Speaker 1: But when I'm worried that that like right off camera,
Speaker 1: there's like towering stuff, like everything that you've bought off
Speaker 1: of infomercials and like the boo boos and that that
Speaker 1: that one false move and it's gonna collapse and we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to like call an ambulance to get you out.
Speaker 2: This is my audition for hoarders, and this is that's
Speaker 2: my gifting closet. Everyone has some structural thing where it's
Speaker 2: just a bunch of crap and you're like, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: give I'm gonna like a hand this off to like
Speaker 2: the next person who comes to my house, and like
Speaker 2: I feel like should leave with something.
Speaker 1: Amen. I wish, I wish I had a gifting closet.
Speaker 1: If I take one thing from this, it's that I
Speaker 1: need a gifting closet. Welcome to Snafoo, your favorite podcast
Speaker 1: about history's greatest screw ups, or more precisely, what those
Speaker 1: spends tacular face plants reveal about us, the idiotic humans
Speaker 1: who just keep making them. I'm your host at Helms,
Speaker 1: and my guest today is a prolific actor, comedian, writer,
Speaker 1: and podcast host. You may know him as Fanny in
Speaker 1: the sensation that is Wicked.
Speaker 2: You may not or.
Speaker 3: You may not, or perhaps you know him as the
Speaker 3: co host of one of the most popular podcasts that
Speaker 3: has ever existed, Las Culturistas, or maybe you've seen him
Speaker 3: as the adorable mood Dang on SNL, among many other
Speaker 3: beloved characters.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Snafu Bowen yang Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry that I had to go. I immediately cut
Speaker 2: in because I feel like I'm one of the few
Speaker 2: characters in the Wicked films who is not ever named,
Speaker 2: like my Like, it's not the Bechdel test, but there
Speaker 2: must be another like film sort of rubric where it's like, well,
Speaker 2: if the character's not named, it's like if it's like
Speaker 2: an under five, it's like there's an existential sort of
Speaker 2: like lane that the kind of role exists in.
Speaker 1: But you had a name in the credits. I did,
Speaker 1: but you're not actually named in the dialogue of the movie.
Speaker 2: Is that what you're saying and not going to? Yeah,
Speaker 2: because there's an ongoing debate as to how the name
Speaker 2: is even pronounced. Oh, we shot it in the UK
Speaker 2: and it was it was just Fanny there means pussy,
Speaker 2: and it just it just kind of became a whole
Speaker 2: people were just giggling, chortling. I'm sorry, it's the UK.
Speaker 2: They were chortling on set. This is a character that
Speaker 2: is that is suffused with like unseeriousness in every way,
Speaker 2: which is great. Like I as a as A as
Speaker 2: two comedians, I think we understand this.
Speaker 1: I saw and loved the movie Wicked. I didn't know
Speaker 1: your character's name and had to look at it.
Speaker 2: There you go, so you so when you say you
Speaker 2: know you may know him as Fanny, I had to
Speaker 2: chortle myself. Have you guys talked about the etymology of
Speaker 2: the word snafu. I've always been curious. Do you know
Speaker 2: anything about where this word rich? Yeah, like well absolutely, yeah, okay, oh,
Speaker 2: it's a great word. So it's in fact, it's not
Speaker 2: a word at all. It's an acronym. It's it stands
Speaker 2: for situation normal, all fucked up. It's a military.
Speaker 1: Acronym and it basically just means when like everything is
Speaker 1: everything's going wrong, which is you know a lot of
Speaker 1: times in war and the soldiers in World War two,
Speaker 1: uh just started using snaffoo. And then it's it's close
Speaker 1: relative sibling. I might even say, is fubar fubar.
Speaker 2: I know fubar, Yeah, but snafu really is really kind
Speaker 2: of like folds into like I don't know the English
Speaker 2: language quite well fo bars. Fubar is unwieldy and it
Speaker 2: feels shoehorned in if you try to use it in
Speaker 2: a sense, or it feels very like early aughts.
Speaker 1: Snafu is like worked into the lexicon. We just say like, ah,
Speaker 1: what a terrible snafoo, and we get it. We all
Speaker 1: know what that is.
Speaker 2: Are you a video game person?
Speaker 1: I'm not. I kind of wish I was, but I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: It's okay, Yeah, there's some there's a video game called
Speaker 2: Chance of SNAr, but it's so stylized and super cool
Speaker 2: and really simple and cheap. It's just you like going
Speaker 2: up a tower, not unlike the Tower of Babble, where
Speaker 2: you are just translating different languages that are like made
Speaker 2: up and fictional to this universe. But you are kind
Speaker 2: of just like joining together these different languages with different
Speaker 2: syntaxes and different structures, and it all kind of I
Speaker 2: think as a history buff you would like this as
Speaker 2: someone who understands fundamentally that language limits our relational capacity
Speaker 2: for whatever anything. Yes, between human beings. It is. I
Speaker 2: think this is the right game for you.
Speaker 1: This is so interesting because as you're describing it, I'm thinking, like,
Speaker 1: this sounds so cool and interesting and amazing and also
Speaker 1: not at all what I think of as gaming, right exactly,
Speaker 1: And you're so right, by the way, because how often
Speaker 1: have you befriended someone for whom English is a second language,
Speaker 1: or tried to befriend someone where you can kind of
Speaker 1: speak their language, felt like you're not getting your full
Speaker 1: self across.
Speaker 2: All the time. Basically, all of my family except my
Speaker 2: parents and my sister are in China, and anytime we're together,
Speaker 2: especially recently, they're just like, hey, You're like, people think
Speaker 2: you're funny in America. I'm like, well, not everybody, but
Speaker 2: I was like, but they're like, but what do you mean?
