Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
Speaker 1: and Jerry's here too, and it's just the three of
Speaker 1: us with three pairs of eyes. And that's all I did.
Speaker 2: We all wear glasses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess all three of us do. Now, Huh
Speaker 1: you didn't for a really long time. You were the
Speaker 1: holdout who kept crashing your car.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I wore And I think I've told this story,
Speaker 2: but I was sort of the typical story of always
Speaker 2: had really great vision and then it's been more longer
Speaker 2: than you think. Then sometime in my mid forties, I
Speaker 2: was like, Huh, this thing I'm reading isn't so clear.
Speaker 2: And I went to the doctor and they're like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're reading. Vision is failing, so just get some glasses.
Speaker 1: Did I ever tell you the story of when I
Speaker 1: found out I needed glasses?
Speaker 2: Now? How old were you?
Speaker 1: I was in fourth grade and we went in for
Speaker 1: like a lyfe check and a like an eye exam
Speaker 1: that just an eye test, just one of those things
Speaker 1: where it's like, obviously the state requires this, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually it's not actually a.
Speaker 2: Thing scoliosis too while they're at it.
Speaker 1: Probably, so I was like totally flabbergasted when they were like,
Speaker 1: you need glasses, Like I was just expecting not that
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, And sure enough, when I went in
Speaker 1: for an eye exam, I was like, oh, I can
Speaker 1: actually see things now. I hadn't really noticed. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: since fourth grade I had to wear glasses or contact lenses,
Speaker 1: and I'll never forget my first pair of glasses. I
Speaker 1: think I was kind of bummed that I had to
Speaker 1: wear glasses at all. So my mom made sure that
Speaker 1: we went and got like the coolest glasses we could find,
Speaker 1: that's sweet, which were in Elton John Special. They were
Speaker 1: totally clear, an electric blue wire going through the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and I would wear those today if I could find them.
Speaker 1: They were pretty awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the time where we grew up glasses
Speaker 2: was definitely like kind of super not cool, but then
Speaker 2: I remember by the time we got to high school,
Speaker 2: it was I can't believe I'm admitting this. I'm actually
Speaker 2: one of those people who bought the fake glasses and
Speaker 2: were a little while Oh yeah, yeah, because it was
Speaker 2: you know, international mail, the whole GQ thing. I thought
Speaker 2: I was a preppy kid, and I thought they'd make
Speaker 2: me look cooler and more preppy, and so I did
Speaker 2: that tortoise shells yeah for a while. But yeah, glasses,
Speaker 2: And as we'll see in this, in this great, great
Speaker 2: article that Livia put together for us, that has long
Speaker 2: been a push pull since kind of the beginning of
Speaker 2: glasses was do they make it seem like you're deficient
Speaker 2: as a person or do they make you look like smarter?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, No, it's it's a tension that's as old
Speaker 1: as glasses, basically. Yeah, And it's sad that it still
Speaker 1: kind of goes on. But I think that's really kind
Speaker 1: of gone the way of the dinosaur thanks to people
Speaker 1: like you stepping up and wearing glasses when you didn't
Speaker 1: need them, thanks to Huey Lewis stepping up and teaching
Speaker 1: everyone it's hip to be square. I really think that
Speaker 1: was probably the transition point right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I also want to point out I would
Speaker 2: love to see pictures of you with those glasses, if
Speaker 2: you have any, because to me, there's nothing cuter than
Speaker 2: a kid wearing glasses. Well, I don't.
Speaker 1: Know if I can, if I can put my finger
Speaker 1: on any of those and even if I could, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure the glasses were my best feature back then.
Speaker 1: So you talked about, you know, this tension from the
Speaker 1: beginning of glasses. Let's talk about the beginning of glasses.
Speaker 1: Because the concept of glasses as we understand them today,
Speaker 1: like these things that you wear that contain corrective lenses
Speaker 1: that you can put on your on your face and
Speaker 1: they typically won't fall off. That's only a few hundred
Speaker 1: years old. But people have needed corrective lenses for long
Speaker 1: before that. So there's a really great question that I've
Speaker 1: always kind of wondered that I've never bothered to look up,
Speaker 1: Like what about people who needed glasses before glasses were invented?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So, uh again, Lyvia helped us with this, and
Speaker 2: I think I'm going to use her title because it
Speaker 2: was really another Lvia special.
Speaker 1: I didn't get it.
Speaker 2: Four eyes good. You didn't get it?
Speaker 1: No, I still don't.
Speaker 2: Well, four eyes means you wear glasses, right, and so
Speaker 2: you know four eyes is good? Okay, So they're like
Speaker 2: helps you see better.
Speaker 1: There's no there's no deeper meaning or pun or reference
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 2: Oh I don't think so, cause I mean.
Speaker 1: Why why didn't she include r like, four eyes are good.
Speaker 2: I just took it. I may be wrong. We'll have
Speaker 2: to ask Livia as just four eyes good, like TikTok would.
Speaker 1: Say, yeah, okay, all right maybe, so yeah, we have
Speaker 1: to ask Olivia.
Speaker 2: I may be staring at an obvious pun though that
Speaker 2: I'm not overlooking so who knows.
Speaker 1: Well, we're both overlooking it if we are.
Speaker 2: So let me put on my pun glasses.
Speaker 1: You need to break those things, all right.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I agree, you know, Olivia kind of points
Speaker 2: out like as reading came along, people needed glasses more
Speaker 2: and more because a lot of like myself, if I
Speaker 2: never read anything, I would be just fine. Like I
Speaker 2: might look at something close to me and be like,
Speaker 2: well it might look a little fuzzy, but it's not
Speaker 2: like reading something that's fuzzy. So for before reading became
Speaker 2: a big, big thing, not as many people noticed, I think.
Speaker 2: And then I think people who had which is it
Speaker 2: nearsighted or far sighted When you can't see something far away.
Speaker 1: You're nearsighted, like you're sighted to see things nearby.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I think those people were just kind of
Speaker 2: sol and just was like, oh, well, I guess just
Speaker 2: one of the things that happens to people.
Speaker 1: Yes, there is such a thing as hereditary myopia, where
Speaker 1: you can be myopic because you were born that way.
Speaker 1: But the larger point here is that there were far,
Speaker 1: far fewer people who were myopic than there are today
Speaker 1: because of the advent of reading. And there's studies that
Speaker 1: show that the more students read, the more myopic they become.
