On a day in 2008, Linda Ghent and Alan Grant were talking about different TV shows Ghent had noticed were full of examples of economics.

Of the shows mentioned, Ghent had found clips in “Grey’s Anatomy”, “King of Queens”, and some of “Seinfeld”. “Some” was not what Grant expected to hear, Ghent said.

“(Alan) said, ‘Oh I think there’s a lot more,'” Ghent said.

Ghent said Grant volunteered to watch all nine season of “Seinfeld”, the NBC show, which originally aired from 1990-1999. He would watch an episode every morning, over breakfast.

Nine seasons of non-sense later, Grant presented 90 “Seinfeld” clips, which were examples of economics in the show.

The show turned into much more than a teaching tool for Ghent, Grant and co-creator George Lesica; it turned into a website, which will soon be featured on NBC’s Today Show.

The website, yadayadayadaecon.com, transformed into an educational website, which could be used by anyone interested in learning or teaching economics, Ghent said.

“It’s useful now in that if you don’t know what moral hazard is you can actually go and if you click on that tag on the website it’ll define it for you,” Ghent said. “So if you’re watch the clip you can see that.”

The original site was online in March 2010, and after Ghent gave a “Seinfeld” lecture at Berry College, in Rome, Ga., in October, the site took off.

Frank Stephenson, the chair of the economics department at Berry College, blogged about the site, which led to a media explosion, Ghent said.

The Wall Street Journal wrote about it in July 2010, The Economist and The New York Times wrote about it in October 2010, and Business Week wrote about it in November 2010. Also, Ghent said she was told the New York Post wrote about it; however, she has never seen the article.

“This is just the power of media,” said Ghent, the chair of the economics department.

One of Ghent’s most memorable interviews about the website came when two radio disc jockeys from Hartford, Conn. asked the co-creators to call into their morning show.

“They are huge ‘Seinfeld’ fans,” Ghent said. “They basically abused us for about 15 minutes because they know way more than we ever thought we would know.”

Once the blogs of major publications like The New York Times wrote about the site, Lesica said traffic to the site increased rapidly.

Lesica said it was interesting to watch the various spikes of site traffic based on which publications were mentioning it. The biggest jumps in views came when the site was mentioned on blogs related to economics.

“(This) suggests to us that a significant amount of the traffic is actually coming from educators and students, which was pretty much the goal,” Lesica said. “It validates the original idea that this can be something useful to people who learn and teach economics.”

Since January, approximately 50,000 people have visited the site, Lesica said. The website has gained 200,000 page views total.

“For a limited educational resource, that’s absolutely enormous,” Lesica said. “It’s not like The New York Times or something.”

In the fall, the Today Show contacted Ghent and NBC’s Sara Haines asked to come to Eastern to interview Ghent.

In March, Haines and a producer showed up and filmed one of Ghent’s classes for about an hour. Then, they filmed an interview with Ghent.

“It was very low key,” Ghent said. “Nobody came in and said, ‘Get into wardrobe and make up.’ It was really, ‘I’m just going to show up in a rental car and film you.’ No production at all.”

The two-minute piece was scheduled to air May 17, but got bumped from the fourth hour by recent news about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, Ghent and her two partners on the site are waiting for the next email from NBC about when their segment will air.

Lesica said he doesn’t expect as much of a spike in site traffic by being featured on the Today Show, as they had previously from blogs.

“People watch the Today Show in front of their televisions and where we get the most traffic is from people clicking on links on blogs,” Lesica said.

Even so, Lesica said being featured in the public eye on NBC is something special for all three creators and the university.

“It does show that we are doing something here other than showing up, standing in front of a chalk board and going home,” Lesica said. “People are attempting to improve the way subjects are taught.”

Ghent said she thinks it is a weird to be nationally recognized for the website because she has done other serious research as an economist.

“I’ve published articles on retirement and lotteries and other things, and then you do this thing with ‘Seinfeld’ and that’s what you’re going to be known for,” Ghent said. “That to me is a little strange.”

Website took time to complete

In 2008, when the idea of teaching with Seinfeld came to fruition, Ghent said she and Grant had not thought about making it a website.

Ghent and Grant knew Lesica as a graduate student in the department and Lesica was technologically savvy, Ghent said, so they sent him the idea about making it into a website.

Lesica said they only asked him to move some of the information onto a website. They did not choose to put videos on the website initially because they were worried about copyright.

“We were very worried,” Ghent said. “Not that we’re not still a little concerned – just less concerned.”

Soon, Ghent found a website, criticalcommons.org, which would host video clips on their website so they could be embedded on her website.

Lesica helped embed the clips to the site and then much more information went onto it, including scene descriptions, economic definitions and times for where the clips could be found on the DVDs.

Lesica said he thinks the website is protected under fair use because the clips are being used for educational purposes. He said it is similar to a film critique.

“We’re not doing anything different than a Jon Stewart where they rebroadcast – retransmit – something, where in his case it’s mostly satire,” Lesica said.

Lesica, assistant to the dean for technology, said he think NBC probably asked Seinfeld’s lawyers if they were going to sue them for using the clips.

“I can’t imagine (NBC) would’ve done so much to promote it unless they had,” Lesica said.

‘Seinfeld’ and ‘The Simpsons’

“Seinfeld” is the perfect show to spot economics in, Ghent said, because of what its basis is.

“You have four people who are just doing nothing,” Ghent said. “They’re going to restaurants or they’re going to the movies. While they encounter really weird people or odd situations, there are things we’d encounter too.”

For example, monopoly sellers and people like the Soup Nazi, are things that can have real life comparisons to things we deal with every day, Ghent said.

Ghent said one ‘Seinfeld’ character in particular is more involved with economics than any other, George Costanza.

“George is probably the most self-interested person and strategic person,” Ghent said. “George is always trying to figure out how he can get by, so he’s trying to maximize his own utility.”

Ghent said she has also found clips from “Friends”, “King of Queens”, “Law & Order”, and “The Simpsons”.

In “The Simpsons” economics are just as evident, Ghent said, especially with Bart Simpson.

“Bart Simpson is also very self-interested and has his own attitudes about the way the world works,” Ghent said.

Ghent has now decided to teach with pop culture in her classes, and she said she can notice it a lot more in TV shows.

“I find myself thinking about it all the time when I’m watching a show,” Ghent said. “You do start watching that and other TV shows differently.”

Alex McNamee can be reached at 581-7942 or [email protected]