Tulip Mania: The World's First Financial Bubble (with Bowen Yang)

Summary

SNAFU with Ed Helms: "Tulip Mania: The World's First Financial Bubble" (with Bowen Yang)
Original Release: April 22, 2026
Podcast: SNAFU with Ed Helms, iHeartPodcasts – Season 4

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Episode Overview

In this lively and insightful episode, Ed Helms welcomes comedian, actor, and podcast host Bowen Yang to dissect the wild historical SNAFU known as Tulip Mania—the 17th-century Dutch frenzy over tulip bulbs that many consider the world’s first financial bubble. Mixing history, humor, personal anecdotes, and contemporary parallels, Ed and Bowen dig into how a simple flower came to cost as much as a house, what drives bubble economies, the psychology of fads, and the deeply human penchant for status-seeking and financial folly.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction & the Comedy of SNAFUs

• Ed introduces the show and guest (03:00-03:42), playing up Bowen’s notability and humorously referencing his roles and the elusive naming of characters (“You may know him as Fanny...Or maybe not.”)
• Immediate rapport set as they joke about “gifting closets” and hoarding (00:00-00:34).

2. What Does SNAFU Mean?

• Origin of the word SNAFU: Ed explains its military (WWII) acronym roots—"Situation Normal All Fucked Up" (05:07) and its integration into common language.
• Bowen’s observation: “FUBAR is unwieldy...SNAFU really folds into the English language quite well” (05:37).

3. Language & Cultural Barriers

• Bowen relates personal experience with language as comedy: Noting how language shapes relationships and humor, especially with his family in China:
  "Anytime we're together...they're just like, wait, you're funny?...I'm not like the gregarious person that I am in Mandarin" (07:10).

4. Economic Bubbles Explained – and Tulip Mania Begins

• Ed defines economic bubbles for listeners (08:26):
  "An economic bubble is when a product's price gets way overinflated...not by the product's inherent value, but just, like, fully by vibes and FOMO."
• Bowen’s playful ignorance about financial matters:
  “You’ve picked the worst person possible to discuss this with...I couldn't even come up with the word financial.” (08:51)
• Set-up for Tulip Mania—17th-century Dutch "madness" for tulips, a flower that came to cost as much as a house (09:27).

5. Tulips: From Central Asia to Dutch Obsession

• Tulip origins (10:15-11:22): Native to Central Asia, named for the Turkish “tulbint,” became status symbols in Ottoman Empire before arriving in the Netherlands during its Golden Age.
• Dutch context: Netherlands’ economic and artistic boom, driven by the Dutch East India Company (“like a multinational corporation...worth trillions by today’s standards” [12:48]), emergence of a new wealthy urban merchant class.

6. Tulips as Status Objects and the Beginnings of the Bubble

• Tulips become markers of status and envy:
  “Exotic, imported and just different enough to make your neighbor low key jealous.” (13:04)
• Parallels to modern fads: Bowen compares tulip mania to NFTs or Beanie Babies—"once seemed so valuable that investors poured a lot of money into...the best thing that can happen is if they stick around and are at least a lovely thing for people to look at” (14:50).

7. The Craze Takes Root – Legends and Intrigue

• Role of botanist Charles de l’Ecluse: His refusal to sell rare “broken” tulips (multi-colored from a virus) makes them more desirable. The garden is robbed; the stolen bulbs kickstart the craze (19:17-21:05).
• Bowen’s take: "I would never have the guts...I'm just so non-confrontational." (21:07)

8. Status, Fads, and Human Behavior

• Discussion of social comparison:
  Ed: “This was simply about prestige, spectacle, and the of course, deeply human tradition of obsessively comparing yourself to your neighbors.” (22:00)
• Meta-commentary on Hollywood fame metrics: Both note unease with literal ranking systems like IMDb “star meters” (22:29-23:10).
• Modern fads: Bowen cites things like Labubus (TikTok trends), Lisa Frank stickers (90s nostalgia), and the commercial machinery behind today’s viral products (24:49-26:32).
  “Fads are...freeze them in amber now, I think. There are ways and means to freeze them in amber.” (24:51)

9. Tulip Prices Go Insane

• Price escalation: Ed cites the Amsterdam Tulip Museum—bulbs increasing by ~1,000%; one sale for 10,000 guilders (over $600,000 today), enough to buy a house (29:17-29:57).
• Staggering comparisons: “You could have traded one tulip bulb for three Rembrandts” (30:00).
• Psychology of the bubble:
  "If you buy a tulip bulb...and then suddenly it's worth 10 times what you bought it for—you don't think you're in a bubble. You just think you're in a financially advantageous situation.” (31:07)
• Status drives culture: Bowen references Status and Culture by W. David Marx to explain why “status markers” like tulips explode in value (“...trying to emulate this kind of status mobility...and show to my neighbors that I have it.” [32:31]).

10. The Most Absurd Deals

• Ed details outlandish barter exchanges: One Viceroy bulb sold for “two loads of wheat, two loads of rye, four fat oxen...a complete bed, a suit of clothes, and a silver beaker” (32:49–33:43).
• Bowen quips: “This is so Oregon Trail...for one bulb? Holy moly.” (33:43)

11. The Bubble Pops: Reality Hits Hard

• Charles McKay’s apocryphal tale: A sailor mistakes a million-dollar tulip bulb for an onion and eats it (38:33–39:36).
• Price collapse in 1637: Bulbs dropped to 1% of their prior value; possible causes include market panic, a plague outbreak, or finally realizing “these things just grow in the ground” (47:52).
• Aftershocks: “People felt quite foolish when they woke up from their tulip fever dream.” (48:21)