Speaker 1: And it's just as sounding to me. I didn't ever
Speaker 1: think of it that way, but it's totally true. From reading.
Speaker 1: Glasses came as a necessity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the people that may have been had you
Speaker 2: not great close focus back in the day, may have
Speaker 2: done things like engraving or these skills where they were
Speaker 2: doing something kind of like reading, right right.
Speaker 1: So, and we've had lenses, just not corrective lenses for
Speaker 1: a very long time. About almost five thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: people were grinding things like quartz into lenses, but they
Speaker 1: were basically like little six year old kids. They would
Speaker 1: use them to start fires with that's what their purpose was.
Speaker 1: And they were developed independently in different parts of the world,
Speaker 1: like Assyria and Greece had them about five thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: and about two thousand years ago they developed them in Peru,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool too. But I mean, a good
Speaker 1: idea is a good idea, and I think things like
Speaker 1: that proved that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, it was archimedes deathway was that a lens?
Speaker 1: It was a mirror a right, Yeah, I thought of
Speaker 1: that too.
Speaker 2: Oh, we did a great podcast on mirrors a long time,
Speaker 2: you remember that one.
Speaker 1: That was a good one. My brain is still broken
Speaker 1: from that. Like it was one of those things where
Speaker 1: I just assumed it would be pretty easy, and it's
Speaker 1: not at all easy. It's really hard to comprehend mirrors
Speaker 1: and how they work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, all right, So, yeah, they were polishing lenses
Speaker 2: and I think the reading stone was the first kind
Speaker 2: of use of a lens to help you read something.
Speaker 2: And those were the little round things that you would
Speaker 2: sit literally sit on a book and push along rather
Speaker 2: than hold it out like a magnifying glass. And there
Speaker 2: was a lot of monk, a lot of monks doing
Speaker 2: a lot of this because I think they were doing
Speaker 2: more like text work than a lot of most people
Speaker 2: back then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you didn't have a way to copy anything
Speaker 1: except for by hand, so that was a huge role
Speaker 1: of monks. So yeah, they definitely needed those and then
Speaker 1: translating things into other languages. There's a really good example
Speaker 1: of an important development in the field of like classes
Speaker 1: or corrective lenses that happened because somebody translated the writing
Speaker 1: of an Arab scholar named Abu Ali al Hassan Ibn
Speaker 1: al Hatham, who was born in nine sixty five CE,
Speaker 1: and he actually figured out that we see because our
Speaker 1: eyes sense beams of light, and in other parts of
Speaker 1: the world, like for example, Greece, they thought it was
Speaker 1: the opposite, that we shot laser beams out of our eyes.
Speaker 1: And I know we've talked about that before, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's so preposterous that I just love it. But I
Speaker 1: don't remember what episode, but but I a'l Hatham figured
Speaker 1: this out. But he was writing in Arabic. Luckily, there
Speaker 1: was a monk who was also a physicist, a Polish
Speaker 1: monk named Vitelo, who in the twelve hundreds translated al
Speaker 1: Haitham from Arabic to Latin, which gave a chance for
Speaker 1: another monk in English, monk named Roger Bacon, to read
Speaker 1: it in Latin and then build on al Haatham's findings
Speaker 1: about vision and optics.
Speaker 2: Is it weird to me that I thought the monk
Speaker 2: being named Roger Bacon was funny sounding.
Speaker 1: No it is. It's really funny. Oh okay, yeah, no
Speaker 1: it's I mean, it's just such a modern name but
Speaker 1: also a silly modern name. Yeah, yeah, okay, good, I'm
Speaker 1: with you. No offense to Kevin, No, no, he knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if we're talking about glasses, like you know, the
Speaker 2: glasses that we think of today, still not you know,
Speaker 2: you'll note there's some key things missing here still. But
Speaker 2: if we're talking about a convex lens to help someone
Speaker 2: who is far sighted read text or a book, you
Speaker 2: got to go to Italy in the late thirteenth century,
Speaker 2: Italy with a little bit of Germany mixed in here
Speaker 2: and there. But it seems like Italy really drove the
Speaker 2: glasses industry forward, using crown glass at the time, like
Speaker 2: you know, real glass for their lenses. And we'll get
Speaker 2: to that switch later on too. But they speculate that
Speaker 2: you know, they were grinding me and you know, they
Speaker 2: were making mirrors and polishing stones and stuff, so they
Speaker 2: probably wasn't a big leap to start doing the same
Speaker 2: kind of things with the same kind of tools to
Speaker 2: make glass lenses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so like you said there were convex lenses
Speaker 1: to help magnify things for people who are far sighted,
Speaker 1: and that is far far easier to make than a
Speaker 1: concave lens, as we'll see. So those convex lenses were
Speaker 1: around for centuries before corrective lenses for people with myopia
Speaker 1: came along.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And another thing I don't want to do, maybe
Speaker 2: is if you're in a place to look things up
Speaker 2: for image searches, these are all fun to look at,
Speaker 2: these antique glasses. If you look up Rivet spectacles Rivet,
Speaker 2: these were sort of the first glasses that were held
Speaker 2: together by a little you know, Rivet. It looks like
Speaker 2: a hinge. I couldn't tell it. It looks like they
Speaker 2: might move and like fold upon each other.
Speaker 3: Is that true.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it looked like that to me too,
Speaker 1: I would guess.
Speaker 2: So they're kind of cool looking. But one thing you
Speaker 2: notice is that even with the Rivet spectacles, they're not
Speaker 2: you don't hang that Rivet on your nose. It's still
Speaker 2: just a hinge to hold them together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you had to hold classes or spectacles with your
Speaker 1: hand for centuries after they were invented. Basically. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: like we said, with the advent of reading. Thanks to
Speaker 1: things like the Gutenberg printing Press in the fourteen hundreds
Speaker 1: or later in the sixteen hundreds, when Europe started to
Speaker 1: publish newspapers all over the place, reading became much more widespread,
Speaker 1: and so the need four glasses became much more widespread
Speaker 1: thanks to the development of myopia from reading and especially
Speaker 1: reading by candle light.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that would really put a strain on
Speaker 2: your eyes, right.
Speaker 1: Totally for sure. And so this is also about the
Speaker 1: time in medieval I think medieval Europe where the whole
Speaker 1: thing kind of became like, all right, is this a
Speaker 1: fashion statement? Are you showing everybody that you're correcting a disability?
