Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Tulips

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy podcasters Miles Gray ('The Daily Zeitgeist' podcast) and Anna Hossnieh ('Ethnically Ambiguous' podcast) for a look at why tulips are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Hey folks, you're about to hear episode 98 of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, 9-8. I'm running a membership drive from now until episode 100, and I have a bunch of great news to share because several great things are happening all at once. Thanks to you folks supporting the show, and thanks to everybody who has come through and backed the show, backed the drive. First piece of good news is that there are several goals for the membership drive, and we just hit a new one. Thank you so much.

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Tulips. Known for being pretty. Famous for being flowery. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why tulips are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. My guests today are Miles Gray and Ana Hosnier. Two wonderful guests, two returning guests. Miles Gray is co-host of The Daily Zeitgeist with Jack O'Brien, also the NBA podcast Jack and Miles Got Mad Boosties, And Miles also co-hosts the podcast 420 Day Fiance with Sophia

Alexandra. Just an absolutely wonderful person on mic person to talk to. I'm so glad he's here. I am also so glad Ana Hosnier made extra taping time to do this. She co-hosts a show called Ethnically Ambiguous with other friend of the show, Shireen Lani Yunus. And Ana is also a super producer of many podcasts. She's also a frequent guest on the Daily Zeitgeist and Will You Accept This Rose and other shows too. You know, she and Miles have many, many things to be doing. And so I'm really grateful they made extra time

to do this thing about tulips. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Acknowledge Miles and Ana each recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech and Chumash peoples, and acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here.

All of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about tulips. I think it's self-explanatory. I think it's very summer, very blooming, you know, and it's the very first flower that we've ever done on the podcast. Please sit back or get yourself a tulip to celebrate the first flower show. We made it. We're here. It's happening. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Miles Gray and Ana Hosnier.

I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. on a miles it is so good to have you both back on and of course i always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it either we can start but how do you feel about tulips i like them nice i like flowers just oh is this up and thumbs up or thumbs down on tulips like a cisco debert yeah yeah i'm i'm i'm uh i'm two two lips up for tulips uh for sure i like tulips i think they're beautiful flowers i like dutch history i don't know that features heavily with dutch history yeah and also the favorite one of the first exotic joints that I rolled in high school was a tulip joint.

Oh, okay. Or like a rose joint. I know, and I know this might sound completely foreign to you, Alex, but yes, that's a, it was just this thing you would roll on like the end of a magazine subscription card. So it looked like an actual tulip with a stem. I was about to ask you if it's like a shape thing. Okay. Makes sense.

Great. Next time. Next time you're around, man, we's like a shape thing. Okay. Makes sense. Great. Next time. Next time you're around, man, we'll bust a tulip. Nice. Miles, this is a clean show, please. And this is the first flower I've ever done for a topic on the show. There have been like plants with flowers. It turns out potato plants have amazing flowers.

But this is the first gardening episode like what do you mean like if you leave a potato and like let stuff grow out of it no it turns out like you know the potatoes under the ground it turns out there's a bush above the ground and it has like very pretty flowers if you just google potato flowers they're really pretty oh okay yeah whole nother feature makes me want to farm potatoes yeah but tulips yeah beautiful flower. No complaints about them. Very good. Oh, I feel like, yeah, you kind of see these sprouting off an old potato.

That would make sense, yeah. Or I don't know. I mean, I think that shows you how well I keep my store, my vegetables in my house. Oh, wow, they're gorgeous. And with the tulips here, do either of you garden? I do not garden, but I'm curious if you do. No. I like to. Don't need to. You like to?

I don't have like a garden outdoor space, but I have a bunch of plants inside that are slowly taking over my life. Oh, yeah. You have indoor plants. I can't, for the life of me, I remember, like, recently, I got, like, a free herb kit to grow, like, your own peppers and shit. I did not. Absolutely failed catastrophically at trying to do that. So, no, I'm not as, I don't have a green thumb. No.

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, my dad's a big gardener, so I grew up around it. He loves gardening. It's like his favorite hobby. Oh, okay. Yeah. My mom is a big cacti person. Like her front yard is just inundated with like succulents and cacti that she just like

propagates from like her friend's houses. And she's like, you can make more from this one. And I was like, okay. I can't even see the front door anymore. But yeah, you know, there's some plant love in the family. That's nice. Yeah, that we we had a little garden growing up and I really didn't like weeding. And I think that turned me off of plants somewhat.

But that's that's nice if you're into it. That's good. Did you have a lot of a lot of plants in your yard? No, just my my mom would do flowers every spring, like when the burpee catalog came. But then it would be part of our job as little kids to weed, like remove that. The what catalog? It's a company called Burpee. B-U-R-P-E-E.

And they do seeds for stuff. And it sounds like that burpee workout or just burping. Wait, you put me onto a cultural thing I had no idea. You're like, yeah, because when the burpee catalog came, then you know what that means. It's time for the flower bed to go. That was sort of like the flow of your life? Yeah, that was what we had going on. Yeah.

Oh, shit. I think they're still in a business. I don't know. But they would time the one catalog per year with the seasons. Right. It was great. Oh, nice. That's like before online shopping.