Speaker 2: Because I'm not this, I'm not like the gregarious person
Speaker 2: that I am in Mandarin, because they're like wait what
Speaker 2: and so all the time. But also there are there are,
Speaker 2: but then there are so many cases where there's a
Speaker 2: language barrier, and then yet you still sort of get
Speaker 2: the essential person of course, of.
Speaker 1: Course, and of course it's so funny to me that
Speaker 1: your family is like, wait, you're funny. What it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's some version of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Hey, let's
Speaker 1: dive into the snafu. Are you ready?
Speaker 2: I'm so okay?
Speaker 1: All right, we have a doozy today. This one is
Speaker 1: kind of fun and interesting. We're gonna play with bubbles today.
Speaker 1: But we're not talking about soapy bubbles like you make
Speaker 1: it a kid's birthday party. We're talking about economic bubbles,
Speaker 1: and it's more interesting than it sounds.
Speaker 2: Well, did the bubbles trickle down? No, I'm kidding, keep going,
Speaker 2: They never do.
Speaker 1: Just for listeners who may not be aware. An economic
Speaker 1: bubble is when a product's price gets way over inflated
Speaker 1: because everyone's convinced it's like the next big thing, and
Speaker 1: they keep buying and selling it to make a quick
Speaker 1: book and then pop. The bubble inevitably bursts because some
Speaker 1: people start to catch on that the crazy price is
Speaker 1: propped up not by the product's inherent value, but just
Speaker 1: like fully, by vibes and fomo.
Speaker 2: You've picked the worst person possible to discuss this with.
Speaker 2: But I'm with you. I'm so with you. But why
Speaker 2: couldn't tell you a thing about just bubbles? Bubble like
Speaker 2: financial matters financial anything. I couldn't even come up with
Speaker 2: the word finance.
Speaker 1: I'm the same way. No, really, I'm in the same
Speaker 1: But fully, this is why you're even more perfect than
Speaker 1: I hoped, because like you will bring a very genuine,
Speaker 1: sort of open and curious mind to this. Because I
Speaker 1: also there's parts of the math of this story that
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm not even gonna bother with that because
Speaker 1: it's so confusing to me. Okay, what's fascinating about this one,
Speaker 1: in particular is what the bubble was. We're going back
Speaker 1: to the seventeenth century when the Dutch went mad, like
Speaker 1: completely batshit crazy for tulips. Yes, the flower, which you
Speaker 1: can buy at your local grocery store at one point
Speaker 1: cost the same as a house a single flower. So
Speaker 1: the story today is what historians call tulip mania. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's a real thing. Now are you ready for this?
Speaker 2: I am? But it never it never went away in
Speaker 2: Hall in the Netherlands. It's these flammed Jersians still love
Speaker 2: their tulips. But keep going, I'm so invested.
Speaker 1: Before we dive into seventeenth century Dutch society, let's detour
Speaker 1: for a quick tulip origin story. Tulips are native to
Speaker 1: Central Asia, so we're talking like modern day Kazakhstan and
Speaker 1: the surrounding regions, where they have been cultivated since the
Speaker 1: eleventh century. The name comes from the Turkish turbent, meaning turbin,
Speaker 1: a nod to their upward blooming, turban like petals. Wow,
Speaker 1: tulips weren't just beautiful either. They carried a lot of
Speaker 1: serious cultural weight in their native lands. In fact, they
Speaker 1: were the official symbol of the Ottoman Empire under Suleman
Speaker 1: the Magnificent, who ruled from fifteen twenty to fifteen sixty six.
Speaker 1: In the fifteen fifties, European ambassadors in Constantinople took notice
Speaker 1: of the flower, and this is when tulips spread to
Speaker 1: European markets. By the fifteen nineties, they had reached the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: And now this is right when the Dutch Republic was
Speaker 1: entering its Golden Age, a time of crazy, booming trade
Speaker 1: and artistic brilliance. Have you ever been to the Netherlands.
Speaker 2: I've been to the Netherlands. I've somehow ended up in Amsterdam,
Speaker 2: like like several times within like a couple years. I
Speaker 2: can't say that I know it like the back of
Speaker 2: my hand. I appreciate the culture of the place a
Speaker 2: great deal. And I have a theory already about why
Speaker 2: tulips kind of blew up, but I'll let you keep going.
Speaker 1: Is because everyone does mushrooms in Amsterdam.
Speaker 2: No, I think it's because they're easy to draw, like
Speaker 2: a child could draw. It's like thing what like a
Speaker 2: cartoon flower is essentially.
Speaker 1: So simple and gorgeous. We're broadening out a little bit now,
Speaker 1: just into some more Dutch culture context. It's the golden
Speaker 1: age for Dutch culture. And you're probably asking, well, how
Speaker 1: did that come about? And I'm glad you asked, Bowen.
Speaker 1: A lot of it traces back to the Dutch East
Speaker 1: India Company, which in sixteen oh two basically invented the
Speaker 1: multinational corporation. Partnered with the government, it was meant to
Speaker 1: safeguard trade in the Indian Ocean. If by safeguard you
Speaker 1: mean like making deals, fighting battles, and committing massive international
Speaker 1: atrocities on a massive scale, and generally acting like an
Speaker 1: entire country version of a high school bully. It was
Speaker 1: such a massive operation that in today's dollars it would
Speaker 1: be like trillions. The value of this company was like
Speaker 1: in the trillions which is hard to wrap your head around.
Speaker 2: Which is like, there's only one trillion dollar company right
Speaker 2: right now? Is it Apple? I think it's just Apple?
Speaker 2: And wait, so what you did Ververmeir paint all of
Speaker 2: his stuff? Like, that's to me, that's the golden Dutch
Speaker 2: age in my book.
Speaker 1: We're in the same zone.