Speaker 1: What's the deal here with classes? This is around the
Speaker 1: time where it really kind of started to take hold,
Speaker 1: and in fact, Olivia turned up something I thought was
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Depending on the painter and depending on how
Speaker 1: you wanted to depict the person, especially during the Renaissance,
Speaker 1: you might show somebody who was born before glasses were
Speaker 1: invented wearing glasses to get across how studious and scholarly
Speaker 1: they were, or if you wanted to show how cool
Speaker 1: somebody was if they were known to wear glasses you
Speaker 1: might have you might leave the glasses out altogether.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's that that weird pushbull that we were
Speaker 2: talking about. And I guess it just depended on maybe
Speaker 2: just the time and place and what the culture was
Speaker 2: like in that particular time and place, right right.
Speaker 1: They were also a way to depict wealth. Remember it
Speaker 1: had a painting called the Parable of the Rich Fool,
Speaker 1: which is a Bible story. So of course it's took
Speaker 1: place long before there was such a thing as glasses,
Speaker 1: but he included glasses on the Rich Fool to show
Speaker 1: how rich he was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in China, because he's spread via the Silk
Speaker 2: Road to Asia, some of their judiciary committees they were like,
Speaker 2: here's your uniform, and part of it was glasses, whether
Speaker 2: you needed them or not. Like you like me? That
Speaker 2: nice work.
Speaker 1: You want to take a break, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, since we literally just chinxed each other, I
Speaker 2: think it should take break.
Speaker 1: That's right. You owe me a coke?
Speaker 3: All right, be right back, so chuck before we.
Speaker 1: Get started again. I want to say something every time
Speaker 1: I say glasses, or hear glasses, or even read glasses
Speaker 1: in my head, Velma goes my glasses. It's been happening constantly,
Speaker 1: and I think what's most significant about it is that
Speaker 1: hasn't gotten old yet.
Speaker 2: So Velma from Scooby Doo would she lose her glasses?
Speaker 1: She invariably said, my glasses, and I just got it
Speaker 1: in my head.
Speaker 2: And you've been doing that like for two days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, over and over and over and over. It's going
Speaker 1: on right now as we speak. As a matter of fact.
Speaker 2: And by the sounds of it, you were also practicing
Speaker 2: that Arabic name.
Speaker 1: I actually did not out loud.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you busted that thing out, man.
Speaker 1: I just have a silver tongue for Arabic.
Speaker 2: Apparently that was really good.
Speaker 1: Thanks. Okay, so let's get started. We talked about how
Speaker 1: the lenses for far sightedness or around for centuries before nearsightedness,
Speaker 1: but we eventually got to those, I guess in like
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century the fourteen hundreds, again not coincidentally with
Speaker 1: the spread of reading, we finally figured out how to
Speaker 1: make lenses that are concave that correct vision for people
Speaker 1: who can see things nearby but not far away.
Speaker 2: That's right, and the other way around, like you mentioned
Speaker 2: in Act one, a lot harder to do. There was
Speaker 2: a cardinal named Nicholas of Kusa, And this is where
Speaker 2: the Germany part comes in, because that's where Germany is now.
Speaker 2: He's given a lot of credit to developing the convex lens.
Speaker 2: But once again, it was really Italy where a lot
Speaker 2: of this was taking place, specifically Florence, where they were
Speaker 2: really crafting excellent lenses for the time. And I think
Speaker 2: they were pretty darn good at it, even like compared
Speaker 2: to today. I've read that it's like kind of remarkable
Speaker 2: how good they were at this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean I always equate venue
Speaker 1: with glass because of Venetian glass, but sure, why not
Speaker 1: Florence too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there are a couple of innovations that came along
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century to the sixteen hundreds that really
Speaker 1: kind of helped push things forward. So we've been making
Speaker 1: glass for centuries by then. But as they were trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to make these things refract light.
Speaker 1: That's how lenses correct. They refract light at different angles
Speaker 1: depending on what you need to see in focus. They
Speaker 1: figured out that not only you know, could you use
Speaker 1: traditional glass and then shape it in certain ways, you
Speaker 1: could add certain things to glass that would help with
Speaker 1: their refractiveness. So they figured out that if they add
Speaker 1: low iron, potash or lead oxide, it will give it
Speaker 1: a higher refractive index. But you need less glass to
Speaker 1: do that. So all of a sudden, glasses became immediately
Speaker 1: less clunky and a little more comfortable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And you know you mentioned paintings in
Speaker 2: that in the first part. But I thought the encyclopedia
Speaker 2: brownness of this next bit was really pretty great because
Speaker 2: there is actual evidence of concave lens use in Raphael's
Speaker 2: painting portrait of Pope Leo ten and two cardinals and
Speaker 2: they say ten. Huh, what do you say? X?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know it's ten, but it just sounds cooler
Speaker 1: as Poplo X.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So Poplio was part of the Medici family, which had
Speaker 2: genetic my iopia, as was well known back then. And
Speaker 2: you can see, and this is where it gets encyclopedia brown.
Speaker 2: You can see in the painting behind the lens, his
Speaker 2: thumb is smaller, showing that it's a distance lens, and
Speaker 2: that is just that little detail. For someone to paint
Speaker 2: that and then other people to notice is pretty great.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's so raphe yel you know. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: then there was some other advances too that weren't exactly
Speaker 1: corrective lenses, but people figured out, especially the Dutch, were
Speaker 1: super into this that if you took corrective lenses that
Speaker 1: could bend light in different ways, you could see things
Speaker 1: that were really small, or you could see things that
Speaker 1: were really far away, and so they were really helpful
Speaker 1: in developing the microscope and the telescope too.
Speaker 2: That's right. But I know everyone's chomping at the bit saying,
Speaker 2: these glasses that you can hold up to your face
Speaker 2: are fine. But guys, when did people start wearing glasses?
Speaker 2: We can go to the seventeenth century finally, when we
Speaker 2: got the bow spectacle or is it boo?
Speaker 1: I wonder that myself. I think bow like a bow
Speaker 1: and arrow bow. It's like the shape of a bow
Speaker 1: without the string. I think that's what it is.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's what I think it is too. But those
Speaker 2: are the glasses that still didn't have what do you
Speaker 2: call the things on the side.
Speaker 1: The temples or the arms now.