It was like, send them a catalog, convince them. Great. Oh, yeah. I mean, East Bay, that was my favorite catalog. And then also I learned a lot about girls' fashion because of the Delia's catalog that all the kids in my school would freak out about whenever that came out. Well, and I think we can get into some stats and numbers about these flowers, about tulips. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week, that's in a segment called,

If you want to listen to CivPod, you got to get with my stats. Make them last forever, cause numbers never end. And that name was submitted by Megan Moraga. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make a massillion-wagging bet as possible. Submit to Zipod on Twitter or Zipod at gmail.com. Thank you, Megan. Great.

All right, Megan. Speaking of catalog times, right? Space Girls. Great. Oh, yeah. That was a... If only we could go? Spice Girls. Great. Oh, yeah. That was a... If only we could go back to those times somehow. Well, and the first number here is 90%.

And 90% is about how many of the world's tulips are grown in the Netherlands today. And National Geographic, they cited that in 2021. This is like the flower industry 90 of it is the netherlands whoa yeah is there another country that has like that is like dominating one flower like that not that i've heard of yeah i would i would like to do this topic more so i find out but it's it's kind of the rare flower in the world where you really, really associate it with one place and especially a small place. The Netherlands is not that big. I don't know.

They feel Dutch. Something about it. Tulip. Feels Dutch. It's a simple, it's a simple flower, you know, like for the simple people. I don't mean that disrespectfully. I mean, I think the Netherlands is a beautiful place. But yeah, I don't know. I honestly don't think of another place being more with one,

like a flower being associated with a place as much as a tulip with Holland. Because anything else, I don't know. What's America? Corn? Yeah, pretty much. Maybe sunflowers? Right. Oh.

Yeah. Well, I guess California poppies? Oh, yeah. Poppies in California. That's our state flower, yeah. But that's like what I always think about, California poppies. But poppies exist outside of California, right? Yeah. Like that's what they wear like in Remembrance Day, like from the fields of Flanders from

World War I, you see like a Remembrance poppy people wear in Europe. So just always keep them on deck. Then you have a flower for all occasions. But you're not supposed to pick them. It's illegal. So, please. Oh, damn it. You will be arrested.

You can't even. Can you buy them at the store? What do you mean you can't pick them? You mean off somebody's yard? Poppies is illegal. I just remember as a child, we would pick them. My mom would be like you're gonna go to jail what oh and that's how i learned it there's like a whole san francisco chronicle out like article kind of debunking this or it's like like it says no it's not illegal to pick a california poppy uh but it says why does everyone think it is

but i thought it is if it's in a state or federal park or whatever oh it says something most bay area residents have been told never to do is not technically illegal so that's like some upstate lore that you've been experiencing there you go because we were sloppy down here we just ripped them out of the ground i would still be careful careful. Yeah. No, that's not true. Definitely. I'm going to think twice next time I see a beautiful field after a super bloom. Because that's the other thing. You see people at the super bloom whenever they have them, like in Antelope Valley.

People are picking those poppies. Yeah. And trampling them. So, yeah, maybe there's not enough respect for them. Yeah, I've been one time and we're pretty sure we saw somebody taking some and we were real mad at him but you know it was just a field nobody was watching yeah exactly and that's but see that's the kind of thinking that that's how we end up where we are nobody's watching and with like special flowers for a place i'm thinking of maybe chrysanthemums like for parts of east asia but even then those grow other places too like yeah they're they're regional flowers but this might be the biggest one and we'll talk about how that

came to be yeah chrysanthemums yeah but also yeah big in like japanese like iconography for sure but then like you can go see them elsewhere it's not limited yeah exactly like yeah look Yeah, exactly. Like, yeah, look, great branding again for the Dutch. 10 out of 10. year as of 2015. And then about half of those bulbs get grown into flowers to be cut flowers. And then both the bulbs and the cut flowers are like sold and exported all over the world. Wow. So they're kind of the tulip supplier to the earth at this point. Wow. Turns out there's a cold chain that's any series of refrigerated containers and facilities that they can just move cut tulips all over the world through. They try to get it from farm to shop within 48 hours.

And then also in the floral industry, apparently each day a flower is being shipped, it loses 15% of its value. It's their rule of thumb. So this is like a massive, carbon footprint operation to like get flowers all over the world so what's the typical so you're saying there's a whole there's all this infrastructure built to keep the flowers looking as fresh as possible as they travel what are is anybody in the u.s even realistically getting a 48 hour cut tulip they could be especially just with if it's put on a cargo plane flown over on the east coast delivered yeah maybe in a big city especially but a lot of floral stores are trying to get flowers locally now instead of doing all that because it's just

a better way to go right yeah plus you can sounds like you can grow them anywhere. Yeah. And also, the next number here is about 4,000. About 4,000 is the approximate number of modern tulip varieties. There are tons of kinds. National Geographic says they come in basically every color except blue. It's very hard to make a blue flower. If you see a tulip that's blue, it's probably more of a purplish, and it's not quite that thing. Wait, you said the only color is blue? No, you can't do blue.

Can't do blue, yeah. I know, I said the only color they can't do is blue. That's the only one. Apparently that's hard with a bunch of flowers. Black tulips they can do, yeah. Yeah. I have a ton of black tulips on Animal Crossing. You do? Yeah, I do, actually.

