Yeah. A hundred percent. It would happen all the time if my

glasses were liquid i would drink my glasses all the time i'd be i'd be too lazy to get up a glass of water and just like oh i can see poorly for an hour i'm just so thirsty okay there's also another interesting workaround here that's coming from historian Sarah Bond, a professor at the University of Iowa who studies a lot of ancient Roman stuff. And she says that the Emperor Nero, who lived in the 30s to the 60s AD, he used to watch gladiators fight by looking through an emerald. Whoa. And some sources say that was a version of sunglasses, but she says it's more likely it was like a lens-ish shaped emerald that helped with his nearsightedness. So he could just see the gladiators more clearly. Oh, interesting. Wow. I would leave it to an emperor to be able to afford an emerald monocle, basically.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, a gem solution, yeah great available to everyone and also i guess nero and seneca the younger knew each other like seneca was part of nero's administration and so so maybe he got some of the idea from him but oh yeah in the early days people were just like guessing stuff that would help right and then the first like consistent forerunner of glasses was what was called reading stones, which is what we were talking about before of putting something on the text. And it was kind of European monks' version of having glasses. They would take a transparent

mineral like quartz or something made from actual glass. And in the 10 hundreds, 11 hundreds, 12 hundreds, they would put that on top of the text and it magnified the letters okay yeah so that was how a nearsighted monk worked that was how they could do it yeah emerald for an emperor quartz or mineral for a monk that makes sense right i i hadn't thought about the because i was just thinking about oh monks have this job where it's reading intensive and that's rare. But I wonder if people were jealous of like, oh, that fancy monk with their quartz item. You know, like lucky, lucky them.

They get to read the paper. I don't get to. Never mind that I can't read, but I still want that quartz. Also, why am I from Texas? Yeah. Yeah. from texas yeah yeah the it also the sources here say the other main use of reading stones was to get a closer look at holy relics so if somebody had like what they claimed was a piece of the true cross or something you use a reading stone to like check i guess there's no evidence but

yeah it's like what you're using oh yeah you want to check that. It's like a jeweler's loop. A lot of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of, it's weird with history that until very recently, there were kind of only specific jobs where you needed to close read stuff effectively. Like the past few centuries, there was more of that.

But earlier on it was like, I don't know, you can farm, right? And they'd be like, yeah, I can farm. And then they're horribly nearsighted, you know. You could still count seeds without eyesight i think though and you know yeah yeah it's called feeling the seeds put them in your hand buddy but yeah so i don't know i like that reading stones existed it's a pretty smart solution to not having glasses yet and yeah that's pretty's pretty good. I'm glad nearsighted people a thousand years ago could still be a monk and do that stuff. Me too. And another takeaway here with glasses history is takeaway number two.

Takeaway number two. The word glasses is kind of obsolete. And the word lenses comes from lentils. The beans, the legume? Yes, that's right. Wow. Okay, I'm all ears. Yeah, and that one's fun and we'll start with it.

Because the thing about lenses is that the modern ones like bend inward on one side. But early lenses tended to bulge outward on both sides. Like it was a, it was an item that made things more magnified, but it was the easiest way to say it is lentil shaped. Like it's, it's sort of, sort of flat, but bulging out on both sides. So is that like related to convex and concave? The difference between those? Is that what you mean? Yeah, like that.

Oh, I see. I gotcha. Those are better words for it. for it yeah no i like lentil way better lentil and then like cheese puff are your two versions just depending on which way they're facing oh the curved cheese puffs not the cheese balls anyway please go on I've really hijacked this. I was about to Google convex to make sure it's the one I think it is. But I'm now thinking about cheese puffs too. That's great. Yeah, convex.

So lenses used to be convex bulging outward on both sides. And when people wanted a word for it, it reminded them of lentils. If you are not familiar with lentils, just Google one. It looks like a little bulging outward thing. And so that's where the word comes from. Gotcha. That's cool. But now they're not shaped like that. So it's not, uh, it's not quite the right word anymore. But that's funny. That's where lens came from is lentils. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. The Latin word is lentis and then that shortened to lens. Okay. And we got there.