Speaker 2: No arms, yeah, no arms yet. But they had a
Speaker 2: little a little thing where you could slip it over
Speaker 2: your nose and it would, you know, if you had
Speaker 2: a good fit, it would sit there. Otherwise you probably
Speaker 2: still needed to assist it with your fingies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly the same thing that's still around now. It
Speaker 1: sits on the bridge of your nose and rests and helps,
Speaker 1: you know, hold your glasses up right. Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: was a huge advance. It's funny when you look back
Speaker 1: at this stuff, You're just like, this is all just
Speaker 1: such low hanging fruit glasses. Guys, why didn't you just
Speaker 1: put them together immediately? Yeah, And that's just not how
Speaker 1: it went. I mean, this person contributed this, this person
Speaker 1: contributed that, and they took millennia to develop, which I
Speaker 1: just find astounding. It's like a miracle that we have
Speaker 1: glasses today based on how long and plotting their development was.
Speaker 2: Well. Yeah, And what's the funniest thing to me about
Speaker 2: all of this as I was reading each little development
Speaker 2: was the whole time, the ears are sitting there on
Speaker 2: the side of your head, just like, hey, guys, we
Speaker 2: have two literal anchor points sticking out of the side
Speaker 2: of everybody's head and still no one I think. In Spain,
Speaker 2: Lvia found that some people would tie a string and
Speaker 2: then tie it around their ear, like if they were
Speaker 2: playing you know, soccer or something. I guess but no
Speaker 2: one still was like, hey, maybe we should make something
Speaker 2: to sit on those ears.
Speaker 1: So to be fair, there was a guy named Edward
Speaker 1: Scarlett who was an optician in London in the seventeen twenties,
Speaker 1: and he saw what you're talking about, m M. But
Speaker 1: at the time, so he invented temples those sides those arms,
Speaker 1: but they didn't curve downward to take advantage of those
Speaker 1: natural anchor points the backs of the ears like the
Speaker 1: US today. But there was a good reason why, and
Speaker 1: that was at the time, anyone who is wealthy enough
Speaker 1: to afford glasses also wore powdered wigs and those things
Speaker 1: were giant and covered the ears. You couldn't use the
Speaker 1: back of the ears like that because they were covered up,
Speaker 1: but you could use the temples as pressure points for
Speaker 1: those those arms that they he came up with.
Speaker 2: So those were just like little squeezes essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they would give you a migraine in like three minutes.
Speaker 2: Okay, because I did also see that. Olivia found rather
Speaker 2: that they some people would it would attach a ribbon,
Speaker 2: but they still wouldn't time around the ear. They would
Speaker 2: just tie it around the back of their head. A
Speaker 2: harlequin yeah, yeah, to those squeeze temples. Finally we get
Speaker 2: a guy that gets closer. In seven fifty two, an
Speaker 2: English optician named James ice Coff, I guess had a
Speaker 2: double hinge side and well, actually I don't think he
Speaker 2: invented the turnpin template. That was about twenty five years
Speaker 2: after that, because the turnpin template from or temple, from
Speaker 2: what I can tell, it goes straight back and then
Speaker 2: has a hinge and then goes straight down behind the
Speaker 2: ear ninety degrees. But it doesn't like curve around the ear.
Speaker 2: It was just a big ninety degree drop that sat
Speaker 2: down a couple of inches even below the ear right.
Speaker 1: But it finally started to take advantage of the back
Speaker 1: of the ear right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in a clunky way.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, with these guys putting hinges
Speaker 1: in there, now you have these arms that can number one,
Speaker 1: fold away for convenience, but also number two. If they're
Speaker 1: double spring, they can also bend kind of outwards. So
Speaker 1: now you could just put glasses on and they would
Speaker 1: fit to your giant head or your tiny head, depending
Speaker 1: on the size. Immediately thanks to the spring and those hinges.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember seeing those for the first time, and
Speaker 2: that seemed like a very modern invention in like the eighties,
Speaker 2: But that's not true.
Speaker 1: At all, No, I don't. I think it took a
Speaker 1: little while for it to become ubiquitous, but it was
Speaker 1: older than that for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I only use you know, I found a
Speaker 2: number of years ago that the ray Ban Wayfairer is
Speaker 2: kind of the only sunglass that I look okay in Okay,
Speaker 2: So I've only worn those, and then I just buy
Speaker 2: those frames to get my readers made because it's the
Speaker 2: only only shape that I've ever found works for my face.
Speaker 2: And so I'm a wayfair purist.
Speaker 1: I guess I can do wayfarers and I can do
Speaker 1: aviators too.
Speaker 2: I can't pull those off.
Speaker 1: The ones that I can't pull off that I really
Speaker 1: wish I could are the I want to say, carreras,
Speaker 1: but they're not. You know what I'm talking about, those
Speaker 1: Italian ones that are super sleek looking that you basically
Speaker 1: have to wear a speedo with.
Speaker 2: I think I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those, I wish I could rock those, and they
Speaker 1: just do not look right on me. And I think
Speaker 1: we should include a little PSA here for everybody that
Speaker 1: wears those giant multi colored reflective visor sunglasses. Now nobody
Speaker 1: looks good in those, which ones the giant visor sunglasses
Speaker 1: that are super in right now.
Speaker 2: What is visor? Would you mean like a hat visor?
Speaker 1: No, like like ski goggles, but without the goggle part.
Speaker 1: They're just sunglasses. But they're that massive and colorfully reflective.
Speaker 1: How have you not seen these? I don't know, like
Speaker 1: Oakley's kind of Yeah, I'm sure, please make them. Yes, bigger,
Speaker 1: just imagine bigger.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to look up a picture of these
Speaker 2: because I have not known. Also, I don't, you know,
Speaker 2: get around in the world too much, So.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm surprised you at least haven't seen like
Speaker 1: a delivery person wearing them.
Speaker 2: Oh, well, you know it's funny. I just did a
Speaker 2: rare inshow look up and I see exactly what you're
Speaker 2: talking about. H I do not like those. I did
Speaker 2: not know people were wearing those. Oh yeah, they're huge now,
Speaker 2: but they also when you type indvisors glasses, they make
Speaker 2: sunglasses with the little visor over them.
Speaker 1: Oh that's neat, like the Wane little flip up sunglasses.