I actually have blue tulips on Animal Crossing, too, so I think that's a little interesting that we can't even do them. You should sell them on Animal Crossing. Like, yo, who else got blue tulips? I'm not selling them, Miles. They're part of my garden at my home on my island. I need to get into Animal Crossing so I know how the economy works. Because half the time it's like acorns or whatever Tom Nook is selling.

I don't know. Maybe you've got blue tulips. Based on the information I'm learning, diversify. They're quite coveted and I had to grow them. Okay. Dang. Wait, but how do you make a black tulip? That's so, this is all.

It's a process. And if you water the black tulip enough, it turns gold. Okay. Can we talk about Animal Crossing actually? It's actually way more exciting. The flower politics of Animal Crossing. I'm like, okay, tell me this, Alex. With your regular ass tulips, can you water a black one and it turns gold?

No, not even. Advantage Animal Crossing. Yeah. And you also said you can't get blue tulips in you water a black one and it turns gold no not even advantage animal crossing yeah and you also said you can't get blue tulips in the real world no advantage animal crossing okay so i feel like we should shift a little bit over here to tom nook's part of the world right like and who's the president in the real world? Not Tom Nook? That's what I thought. Okay, Advantage Animal Crossing. Well, Tom Nook is... I wouldn't say he's the most progressive figure. Oh, no.

He's definitely a scammer. I did Google blue tulips. And you're right, they do all just kind of have a purple edge. There's no good, like... You don't see a baby blue tulip, really. What? Wait, why is it so hard? Alex, why is it so hard?

Yeah, it turns out the general answer is that it's hard to make like any blue flowers or at least varieties of flowers that aren't usually blue. Apparently, there are growers who've been trying to generate blue roses for many years. They just can't make it happen. They can get to purple. Wow. been trying to generate blue roses for many years they just can't make it happen they can get to purple wow and so then people you know see all these varieties of all these different flowers and want a blue one and then they can't get it so then they're just frustrated wow oh i mean i guess that kind of makes because like wasn't like indigo like one of the most coveted dyes like early on yeah so blue is just one of those things that it's like, it's like rare,

even though I feel like it's the most common, like between our ideas of the sky or water, um, actually doesn't occur that much in that in nature. Um, and I'm sorry to bring it up again, but I do have blue roses on animal cross. Oh my God.

Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Well, hold on. What happens when you water those? Do they change or? No, they just stay beautiful. Oh my God. Okay. Sorry, sorry. Wait, hold on. What happens when you water those? Do they change? No, they just stay beautiful.

That's fine. The black ones are the only ones that turn gold. Because from what I just heard, Alex, you cannot get blue roses on Earth. Cannot. And then Anna, you just said you can get them from you for the low, low on Animal Crossing. I'm not. Well, we'll talk later okay anyway advantage animal crossing hit again that's next time we do this topic is turnips we make some real money right then we get some

then then we're in yeah turn up nfts with tom nook turnip nfts with tom nook yeah and and tulips too like they're almost cartoon flowers in my head they're just such typical flowers and they're such a bright color and it just feels like it makes sense yeah so then people will get upset when they just can't be blue in real life and i'm gonna link a piece from the toronto star This is somebody's story of attending a flower show in Philadelphia. But they said that they attended a flower show in Philadelphia. They saw a bunch of blue tulips there. And then they like basically bugged every Dutch guy who was running it because it was Dutch people running it. They were like, why are they blue? How are they blue? how did you do it and one of them admitted that they had dyed the tulips blue because the organizers of this philly event wanted a set of tulips in american flag colors and so under pressure from them to do u.s patriotism stuff they faked some blue tulips at a show that that feels very appropriate. Wow. I need my red, white, and blue tulips. Wow, just dying.

That's, again, you know, I don't think in Animal Crossing you don't die them, correct? No. They occur. Okay. You just have to plant certain flowers next to each other and water them a lot to get their, like, color offspring. Got it. So, I mean, alex i feel like they should have just done this i think that's what they try to do but they can't oh right right right there's limits to this i guess what do you do it's like that old celery experiment that you

do like when you're in elementary school where you put the celery in the food dye to see it's like vascular system like pull the food dye up like is that what they're i wonder if that's what they're doing like they or i don't know like i know you can shock other plants with like cold uh temperatures to get them to change colors but yeah i got a lot of questions yeah i almost i feel like those people who asked for fake blue tulips they were missing the just interesting process of gardeners gradually crossbreeding plants over time and making them colors that way like that's really cool but they were like no fake one fast for me real quick yeah i don't appreciate the red or white tulips we've generated over time either please blue only blue for uncle sam the last number is may 2017 and may 2017 is the time when a moose snuck into a

canadian botanical garden and ate their red and white patriotic tulip display so this is kind of a canadian version uh there was in july of 2017 they celebrated the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation. That's Canada Day, July 1st. And so previous October, workers at a botanical garden in Newfoundland planted some red tulip bulbs and white tulip bulbs to get a patriotic thing. And then a few weeks before that, a moose came in and ate all of them. So no display. I mean, how can you protect against a hungry moose came in and ate all of them so no display i mean how can you protect against a hungry moose honestly yeah i just it doesn't know they should have put i mean honestly that's

on that's on them for not giving the the protecting their bulbs um protecting their their sense of patriotism i guess it's a terrible terrible thing to think of like all the time they put in like october like yo a moose just ate all the tulips uh yeah well that's the way of life you know yeah it's got it look you can never you can never predict the future honestly so i guess we just live for for the moments that they were there until that moose came along. Yeah, it is like we forget that these common garden flowers are like plants and that the rest of the ecosystem can just come eat them sometime. And yeah, and these guys, Alice Obscura says these guys came to work. They saw several ransacked flower beds with bulbs yanked up and leaves chewed to the ground.

