77. Playing the Nerd Card

The NBA’s superstars are suddenly sporting Urkel glasses -- but is it more than a fashion statement?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 0:46Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:27Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:53Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 2:30Speaker 01

  From APM, American Public Media and WNYC,

• 2:36Speaker 01

  this is Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace. Here's the host of Marketplace, Kai Rizdal.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Time now for a little Freakonomics Radio, that moment every couple of weeks where we talk to Stephen Dubner. He is the co-author of the books and the blog of the same name. It is the hidden side of everything. Dubner, good to have you back.

• 2:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Great to be here, Kai. I don't know with the LA teams out of the NBA playoffs now, I don't know if you're still paying attention, huh?

• 3:02Speaker 02

  I am so done with the Lakers. I was, and the people, this is where the hate mail from LA comes in. But I just, I mean, come on, really? Get over yourself.

• 3:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, there is a trend, besides the demise of the Lakers, that is unmistakable, but it's a trend off the court. It's something you see during the post-game press conferences, and that is that just about every star player, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, Kevin Garnett and Kevin Durant, they're all wearing these big, chunky, black eyeglasses. You know, the kind that Urkel used to wear, depending on your timeframe, you know, Buddy Holly.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  That's right. I saw, who was, I guess it was LeBron I saw at a press conference from Miami, yeah.

• 3:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  There you go. Now, in the old days, it was pretty uncommon to see many athletes wear any kind of glasses. So my first thought was simply, hey, you know, maybe poor eyesight is on the rise. So we reached out to Susan Vitale. She's a researcher at the National Eye Institute, and she has looked at the rate of myopia, or nearsightedness, among Americans in the early 1970s and then again in the 2000s.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  So in '71, '72, the prevalence of myopia in people who were aged 12 to 54 was 25% or 1 in 4 people. And when we applied those same methods to the later population, we found that the prevalence was 41.6%.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Which is roughly a 66% increase.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  So that's a lot, right? 66% in 30-something years? Are we just getting older, or what's going on?

• 4:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, you know, the causes are the subject of a lot of debate. Some researchers think it's all the close-up work we do, like reading the myriad screens we're tethered to. Others think it's because we don't get enough sunshine. Whatever the case, we asked Miami Heat superstar LeBron James if he actually needs those glasses to see.

• 4:45Speaker 04

  Nah, I don't need glasses to see. Glasses is just fashion. It's about fashion. If you wear them right, sometimes they look good, sometimes they can not look so good.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  He's faking, man. He's wearing non-prescription lenses.

• 4:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  As millions of Americans do each day, we learned.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Really?

• 4:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Probably about 4 million. You know, they're called "plainos," or glasses with plain lenses. Yes, sir. Yep.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  That's, I don't understand that. Well, he is so cool that he can look cool wearing glasses? I don't even know.

• 5:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  I think that's about right. The fact is, this trend has blown up all over the NBA, the NFL also. I asked the Harvard economist Roland Frye about this, and he suspects, as only an economist could suspect, that this is what you'd call a "two-audience signaling mechanism."

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:26Speaker 05

  These guys are saying to one audience, "Hey, I'm here, I'm an athlete." To the other one, "Look at my glasses. Look at the way I'm dressed. Look at the way I carry myself. I can promote your product."

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Oh, oh my God. That is so cynical. That's horrible. Right?

• 5:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, it may be much more than that as well. Even Roland Frye says that. Frye has also studied the "acting white phenomenon," right? Which is when black kids who study too much get called out by their peers, as if there's a stigma in trying to accomplish too much. So now, with all these black NBA and NFL stars wearing their big nerd eyeglasses, it may be that they're sending a message that the acting white stigma is over, or at least that it should be over. LeBron's teammate, Dwyane Wade, told us that he doesn't need his nerd glasses either, but he does like the message that they send.

• 6:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, it is cool. You try to go out and you talk to kids, you try to let them know that it's cool to be smart, it's cool to be educated, you know, so it's a message behind the madness, you know?

• 6:25Speaker 02

  That's actually great, message behind the madness. It's acting smart is not acting white, right?

• 6:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's exactly right. Although I will tell you something very interesting. Roland Fryer, who's also African-American, told me that even he, a Harvard econ professor, that he wears glasses that he doesn't need also in order just to relax everyone, as he puts it. And I should tell you this also, the signaling at Harvard doesn't end with eyeglasses, according to Fryer.

• 6:51Speaker 05

  Couple of years ago, I was talking with one of my colleagues here at Harvard, and they said to me, they confessed, let's say, to me that they dyed their hair gray. And I said, why would anyone do that? And he says, well, I want people to take me more seriously.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Wow, I will never understand people. Can I just tell you that?

• 7:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  I understand you, though, Kai. I understand you.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics.com is the website. We'll see you in a couple of weeks.

• 7:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Thanks for having me, Kai.

• 7:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  On next week's podcast, you'll hear the second half of You Eat What You Are, our two-parter about food. This time, we run the numbers on the local food movement, and some of them might surprise you.

• 7:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by EverPure. Is the value of AI not living up to the promise? The problem is probably your data, not your AI models. When it's scattered across different systems, getting your data AI-ready is a challenge. You keep your AI waiting, and everything slows down. EverPure unifies your data, so you can see it, understand it, and control it all from one simple place, and get it AI-ready fast. Unlock the true value of your AI at everpuredata.com.

• 8:31Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 9:25Speaker 09

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• 9:31Speaker 10

  This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Is there a right time to sell a stock? Are you taking the right risks with your portfolio? Financial decisions can be tricky, and often your own cognitive and emotional biases can lead you astray. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, can help. Join host Mark Reapy as he offers practical solutions to help overcome the cognitive and emotional biases that may affect your investing decisions. Listen at schwab.com/financialdecoder.