Speaker 2: Well, it's those are individual for each side. This is
Speaker 2: I'm sending a picture of this dude right now, because
Speaker 2: he's rocking pretty hard.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 2: Anyway, where I started with the whole ray ban thing
Speaker 2: is though they don't make the spring ones where they
Speaker 2: you know, have a pretty fat head, then luckily they
Speaker 2: fit my face. But they don't, you know, bend outward,
Speaker 2: flex outward.
Speaker 1: They have what you called barrel hinges in there. No
Speaker 1: they don't. They stop it like I guess ninety degrees
Speaker 1: to the frame. But you can go in and get
Speaker 1: those little parts of the barrel hinges adjusted to fit
Speaker 1: your head if they don't automatically fit your head.
Speaker 2: Man, you know a lot about this stuff.
Speaker 1: Well you know, I've been wearing them since fourth grade.
Speaker 1: And you just pick up facts here or there.
Speaker 2: All right. Just to cite a further example of the
Speaker 2: push and pull of cool versus not cool, Napoleon needed glasses,
Speaker 2: thought they make him look weak, so did not wear them,
Speaker 2: and as a result, I think, like tripped over stuff
Speaker 2: and people thought he was clumsy.
Speaker 1: I mean, he rode a horse and he couldn't see.
Speaker 1: That's kind of dangerous totally. There's another kind of big
Speaker 1: splash that happened with glasses that made them fashionable. But
Speaker 1: it was one of those things where something that's ugly
Speaker 1: and utilitarian becomes fashionable. And it was a type of
Speaker 1: glasses invented by Benjamin Martin. They ended up being called
Speaker 1: Martin's margins because they're hugely thick frames. And the reason
Speaker 1: that Martin invented them like that is because they block
Speaker 1: light coming in from different directions rather than looking forward,
Speaker 1: and that can obscure your vision a little bit. And
Speaker 1: he's absolutely right, that totally is true. If you're just
Speaker 1: outside looking wearing say, contacts, and you put on glasses,
Speaker 1: there's a huge difference between the two because the frames
Speaker 1: block some of the light coming downward into your eyes.
Speaker 1: And everybody made fun of these because they were just
Speaker 1: so ugly, but people started wearing them, and so everybody
Speaker 1: who were making fun of them started making and selling
Speaker 1: them too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're kind of crazy looking when you look
Speaker 2: at them now. I have seen some that people that
Speaker 2: kind of emulated this style. But it was noteworthy too
Speaker 2: because it was one of the first ones that had
Speaker 2: any kind of noticeable rim. Usually it was just the
Speaker 2: lens and kind of the smallest piece of whalebone or
Speaker 2: wire or something that could host that lens.
Speaker 1: Right for sure, Yeah, so the sixteen hundreds I think
Speaker 1: saw some technical advances, but the nineteenth century was just
Speaker 1: a boom century for especially using corrective lenses, right, not
Speaker 1: just fashion or the way that they were made, or
Speaker 1: getting around and putting arms that reach behind the back
Speaker 1: of the ear, but like the actual function of glasses
Speaker 1: became exponentially better in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you know, previous to this, the way you
Speaker 2: got glasses well as the glasses manufacturer would make a
Speaker 2: bunch of them and then they would send a salesperson
Speaker 2: around and a wagon or I guess eventually a car
Speaker 2: and they would travel around and kind of do like
Speaker 2: the over the counter readers that what was it, like
Speaker 2: thirty four percent of Americans actually use those these days.
Speaker 1: Thirty four million, I think, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thirty a lot, Yeah, thirty four million. But it
Speaker 2: was on the you know, on the road. Basically, you
Speaker 2: just didn't have a prescription specific to your eye. Someone
Speaker 2: just came around. You're like, well, these will do I guess.
Speaker 2: But now all of a sudden, you got a real
Speaker 2: you know, vision test, so they could dial in a
Speaker 2: prescription for you for the first time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that was thanks to people who started inventing
Speaker 1: tools that are still kind of in use today evolved versions.
Speaker 1: In particular is a guy named Herman von Helmholtz who
Speaker 1: goes without saying was German. He invented the ophthalmoscope and
Speaker 1: the ops a opthalometer uphthalmometer, sorry, and the ophthalmoscope lets
Speaker 1: you see the back of a patient's eyeball, so when
Speaker 1: they look at your eye and they're shining a light
Speaker 1: and they're like, don't look into the light, look in
Speaker 1: my ear or something like that. That's essentially an opthalmoscope
Speaker 1: that Herman von Helmholtz invented in the eighteen fifties. And
Speaker 1: then the ophthalmometer. You can assess the essentially the curvature
Speaker 1: of the back of the retina while you're looking at
Speaker 1: the retina through an opthalmoscope. And what you have now
Speaker 1: is basically the the invention of the ability to figure
Speaker 1: out what kind of corrective lenses you needed. Ophthalmology it
Speaker 1: was born at this time, and so now they could
Speaker 1: really take exact measurements and then create the glasses for
Speaker 1: you specifically, and they just worked so much better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm glad you took all those words.
Speaker 1: We should we mention that we had to edit out
Speaker 1: at least one attempt of ophthalmology.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that was the easiest one, I think,
Speaker 2: because that's a word people commonly say. But there's something
Speaker 2: about the optal being at the beginning that just makes
Speaker 2: it a little brain breaking.
Speaker 1: So horrendous.
Speaker 2: What did you say for the second.
Speaker 1: Machine, ophthalmom opthalmometer. I tried to add an extra syllable,
Speaker 1: as per.
Speaker 2: My usual opthalmometer. Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, that's what meter.
Speaker 1: Upthalmometer.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, are we going to talk about the diopter?
Speaker 1: I think we should just mention it because it was
Speaker 1: a huge breakthrough. We don't have to go into the formula.
Speaker 1: But there were a pair of French ophthalmologists who in
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies figured out that you could quantify just
Speaker 1: how much vision correction you needed. And it's mind bending
Speaker 1: that it's called the diopter and it's a really simple formula,
Speaker 1: but it's really hard to understand. But just take for
Speaker 1: granted that ophthalmologists understand how to use that. And so
Speaker 1: if you look at your prescription, whether for glasses or
Speaker 1: for context, the thing that's labeled power, that number is
Speaker 1: in diopters, and that just means how much of a
Speaker 1: refraction correction you need to focus stuff far away or
Speaker 1: nearby at your retina rather than in front of you
Speaker 1: or behind you as you naturally would be with your
Speaker 1: near sightedness or far sidedness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is the key to all this that machine that
Speaker 2: you look through with the lenses that they flip down
Speaker 2: during the eye test.