several ransacked flower beds with bulbs yanked up and leaves chewed to the ground and in a facebook post the staff said they were upset but also said quote how bloomin canadian is that end quote how bloomin canadian is that i think they're trying to do like a flower yeah with bloomin and then also like oh look how canadian a moose destroyed it we're canadian just getting way into it you know we're canadian this is part of me though even when i was like blooming canadian is that i'm like from my toxic american perception like what are you like a human and that like made you that tickled your fancy rather than getting like so aggro you didn't go on a moose hunt right after to you know restore the honor of your flower bed that was like my first thought oh right it is pretty canadian though i

mean the fact that they handled it with a good attitude you don't see that much these days yeah not here but canada good job yeah oh that moose would have been hung up to dry. Oh, yeah. It would have been like Moose Burger Day in that town. Like if it was in America, they're like, and we ate the moose to show it a lesson to teach the other future moose. What happens when you mess around near Canada Day with our custom bulbs? It's like it's like the transitive property or whatever. Like the flowers got eaten by the moose and then the moose got eaten by us. So now we have the flowers back inside of us. We won.

And we will use it. We will fertilize these flower beds once more to fully complete the cycle. Now that's blooming efficient. And there's two main takeaways here for the main episode. Let's get into them with takeaway number one tulips are a central asian flower that's been propagated worldwide oh so that's where they stem from sorry i'm crazy i'm crazy no but seriously, that's where they're from?

Seriously, so they stole that from Asia? Yeah, that's really good. Wow, Holland, really? Okay, Netherlands, really keeping with the theme here. We take things from other places. They're ours now. And actually, this has been ours. Now we make 90% of them.

Huh. Yeah, I find it amazing that we're correct about the modern situation where tulips are super Dutch, but that's only been a phenomenon for the past 400 years, 500 years. Before that, this was a characteristically Central Asian and West Asian flower from the mountains up there. And what happened? Was it some through empire exploration? How do they go from Asia into to Holland? Like, do we know who brought the tulips to the Netherlands? Yeah, it's like it's a progression of a few groups of people. Yeah. And and key sources here.

There's a book simply called Tulip. It's by writer and lecturer Celia Fisher. Also, Peace for National Geographic by Mohamed Mohaysan, Peace for JSTOR Daily by Matthew Wills, and Peace for Smithsonian Magazine by Lorraine Beausenoir. But the starting point of Tulips is mountainous regions of Central Asia, in particular a range called the Tian Shan Mountains, which is mostly modern-day Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and then the Pamir Alai Mountains, which is mostly modern day Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and then the Pamir Alai Mountains, which is mostly modern day Tajikistan.

Tulips, they grow well in many climates and regions of the world, but they started out as like wild mountain flowers up in the mountains of Asia. Okay. So was, I'm assuming some explorer colonizer person went out and was like this cute and then brought it back to their leaders and they were like go bring back more colonize the flower it's like it's a little more positive i guess i'd call it like it was much more of a thing where people in that region loved tulips and brought them places especially turkey and especially india and then mostly through like trade and imperialism comes into play too but it was more of a like everyone

got enthusiastic about tulips and brought them from place to place to place so yeah it was about the it was about the the real art first before the prophets they just loved the flowers first before it got muddied by wait hold on a second start making money off of these yeah yeah like the cash really gets going after a while but uh we'll have pictures linked for people and also i dropped them in the chat just now there's tons as i said in the numbers there's thousands of varieties of tulips and we still have some of the wild mountain kinds and there's pictures of them in my resources those look actually kind of cooler than like the very i feel like super symmetrical pleasant like idea that i have of a tulip these wild ones i i actually this i like these now i think these are like the original concept of the tulip before they became like commercialized and like beautified

and and in eurofied yeah yeah i'm always we're always going to take it back to that yeah we're looking at a picture of it's called Tulipa ferganica, and then another one called Tulipa sogdiana that are up in mountains and kind of arid places. And yeah, they're sort of multicolored. It's a different petal pattern and shape than I'm used to. I agree, it feels less mechanized down to a one color little geometric thing. Yeah, because like you were saying, the idea idea of like even our concept of a tulip, I feel like it's one of the easiest flowers to draw, you know? It's like, yeah, it's this cup shape.