Got it. And then as far as the word glasses being a little obsolete, our eyeglasses are not really usually made with glass anymore. That's sort of a past thing. Our lenses are almost always plastic or some kind of polycarbonate that's also a plastic. Yeah, so when did glasses, actual glass go away? Because I remember when I was younger, I think you could have the option to get glass. Oh, yeah. And it's still a thing. It's just a lot less common. And also, in most cases,

people are just taking a disc of plastic and using a lathe to carve it into glasses lenses. And we'll link an episode of NPR's Science Friday hosted by Ira Flato, where he talks to a general manager of a lens manufacturer about how that works. Wow. Because it's not super interesting, but it's just taking plastic and carving it with a lathe and glass is sort of an old fashioned way to do it. Yeah, got it. And the origins of that come from, like, 1300s Italians carving actual glass into lenses. But from there, we've gotten plastics, plastic ways to do it, especially in the 20th century.

And also better lens making led to our telescopes and our microscopes. And so there's a whole history of people trying really hard to make lenses better. And along the way, we kind of got past glass for our glasses. Don't need it. Hmm. Poor glass. Yeah. It can still be Mexican Coke and stuff, but you know, it doesn't need to be on our faces

so much. That's true. All right. Off of that, we're going to a short break, followed by the big takeaways. See you in a sec. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters,

and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.

And remember, no running in the halls. Yeah, so that's the general situation with the words glasses and lenses, and that takes us into the last of three takeaways for the main episode. Takeaway number three. The entire world needs more access to eyeglasses, and in a couple different ways. It's bad news, but also extremely fixable. So in that sense, I think it's good news. But there's a basic shortage of access to eyeglasses that just a lot of people are dealing with.

That's just going on in the world. Yeah, I'm sure. And I remember my childhood eye doctor had a box you could put your old glasses in, but I also always felt like I needed at least one old pair as a backup, usually two. And so I was like holding, I would give them like four generations ago glasses eventually. And before that, I just kept it. Yeah. Oh, now i feel so selfish for wanting to keep all my glasses as this uh walk through my nostalgic lifetime memory lane no it well it's not on you to fix the whole thing it's a it's a broader problem well also for selfish reasons that for whatever stupid like

show or something i might be doing or some who knows what you never know when you're going to need like that certain type of eyeglasses fashion statement or Halloween costume or something. And at this point I've got all kinds now, you know, big, little, small, dumb, stupid, good looking, you know, just, I've got them all. That's a resource. That's yeah exactly yeah is that um i'm thinking in particular of superego live shows but also just stuff in general where it's not audio like do you have sketch props ready to go because when i was doing live sketch i always had like a chunk of the closet that was like a frog costume and weird hats and stuff. Less and less though,

my wife who kind of does similar work to me, though we've kind of a lot just moved to podcasting. We have these things that could be pseudo costumes, but we don't, I think we're both past the point of wanting to do anything that would force us to dress up in a silly costume anymore. I think that that feels like a different time. However, there are Halloween costumes.

Cause I think we like dressing up for Halloween. So we have a couple of like go-tos like Lederhosen and Dirndl, or I still have my dad's, all my dad's military stuff and things that kind of have, you know, historical meaning or, or are kind of fun things we've got on travels or something like that but no there's no there's no trunk full of wacky sketch hats anymore i mean there is but it's not for that purpose

right we're not adding to it let's just say that there you go yeah yeah because i well i i'm remembering it partly because i think there were one or two times where i like got rid of a prop and then somebody was like and we can do that pirate thing and i was like no i felt weird keeping that so i don't have it anymore yeah actually we would need anyone yeah that's fun to know that's great yeah i get and sorry if i have you like dressed up as michael myers ever or any of that for like i'm thinking of gorley and russ but i never have i've never been in a michael's myers costume which uh just so the listeners know i have a long sordid history with being frightened by that movie as a child. And I do a podcast about horror movies, a season specifically about that franchise.

And no, I never have. I guess it's like it would be too weird. But I think I would if the costume was presented to me. It's very simple, a mask and some coveralls. I probably would want to get in it and feel what it's like to be my nemesis. Understand my enemy. What's it like to be a motiveless murderer? I don't know.