Speaker 1: I think that's almost like a like they're zeroing in
Speaker 1: on their observations of what your eye looks like, and
Speaker 1: now they've got it narrowed down to like a couple
Speaker 1: of different diopters. Okay, And it's almost to me like
Speaker 1: that those traveling salesmen who'd be like, try this pair on,
Speaker 1: try this pair on, but they're doing it with the
Speaker 1: cool machine that has slides instead. Right, that's my take.
Speaker 1: I could be wrong. I probably am wrong.
Speaker 2: Well, I'd like to hear from optomologists because I know,
Speaker 2: I know there's a lot more to it than like
Speaker 2: just sitting down in front of this machine and we'll
Speaker 2: punch the numbers into the whatever and it'll spit out
Speaker 2: your prescription. Like there is actual expertise involved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, they have to like observe and
Speaker 1: make guesses based on their observation from what I can understand.
Speaker 2: How about that little eyepuff, the little air puff you.
Speaker 1: Get it takes some time to get used to. Do
Speaker 1: you like that?
Speaker 2: No? I don't like it, but it's definitely I mean
Speaker 2: all this was brand new to me a decade ago ish. So,
Speaker 2: like you said, you've been doing it since you were
Speaker 2: what like twelve eleven?
Speaker 1: Yeah, however old you are in fourth grade, ken, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but yes, around that time. To me, those
Speaker 1: things are like the same experience as pulling a nose
Speaker 1: hair out, you know, like you just it's in some
Speaker 1: weird mass of kit stick way like enjoyable, but it's
Speaker 1: not really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so we're having too much fun here.
Speaker 2: Let's take a break and get serious and we'll talk
Speaker 2: a little bit more about plastics and bifocals and monocles
Speaker 2: and sunglasses and everything else right after this. All right,
Speaker 2: So we promised talks of plastic. After World War One,
Speaker 2: plastics became a big thing, and resin specifically c R
Speaker 2: thirty nine became the first big kind of popular plastic
Speaker 2: used for lenses, which is still a pretty popular choice today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was a huge advancement in lenses, but
Speaker 1: people were still making glass lenses for a long time
Speaker 1: until nineteen seventy two in the United States, the FDA said, Hey,
Speaker 1: walking around with two glass lenses on your eyes, like
Speaker 1: so close to your eyes is probably kind of scary.
Speaker 1: So now all lenses need to be shatterproof. So a
Speaker 1: lot of glasses makers just turned to plastics at that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and plastic worked. You know, it was much better
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways because they were you know,
Speaker 2: turned out to be more durable. Once they figured out
Speaker 2: the scratch resistance, they wouldn't shatter, you know, near eye.
Speaker 2: Obviously you could have a lot more kinds of styles.
Speaker 2: You could have rimless glasses. Yeah, Obviously plastics in the
Speaker 2: frames created a boom in fashion eyewear, like in the
Speaker 2: fifties with cat eye glasses and horn rim glasses and
Speaker 2: tortoiseshell and like the glasses you talked about in the
Speaker 2: seventies and eighties, the big giant ron know if you
Speaker 2: mentioned them, the big giant like neuro worn at the
Speaker 2: end of Casino.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love those, man.
Speaker 2: Jesse Thorn has some of those. I'm so jealous whenever
Speaker 2: I see those.
Speaker 1: Those seem to be based on a military issue type
Speaker 1: of glasses, which we didn't say. The Two World Wars
Speaker 1: helped make glasses normal in the United States because so
Speaker 1: many soldiers needed them that the government started issuing them
Speaker 1: like two million plus pairs. But the standard issue military
Speaker 1: glasses were called were so ugly. They were called informally,
Speaker 1: of course, birth controlled glasses or bcgs. And if you
Speaker 1: look them up, they are that ugly. They're terrible.
Speaker 2: Did they look like the Denier ones? Are they just giant?
Speaker 1: They weren't nearly as cool as the DeNiro ones. They
Speaker 1: were an uglier version of the DeNiro ones.
Speaker 2: Got it. I'm going to look those up too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're tough to look at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, giglasses that they're sometimes called as well.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: It's like thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: Army exactly. So that was a huge advance, but just
Speaker 1: kind of dialing it back a little bit time wise.
Speaker 1: There's like an old story that Ben Franklin invented the bifocals,
Speaker 1: and that seems to actually be correct, based on a
Speaker 1: letter that he wrote to one of his friends in
Speaker 1: the late seventeen hundreds where he basically described creating bifocals
Speaker 1: but by having a glassmaker cut his two different sets
Speaker 1: of glasses in half. Right.
Speaker 2: Did the letter say, for instance, I'm reading what I'm writing,
Speaker 2: and now I'm looking across the room, And now I'm
Speaker 2: reading what I'm writing, and now I'm looking across the room.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it had a lot of that, a couple of paragraphs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, it seems like he did. He
Speaker 2: said that he could, you know, see his food and
Speaker 2: look at people at the dinner party. At the same time,
Speaker 2: progressive lenses came along. This sort of shocks me. I
Speaker 2: thought they were newer too, but they came along in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty nine. And isn't the idea there that it's
Speaker 2: sort of like a bifocal that's just sort of blended
Speaker 2: in and less harsh.
Speaker 1: It's actually a trifocal. There's distant, mid, and near all
Speaker 1: mixed together, and it just depends, I guess, on where
Speaker 1: your eye focuses. I think it's magic. Basically. They're also
Speaker 1: called multifocal lenses.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think they offered me those just so I
Speaker 2: could wear glasses all the time. Yeah, And I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't want to wear glasses all the time. If
Speaker 2: I don't have to, I don't putting them on to read.
Speaker 1: There's a theory that you should use glasses as little
Speaker 1: as possible and use the lowest power, say, contacts as
Speaker 1: possible because your eyes can get dependent on the stronger
Speaker 1: prescription or wearing them all the time. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's a folk tale or something, but it definitely
Speaker 1: intuitively makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it totally makes sense.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, then you made the right choice.
Speaker 2: Can we talk about monocles?