Speaker 2: We are, Okay then great, yeah, let's see girl with
Speaker 2: the earing. I feel like, you know what all of
Speaker 2: all of the Netherlands was like, we are cooking. Let's
Speaker 2: let's go crazy.
Speaker 1: Vermiir is part of that artistic boom that's that's happening
Speaker 1: at the same time as this like massive financial and
Speaker 1: cultural boom. It's like Maslov's hierarchy of needs, Like as
Speaker 1: the country becomes increasingly wealthy, things like art and even
Speaker 1: sciences they really flourish because there's just more people have
Speaker 1: more time, and more and more interest in luxury. So
Speaker 1: all of this activity the supercharged economy contributed to the
Speaker 1: rise of a new urban business class comprised of merchants
Speaker 1: and traders who came to dominate high society. While the
Speaker 1: old rural nobility was getting pushed aside. The wealth gap
Speaker 1: was still significant. It didn't disappear, but regular workers were
Speaker 1: definitely doing a lot better and not quite like by
Speaker 1: a yacht vibes, but definitely like maybe splurge on some
Speaker 1: fancy cheese, say, for example. So enter into this cultural moment.
Speaker 1: The tulip exotic, imported and just different enough to make
Speaker 1: your neighbor low key jealous. Now Bowen, do you have
Speaker 1: a taste for finer things?
Speaker 2: I think the finer things are wasted on me, but
Speaker 2: I try to I try to orient myself towards those things,
Speaker 2: just just short of like being like really like obnoxious
Speaker 2: and cloying about it. What's like a really us?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's funny. I don't really splurge
Speaker 1: on stuff. I splurge on experiences. That's where I spend.
Speaker 1: Tend to spend money, like things for my family to
Speaker 1: do that are like exciting or cool.
Speaker 2: Whatever happens here, I hope no lives get lost, but
Speaker 2: I think like what happens here has a great ending
Speaker 2: and it was all worthwhile because tulips are beautiful and
Speaker 2: it's an aesthetic thing. But it's like the modern day
Speaker 2: thing where if like you know, NFTs or like little
Speaker 2: dumb pictures of cartoon gorillas and like baseball caps somehow
Speaker 2: where it was in like every single garden and park
Speaker 2: and forest of America, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 2: things that once seemed so so valuable that investors poured
Speaker 2: a lot of money into. If they stick around, I
Speaker 2: don't know if the bubble bursts, Like the best thing
Speaker 2: that can happen is if they stick around and they
Speaker 2: are at least a lovely thing for people to look at.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when a bubble burst, like the thing doesn't disappear.
Speaker 1: In my Snafu book, I did a chapter on the
Speaker 1: beanie baby bubble Yes, which was a very sort of
Speaker 1: famous version of this the bubble burst and people lost
Speaker 1: a ton of money. It was very heartbreaking. But beanie
Speaker 1: babies are still around. They're still cute. You can still
Speaker 1: buy them. So the Dutch tulip craze begins with a
Speaker 1: botanist named Charles de le Cluse at the University of
Speaker 1: Leeden in the fifteen nineties. He cultivated meticulous tulip gardens
Speaker 1: and in sixteen oh one published The History of Rare Plants,
Speaker 1: in which he obsessed over what are called broken tulips. Now,
Speaker 1: these were the these are like the real show off tulips.
Speaker 1: Instead of a single color they had, they had like
Speaker 1: these wild, flame like streaks in them. I think we
Speaker 1: have a photo here.
Speaker 2: Of a I think I'm familiar. Oh yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep,
Speaker 2: they are so yeah. This is uh, this is what
Speaker 2: is called a Viceroy bulb. Well, actually, I don't think
Speaker 2: this is the bulb. This is the this is the whole,
Speaker 2: This is the whole thing. This is a sprouted flower.
Speaker 2: The bulb is what it grows from underground. I'm again
Speaker 2: the wrong person to ask.
Speaker 1: I feel very confident. I feel very confident about this.
Speaker 2: I have confidence in you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. Legend has it. Lecluse refused to sell
Speaker 1: his bulbs, which only made them more desirable. That's when
Speaker 1: thieves broke into his garden and stole offshoot bulbs called offsets.
Speaker 1: It was these stolen bulbs that then allegedly kickstarted the
Speaker 1: tulip craze. It gets better. While visiting a Viennese aristocrat,
Speaker 1: lit Close supposedly spotted a vase of lovely multicolored tulips,
Speaker 1: the kind he knew existed only in his own garden,
Speaker 1: And when he pressed this aristocrat, she denied everything and
Speaker 1: claimed she had no idea where they came from, which
Speaker 1: was like bold as hell and just complete horseshit right
Speaker 1: and just audacious.
Speaker 2: I would never have the guts. I just don't have
Speaker 2: it in me. I'm just so non confrontational.
Speaker 1: Wait to steal something to begin with, or to like
Speaker 1: ostentatiously display something that you stolen.
Speaker 2: No, just to do the cluse thing of calling someone out.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm telling the world you can
Speaker 2: come and steal me for all I am worth, and
Speaker 2: I will not do a thing about it.
Speaker 1: Just to avoid the awkwardness I am there. I don't
Speaker 1: want to get into that. Yeah, it's like, eh, because
Speaker 1: like if I call you out, then there'll be a
Speaker 1: whole back and forth and like you might get mad
Speaker 1: and you'll it's like you'll probably feel ashamed, and then
Speaker 1: that'll transform into rage and then we're just in as
Speaker 1: like terribly.
Speaker 2: Weird place exactly, And can't we all just be friends
Speaker 2: even after you've stolen from me? That's all I want.
Speaker 1: So before long, Dulips graduated from nice little garden accent
Speaker 1: to full on status symbol, so actual value no longer matter.
Speaker 1: This was simply about prestige, spectacle, and the of course
Speaker 1: deeply human tradition of obsessively comparing yourself to your neighbors.