12. Reflections on Bubbles, Culture, and Beauty

• Bowen reflects on flowers as beauty and self-care: He describes a local florist bouquet subscription he cherishes (42:42–43:39).
• On the nature of bubbles and fads:
  Ed: “In some sense, a bubble...is a denial of reality. It’s just ascribing a crazy amount of value onto something.” (49:29)
  Bowen: “I get it. Tulips are beautiful. I wouldn’t pay eight fat pigs for it, but…” (43:13)
• SNAFU lesson: Human nature and status anxiety drive bubbles across eras.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On status fads:
  “Fads are...freeze them in amber now, I think.” — Bowen Yang (24:51)
• On being surrounded by impulse purchases:
  “I'm worried that like, right off camera, there's like towering stuff, like everything that you've bought off of infomercials and Labubus and that one false move and it's gonna collapse and we're gonna have to like, call an ambulance to get you out.” — Ed Helms (00:00 & 26:41)
• On how bubbles feel on the inside:
  “You don't think you're in a bubble. You just think you’re in a financially advantageous situation.” — Ed Helms (31:07)
• Satirical insight on bubble value:
  “Seems fair to me. That’s crazy. That’s nuts.” — Bowen Yang, upon learning a tulip bulb once cost more than a Rembrandt (30:25)
• Ancient bartering absurdity:
  “This is so Oregon Trail...for one...what was it? The viceroy bulb. It's pretty though.” — Bowen Yang (33:43)
• On realizing bubble stupidity:
  “No, you fucking idiots, it’s just a plant. It’s a plant!” — Ed Helms (49:29)

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Important Timestamps

• 03:00–07:00: Introductions, SNAFU & language
• 08:00–10:00: Defining economic bubbles and tulip fever background
• 10:00–14:00: Tulip origin, Dutch history & status context
• 19:00–22:00: The l’Ecluse legend and origins of the craze
• 29:14–31:07: Price escalation; comparing tulips to Rembrandt paintings
• 32:49–33:43: The infamous Viceroy bulb barter
• 38:33–39:36: Sailor eats a million-dollar bulb (apocryphal)
• 47:52–48:21: The bubble pops; aftermath explained
• 49:29–50:06: Metaphor of bubbles as collective denial

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Tone & Style

The episode blends comical asides, genuine befuddlement over economics (“I couldn’t even come up with the word financial”—Bowen), and academic curiosity. Both Ed and Bowen embrace their self-deprecating “non-expert” roles even as they dig deep into the history and social meaning of Tulip Mania, interweaving personal stories, pop culture references, and larger observations about human nature (“We’re basically just toddlers with nukes”).

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Takeaways

• Bubbles are driven by status anxiety and human irrationality—across history.
• Fads and speculative manias aren’t a fluke—they’re a recurring human pattern.
• Whether it’s tulip bulbs, NFTs, Beanie Babies, or TikTok trends, the pull of status, envy, and “FOMO” is timeless.
• Humor and humility in exploring human folly make even complex history accessible and fun.

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Final Note:
A delightful, insightful romp through one of history’s great financial fiascos, this episode packs laughs and learning in equal measure—with Ed Helms and Bowen Yang proving themselves the ideal duo to chronicle humanity’s beautiful, vainglorious mistakes.

Transcript

[Ed Helms]

Bowen. I'm worried that like, right off camera there's like towering stuff like everything that you've bought off of infomercials and like Labubus and that one false move and it's gonna collapse and we're gonna have to like call an ambulance to get you out.

[Bowen Yang]

This is my audition for Hoarders. And this is. That's my gifting closet. Everyone has some structural thing where it's just a bunch of crap and you're like, I'm gonna give. I'm gonna like hand this off to like the next person who comes to, I feel like, should leave with something.

[Ed Helms]

Amen. I wish. I wish I had a gifting closet. If I take one thing from this, it's that I need a gifting closet.

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[Ed Helms]

Welcome to Snafu, your favorite podcast about history's greatest screw ups. Or more precisely, what those spectacular face plants reveal about us, the idiotic humans who just keep making them. I'm your host, Ed Helms, and my guest today is a prolific actor, comedian, writer, and podcast host. You may know him as Fanny in the sensation that is Wicked.

[Bowen Yang]

You may not, or you may not.

[Ed Helms]

Or perhaps you know him as the co host of one of the most popular podcasts that has ever existed, Las Culturistas. Or maybe you've seen him as the adorable Mu Dang on snl, among many other beloved characters. Welcome to Snafu. Bowen Yang.

[Bowen Yang]

Hi, Ed. I'm sorry that I had to. I immediately cut in because I feel like I'm one of the few characters in the Wicked films who is not ever named like my. Like, it's not the Bechdel test. There must be another, like, film sort of rubric where it's like, well, if the character's not named, it's like. If it's like an under five, it's like there's an existential sort of like, lane that that kind of role exists in.

[Ed Helms]

But you had a name in the credits.

[Bowen Yang]

I did.

[Ed Helms]

But you're not actually named in the dialogue of the movie, Is that what you're saying?

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah. Because there's an ongoing debate as to how the name is even pronounced. Oh, we shot it in the UK and it was just Fanny there means pussy. And it just kind of became a whole. People were just giggling, chortling. I'm sorry, it's the uk. They were chortling on set. This is a character that is. That is suffused with unseriousness in every way, which is great. As two comedians, I think we understand this.

[Ed Helms]

I saw and loved the movie Wicked. I didn't know your character's name and had to look it up.

[Bowen Yang]

There you go. So when you say you may know him as Fanny, I had to chortle myself. Have you guys talked about the etymology of the word snafu? I've always been curious. Do you know anything about where this word orig. Yeah.

[Ed Helms]

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

[Bowen Yang]

Okay.