Speaker 1: Yes, let's please. I think this is the high point
Speaker 1: of this episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, monocles are kind of fun. If you don't know
Speaker 2: what a monocle is, I guess I'm assuming is the
Speaker 2: single round lens that would you would just sort of
Speaker 2: made to fit your eye as you were wealthy if
Speaker 2: you had one, and you would just sort of stick
Speaker 2: it in there and sort of squint around it a
Speaker 2: bit to hold it in. But from the very beginning,
Speaker 2: it seems like the monocle was it kind of just
Speaker 2: said one thing, which is, look at me, I'm a pompous,
Speaker 2: rich person who wants you to know that I'm pompous
Speaker 2: and rich.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is that's the reason why Eustace Tilly, the
Speaker 1: mascot for the New Yorker has a monocle, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: or the Monopoly Man, Yeah, has a monocle. It can
Speaker 1: also be exotic, like the count from Sesame Street. Where's
Speaker 1: a monocle? Yeah? I looked this up. By the way,
Speaker 1: this isn't off the top of my head. The Penguin,
Speaker 1: the Burgess Meredith Penguin from the k sixties, Batman monocle,
Speaker 1: Colonel Clink. Yeah, Actually, what the point was of his monocle?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Maybe it's sort of evil villain.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It made him eat more evil, didn't it. I
Speaker 1: think so, But I'm not quite sure how. But there's
Speaker 1: a long history of people wearing monocles. But one thing
Speaker 1: that I had noticed before that I never really kind
Speaker 1: of sat down and put together is that they were
Speaker 1: also used in the early twentieth century by women who
Speaker 1: were eschewing traditional gender roles.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, think so. Have you ever seen Madonna wearing like
Speaker 1: a tuxedo and a monocle. She's basically making a nod
Speaker 1: to like Weimar Republic German women, probably lesbians of the era,
Speaker 1: who were basically dressing like men in One of the
Speaker 1: big fashion accessories for that was the monocle.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Dietrich Intomaggio exactly what a great song. God so good?
Speaker 2: All right. Should we talk a little bit about sunglasses, yes,
Speaker 2: take it away. Yeah, this is I mean, sunglasses have
Speaker 2: been around a long time as far as something to
Speaker 2: wear on your face to shield your eyes from the sun,
Speaker 2: not necessarily like darker lenses, but or dark lenses. But
Speaker 2: Inuit people, you know, one thousand years ago, were wearing
Speaker 2: sun goggles, which essentially, you know, because of the bright
Speaker 2: sun and the snow was either like wood or ivory
Speaker 2: or something that fit around your eyes and had a
Speaker 2: little little slits cut almost almost like sort of the
Speaker 2: old tanning bed goggles that you would wear exactly if
Speaker 2: you were into that in the eighties.
Speaker 1: And again like those big frames that kind of blocked
Speaker 1: some light. They did that, but the slits also narrowed
Speaker 1: your vision too, so it actually focused further away too.
Speaker 2: It's pretty But what about lenses. They started darkening those
Speaker 2: a while ago, too, didn't they.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think as far back as Samuel Peeps in
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, the famous diarist whose name I finally
Speaker 1: pronounced correctly. He tended I think his class is green
Speaker 1: to protect his eyes from candle light when he was
Speaker 1: riding late at night. So they've been around a really
Speaker 1: long time, and even before that, Like, I think there's
Speaker 1: a legend that Emperor Nero used ground emeralds as basically
Speaker 1: sunglasses when he hung out at the coliseum.
Speaker 2: You know, this is not a look that looks good
Speaker 2: on me at all. But when I was just in
Speaker 2: La I went to dinner with friends of the show,
Speaker 2: David Reese, oh cool, and Paula Tompkins and his great
Speaker 2: wife Janey. They all say hello, by the way, nice hello,
Speaker 2: paul You know, mister fashion wore vision glasses that were
Speaker 2: tinted blue, and they looked really really sharp on him.
Speaker 2: I could never pull it off, but they looked really good.
Speaker 1: Paula Tompkins can pull off basically anything. He knows exactly
Speaker 1: what he can wear, and if there's a wide range
Speaker 1: and he does it really well.
Speaker 2: Guess what color shirt was.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess a different shade of blue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it went perfectly.
Speaker 1: Did he wear a thick plaid like not The coat
Speaker 1: was thick, but the plaid was thick. The pattern of
Speaker 1: the plaid was a very thick, prominent plaid blue out jacket.
Speaker 2: It was actually a white suit with white Chuka boots
Speaker 2: and a solid blue shirt with the blue glasses. Very
Speaker 2: very sharp.
Speaker 1: I very rarely say the word wow, but that run
Speaker 1: was well learned.
Speaker 2: But you found I think, as we're just blue blue,
Speaker 2: but you found some good information on to me magic
Speaker 2: that happens when you were inside with clear glasses and
Speaker 2: you walk outside and they turn into sunglasses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, transition lenses, which it turns out transitions is a
Speaker 1: proprietary eponym basically like Kleenex. Because it's so successful, everybody
Speaker 1: calls any what are called photochromic lenses transition lenses. So
Speaker 1: transition lenses are photochromic, but not all photochromic lenses are
Speaker 1: transition essentially, is what I'm saying. Yeah, the thing that
Speaker 1: strikes me, Chuck, is like they've been around since the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, because I definitely identify them with late eighties,
Speaker 1: early nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean you found the stuff on how
Speaker 2: it were, and I still don't understand how that's not
Speaker 2: just black magic.
Speaker 1: Well, there's basically there's certain kinds of dyes called photochromic dyes,
Speaker 1: and the more they're exposed to UV light, the darker
Speaker 1: they get because the more light they absorb. And so
Speaker 1: they've actually figured out how to include these in the lenses.
Speaker 1: So when there's not UV light, say you're inside the
Speaker 1: photochromic dyes are arranged as certain kinds of molecules, and
Speaker 1: that's they're transparent. But when they're exposed to UV they
Speaker 1: break apart and form different molecules which absorb light much more,
Speaker 1: which darkens them. And since there's a bunch of them
Speaker 1: in the lenses, the lenses turn dark and you effectively
Speaker 1: have sunglasses. And then when you go back out of
Speaker 1: the UV light exposure, they go back to their normal
Speaker 1: molecular configuration.
Speaker 2: Just incredible, I thought so too.
Speaker 1: Hats off to Warby Parker by the way, for explaining
Speaker 1: that understandably.
Speaker 2: I think, thank you, mister Warby.