Speaker 1: It's now sixteen thirty four. I don't do that, by
Speaker 1: the way, I don't know if you.
Speaker 2: Do comparing yourself to neighbors specific you're your neighbors specific.
Speaker 1: I mean neighbors in the sense of like, of course
Speaker 1: the little about it, Yeah, like whatever neighbor might mean.
Speaker 1: It's so funny. We operate in a career that is
Speaker 1: very disconcerting because I'm taking a detour for a second,
Speaker 1: the world in which we move in this show business world,
Speaker 1: it's obviously very status driven, but it's also like there
Speaker 1: are so many metrics that are so literal as to
Speaker 1: like that other people can try to like assess your
Speaker 1: value and rank you. And sometimes it's you know, it
Speaker 1: used to be things like what's your most recent box
Speaker 1: office opening number? Or now IMDb has literally has a
Speaker 1: star meter that ranks the whatever the starness of someone is.
Speaker 1: But I've always found that so bizarre and like, mind
Speaker 1: fucky about the business that we're in. Nice little sidebar,
Speaker 1: We're gonna cut all that. No, those are the best moments.
Speaker 1: So it's now sixteen thirty four, and things are heating up,
Speaker 1: Speculators pile in prices go nuts, and suddenly everybody wants
Speaker 1: the aforementioned broken bulbs. These, of course, were prized because
Speaker 1: they could produce even more rare, flashier offspring the offset
Speaker 1: bulbs we mentioned before, So owning one was like owning
Speaker 1: a racehorse, like if it's a winner, that's great, but
Speaker 1: if it breeds more winners, congrats. You're basically running like
Speaker 1: a seventeenth century tulip startup. What's interesting is that we
Speaker 1: learned later through science that the reason these these flamy,
Speaker 1: these tulips had this kind of like fiery appearance with
Speaker 1: multiple colors was because of a virus and off their
Speaker 1: offset bulbs are increasingly weak, and eventually they get to
Speaker 1: the point where they can't even flower. So they it's
Speaker 1: it's just a sort of delicious irony that they have
Speaker 1: diminishing returns over time.
Speaker 2: That's what happens with the inbreeding.
Speaker 1: It's exactly right, the habsburg chin.
Speaker 2: Or no, it's just the whole face.
Speaker 1: I think package package. Are there any fads that you've
Speaker 1: just like fully fallen into or for well, now.
Speaker 2: I feel like, okay, I feel like in this day
Speaker 2: if a fad pops off, there are about a million
Speaker 2: people behind the scenes or forces algorithmic or economic or
Speaker 2: whatever that are like ensuring its sustainability or success or whatever,
Speaker 2: like well into infinity. I think right like La Boo
Speaker 2: boos popped off last summer, and now I feel like
Speaker 2: every single person across like up and down the sort
Speaker 2: of like pop mark chain or whatever, is like there
Speaker 2: are teams of people being like, this is our strategy
Speaker 2: for how to make sure these are ubiquitous wherever we're
Speaker 2: coming up the movie, we're coming out with the clothes
Speaker 2: and we're coming out. It's like there's fat fads. Are fads?
Speaker 2: Are people try to like freeze them in amber? There
Speaker 2: are there are ways and means to freeze them in amber.
Speaker 2: Now I think so anyway, that's not answering your question.
Speaker 2: To answer your question, of course, I fell for bos.
Speaker 2: I felt right off thousand boos. Yes, there's at least
Speaker 2: there are two in my kitchen of all places. Terrible
Speaker 2: place to keep them. Why are they their furry They're
Speaker 2: they're they're going to catch something crumbs, you know, you know, uh,
Speaker 2: let's see fire on fire. They are dangerously true story.
Speaker 1: Class that is a synthetic fur. I don't know what.
Speaker 2: It's probably mine mine or minor human hair. I know
Speaker 2: my every fat. I'm playing this Pokemon game right now.
Speaker 2: That is like all over the internet. I'm looking at
Speaker 2: Lisa Frank stickers right now. I would call those a fad.
Speaker 2: There's a great documentary about how what is that? To Frank?
Speaker 2: You don't know at least a Frank?
Speaker 1: Wait, do I what is that?
Speaker 2: These are? These are big in like the nineties and aunts.
Speaker 2: These more on every single like space saver binder backpack
Speaker 2: in the late nineties, early ats anyway, and.
Speaker 1: You have a fresh path, like right there on your desk,
Speaker 1: I'm scared. But when I'm worried that that like right
Speaker 1: off camera there's like towering stuff like everything that you've
Speaker 1: bought off of infomercials and like la boo boos and
Speaker 1: that that that one false move and it's gonna collapse
Speaker 1: and we're gonna have to like call an ambulance to
Speaker 1: get you out.
Speaker 2: This is my audition for hoarders, and this is that's
Speaker 2: my gifting closet. Everyone has some structural thing where it's
Speaker 2: just a bunch of crap and you're like, I'm gonna give.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna like a hand this off to like the
Speaker 2: next person who comes to my house and like, I
Speaker 2: feel like should leave with something.
Speaker 1: Amen. I wish, I wish I had a gifting closet.
Speaker 1: I take one thing from this, It's that I need
Speaker 1: a gifting closet because there are a lot of times
Speaker 1: you're walking out of the door like a fuck, I
Speaker 1: need a bottle of wine.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, how much were these tulips actually selling for? I
Speaker 1: don't know if you passed econ one on one in college.