Great, and that's a tulip. Like, whereas other ones you're like, I don't have the skill or dexterity to draw that. Whereas these feel very, I don't know, they got a little edge to them, the natural ones in the wild. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And then if people want to see

a contrast there to also have there's a type called tulipa gesneriana that's nicknamed the garden tulip because it's what we're used to and it's it's a it's a really surprising difference seeing the two i know that's all visual but right the point is like these wild tulips have been crossbred and hybridized in a bunch of ways to become the flower we have now and you can still see the old ones right so i do like a tiger or a house cat yeah they both have their value you know and there's also i think a lot of people know that tulips sprout from bulbs like there's a bulb under the ground and then a tulip comes up. And part of the reason is that these tulips are from mountain ranges and especially dry mountain ranges in Central Asia. Apparently, when the harsh summer drought comes along, the flower part of a tulip will

die off. But then the bulb just stays under the ground, dormant, and then grows another flower when there's moisture again. So that's part of why tulips have bulbs in the first place, is they come from a dry, mountainous region. I don't know anything about flowers. Most of our flowers are not bulb-based, I'm guessing? Yeah, tulips are pretty much an annual plant because there's a bulb under the ground year round and then it will form a new bulb and also form a flower. And that's kind of

the life cycle of it. But a lot of other flowers, you just plant a seed and tulips can also be spread through seeds. Right, right, right. Got it. But then the living organism that they transport will be the bulb to be like, OK, you can you can invest in this now because it will give you flowers later. Yeah. Yeah. They come like packaged in a little bulb that's super easy to transport and plant somewhere else. Yeah. So that's part of them spreading easily without like just wars or something causing it is that people can just pick up a bulb and trade it like anything else. Right. Not just wars. There we go.

That's a fun phrase. Not just wars. That's cool. How easy you can just move it. Yeah. Like just people would get sacks of bulbs and throw them on a ship and then bring the sack somewhere else, you know? Right.

It's very easy to transport and do stuff with. Bulb on. and then bring the sack somewhere else. It's very easy to transport and do stuff with. Ball balling. And then there's also an amazing thing where we are still discovering new species of wild tulips. Celia Fisher in her book says that botanists discovered a variety they named Tulipa cinnabarina in the year 2000, and it was in the Taurus Mountains in southern Turkey. Then other botanists found a new species in Albania

in the year 2010. There are just so many kinds and most of them are up in high places, the wild ones. So it's, there's like new tulip news in the world. Right. Oh, that's pretty cool. Isn't that like, I feel like that's like a scene in a movie, but I don't know. I just feel like, yeah, that, that like some inescapable chase to go to like the highest elevations to see if you can find like a new kind of tulip uh but man i mean that's where you gotta go yeah if you want the new new you gotta go and risk your life for it based on what i'm hearing i can catch blue tulips on animal crossing so you might not have to go to deadly elevations to see things you have not seen in nature before but i get it to each their

own you know to each their own see you on animal crossing yeah get these bulbs now here's my here's my uh switch id Hit me up. Or it's like, man, I can't find my Switch ID. I'm just going to climb a mountain. Forget it. That's easier. Seems chiller. The person that found it is like,

oh, I would have just gone on Animal Crossing, but I couldn't find a USB-C charger, so it's dead. And I got to go up this, I got to go to the Azores or something and go somewhere new to try and find these bulbs see that's not in asia so i guess he wouldn't find him there well and uh and yeah and then these tulips like people in central asia just got excited about them and spread them and apparently there are records of tulip cultivation in Istanbul as early as the year 1055. And that was back when it was called Constantinople. But the Ottoman Empire

becomes one place that really spreads tulips. Their leader, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II was a big fan. He had 12 royal gardens staffed by 920 people. And tulips were one of the main things they grew. And then when he conquered Constantinople, made it Istanbul, he ramped up tulips there. And then his successor, Suleyman, commissioned a lot of tulip art across the empire, also had tulips embroidered on his robes and his battle armor. Right. There was a tulip festival out there. Oh, in Turkey? In Istanbul? Istanbul, yeah.

Or somewhere in Turkey. Maybe it's not directly Istanbul. But no, actually, I think it is Istanbul. Because it wouldn't be Ankara. I think it is, yeah. Yeah, I think they have a tulip festival. But also, they have beautiful flowers around the mosques and stuff. Oh, cool. Like planted flowers or art of flowers yeah like they have like really great like just gardens like beautiful gardens

around the mosques and stuff that you can walk through oh that sounds great i've never been there yeah i mean it's funny like when you think like oh everything was spread through like constantinople and it's like it makes sense because like everything had to go through constantinople everything had to go through there basically so that's why there's that song which one yeah the constantinople i don't know i can't remember exactly how it goes but remember that's yeah that that might be giant song like istanbul was constantinople that thing yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, I feel like that was a song I heard other kids sing, but they might be Giants' song? I don't know about that, but I guess so. I didn't know.

Always making hits for the kids. That totally makes sense that there are tulip festivals out there. And really until the 1600s or so, the Dutch are not the main tulip place. It's modern Turkey and countries near there. Because their ruler, Sultan Ahmet III, held so many tulip festivals and built so many tulip gardens. Until he was deposed in a revolution, his administration was famous for like 12 years of tulips all the time. Whoa, okay. Big tulip place.

Yeah. I'm just like, when he was overthrown, did they allow the tulips to remain or was this a tulip based coup? I think they, they were like, they're nice, but that's enough, you know? Right. Like we have some problems that we need to solve within the land. It's like, yeah, but these tulips are so nice. Let's just think of some, some more ways to incorporate tulips around the place. Yeah. And then another big spreader of these was the Mughal Empire, which was in the northern part of what's now India.