Just to have no reason to do any of it, yeah. Yeah. of it yeah yeah and speaking of eyeglasses if 75 of people need vision improvement between jason freddy michael and chucky three of those technically should be wearing glasses and does that impair i mean i know there's some supernatural so it's suspension of disbelief, but it does feel like at least Jason or Michael should need eyeglasses. Yeah. Yet, you know, it's probably like hell offers LASIK or something. That's my best guess. Yeah.

There's some. That's good. Yeah. There's like onboarding and the underworld where they're like, okay, welcome to vengeance. LASIK, obviously. Here's dental. onboarding in the underworld where they're like okay welcome to vengeance um lasik obviously uh here's dental uh yeah the all the health care plans in hell are incredible like all the human resources it's just like european medical coverage it's just really you know no good i guess yes sweden and hell those are the ones the taxes though they're in hell my god

well uh but yeah but the in terms of the world's need of glasses and this is it's a thing that would be so easy to fix which i think is very exciting. But the World Health Organization says that globally, at least 2.2 billion people with a B have a near or distance vision impairment. And then in at least 1 billion of these cases, the vision impairment could have been prevented or has yet to be addressed. So either they could get glasses now or glasses would have helped.

And so it's just a thing in many countries, many situations, including the U.S., where people are lacking glasses and could use it. And good news, it's like $10 to make a set of frames, apparently, and the lenses, you can just carve them out of plastic. So great, we could fix it. Yeah, that would be nice. It's also, they say it's relatively specific to poorer countries,

more than 80% of people. They say that more than 80% of people with near vision impairment in sub-Saharan Africa could use glasses or contact lenses for it. And that number is less than 10% in North America, Australasia, Western Europe, East Asia, relatively high income countries there. there but so there are countries where like truck drivers can't see the road well and farmers can't see if their crops are ripe or not very effectively without getting like putting their faces toward them uh and then kids in school there's there's you know just our lives with glasses the ramifications of not having them is is out there it's going on. Yeah. It's not like funny, obviously, but it's a thing that I think could be donated toward. And we'll link a piece by New York Times health and science reporter, Andrew Jacobs, about like efforts that are going on toward that. He talked to a nonprofit that works on getting eyeglasses to the developing world. So there are organizations out there doing this. Oh, that'd be good to know. I'd be very interested in that. Yeah, we'll have extensive links for it because I think it's cool. And

they also said that in 2015, the entire world only spent $37 million US on getting glasses to people, which is a fraction of a fraction of 1% of what we spend on global health and helping people. So we could just raise that. It's out there. Wow. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Good. Yeah. And we don't need to invent anything new. They invented these in the 1300s. It's great. I know. Yeah. No kidding. Yeah. There's no R and D that needs to go into this. Yeah. And then also in the U.S. specifically, there's like a business situation going on that limits people's access to eyeglasses. The professional organization of U.S. optometrists is called the American Optometric Association or AOA. They spend a couple million dollars on lobbying every year toward Congress and on campaign contributions because they're trying to change laws that let you take your eyeglasses prescription

from your eye doctor to another place to buy eyeglasses there. And so their goal is to change. It's two recent laws. One was in 1997, one was in 2003. The laws let you bring your prescription from your eye doctor to a different place to purchase glasses because american eye doctors are trying to also be retailers to like you know make ends meet but also make some extra profit so they want to change that yeah i've come up against some resistance in that and it's really annoying it's made me

leave a certain optometrist who is really territorial about things and really upsell-y. And I did not like it at all. Yeah. I did the same thing once in LA. Yeah. And I was like, okay, this is a medical, it's officially a medical device by law and you're allowed to go somewhere else, but they'll give you like kind of the hard sell if you do. Yeah. And I remember trying to get my prescription from them and they were really cagey about it. Kind of like, kind of like, Oh, who's, who's this girl you're dating? You know, like what, what you like her better than me. You know, what, what do you, it was just, it was weird to the point where I met me. That's half the reason I haven't gone back to get another prescription it just feels always a little emotionally uh manipulative yeah man it is good when you go back they can they can be like long time no see because of the pandemic right and you'll be like