Speaker 1: I did not. But I think it's important that we
Speaker 1: established some basic facts about the Dutch economy during the
Speaker 1: Golden Age before we get into the hard data of
Speaker 1: tulip Mania. So quick shout out to author and historian
Speaker 1: Mike Dash who wrote a fascinating book about the tulip
Speaker 1: craze called tulipo Mania. He actually starts off the book
Speaker 1: with a bit of a financial primer on Dutch currency
Speaker 1: from the era. I'm not going to get too deep
Speaker 1: into the weeds here on Dutch currency of the seventeen ears,
Speaker 1: but suffice to say, until the early nineteenth century, the
Speaker 1: basic unit of currency there was called a gilder. Now
Speaker 1: as for what that's worth today. It's kind of fuzzy.
Speaker 1: It's hard to compare value of things from so far back,
Speaker 1: but some estimates say one guilder might be equal to
Speaker 1: about ten dollars. Others go much bigger, suggesting that one
Speaker 1: guilder could be worth as much as sixty dollars anyway
Speaker 1: you slice it. Flowers were selling for too much money.
Speaker 1: So now that we have that little bit of context,
Speaker 1: these numbers am about to spew it, you might actually
Speaker 1: make some sense. So tulip prices they didn't just rise,
Speaker 1: they rocketed, according to the Amsterdam Tulip Museum, which is
Speaker 1: that's not a bit, that's a real place, and you're
Speaker 1: going next time you go to amberam I've never been.
Speaker 1: I've been to Amsterdam. I cannot believe I've been. I
Speaker 1: have been all over the world and I've never been
Speaker 1: to Amsterdam.
Speaker 2: And it's a comedy town. Like there's a dollar there.
Speaker 2: It's oh, it's wonderful, you'd love it.
Speaker 1: I know. I'm so excited to go, and it's it's
Speaker 1: at this point in my life. It's going to be
Speaker 1: a family trip, and I'm I'm fine with that.
Speaker 2: It's a perfect family trip. It's great for everybody.
Speaker 1: According to the Amsterdam Tulip Museum, a single bulb sold
Speaker 1: one day for forty six guilders, then changed hands a
Speaker 1: month later for five hundred and fifteen guilders. Another bulb
Speaker 1: row from ninety five to nine hundred guilders in a
Speaker 1: similar period of time. Now you're like gilders, what okay?
Speaker 1: What all you have to know is that in both
Speaker 1: cases we're talking about a roughly one thousand percent increase
Speaker 1: in price. Some records indicate that the priciest sale was
Speaker 1: for ten thousand guilders in sixteen thirty six ish sixteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven, which translates to well over six hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: Today one bulb, not even not even the sprouted flower,
Speaker 4: for a single tulip bulb, Now this is a time.
Speaker 4: That kind of money could buy you an entire house.
Speaker 4: Of course, you brought up Vermer earlier. Here's a fun
Speaker 4: comparison for you. Rim Brand painted his masterpiece of the
Speaker 4: night Watch for about sixteen hundred guilders, meaning you could
Speaker 4: have traded one tulip bulb for three rim Brands.
Speaker 2: Seems fair, yeah, I mean seems fair to me. That's
Speaker 2: crazy it's that's nuts.
Speaker 1: How do you think people justified this to themselves? Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you like we talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about sort of falling for fads here and there,
Speaker 1: but like when when you're in a real bubble like this,
Speaker 1: and there are modern examples like crypto and so forth.
Speaker 1: I think what's fascinating about this kind of situation is that,
Speaker 1: like if you buy a tool of bulb in the
Speaker 1: Netherlands in the sixteen hundreds and then suddenly it's worth
Speaker 1: like ten times what you bought it for, you don't
Speaker 1: think you're in a bubble. You just think you're in
Speaker 1: You just think you're in this like financially advantageous situation,
Speaker 1: of course, And that I think is what is like
Speaker 1: such a trap and why bubbles just keep happening over
Speaker 1: and over again. It's because they're almost impossible to perceive
Speaker 1: when you're in them.
Speaker 2: When you're in them, it feels like it is always
Speaker 2: the exception. Probably. There's a great book called Status in
Speaker 2: Culture by this guy named W. David Marx. He says
Speaker 2: that what dictates culture and especially like pre Internet, was
Speaker 2: markers of status, right, and so like in an economy
Speaker 2: where you're describing like in the Netherlands, like even like
Speaker 2: the quote unquote lower classes like had spending power, like
Speaker 2: it just drives up the price of something as like
Speaker 2: what seems as trivial, as like a flower, or as
Speaker 2: like fragile, not even trivia, but it's like fragile, Like
Speaker 2: there's a bulb like could sprout, it could not, like
Speaker 2: you're really it's kind of a gamble like but basically
Speaker 2: like you can buy that. Your people are buying this
Speaker 2: up because it is, as you were saying earlier, a
Speaker 2: status marker where they are trying to then like it's
Speaker 2: it's like buying like I don't know whatever I see.
Speaker 2: I'm so I'm so out of touch now like whatever
Speaker 2: the cool like pant is or whatever or you know,
Speaker 2: or let's just say Rolex. It's just like that is
Speaker 2: a marker of status. I need to emulate this kind
Speaker 2: of I don't know, status mobility, and therefore I need
Speaker 2: to buy this thing and then show to my neighbors
Speaker 2: that I have it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, But that's that explained. I mean it sounds yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean we're talking about it now like hundreds of
Speaker 2: years later, being like isn't that so crazy? But you're right.
Speaker 2: It's like when you're in the bubble. It is imperceptible
Speaker 2: because you think it is always you always think that
Speaker 2: you are the unicorn. It's the self selection bias like this,
Speaker 2: it's different this time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that it's gonna just going to stay this way.
Speaker 1: The market's going to stay the way that it is. Okay.
Speaker 1: So this is one of my favorite examples of the
Speaker 1: absurdity of these deals that were going down. So according
Speaker 1: to historian Mike Dash, one of the highest exchanges for
Speaker 1: one Toulip speculator came in a magnificently lopsided load for
Speaker 1: one Viceroy bulb like the one that we saw earlier.