And in the 1500s, that dynasty was founded by a lord in Afghanistan named Babur. And he decreed that any cities he conquered should build gardens and specifically plant tulips in them. And then his great grandson Jahangir ramped up tulip planting. And he also wrote poetic stuff about the cities of their empire being, quote, lighted by the torches of tulips end quote oh so that's a whole nother empire like coming down from central asia saying you got to see these flowers like these are amazing what is going i mean i guess this makes sense like what was the what was the flower game like at that point like people only had like daisies and stuff like so you're truly like oh my god this thing is purple like that i guess it was a low bar at the moment but i get it they're beautiful but i guess that means

everything else was not even coming close to the beauty of a tulip i think the idea is you'd walk up and be like oh my god what is that oh it's a flower gorgeous like oh thank god, what is that? Oh, it's a flower. Gorgeous. He's like, oh, thank god. You don't know it's a flower. He's like, oh my god, what is that? It's a flower? OK. You think there's sorcery around. You know, you think, what sorcerer brought this piece of colored plant matter to our home?

That's why everyone was very dramatic back then, you know? Right. Like, it's a tulip for you. All right. That's what you see. I see an opening, a portal, perhaps, to another world. Wait, what? Yeah.

Exactly. Okay, you've never seen a green tulip? Come on now, you're brand new. exactly okay you never seen a green tulip come on now you're brand new yeah before people had tv they had to invent their own drama yeah like ah yeah yeah oh yeah that's like my mom she she invents her own drum like she sees a she'll see a possum and she projects a whole life story onto the things like and i love that possum because of the things that went through and i'm like you have no way of verifying this and this is kind of freaking me out because you're saying stuff about my life and saying this happened to this possum but the possum's father came to school

during track the track and uh buster rhymes was playing it you're like what hold on you're telling the story about when my dad told me he was splitting up with you well that possum had a tough life and and we really need to care for it. It should live in your old room. This possum was half squirrel, and it was a very contentious time for mixed species rodents and marsupials. And I was like, wait, hold on. What you're even talking about is not possible, Mom. and marsupials and i was like wait hold on that's not even what you're even talking about is not possible mom uh i'm just saying i'm just saying i believe that's what this possum has been going

through hey miles the lakers are on do you and the possum want to watch no he's not automatically into my teams i don't get it brother the possum would like to come to your wedding What? Mom What do you mean there's no I really noticed that you didn't ask what your brother Wanted to eat for the meal Okay garbage Or cat food Well he's vegetarian

And if you even took a second to know him better, you wouldn't have made such a terrible faux pas. But yeah, I think people really were thrilled with these things. It's like good entertainment does not exist yet. Oh, flowers. That's entertainment. Right. And, uh, and then from here, like the other, other empire to spread these tulips is the Dutch, uh, through imperialism and also trade and everything in between. And according to JSTOR daily, the Dutch initially viewed tulips as a very Turkish flower, like before they took it on and co-opted it.

Turkish flower, like before they took it on and co-opted it. And also the English name tulip comes from what the Dutch changed the name to. The Latin genus name tulipa comes from the Turkish word tulben, which apparently is a word for a turban. And then that's a separate word from the Turkish word for what a tulip is, but Europeans named the tulips after the shape of a turban of the Turkish people bringing them these flowers. Oh. And you said the original name was

Dua Lipa? I heard that too. I heard Dua Lipa too. Say hold on. Is she ripping off even her name for a flower wasn't enough with that one song wow okay so dualipa but yeah wait what was it but what was the word the original word that meant turban tulipa celia fish's book says the turkish word tulban t-u-L-B-A-N, which might be pronounced differently. I apologize

if I got it wrong. They turned that into tulipa in Latin. And then it was tulp in Dutch and tulip in English. And every time I say tulipa, I think about Dua Lipa. It's really sticky. She's got a big branding opportunity here. Is she into tulips? I'm very curious. Where's Dua Lipa from? Oh, she's English. Yeah, if she wanted to sell, like, Dua Lipa seeds or bulbs or something, that would probably go pretty good.

Oh, yeah. Dua Lipa's tulipas? Come on. I mean, like, she's on the top of the charts right now, so maybe it'll be a while till we see her pivot to tulip bulbs. But to do leapers. Yeah. To do leapers. She lobbies heavy to be like, these are no longer called tulips.

They're do lips. Well, and and yeah, and then today the tulip is like world famous as a Dutch flower. And there are major tulip gardens and festivals everywhere from Canada to Michigan to the province of Victoria, Australia. But yeah, again, that's recent. Until about 500 years ago, tulips originated in Central Asia. And then JSTOR Daily has a bunch of quotes from Europeans who called tulips strange and called them foreign when they first arrived in the netherlands even though now we we just think of it as the flower there wow this is yeah i mean it's interesting because now i'm like remembering more things right like even in japanese culture like hanami like like when the cherry blossoms bloom is like

a thing you do it's just to be like and we're going to look at the flowers bloom and you're right that as the more i think about like yeah that actually was tv because because we were in nature more rather than looking at screens and then like thinking of all the people how wowed they were by tulips like kind of makes sense for why like that whole tulip mania nonsense went down in the netherlands yeah that's part of it yeah they're basically like oh these are like nfts like you seen these things you're like hold on hold on you're speculatively buying a lot of this stuff and it's unsustainable but i get it was the new cool thing next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway before that

we're going to take a little break we'll be right back i'm jesse thorne i just don't want to leave a mess this week on bullseye dan akroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. and NPR. for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson,

John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday

on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And that leads perfectly into the other main takeaway for the episode, because here we go into takeaway number two. There was a real Dutch tulip craze. And after the fact, some people have exaggerated it for their own purposes. Interesting.