Speaker 1: What about scratch resistant lenses? Ca these to me are
Speaker 1: this is the story of the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a lot of great facts of
Speaker 2: the show in here. The proprietary eponym of progressive certainly
Speaker 2: one of them. But you know, ground Lindsay you said,
Speaker 2: you know, in nineteen seventy two, this one the FDA
Speaker 2: said you can't have glass breaking right in front of
Speaker 2: your eyeball. So the plastics came around and they were
Speaker 2: great for not shattering, but they were very scratchy or
Speaker 2: scratch a bole, I guess, And NASA actually developed technology
Speaker 2: to try and make you know, astronaut helmet face advisors
Speaker 2: not scratchy. And so this is one of those NASA
Speaker 2: inventions that made it to the regular world. When Foster
Speaker 2: Grant in nineteen eighty three, who I don't think we
Speaker 2: mentioned they were sort of the first big sunglasses company.
Speaker 2: They weren't the biggest in the eighties, just because they had,
Speaker 2: you know, the coolest commercials. They had been around since
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties selling sunglasses. So they said, hey, NASA,
Speaker 2: we want to license that technology to make our lenses
Speaker 2: scratch resistant. And you know, all of a sudden, that's
Speaker 2: just sort of the I mean, I think you can't
Speaker 2: even get them that aren't scratch resistant these days.
Speaker 1: Right, No, there's no point you would go through glasses
Speaker 1: every couple months. Basically, why would you do that save
Speaker 1: a couple of bucks? Yeah, basically yeah, and you'd end
Speaker 1: up buying way more glasses and spending way more money probably,
Speaker 1: But those scratch resistant lenses just out of the gate.
Speaker 1: They made glasses last ten times longer, which even went
Speaker 1: beyond glass, like how good glass lenses could last too.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was a huge advancement as well.
Speaker 2: All right, well if you want to look at today,
Speaker 2: I mean, we're not going to talk about context too much.
Speaker 2: That may be its own episode at some point.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: But they did debut in eighteen eighty seven, which to
Speaker 2: me is a startling thing that people were inserting a
Speaker 2: glass lens from eighteen eighty seven onto their eyeball because
Speaker 2: that's what it had to be.
Speaker 1: Even in nineteen sixty when they were like the soft
Speaker 1: contacts were invented, Uh huh, they were still pretty hard
Speaker 1: and you would not want to have worn them.
Speaker 2: Do you do the disposable ones?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Multifocal?
Speaker 2: So what does that mean?
Speaker 1: It means that I can see far away in the
Speaker 1: middle ground and nearby basically how based on how my
Speaker 1: iris focuses.
Speaker 2: And then you use those for a day and then
Speaker 2: they go away and then you use another.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're supposed to use them for a day, but
Speaker 1: I use them for three to five days until they
Speaker 1: get uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: It's just set the waste.
Speaker 2: Can you can you sleep in those?
Speaker 1: No, you're not supposed to. I used to all the
Speaker 1: time because I hated taking them out and putting them in,
Speaker 1: And then I grew up and I'm like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: should not do that because it's really bad for your eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It just seems like a lost sort of time
Speaker 2: when hey, don't anyone move, I'd lost a contact, right,
Speaker 2: or the little the little cases and washing them out
Speaker 2: night and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because there weren't disposables. It was all of
Speaker 1: those contexts. It was basically like your retainer, You do
Speaker 1: not lose your retainer, right, you know, same thing with
Speaker 1: your contacts.
Speaker 2: Oh goodness, we lift through a great era, I think.
Speaker 2: All right, So today, if you look at some stats,
Speaker 2: the one hundred and sixty six US adults where prescription eyeglasses.
Speaker 2: That's about sixty four percent of people, Like you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: thirty four and a half million people where the over
Speaker 2: the counter readers. About forty five million wear contacts, and
Speaker 2: that is that's a lot of people with That feels
Speaker 2: like most adults have some sort of eye correction going on.
Speaker 1: Because all of us went through school and had to
Speaker 1: read books all the time.
Speaker 2: I guess so, it's not many people that are in
Speaker 2: their fifties and up that don't need any sort of
Speaker 2: glasses or lenses at all.
Speaker 1: Right, you can thank your public school for that. I guess,
Speaker 1: so you got anything else about glasses?
Speaker 2: No, that was a fun one. I like these histories,
Speaker 2: like the dentistry when these are fun for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought of the dentistry one when I was
Speaker 1: researching this too. Well, thanks again Olivia for helping us
Speaker 1: with this one, and thank you for listening. And since
Speaker 1: Chuck said he doesn't have anything else right now, it's
Speaker 1: time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this just a little shout out, you know,
Speaker 2: when it comes to talking about stuff on the show,
Speaker 2: like any sort of you know, the latest words that
Speaker 2: people should use in terms of like gender and things
Speaker 2: like that. Like we always try and stay on top
Speaker 2: of things, while we always also try and speak to
Speaker 2: like a wide audience and make sure things are super
Speaker 2: clear to everybody. And it's a delicate balance for us,
Speaker 2: so we try. And this was just a letter of
Speaker 2: thanks from someone from Canada. Hey, guys, just listening to
Speaker 2: the Share episode and I wanted to stop and say
Speaker 2: thank you the way you talked about her son, Chaz,
Speaker 2: who is transgender, was perfect. You gendered him correctly, even
Speaker 2: in referring to him pre trans when you mentioned when
Speaker 2: he was born. I know it might sound silly, but
Speaker 2: it made me glassy eyed to hear. As a trans person.
Speaker 2: It was so hard to be in a world that
Speaker 2: seems determined to hate us or make it harder for
Speaker 2: us to exist as the normal humans that we are.
Speaker 2: So hearing you talk about Chaz and not make his
Speaker 2: transness a bigger deal than it needed to be. And
Speaker 2: here you talk about him in a way we trans
Speaker 2: people advocate that we should be talked about. Really move me.
Speaker 2: Thank you for working so hard to get it right.
Speaker 2: I know it hasn't always gone perfectly, but I know
Speaker 2: you care a lot and want to get it right
Speaker 2: every time. This is part of why after fifteen years,
Speaker 2: I've been listening every week. Thanks for all you do
Speaker 2: and for keeping me learning new things, making me laugh
Speaker 2: while I do. I hope you have an amazing weekend, friends,
Speaker 2: And that is Lucy from Canada.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Thanks Lucy. We appreciate that big time. That was
Speaker 1: a good one, Chuck, thanks for picking that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we do our best folks.
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