[Ed Helms]

Oh, it's a great word. So It's. In fact, it's not a word at all. It's an acronym. It's. It stands for Situation Normal All Fucked up. It's a military acronym. And it basically just means when like, everything is. Everything's going wrong. Which is, you know, a lot of times in a. In war and the soldiers in. In World War II just started using snafu, and then it's. It's close relative, sibling, I might even say is fubar.

[Bowen Yang]

Fubar. I know, fubar. Yeah, but SNAFU really is really kind of like folds into like, I don't know the English language quite well. Fubar. Fubar is unwieldy and it feels shoehorned in if you try to use it in a sense or it feels very early aughts.

[Ed Helms]

SNAFU has worked into the lexicon. We just say like, ah, what a terrible snafu. And we get it. We all know what that is.

[Bowen Yang]

Are you a video game person?

[Ed Helms]

I'm not. I kind of wish I was, but I don't.

[Bowen Yang]

No, it's okay. There's a video game called Chance of Sennaar, but it's so stylized and super cool and really simple and chic. It's just you going up a tower, not unlike the Tower of Babel, where you are just translating different languages that are made up and fictional to this universe, but you are kind of just like joining together these different languages with different syntaxes and different structures, and it all kind of. I think as a history buff, you would like this as someone who understands fundamentally that language limits our relational capacity for whatever, anything between human beings. It is. I think this is the right game for you.

[Ed Helms]

This is so interesting because as you're describing it, I'm thinking, like, this sounds so cool and interesting and amazing and also not at all what I think of as gaming.

[Bowen Yang]

Right, exactly.

[Ed Helms]

And you're so right, by the way, because how often have you befriended someone for whom English is a second language or tried to befriend someone where you can kind of speak their language and felt like you're not getting your full self across?

[Bowen Yang]

All the time. Basically all of my family, except my parents and my sister are in China. And anytime we're together, especially recently, they're just like, wait, you're like, people think you're funny in America. I'm like, well, not everybody, but I was like, but they're like, but what do you mean? Because I'm not this. I'm not like the gregarious person that I am in Mandarin because they're like, wait, what? And so all the time. But also, there are. There are. But then there. There are so many cases where there's a language barrier and then. Yet you see, still sort of get the essential person.

[Ed Helms]

Of course. Of course. It's so funny to me that your family is like, wait, you're funny? What? It's.

[Bowen Yang]

You know, it's.

[Ed Helms]

We've all been through some version of that.

[Bowen Yang]

Yep, yep, yep.

[Ed Helms]

Hey, let's dive into this nefu. Are you ready?

[Bowen Yang]

I'm so ready.

[Ed Helms]

All right, we have a doozy today. This one is kind of fun and interesting. We're gonna play with bubbles today, but we're not talking about soapy bubbles like you make at a kid's birthday party. We're talking about economic bubbles, and it's more interesting than it sounds.

[Bowen Yang]

Well, do the bubbles trickle down? No, I'm kidding. Keep going. They never do.

[Ed Helms]

Just for listeners who may not be aware, an economic bubble is when a product's price gets way overinflated because everyone's convinced it's like the next big thing, and they keep buying and selling it to make a quick buck and then pop. The bubble inevitably bursts because some people start to catch on that the crazy price is propped up not by the product's inherent value, but just, like, fully by vibes and fomo.

[Bowen Yang]

You've picked the worst person possible to discuss this with. But I'm with you. I'm so with you.

[Ed Helms]

But why?

[Bowen Yang]

Couldn't tell you a thing about just bubbles bubbling.

[Ed Helms]

Like, financial matters.

[Bowen Yang]

Financial anything. I couldn't even come up with the word financial.

[Ed Helms]

I'm the same way. No, really, I'm in the same bo. This is why you're even more perfect than I hoped, because, like, you will bring a very genuine, sort of open and curious mind to this. Because I also. There's parts of the math of this story that I'm like, I'm not even gonna bother with that because it's so confusing to me.

[Bowen Yang]

Okay.

[Ed Helms]

What's fascinating about this one in particular is what the bubble was. We're going back to the 17th century when the Dutch went mad. Like, completely batshit crazy. For tulips. Yes. The flower which you can buy at your local grocery store at one point, cost the same as a house, a single flower. So the story today is what historians call tulip mania.

[Bowen Yang]

Yes.

[Ed Helms]

It's a real thing. Now, are you ready for this?

[Bowen Yang]

I am. But it never went away in the Netherlands. These Flandersians still love their tulips. Keep going. I'm so invested.

[Ed Helms]

Before we dive into 17th century Dutch society. Let's detour for a quick tulip origin story. Tulips are native to Central Asia, so we're talking like modern day Kazakhstan and the surrounding regions where they have been cultivated since the 11th century. The name comes from the Turkish tulbint, meaning turban, a nod to their upward blooming turban, like petals.

[Bowen Yang]

Oh, wow.

[Ed Helms]

Tulips weren't just beautiful either. They carried a lot of serious cultural weight in their native lands. In fact, they were the official symbol of the Ottoman Empire under Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled from 1520 to 1566. In the 1550s, European ambassadors in Constantinople took notice of the flower. And this is when tulips spread to European markets. By the 1590s, they had reached the Netherlands. And now this is right when the Dutch Republic was entering its golden age, a time of crazy booming trade and artistic brilliance. Have you ever been to the Netherlands?

[Bowen Yang]

I've been to the Netherlands. I've somehow ended up in Amsterdam, like several times within, like a couple years. I don't. I can't say that. I know it like the back of my hand. I appreciate the culture of the place a great deal, and I have a theory already about why tulips kind of blew up, but I'll let you keep going.

[Ed Helms]

Is it because everyone does mushrooms in Amsterdam?

