This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
We begin today with the story of an economic bubble, or to be more precise, a mania.
This mania took place in Amsterdam in the 1630s.
Picture a city of canals, elegant townhouses, and a populace obsessed with one thing.
Tulips.
Morge double of art beste ankoop vanu lew tulpat de kope tulpat.
Amsterdam was the site of a big flowers market.
It still is.
People would trade tulips, and there were some tulips that were especially beautiful, they thought.
And so people wanted those, and the price started going up.
This is economist Robert Schiller.
And when he says prices started going up, what he means is they started going up a lot.
People were getting rich trading in tulips.
One tulip would be the same value as a whole house.
One tulip could hold as much value as a house.
Now, historians say they've only found a few examples of this.
But even more modestly priced tulips could sell for what would today be thousands of dollars.
Tulip to cool.
Tulip to cool.