CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin Explains His Eye Condition
Andrew Ross Sorkin’s eye condition is a coloboma in his left eye, as the "Squawk Box" star has told Twitter followers. Read more about the condition.
July 6 2021, Published 10:28 a.m. ET
Instead of focusing on his financial insights, some CNBC viewers seem fixated on Andrew Ross Sorkin's eyes.
“Fun fact: Andrew Ross Sorkin has two very different colored eyes,” one person tweeted in 2012. And nearly three years later, someone tweeted, “Does Andrew Sorkin on CNBC’s Squawk Box have two different eye colors?”
As Sorkin explained on both occasions, his eyes are actually the same color. He just has a coloboma in his left eye, which makes that eye appear to be a darker color.
Sorkin has also been answering Twitter users’ questions about the condition. He said that colobomas usually aren't passed down to children. It's advised that individuals who have colobomas wear sunglasses in the bright sun.
Colobomas are eye abnormalities that occur in development.
According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s MedlinePlus website, a coloboma is an eye abnormality that develops before birth. It occurs when the optic fissure doesn't close completely in the second month of development. The condition impacts approximately one in 10,000 people, although it sometimes goes undiagnosed since it doesn’t always affect vision.
Basically, colobomas are missing pieces of tissue in the structure of one or both eyes. “They may appear as notches or gaps in one of several parts of the eye, including the colored part of the eye called the iris; the retina, which is the specialized light-sensitive tissue that lines the back of the eye; the blood vessel layer under the retina called the choroid; or the optic nerves, which carry information from the eyes to the brain,” MedlinePlus adds.
The site also explains that colobomas of the iris—which is what Sorkin appears to have—usually don’t impact one’s vision. However, colobomas of the retina or the optic nerve do impact vision.
Colobomas are sometimes accompanied by other eye conditions, including microphthalmia (abnormally small eyeballs), cataracts, glaucoma, myopia, nystagmus, or retinal detachment.
Sorkin isn’t just famous for his eyes, of course.
Despite the social media hubbub around his coloboma, Sorkin’s peepers are hardly the most interesting aspect of his life so far.
In addition to co-anchoring Squawk Box every weekday morning on CBNC, Sorkin is also the founder of the news site DealBook and a financial columnist for The New York Times. In fact, he started writing for the Times in 1995, even before he had graduated from high school, according to his CNBC bio.
Over the years, Sorkin has reported on Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of Compaq, Chase’s acquisition of J.P. Morgan, and Vodafone’s takeover of Mannesmann. Sorkin's reporting has won him two Gerald Loeb Awards and two Society of American Business Editors and Writers Awards.
Sorkin is also the author of Too Big to Fail, a New York Times best seller about the 2008 financial crisis. He helped adapt the book into the 2011 HBO TV movie of the same name.
Sorkin is also the co-creator of the Showtime drama Billions, which is another production starring Paul Giamatti. After he was name-dropped in the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad, Sorkin actually wrote the fictional column.