Which I was also surprised to learn. When I was looking at tulips as a topic, the Dutch were the first thing I thought of. And it's a real phenomenon that happens. But also, there have been claims about it by other people for their own purposes. So it's sort of a myth, too. Wait, what do you what claiming what about about like what happened with the like tulip bubble that popped into the home yeah mainly mainly the scale of it like there are some people who recorded it as like completely sinking the entire dutch economy and it was it was mostly just a problem for the group of some richer people who got in on it in the first place dude this is crypto that is also a thing that

comes up often and and like when i hear about this stuff like there was a parody twitter account of a guy pretending to be like a dutch trader of eft tulips you know like or nft tulips like what is happening the tweet was i'll link it the tweet is i've been hacked all my tulips worthless dutch east india company please help me which is a funny joke but it's it's you know it's uh mocking this thing that uh people tie it to i am shocked by any of by all of this what what is happening they were so into the bulbs people were just buying them for the most ridiculous prices and it was just driving the cost of tulips so there was a tulip bubble yes that crashed yeah yes it's like one of the i feel like isn't it like one of the earliest

bubbles we talk about or like we can even conceptualize like from our modern idea of economies? Yeah, let's lay out the story of it. Because, yeah, also it's not known by everybody. And it's a lot of the same source of the first takeaway. Also stuff from Lapham's Quarterly and the Paris Review. You had this progression where tulips start to arrive in Europe in the 1500s. Apparently the first recorded shipment of tulip bulbs to Europe is 1562, when a boat with a lot of fabric also threw in a bag of tulip bulbs as an extra thing. And so that was 1562. And then

within 100 years, there is an entire economic bubble around the price of tulip bulbs. And then also it crashes. And this all happens in the Netherlands, like this new rich country in Western Europe. And if people remember the episode about the color orange, we talked about the Netherlands kind of starting at the same time in the mid-1500s. They revolted from Spain. They tried to become their own country. And their goal to stay independent was to do as much trade and build as much wealth as possible in order to be rich enough to fight off anybody who tried to take them over again. And that mostly worked.

And that mostly worked by the mid 1600s. According to University of Kansas business professor Mark Hershey, the Dutch had one of the highest standards of living in the world. Very, very rich country, partly by doing imperialism to places. Yeah, I was going to say they're pretty active abroad. Yeah. Wasn't all great money, but they had it and there is a thing that is true with this story where people who had a bunch of disposable income in the netherlands start buying and bidding up special tulip bulbs and in particular tulip bulbs it it sounds very nft but they wanted tulip bulbs that would have like a multi-olored stripes pattern on the petals

which comes from a specific virus that the bulbs can catch and then they'll end up what's called striated and i'll have a picture linked for people i just put one in the chat too but there was a variety called semper augustus oh that's beautiful is now extinct but was like the primary top tulip that the dutch were after oh like in that bubble this was like the the hot item this was the ps5 of tulips back then yeah or like or those board apes or whatever this was the the top top top one you could get yeah yeah oh wow okay and i guess it was there was also like a little bit of entertainment and you're buying a bulb and you don't know exactly what striping you're gonna get and so you're like it's like the lottery like maybe i got a great one maybe i got one that's just plain and i'll

be upset it was gambling too right and then there was also like just like the same just like anything the the positive feedback loops that begin with people like oh yeah that is worth that i'll pay that and then it's like and it's just like what are you doing folks yeah like the amount of money being spent it's like absurd for for people like given the cost of like other items at the time like they were really they thought they were dealing with gold big time yeah yeah they they're records of one of these semper augustus bulbs selling for 13 000 dutch florins which was enough money to buy a nice house in amsterdam jeez louise one tulip bulb and there's there's another record of one selling for what's recorded as the as six times the price of a ship so you could buy

six boats or you could buy this one bulb somebody did that okay uh that's something that really is again like this kid sold a jpeg for the for what if some person would sell on a house like it yeah i just whenever i see that comparison i'm like gosh we i love how history just comes in this the same same flavor just in different shapes yeah yeah there's even uh in 2013 there was a banker in the modern netherlands he was the former president of the dutch central bank and in 2013 he publicly criticized bitcoin and he said like bitcoin's a bubble don't get into it and he specifically called it worse than the tulip craze because quote at least then you got a tulip at the end end quote like yeah like there is a flower at the end of this thing. Right. It's like, oh, I bought one of those illiquid bulbs.