[Bowen Yang]

No, I think it's because they're easy to draw, like a child could draw. It's like what a cartoon flower is

[Ed Helms]

essentially so simple and gorgeous. We're broadening out a little bit now just into some more Dutch culture context. It's the golden age for Dutch culture. And you're probably asking, well, how did that come about? And I'm glad you asked Bowen. A lot of it traces back to the Dutch East India company, which in 1602 basically invented. The multinational corporation partnered with the government. It was meant to safeguard trade in the Indian Ocean. If by safeguard you mean like making deals, fighting battles, and committing massive international atrocities on a massive scale, and generally acting like an entire country version of a high school bully. It was such a massive operation that in today's dollars, it would be like trillions. The value of this company was like, in the trillions, which is hard to wrap your head around, which is like,

[Bowen Yang]

there's only one trillion dollar company, right? Right now.

[Ed Helms]

Is it apple?

[Bowen Yang]

I think it's just apple. And wait, so what year did Vermeer paint all of his stuff? I feel like that's, to me, that's the golden Dutch age. In my book.

[Ed Helms]

We're in the same zone. We are.

[Bowen Yang]

Okay then. Great.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah.

[Bowen Yang]

Let's see. Girl with a pearl earring. I feel like, you know what? All of the Netherlands was like, we are cooking. Let's go crazy.

[Ed Helms]

Vermeer is part of that artistic boom that's happening at the same time as this like massive financial and cultural boom. It's like Maslov's hierarchy of needs. Like as the country becomes increasingly wealthy, things like art and even sciences, they really flourish because there's just people have more time and more interest in luxury. So all of this activity, the supercharged economy, contributed to the rise of a new urban business class comprised of merchants and traders who came to dominate high society. While the old rural nobility was getting pushed aside, the wealth gap was still significant. It didn't disappear. But regular workers were definitely doing a lot better. And not quite like buy a yacht vibes, but definitely like maybe splurge on some fancy cheese, say, for example. So enter into this cultural moment. The tulip. Exotic, imported and just different enough to make your neighbor low key jealous. Now, Bowen, do you have a taste for finer things?

[Bowen Yang]

I think the finer things are wasted on me. But I try to, I try to orient myself towards those things. Just short of being really obnoxious and cloying about it.

[Ed Helms]

What's like a really, I mean, you know, it's funny, I don't really splurge on stuff. I splurge on experiences. That's where I tend to spend money. Like things for my family to do that are like exciting or cool.

[Bowen Yang]

Whatever happens here, I hope no lives get lost. But I think what happens here has a great ending. And it was all worthwhile because tulips are beautiful and it's an aesthetic thing, but it's like modern day thing where if like, you know, NFTs or like little dumb pictures of cartoon gorillas in like baseball caps somehow was in like every single garden and park and forest of America. You know what I mean? Like things that like once seemed so valuable that investors poured a lot of money into. If they stick around. I don't know if the bubble bursts. Like the best thing that can happen is if they stick around. And they are at least a lovely thing for people to look at.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah. When a bubble burst, like the thing doesn't disappear. In my snafu book, I did a chapter on the Beanie Baby bubble.

[Bowen Yang]

Yes.

[Ed Helms]

Which was a very sort of famous version of this. The bubble burst and people lost a ton of money. It was very heartbreaking. But Beanie Babies are still around. They're still cute, you can still buy them.

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[Bowen Yang]

Your bill, ladies.

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[Bowen Yang]

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[Ed Helms]

So the Dutch tulip craze begins with a botanist named Charles de L'. Ecluse. At the University of Leiden in the 1590s, he cultivated meticulous tulip gardens and in 1601, published the history of Rare plants in which he obsessed over what are called broken tulips. Now these were the, these were like the real show off tulips. Instead of a single color, they had like these w flame like streaks in them. I think we have a photo here

[Bowen Yang]

of a. I think I'm familiar. Oh, yeah. Yep, yep, yep, yep. They are gorgeous.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah. This is, this is what is called a viceroy bulb. Well, actually, I don't think this is the bulb. This is the.

[Bowen Yang]

This is the whole, this is the whole thing.

[Ed Helms]

This is a sprouted flower. The bulb is what it grows from underground.

[Bowen Yang]

I'm again the wrong person to ask. I am so confused.

[Ed Helms]

I feel very confident. I feel very confident about this.

[Bowen Yang]

I have confidence in you. Yeah.

[Ed Helms]

Thank you. Legend has it Leclus refused to sell his bulbs, which only made them more desirable. That's when thieves broke into his garden and stole offshoot bulbs called offsets. It was these stolen bulbs that then allegedly kick started the tulip craze. It gets better. While visiting a Viennese aristocrat, Leclus supposedly spotted a vase of lovely multicolored tulips, the kind he knew existed only in his own garden. And when he pressed this aristocrat, she denied everything and claimed she had no idea where they came from. Which was like bold as hell and just complete horseshit.

[Bowen Yang]

Right.

[Ed Helms]

And just audacious.

[Bowen Yang]

I would never have the guts. I just don't have it in me. I'm just so non confrontational.

[Ed Helms]

Wait, to steal something to begin with or to ostentatiously display something that you've stolen?

[Bowen Yang]

No, just to do the clues thing of calling someone Out.

[Ed Helms]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bowen Yang]

I'm telling the world, you can come and steal me for all I am worth and I will not do a thing about it.

[Ed Helms]

Just to avoid the awkwardness, just to avoid the distraction. I am there. I just don't want to get into it. Yeah, it's like, because like if I call you out, then there'll be this whole back and forth and like you might get mad and it's like you'll probably feel ashamed and then that'll transform into rage and then we're just in this like terribly weird place.

[Bowen Yang]

Exactly. And can't we all just be friends? Even after you've stolen from me? That's all I want.

[Ed Helms]

So before long, tulips graduated from nice little garden accent to full on status symbol. So actual value no longer mattered. This was simply about prestige, spectacle, and the of course, deeply human tradition of obsessively comparing yourself to your neighbors. It's now 1634. I don't do that, by the way. I don't know if you do.