Speaker 1: The seller received the following two loads of wheat, two
Speaker 1: loads of rye for fat oxen, and yes, it was
Speaker 1: specified that the oxen had to be fat. Eight fat pigs,
Speaker 1: twelve sheep, two hogsheads of wine, four barrels of beer,
Speaker 1: two barrels of butter, a thousand pounds of cheese, a
Speaker 1: complete bed, a suit of clothes, and a silver beaker.
Speaker 1: Huh yeah, this.
Speaker 2: Is so Oregon Trail, like yeah right, yeah, you had
Speaker 2: to like barter with all your stuff to like get
Speaker 2: like I don't know bread and food or medicine, but like,
Speaker 2: for for one, what was it the viceroy bulb? It's
Speaker 2: pretty though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a pretty flower, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Flower. It's lopsided because it's because that was like that
Speaker 2: was the value of the of the one bulb?
Speaker 1: Like is that that is an actual contract? Was the
Speaker 1: exchange of those items for one viceroy bulb?
Speaker 2: Holy moly?
Speaker 1: What I What I love about that list is that
Speaker 1: you know, back in the day, like there was so
Speaker 1: much bartering of goods, livestock and things like. None of
Speaker 1: that is very surprising. It's it sort of sounds like
Speaker 1: a pretty conventional deal of the the sixteen hundreds, like
Speaker 1: you said, Oregon rail vibes. But where it gets weird
Speaker 1: for me is when suddenly like they're adding in a
Speaker 1: bed and then a full suit of clothes, and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, whoever's selling this bulb really needs a fresh
Speaker 1: start in their arm. I needs, Like that's what they're
Speaker 1: that's they're getting. They're getting a ton of butter and
Speaker 1: a bunch of and like she and then all these
Speaker 1: this live stock, Like this is enough to build a life.
Speaker 1: You get a bed, a suit of clothes.
Speaker 2: Like or they were taking in or the person with
Speaker 2: the bulb was taking in like a street urchin, and
Speaker 2: they were like, oh, we'll need an extra bed and
Speaker 2: fresh clothes for this person we're taking.
Speaker 4: Into pounds of cheese and a thousands.
Speaker 2: Well that's just for personally, is that's just for them
Speaker 2: to sort of com throughout.
Speaker 1: All right. So in eighteen forty one, Scottish author Charles
Speaker 1: McKay wrote a book called Extraordinary, Very Popular Delusions and
Speaker 1: the Madness of Crowds, which featured a number of stories
Speaker 1: about the tulip mania and full disclosure. Some of these
Speaker 1: stories are thought to be apocryphal, but in one of
Speaker 1: the tales, there's a great story of a seaman who
Speaker 1: was visiting the house of a wealthy merchant. The merchant
Speaker 1: offered him a breakfast of fine red herring, and the
Speaker 1: semen then spotted what he assumed was an onion lying
Speaker 1: nearby and thought, oh, perfect, this will really elevate the
Speaker 1: fancy fish situation. So he picked it up and crumbled
Speaker 1: it over his yummy fishy meal, and he enjoyed it thoroughly,
Speaker 1: presumably feeling quite pleased with his culinary instincts. Unfortunately, It
Speaker 1: was not an onion, as you have probably guessed. It
Speaker 1: was a tulip bulb, but not just any toolip bulb.
Speaker 1: It was a Simper Augustus bulb, one of the most
Speaker 1: prized and expensive varieties in existence. So the seaman had
Speaker 1: just enjoyed his breakfast with a one million dollar flower.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's on the guy for leaving the buld out
Speaker 2: in the open, victim blaming, But that's that's just what
Speaker 2: it reaks.
Speaker 1: You're right, if it's like a million dollar bulb, like
Speaker 1: you put it some put it on a shelf somewhere something.
Speaker 2: Right before you're like, oh, let me get the red
Speaker 2: herring for you, just make sure like your personal effects
Speaker 2: were like tucked away and like put put that in
Speaker 2: the safe. What are you doing leaving the bulldout?
Speaker 1: Come on?
Speaker 2: Hide them up?
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it be funny to just eat a million dollars totally?
Speaker 2: But like like what just pure cash like and like
Speaker 2: what like.
Speaker 1: And yeah, like what if you were somebody's house and
Speaker 1: they just had like a million dollars sitting out like
Speaker 1: since these things were status symbols, like maybe this maybe
Speaker 1: the merchant was like you know, like leaving it out
Speaker 1: as a sort of like a flex but if you
Speaker 1: were at somebody's house and they just left out a
Speaker 1: big stack of a million dollars and you were just like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, skully eat it. I'll just poor some
Speaker 1: maple syrup on that, and just started eating it all right.
Speaker 1: So now interesting to note a lot of these deals
Speaker 1: went down in local Dutch taverns of all places, which
Speaker 1: turned them into basically little tulip brokerages. Drinks flowed, prices climbed,
Speaker 1: and the rights to a single tulip bulb could change
Speaker 1: hands ten times in a day, which is impressive considering
Speaker 1: no one actually saw the bulbs in most cases, so
Speaker 1: this is a huge twist. A lot of the time
Speaker 1: they weren't trading actual bulbs. The tulips themselves were still
Speaker 1: sitting peacefully in the ground, often in Harlem, which is
Speaker 1: a town west of Amsterdam which has really ideal conditions
Speaker 1: for rearing tulips. Apparently, so what people were buying and
Speaker 1: selling were essentially IOUs or future contracts for a flower
Speaker 1: that hadn't even bloomed yet. So you'd spend a small
Speaker 1: fortune on something you couldn't see, you couldn't touch, you
Speaker 1: couldn't even verify other than just like you know that
Speaker 1: this is someone that you knew in your town, that
Speaker 1: they would be accountable, all in the hope that when
Speaker 1: it finally bloomed, it would be this absolutely fabulous thing,
Speaker 1: which seems kind of bad shit. This is sort of
Speaker 1: like the origin of futures trading, which is a whole
Speaker 1: other thing. I don't quite understand me neither.