There is no commodity behind it. Oh, no. Yeah. Are tulips now, like, are they expensive? Do they still have their value now or have they completely plummeted? I mean, not to say that there's like a like they're the most expensive flower, but like, well, how do they even rank now? They rank pretty normally. And yeah, there's kind of the nice news is that like so there was this crash in 1637. Tulip bulbs are no longer worth all this. But instead, now the Dutch economy, they make a lot of money on just like massive farming of tulips, which there actually is value in.

money on just like massive farming of tulips which there actually is value in like they're just doing a scale of billions of bulbs and selling it for like an actual price that makes sense right they found their actual good thing yeah their real value they had a correction the market had a correction yeah and yeah and that that crash february 1637 people who had invested in tulip bulbs could no longer sell them for thousands of florins. And then the tricky part with this story, for understanding it and knowing the parts of it, is that some people have exaggerated it. And one of them was a Scottish journalist named Charles McKay, who made a bunch of money writing and selling a book all about the tulip craze. But he did that in 1841, which is more than 200 years after the crash. And apparently most of his sourcing is not solid. And some of the

stories are made up. So that's one source of like myths about, again, this real thing, but it's been exaggerated. So. Right, right, right. So it's about in the middle, just more like, again, not that it devastated everyone, but the people who maybe got a little too into the tulip scene that's right yeah like even the comparison of crypto or nfts is interesting because that could end up being bigger scale or smaller scale like we don't really know but if that stuff ever like tanks the whole economy if that's bigger like this this was just some people who did some dumb investing and then the dutch kept being a country and everything and uh there's also another source of fake stories about it is zealous religious people of the time

smithsonian says there were dutch calvinists of the 1630s who just thought all like trying to earn money was a sin. Like it just wealth in general was sinful and vice. And so they put out pamphlets with made up stories about the tulip bubble saying that like a sailor ate a valuable one and got thrown in prison for it. And just a bunch of made up extra stories about this bad thing. Propaganda. Yeah. But it was for like puritanical Christian conservatism reasons.

I see. Jesus. And then this one ate a tulip and then worship the devil for the rest of his life. You don't want to get mixed up in that. Yeah. Yeah. And then some historians just saw these,

like, I don't know, like chick tracts or something about the tulip bubble and were like oh yeah someone from the time wrote that down it must be true and then it just gets into the books you know good luck for the well whatever whatever they can find in the ashen remains of our society uh you can imagine things they'll assume to be true based on what was just said at the time. All of that is bat s***. I don't even understand what... You know what? I just, I cannot engage with these people's nonsense.

It's a gosh darn tulip. Well, I mean, but it's like at the time right it's all perspective like yeah i mean i can't even think i i thought i thought 3d tv was the coolest a couple years ago but you weren't like and or your parents weren't like miles is watching 3d tv that's a gateway drug well then they were i think my mom smashed it with a bat she's like your possum brother told me is rotting your brain trying to save you he's trying to help you um so we don't really talk about them i don't really know how 3d tv, but I imagined you both with the little glasses like a movie. But his are a lot smaller, you know?

He has to hold his with his little possum hands. It's actually a really cute picture. Me and my brother watching 3D TV. His are like those little Gen Z frames. They're trendy. Cool. Wow, your Gen Z possum bro is cool as... Z-frames. Just super thin. They're trendy. Cool. Wow. Where did you find those?

Your Gen Z possum bro is cool as hell, dude. I'm cool, too. He's wearing baggy jeans. Check these glasses out. Check mine out. These are sick, too. You're just trying too hard, to be honest. Your possum brother does it so effortlessly.

Oh, my God. Are those the new Salahi Bemby crocs your possum brother's wearing dude i saw your possum bros tiktok he's really popping off on there he's a way better dancer than you shut up did you see my post i can do the slide just look at it i don't have that tail. It's harder for me. It's harder for me. Okay. He's balancing.

It's not fair. You can't expect a human to dance like a marsupial. Just absurd notion. Anyway, but tulips, yeah, absurd. Also. absurd also. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Miles Gray and Ana Hostier for opening up about Miles's sibling situation. Now we know. Very interesting.

Anyway, I said that's the main episode, because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is Dutch tulip bulb cuisines. Find out how people eat them. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show for a library of more than eight dozen other bonus shows and to back this entire podcast operation.

And thank you for exploring tulips with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, tulips are a Central Asian flower that's been propagated worldwide. Takeaway number two, there was a Dutch tulip craze, and the story is a little bit overblown. Plus, tons more information on how tulips grow, how cut tulips get sold globally, which countries lost their tulip display to a moose, and more. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Miles Gray and Ana Hostier are both amazing podcasters.

Miles is co-host of The Daily Zeitgeist with Jack O'Brien. Also, Ana is frequently on that show and is a super producer of that show. Miles also co-hosts Jack and Miles Got Mad Boosties. And I hope that is enriching your NBA Finals experience. And then Miles is co-host of 420 Day Fiance with Sofia Alexandra. I hope that name makes sense to you. It's 90 Day Fiance plus an enthusiasm for marijuana. Right? You can put this together. You know what 420 means. Great. And then Ana Hosnier is co-host of Ethnically Ambiguous, along with friend of the show Shireen Lani Yunus.

She's also a frequent guest on shows like Will You Accept This Rose? And I'm just so glad they both showed up to this. Many, many shows that they do are linked in the episode links. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A book simply titled Tulip that's written by writer and lecturer Celia Fisher. Also used an amazing piece for Smithsonian Magazine by Lorraine Beausenoir about the tulip fever. And then tons more material from the BBC, National Geographic, JSTOR Daily,

the Paris Review. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show, and thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Thank you.