[Bowen Yang]

Comparing yourself to neighbors specific. Your neighbors specifically.

[Ed Helms]

I mean neighbors in the sense of

[Bowen Yang]

like, of course being liberal about it.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah, like whatever neighbor might mean, right. It's so funny. We operate in a career that is very disconcerting because I'm taking a detour for a second. The world in which we move in this show business world, it's obviously very status driven, but it's also like there are so many metrics that are so literal as to like that. But other people can try to assess your value and rank you. And sometimes it used to be things like what's your most recent box office opening number? Or now IMDb literally has a star meter.

[Bowen Yang]

Bleak. Bleak.

[Ed Helms]

That ranks whatever. The star ness of someone is terrible, but I've always found that so bizarre and mind fucky about the business that we're in. Nice little sidebar. We're gonna cut all that. No, those are the best moments. So it's now 1634 and things are heating up. Speculators pile in, prices go nuts, and suddenly everybody wants the aforementioned broken bulbs. These of course were prized because they could produce even more rare, flashier offspring. The offse bulbs we mentioned before. So owning one was like owning a racehorse. Like if it's a winner, that's great, but if it breeds more winners, congrats. You're basically running like a 17th century tulip startup. What's interesting is that we learned later through science that the reason these flamey these tulips had this kind of like fiery appearance with multiple colors was because of a virus. And their offset bulbs are increasingly weak. And eventually they get to the point where they can't even flower. So they. It's. It's just a sort of delicious irony that they have diminishing returns over time.

[Bowen Yang]

So what happens with inbreeding?

[Ed Helms]

It's exactly right. The. The Habsburg chin or nose.

[Bowen Yang]

It's the nose. It's just the whole face. I think it's the whole thing.

[Ed Helms]

The whole package. The whole Habsburg package. Are there any fads that you've just, like, fully fallen into or for.

[Bowen Yang]

Well, now I feel like. Okay. I feel like in this day, if a fad pops off, there are about a million people behind the scenes or forces, algorithmic or economic or whatever that are, like, ensuring its sustainability or success or whatever. Like, well into infinity, I think. Right. Like, Labubus popped off last summer. And now I feel like every single person across, like, up and down the sort of like, pop mart chain or whatever, is, like, there are teams of people being like, this is our strategy for how to make sure these are ubiquitous forever. We're coming up the movie, we're coming out with the clothes, and we're coming out. It's like there's. Fads are. Fads are people try to, like, freeze them in amber. There are ways and means to freeze them in amber now, I think. And so anyway, that's not answering your question. To answer your question, of course you fell for Labubus. I was in Labubus right off cameras. Yes. There's at least there are two in my kitchen, of all places. Terrible place to keep them. Why? They're furry. They're gonna catch something. Crumbs, you know, on fire. On fire. They are dangerously. True story.

[Ed Helms]

That is a synthetic fur. I don't know what. It's probably nights easy.

[Bowen Yang]

No, mine are. Mine are human hair. I know my every fad. I'm playing this Pokemon game right now that is, like, all over the Internet. I'm looking at Lisa Frank stickers right now. I would call those a fad. There's a great documentary about how.

[Ed Helms]

What is that myth?

[Bowen Yang]

Lisa Frank. You don't know Lisa Frank.

[Ed Helms]

Wait. Do I? What is that?

[Bowen Yang]

These were big in, like, the 90s and aughts. These were on every single, like, space saver binder backpack in the late 90s. Early aughts. Wow.

[Ed Helms]

And you have a fresh pack, like, right there on your desk. I'm scared, Bowen. I'm worried that right off camera, there's towering stuff, like, everything that you've bought off of infomercials and labubus and that one false move and it's gonna collapse. And we're have to call an ambulance to get you out.

[Bowen Yang]

This is my audition for Hoarders. And this is. That's my gifting closet. Everyone has some structural thing where it's just a bunch of crap, and you're like, I'm gonna give. I'm gonna hand this off to the next person who comes to my house and I feel like should leave with something.

[Ed Helms]

Amen. I wish I had a gifting closet. If I take one thing from this, it's that I need a gifting closet. Because there are a lot of times you're walking out the door, you're like, ha.

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[Ed Helms]

I need a bottle of wine.

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah.

[Ed Helms]

So how much were these tulips actually selling for? I don't know if you passed Econ 101 in college. I did not. But I think it's important that we establish some basic facts about the Dutch economy during the golden age before we get into the hard data of tulip mania. So a quick shout out to author and historian Mike Dash, who wrote a fascinating book about the tulip craze called Tulipomania. He actually starts off the book with a bit of a financial primer on Dutch currency from the era. I'm not going to get too deep into the weeds here on Dutch currency of the 1700s. But suffice to say, until the early 19th century, the basic unit of currency there was called a guilder. Now, as for what that's worth today, it's kind of fuzzy. It's hard to compare value of things from so far back. But some estimates say 1 guilder might be equal to about $10. Others go much bigger, suggesting gilder could be worth as much as $60. Any way you slice it, flowers were selling for too much money. So now that we have that little bit of context, these numbers I'm about to spew at you might actually make some sense. So tulip prices, they didn't just rise, they rocketed. According to the Amsterdam Tulip Museum, which is. That's not a bit. That's a real place. And you're going next time you go to Amsterdam. I've never been. I've never been to Amsterdam. I cannot believe I have been all over the world and I've never been to Amsterdam.

[Bowen Yang]

It's a comedy town. There's a beautiful Chicago there. Oh, it's wonderful. You'd love it.

[Ed Helms]

I know. I'm so excited to go. And at this point in my life, it's gonna be a family trip, and I'm fine with that.

[Bowen Yang]

It's a perfect family trip. It's great for everybody.