Speaker 2: That's why I always say flowers up front. I always
Speaker 2: go into my deals saying, flowers, cash, whatever it has.
Speaker 2: I'm not. I can't. I can't be like speculative about
Speaker 2: any of this. I can't be poreful.
Speaker 1: Every time you go I've seen you in a flower
Speaker 1: shop and you were not fucking around it is. I'm
Speaker 1: just like, no, now, I am not. This is not
Speaker 1: a down payment. This is I want to be walking
Speaker 1: out of here with flower And they're like, but when
Speaker 1: that's how it works, we give you the flowers right now,
Speaker 1: and you're like, no, I would insist on, and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what we're doing. We're gonna give it to you.
Speaker 2: Don't worry exactly. Thank you are you are your flowers guy.
Speaker 1: Ed. I'm sort of like a fan of botany in general.
Speaker 1: But I don't. I'm not a big gardener.
Speaker 2: I can't I d them. I can't. I can't look
Speaker 2: at a flyer and be like, oh, that's a you know,
Speaker 2: vernunculous or whatever. You know. But people, people are really
Speaker 2: people are really like that best gift anyone's ever gotten
Speaker 2: me speaking of gifts from earlier local flower shop, like
Speaker 2: weekly subscription drop off thing and I and this was
Speaker 2: this happened like three years ago, and I still I
Speaker 2: love these flowers so much of this florist in Brooklyn
Speaker 2: outline florals that I still pay every week to get
Speaker 2: like a weekly flower bouquet that is like so like
Speaker 2: delicately curated. It's not like this big, like huge bouquet
Speaker 2: of ase. It's like a little arrangement that like is
Speaker 2: just at my door every Saturday, and it's like the
Speaker 2: highlight of my week. And I just this is why
Speaker 2: I like I now, because like, as you're telling the story,
Speaker 2: I'm like, I get a tulips are tulips are beautiful.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't pay eight fat pigs for it, but I
Speaker 2: would pay I would pay somebody. There's still pretty expensive.
Speaker 1: I love this. Oh and this is such a beauty.
Speaker 1: What you're describing sounds so lovely, such a just a
Speaker 1: such a nice way to sort of treat yourself to
Speaker 1: beauty in the world, like on a regular basis, and
Speaker 1: to be reminded of beauty and to be reminded they like.
Speaker 1: It's it's like a sensory it's not just visual beauty.
Speaker 1: They smell beautiful and it someone has put care into
Speaker 1: this presentation for you and it's in your space now
Speaker 1: and that's it has such a lovely, lovely thing. A
Speaker 1: bouquet subscription.
Speaker 2: But like a lot of like the big box, like
Speaker 2: local even better, this is local. Yes, yes, yes, not
Speaker 2: the first person to say it's but like their nature's
Speaker 2: little fireworks and you can look at them for longer.
Speaker 2: It's it's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. So in this case, they weren't
Speaker 1: actually trading flowers. A lot of the time. They were
Speaker 1: just trading these sort of promisory notes, which does get crazy.
Speaker 1: They were very cynical transactions, just about sort of making
Speaker 1: money was all it was about. It wasn't even about
Speaker 1: the beauty of tulips. At a certain point. Eustis Lipsius
Speaker 1: was a Dutch philosopher. He said, quote, what should I
Speaker 1: call this but a kind of merry madness? They do
Speaker 1: vaingloriously hunt after strange herbs and flowers, which, having gotten,
Speaker 1: they preserve and cherish more carefully than any mother, doth
Speaker 1: or child.
Speaker 2: Oh vinglorious. What an underused word. Let's bring it up back.
Speaker 1: I know you're right. It's sort of two words smashed
Speaker 1: together and it means something else perfect. A frustrated botanist
Speaker 1: at Leiden University by the name of Evrard Forstius stated
Speaker 1: that if he saw a wild tulip, he would quote
Speaker 1: attack it furiously with his stick. I think at this
Speaker 1: point people are starting to resent tulips because they're creating
Speaker 1: such merry madness all around.
Speaker 2: At least it's Mary.
Speaker 1: What is like a merry madness in this moment? Would
Speaker 1: you say like swifties or like a marry Like Like
Speaker 1: to me, a merry madness is like benign, like it's
Speaker 1: not you know, you might in this case the tulip bubble,
Speaker 1: like people lost money, but it wasn't like you know,
Speaker 1: already died.
Speaker 2: I think a Mary madness now is like a heated
Speaker 2: rivalry situation where it's like, oh, how lovely likes it's
Speaker 2: nice because people love it. It's like appeals to all
Speaker 2: sectors somehow, somehow it's like a four quadrant thing, where
Speaker 2: like heterosexual manner watching this, going wow, this is really touching,
Speaker 2: and then and then women of all persuasions are like,
Speaker 2: this is the most emotion and arousal I felt in
Speaker 2: my whole life. So I think it really it runs
Speaker 2: the gamut on merrymant, I should say, and therefore it
Speaker 2: is a kind of but people are a little bit
Speaker 2: frenzied about it in a way that is a little
Speaker 2: like confounded and confusing in skins and mad and so
Speaker 2: I think that is probably the closest current example that
Speaker 2: I have.