yes the pandemic yes yeah that is why I stopped seeing you guys for a while the crisis anyway i just need to pick up my things yeah you should you should come with a big like cardboard box at like like you're moving out of a place you know and then they're like it's just a piece of paper and you're like no but this is the vibe i need this is a breakup it's over here drop it in the box uh yeah and so that's that's going on in kind of the u.s specifically we'll link a piece that talks about it by yasha monk in the atlantic and he says that he's lived in several European countries and also made emergency glasses purchases in Peru. And in all those cases, he could just tell them his prescription and receive stuff. And there was not this like this US system where I think even under our laws, you need like a written out prescription, like it's medication. Yeah. To go and get glasses somewhere. Yeah.

It's, it's strange. Yeah. and it's not like pills or something. Why? Why all the security? You're not going to abuse your eye prescription and start, like, I just want to go one more negative point on the left. And then I swear I'll stop. Oh, my God. Just come on, come on.

Give me the negative seven. Come on, please. Give me the ones that turn me into an eagle or whatever. I need it. I need the power. It's not what we're doing. Out of here? Well, and then the last obstacle to, like, glasses access is corporate consolidation.

And we won't talk about it much because there's a lot a lot of comedy shows have talked about it and they're all going off of a 60 minutes piece by leslie stall in 2012 but there is one company called luxottica that is the number one like frames maker in the world and they do it for designers and regular companies. And they also own eyeglasses stores and sunglasses stores and a vision provider. And then they merged with a company called Essilor that is the main lens maker. So there's, there's more or less a monopoly in eyeglasses making. And so that raises prices too, makes it harder. Oh, interesting. So what's Warby Parker's deal? Are they part of that? I believe they're separate. And so that's part of their whole approach. Yeah.

I see. Got it. And yeah, cause they, these guys mainly own LensCrafters and Pearl Vision are their main like retailers that they own. And the, the whole in the monopoly is you can start your own eyeglasses company because it's not like proprietary technology, but they're just trying to be kind of the main thing everywhere. Yeah, corner of the market. But it's all, again, it's sad that a lot of people need glasses and it's great news that we can get them glasses.

It's not inventing a vaccine or splitting an atom. It's just a thing we can go do. I was about to say we can see it. I'm not trying to be cute. It's just where my phrasing went. Alex, it was cute, though. Oh, hey. And not in a bad way.

Not in a bad way. It was adorable. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Matt Gourley for gazing into this topic and for grabbing a handful of his own glasses to make it special. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now.

If you support this show on Patreon.com, because patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is several surprising stories about the iconic eyeglasses of famous entertainers. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost four dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring eyeglasses with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, before we had modern eyeglasses, we had a bunch of strange workarounds. Takeaway number two, the word glasses is kind of obsolete, and the word lenses comes from lentils. And takeaway number three, the entire world needs more access to eyeglasses, and for a couple different reasons. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guest. He's

great. Matt Gourley has an incredible amount of credits and shows and just cool things to his name. To pick a few highlights, you can hear him weekly on Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend alongside Conan and Sona. You can also support his podcast with Gorley and Rust, of course co-hosted with Paul Rust. It's a fantastic balance of horror and being terrified of horror, which I relate to. And the Instagram account at Townland Band gives you wonderful music from Matt Gorley's band. A lot of covers, a lot of new stuff. It's just a really pleasant account to be following and enjoying. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A great article in The New Yorker,

written by Patricia Marks, that's titled Four Eyes. A great radio show called Science Friday from NPR. It's hosted by Ira Flato, and it's a 12-minute episode where they break down exactly how your plastic lenses get machined. It's really nitty-gritty, but I want you to have that if you are super interested in that. And finally, an exciting historian of ancient times, Dr. Sarah E. Bond is an associate professor of history at the University of Iowa. Linking to her blog, it's her own great site, it's called History From Below. And in particular, her stuff on Nero and Seneca the Younger and how their vision worked is amazing. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun.

And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken, unshaven by the Budos band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. I'm also thrilled there's so many of you who are new and showing up for the first time. Welcome to the party of this podcast. Thrilled you're here. And of course, thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then