[Ed Helms]

According to the Amsterdam Tulip Museum, a single bulb sold one day for 46 guilders, then changed hands a month later for 515 guilders. Another bulb ro from 95 to 900 gilders in a similar period of time. Now you're like, gilders what? Okay. What? What? All you have to know is that in both cases, we're talking about a roughly 1,000% increase in price. Some records indicate that the priciest sale was for 10,000 guilders in 1636. Ish. 1637, which translates to well over $600,000 today.

[Bowen Yang]

One bulb, not even the sprouted flower

[Ed Helms]

for a single tulip bulb. Now, this is at a time when that kind of money could buy you an entire house. Of course, you brought up Vermeer earlier. Here's a fun comparison for you. Rembrandt painted his masterpiece the Night watch for about 1600 guilders. Meaning you could have traded one tulip bulb for three Rembrandts.

[Bowen Yang]

Seems fair. Yeah. I mean, seems fair to me. That's crazy. That's nuts.

[Ed Helms]

How do you think people justified this to themselves? I don't know if you. Like, we talked a little bit about sort of falling for fads here and there, but when you're in a real bubble like this, and there are modern examples like crypto and so forth, I think what's fascinating about this kind of situation is that. But if you buy a tulip bulb in the Netherlands in the 1600s, and then suddenly it's worth like 10 times what you bought it for, you don't think you're in a bubble. You just think you're in this financially advantageous situation.

[Bowen Yang]

Of course.

[Ed Helms]

And that, I think, is what is such a trap and why bubbles just keep happening over and over again? Because they're almost impossible to perceive when you're in them.

[Bowen Yang]

When you're in them, it feels like it is always the exception, probably. There's a great book called Status in Culture by this guy named W. David Marx. And he says that what dictates culture, and especially like pre Internet, was markers of status, right? And so, like, in an economy where you're describing, like, in the Netherlands, like, even, like the quote unquote, lower classes, like, had spending power. Like, it just drives up the price of something as, like, what seems as trivial as, like a flower or as like, fragile. Not even trivial, but just like, fragile like this, a bulb like could sprout, it could not. Like you're really. It's kind of a gamble, like, but basically like you can buy that people are buying this up because it is, as you were saying earlier, a status marker where they are trying to then like, it's like buying like, I don't know, whatever. See, I'm so out of touch now, like whatever the cool like pant is or whatever or you know, or let's just say Rolex. It's just like that is a marker of status. I need to emulate this kind of, I don't know, status mobility. And therefore I need to buy this thing and then show to my neighbors that I have it.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Bowen Yang]

But that's it. That explains. I mean it sounds. Yeah, I mean we're talking about it now, like hundreds of years later being like, isn't that so crazy? But you're right. It's like when you're in the bubble, it is imperceptible because you think it is always. You always think that you are the unicorn. It's the self selection bias where you're like, it's different this time. Yeah.

[Ed Helms]

And that it's just going to stay this way. The market's going to stay the way that it is. Okay, so this is one of my favorite examples of the absurdity of these deals that were going down. So according to historian Mike Dash, one of the highest exchanges for one tulip speculator came in a magnificently lopsided load for one viceroy bulb like the one that we saw earlier. The seller received the two loads of wheat, two loads of rye, four fat oxen, and yes, it was specified that the oxen had to be fat. Eight fat pigs, 12 fat sheep, two hogsheads of wine, four barrels of beer, two barrels of butter, 1,000 pounds of cheese, a complete bed, a suit of clothes and a silver beaker.

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah, this is so Oregon Trail. Like barter. Yeah. You had to barter with all your stuff to like get like, I don't know, bread and food or medicine. But like, for, for one. What was it? The viceroy bulb. It's pretty though.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah, it is a pretty flower. That's for sure.

[Bowen Yang]

It's a pretty flower. It's lopsided because it's. Because that was like, that was the value of the. Of the one bulb. Like is that.

[Ed Helms]

That is an actual contract was the exchan those items for one viceroy bulb.

[Bowen Yang]

Holy moly.

[Ed Helms]

And what I love about that list is that, you know, back in the day, like there was so Much bartering of goods, livestock and things like. None of that is very surprising. It sort of sounds like a pretty conventional deal of the 1600s, like you said, Oregon Trail vibes. But where it gets weird for me is when suddenly like they're adding in a bed and then a full suit of clothes and I'm just like, whoever's selling this bulb really needs a fresh start in their life, really needs a bath. Like that's what they're getting. They're getting a ton of butter and a bunch of. And then all these, this livestock, like this is enough to build a life. You get a bed, a suit of

[Bowen Yang]

clothes, or they were taking in, or the person with the bulb was taking in like a street urchin and they were like, oh, we'll need an extra bed and fresh clothes for this, this person we're taking into our lives.

[Ed Helms]

And a thousand pounds of cheese.

[Bowen Yang]

And a thousand pounds of cheese. Well, that's just for personal use. That's just for them to sort of get through.

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[Bowen Yang]

Wasn't that delicious?

[Podcast Producer or Host Assistant]

So good.

[Bowen Yang]

Your bill, ladies.

[Podcast Producer or Host Assistant]

I got it. No, I got it. Seriously. I said I missed it first. Don't be silly. You don't be silly.

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[Podcast Producer or Host Assistant]

Okay. Rock, paper, scissors for it. Rock, paper, scissors.

[Bowen Yang]

Shoot.