Speaker 1: So like all bubbles, this one finally popped in February
Speaker 1: of sixteen thirty seven, And this is where myth in fact,
Speaker 1: can't exactly agree on what went down. Some say too
Speaker 1: many speculators tried to sell at once, clogging the market
Speaker 1: and evaporating demand. Others point to a plague outbreak, dampening
Speaker 1: people's enthusiasm for luxury flower gambling, which you know fair
Speaker 1: if there's if you know there's a pandemic, you're not
Speaker 1: going to be into the nice things for a minute,
Speaker 1: and then there's a theory I love this one that
Speaker 1: a few buyers actually went out to Harlem, this this
Speaker 1: town where a lot of the tulips were cultivated, and
Speaker 1: they saw fields of tulips and they had this devastating
Speaker 1: realization like, oh shit, there's a lot of these and
Speaker 1: they just grow. This is not this is probably not
Speaker 1: a thing we can we can we can't count on
Speaker 1: scarcity driven pricing for very long here.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So but whatever the actual cause, it's reported that bulbs
Speaker 1: were suddenly trading at one percent of the value from
Speaker 1: even just six months prior. Allegedly, the Dutch government tried
Speaker 1: to intervene, offering ten percent of the value on bulb
Speaker 1: contracts to help stabilize the market, but that wasn't even
Speaker 1: enough to save it. Whatever the exact trigger, tulipmania was
Speaker 1: officially squashed, and I imagine a lot of people felt
Speaker 1: quite foolish when they woke up from their tulip fever dream.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, what was the full span of tulipmania? Sixteen?
Speaker 2: It started in what year? In the end at sixteen
Speaker 2: forty two, you said, or thirty.
Speaker 1: Two, So that's a good question. The I think the
Speaker 1: interest in tulips and sort of the rise of tulips
Speaker 1: as a cultural phenomenon took place through the early like
Speaker 1: you know, le Clues, who we mentioned earlier, was in
Speaker 1: the fifteen nineties, so it was sort of starting to
Speaker 1: become a fad through the early sixteen hundreds, and then
Speaker 1: we're hitting peak tulip mania in the mid sixteen thirties.
Speaker 2: Got it. I think I kind of I'm willing to
Speaker 2: believe this Harlem story where they saw the fields of tulips,
Speaker 2: because because it's just an example of like supplying Deman
Speaker 2: going like the complete opposite direction so quickly that of
Speaker 2: course the value drops immediately right where it's like there's
Speaker 2: so much of these fucking flowers, and also nobody wants
Speaker 2: them anymore so and not just kind of kills it
Speaker 2: immediately like that that kind of screeches it too.
Speaker 1: A hault. Yeah, it's also a kind of I'd like
Speaker 1: that story too, because it's it's just so funny, how
Speaker 1: you know, in some sense, a bubble, like this actual
Speaker 1: bubble is a denial of reality. You know, it's a denial.
Speaker 1: It's a denial of of like it's it's just describing
Speaker 1: a crazy amount of value onto something and the reveal
Speaker 1: that there's just these sprawling fields with them. It's such
Speaker 1: a delicious visual to be like, no, you fucking idiots,
Speaker 1: it's just a plant, It's a plant. I love that amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is that's that is the story of tulip mania
Speaker 1: Bowen Yang. I'm so glad I was able to share
Speaker 1: this with you and reflect on it with you. Do
Speaker 1: you have any other like crazy insights or takeaways from
Speaker 1: from this?
Speaker 2: You were so thorough as you always are. I have
Speaker 2: to just say, panic said and when you when you
Speaker 2: start talking about economic bubbles, I was like, wow, this
Speaker 2: is so this is so wrong for me. I'm I'm
Speaker 2: this I'm going to be such a letdown, And I
Speaker 2: think this was This ended up being a wonderful, insightful conversation.
Speaker 2: So this just well, thank you for think you're stewarding though.
Speaker 1: Amen, then thanks just for bringing your curiosity to it.
Speaker 1: I have to say I love these stories. I love history.
Speaker 1: I love just the rabbit hole of these specific incidents
Speaker 1: throughout history. But what I really love about this podcast
Speaker 1: is just the curiosity and the little sort of side
Speaker 1: turns and eddy swirls that we get into with wonderful
Speaker 1: guests like you, and so many of the ideas and
Speaker 1: bits and whatever that bubble up and reflections. I think
Speaker 1: we touched on some very meaningful kind of human behavioral
Speaker 1: ideas throughout this episode as well, and I really appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Ed helms you, gentlemen and scholar. I think you would
Speaker 2: really like this book. I think you would really like
Speaker 2: Status and Culture by W. David Marx. It's like it's
Speaker 2: very like these these are the terms, this is what happens.
Speaker 2: It's very like cut and dry. But as you're reading,
Speaker 2: as you're reading everything, you're like, WHOA, Like this is
Speaker 2: kind of how things are set up, like kind of
Speaker 2: out exception, like all throughout I don't know, not human history,
Speaker 2: but just just in terms of like how things are
Speaker 2: sort of like positioned as like status topics, and how
Speaker 2: that informs like the wider culture of like the arts
Speaker 2: and sports and like all of these different things.
Speaker 1: Bowon Yang, thank you so much for being on Snaffoo.
Speaker 1: This was a god damn delight.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1: Oh hey men, Yes, indeed, of course. Snafu is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Podcasts and Snaffo Media, a partnership between
Speaker 1: Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Post production
Speaker 1: and creative support from good Egg Audio. Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are me Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim,
Speaker 1: and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino
Speaker 1: and Tory Smith. Our managing producer is Carl Nellis. Our
Speaker 1: video editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering from
Speaker 1: Nick Dooley. Additional story editing from Carl Nellis. Our creative
Speaker 1: executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt Gosson
Speaker 1: and The Collected Works. Legal review from Dan Welsh, Meghan
Speaker 1: Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn,
Speaker 1: Lane Kleine and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson,
Speaker 1: Kerry Lieberman and Nikki Ator. While I have you, don't
Speaker 1: forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snaffoo,
Speaker 1: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups. It's available
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Speaker 1: dot com. Thanks for listening, and see you next week.