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[Ed Helms]

All right, so in 1841, Scottish author Charles McKay wrote a book called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which featured a number of stories about the tulip mania and full disclosure, some of these stories are thought to be apocryphal, but in one of the tales, there's a great story of a seaman who was visiting the house of a wealthy merchant. The merchant offered him a breakfast of fine red herring, and the seaman then spotted what he assumed was an onion lying nearby and thought, oh, perfect, this will really elevate the fancy fish situation. So he picked it up and crumbled it over his yummy fishy meal, and he enjoyed it thoroughly, presumably feeling quite pleased with his culinary instincts. Unfortunately, it was not an onion. As you have probably guessed, it was a tulip bulb. But not just tulip bulb. It was a Semper Augustus Bulb, one of the most prized and expensive varieties in existence. So the seaman had just enjoyed his breakfast with a one million dollar flower.

[Bowen Yang]

Yeah, that's on the guy for leaving the bulb out in the open. I'm not victim blaming, but that's, that's just what it reeks.

[Ed Helms]

You're right. If it's like million dollar bulb, like you put it some put it on a shelf somewhere or something right before

[Bowen Yang]

you're like, oh, let me get the red herring for you. Just make sure, like your personal effects are like tucked away. And like, put that in the safe. What are you doing? Leaving the bulb out.

[Ed Helms]

Come on, hide the bulb. Wouldn't it be funny to just eat a million dollars?

[Bowen Yang]

Totally. But like just pure cash, like. And like what? Like, and yeah, like, what if you

[Ed Helms]

were at somebody's house and they just had like a million dollars sitting out? Like, since these things were status symbols, like, maybe this, maybe the merchant was like, you know, like leaving it out as a sort of like a flex. But if you were at somebody's house and they just left out a big stack of a million dollars and you were just like, I don't know, looks good, I'll eat it. I'll just pour some maple syrup on that and just start eating it. All right. So now, interesting to note, a lot of these deals went down in local Dutch taverns, of all places, which turned them into basically little tulip brokerages. Drinks flowed, prices climbed, and the rights to a sing tulip bulb could change hands 10 times in a day, which is impressive considering no one actually saw the bulbs in most cases. So this is a huge twist. A lot of the time they weren't trading actual bulbs. The tulips themselves were still sitting peacefully in the ground. Often in Haarlem, which is a town west of Amsterdam, which has really ideal conditions for rearing tulips, apparently. So what people were buying and selling were essentially IOUs or future contracts for a flower that hadn't even bloomed yet. So you'd spend a small fortune on something you couldn't see, you couldn't touch, you couldn't even verify other than just like, you know, that this is someone that you knew in your town and that they would be accountable, all in the hope that when it finally bloomed, it would be this absolutely fabulous thing, which just seems kind of batshit. This is sort of like the origin of futures trading, which is a whole other thing I don't quite understand.

[Bowen Yang]

Me neither. That's why I always say flowers up front. I always go into my deal, saying flowers, cash, whatever it has. I'm not, I can't be like speculative about any of this. I can't be too careful.

[Ed Helms]

Every time you go, I've seen you in a flower shop and you were not fucking around, it is. You're just like, no, now I am not. This is not a down payment. I want to be walking out here with flowers and they're like, bowen. That's how it works. We give you the flowers right now. And you're like, no, I insist on. And they're like, yeah, that's what we're doing. We're going to give it to you. Don't worry.

[Bowen Yang]

Exactly. Thank you. Are you a flowers guy, Ed?

[Ed Helms]

I'm sort of like a fan of botany in general, but I don't, I'm not a big gardener.

[Bowen Yang]

I can't ID them. I can't look at a flyer and be like, oh, that's a, you know, ranunculus or whatever. You know, people are really. People are really like that. Best gift anyone's ever gotten me. Speaking of gifts from earlier, local flower shop, like, weekly subscription drop off thing. And this was, this happened like three years ago. And I still, I loved these flowers. So much of this florist in Brooklyn, Outline Florals, that I, I still pay every week to get a weekly flower bouquet that is so delicately curated. It's not like this big, huge bouquet, Nevaeh's. It's a little arrangement that is just at my door every Saturday. And it's the highlight of my week. And I just. This is why now, because as you're telling the story, I'm like, I get it. Tulips are. Tulips are beautiful. I wouldn't pay eight fat pigs for it, but I would pay some money. They're still pretty expensive.

[Ed Helms]

I love this Bowen. This is such a beauty. What you're describing sounds so lovely. Such a, just a, such a nice way to sort of treat yourself to beauty in the world, like on a regular basis. And to be reminded of beauty and to be reminded. It's like a sensory. It's not just visual beauty. They smell beautiful. And someone has put care into this presentation for you and it's in your space now. And that is such a lovely, lovely thing, a bouquet subscription.

[Bowen Yang]

But a lot of the big box florists will do. This is local.

[Ed Helms]

Even better.

[Bowen Yang]

This is local. Yes, yes, yes. I'm not the first person to say this, but they're nature's little fireworks and you can look at them for longer. It's Great.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah, I love that. So in this case, they weren't actually trading flowers a lot of the time. They were just trading these sort of promissory notes, which does get crazy. They were very cynical transactions. Just about sort of making money was all it was about. It wasn't even about the beauty of tulips at a certain point. Justus Lipsius was a Dutch philosopher. He said, quote, what should I call this but a kind of merit madness. They do vaingloriously hunt after strange herbs and flowers which, having gotten, they preserve and cherish more carefully than any mother doth her child.

[Bowen Yang]

Oh, vainglorious. What an underused word. Let's bring that back.

[Ed Helms]

I know, you're right. It's sort of two words mashed together and it means something else.

[Bowen Yang]

Perfect.

[Ed Helms]

A frustrated botanist at Leiden University by the name of Evrard Forstius stated that if he saw a wild tulip, he would, quote, attack it furiously with his stick. I think at this point, people are starting to resent tulips because they're creating such merry madness all around.

[Bowen Yang]

At least it's merry.

[Ed Helms]

What is like a merry madness in this moment? Would you say, like, swifties are like a merry. Like, to me, a merry madness is like, benign. Like it's not, of course you might, in this case, the tulip bubble. Like, people lost money, but it wasn't like, you know, nobody died.

[Bowen Yang]

I think a Mary madness now is like a heated rivalry situation where it's like, oh, how lovely. Like, people love it. It's nice because people love it. It's like, appeals to all sectors somehow. Somehow it's like a four quadrant thing where, like, heterosexual men are watching this, going, wow, this is really touching. And then women of all persuasions are like, this is the most emotion and arousal I felt in my whole life. So I think it really runs the gamut on merriment, I should say. And therefore it is a kind of. But people are a little bit frenzied about it in a way that is a little confounding and confusing and scary and mad. And so I think that is probably the closest current example that I have.

[Ed Helms]

So, like all bubbles, this one finally popped in February of 1637. And this is where myth, in fact, can't exactly agree on what went down. Some say too many speculators tried to sell at once, clogging the market and evaporating demand. Others point to a plague outbreak dampening people's enthusiasm for luxury flower gambling, which, fair, if there's a pandemic, you're not going to be into the nice things for a minute. And then there's a theory, I love this one, that a few buyers actually went out to Haarlem, this town where a lot of the tulips were cultivated, and they saw fields of tulips and they had this devastating realization like, oh, shit, there's a lot of these and they just grow. This is probably not a thing we can't count on scarcity driven pricing for very long here.

[Bowen Yang]

Wow.

[Ed Helms]

But whatever the actual cause, it's reported that bulbs were suddenly trading at 1% of the value from even just six months prior. Allegedly, the Dutch government tried to intervene, offering 10% of the value on bulb contracts to help stabilize the market. But that. That wasn't even enough to save it. Whatever the exact trigger, Tulip mania was officially squashed. And I imagine a lot of people felt quite foolish when they woke up from their tulip fever dream.

[Bowen Yang]

Right?

[Ed Helms]

Yeah.

[Bowen Yang]

What was the full span of tulip mania? 16. It started in what year and then ended 1642, you said, or 32.

[Ed Helms]

So that's a good question. I think the interest in tulips and sort of the rise of tulips as a cultural phenomenon took place through. Through the early, like, you know, Lecluse, who we mentioned earlier, was in the 1590s, so it was sort of starting to become a fad through the early 1600s. And then we're hitting peak tulip mania in the mid-1630s.

[Bowen Yang]

Got it. I think I kind of. I'm willing to believe this Harlem story where they saw the field of tulips because. Because it's just an example of like supply and demand going like the complete opposite direction so quickly that of course the value drops immediately. Right. Where it's like there's so much of these fucking flowers and also nobody wants them anymore. So. And. And that just kind of kills it immediately like that. That kind of screeches it to a halt. Yeah.

[Ed Helms]

It's also a kind of. I like that story too, because it. And it's just so funny how, you know, in some sense a bubble like this, a financial bubble, is a denial of reality. You know, it's a denial. It's a denial of like, it's just ascribing a crazy amount of value onto something. And the reveal that there's these like, sprawling fields with them is such a delicious visual to be like, no, you fucking idiots, it's just a plant. It's a plant. I love that.

[Bowen Yang]

That's amazing.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah. That is the story of tulip Mania. Bowen Yang, I'm so glad I was able to share this with you and reflect on it with you. Do you have any other crazy insights or takeaways from this?

[Bowen Yang]

You are so thorough as you always are. I have to just thank you. I panic said, and when you started talking about economic bubbles, I was like, this is so. This is so wrong for me. I'm gonna be such a letdown. And I think this ended up being a wonderful, insightful conversation. So this just. Thank you for. Thank you for stewarding up.

[Ed Helms]

Amen. And thanks for just for bringing your curiosity to it. I have to say, I love these stories. I love history. I love just the rabbit hole of these specific incidents throughout history. But what I really love about this podcast is just. Just the curiosity and the little sort of side turns and Eddie swirls that we get into with wonderful guests like you and so many of the ideas and bits and whatever that bubble up and reflections. I think we touched on some very meaningful kind of human behavioral ideas throughout this episode as well, and I really appreciate that.

[Bowen Yang]

Ed Helms, you gentleman and scholar. I think you would really like this book. I think you would really like Status and Culture by W. David Morgan. It's very like, these are the terms. This is what happens. It's very cut and dry. But as you're reading everything, you're like, whoa, this is kind of how things are set up kind of without exception, all throughout. I don't know, not human history, but just in terms of how things are sort of positioned as status objects and how that informs the wider culture of, like, the arts and sports and like, all of these different things.

[Ed Helms]

Bo and Yang, thank you so much for being on snafu. This was a goddamn delight.

[Bowen Yang]

Thank you for having me on.

[Ed Helms]

Oh, amen. Yes, indeed. Of course. SNAFU is a production of iHeart podcasts and SNAFU Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Post production and creative support from Good Egg Audio Out. Our executive producers are me, Ed Helms, Mike Falbow, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tori Smith. Our managing producer is Carl Nellis. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Additional story editing from Carl Nellis. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt Gossen and the Collected Works Legal review from Dan Welch, Megan Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Terry Lieberman and Nikki Ator. While I have you, don't forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafu the Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw Ups. It's available now from any book retailer. Just go to snafu-book.com thanks for listening and see you next week.

[Bowen Yang]

Wasn't that delicious?

[Podcast Producer or Host Assistant]

So good.

[Bowen Yang]

Your bill, ladies.

[Podcast Producer or Host Assistant]

I got it. No, I got it. Seriously. I insist.

[Ed Helms]

I insisted first.

[Podcast Producer or Host Assistant]

Oh, don't be silly. You don't be silly.

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[Podcast Producer or Host Assistant]

Okay. Rock, paper, scissors for it. Rock, paper, scissors. Shoot.

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[Podcast Producer or Host Assistant]

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