CLASSIC: Were Tulips Really The Bitcoin of th...

Today, everyone knows the potential dangers of both illegal and legal drugs. Some are more popular and more widely-accepted than others (shoutout to coffee!), but across time and cultures, it's an open secret that pretty much every civilization was doing one drug or another. Some ...  Show more

Queen Marie Antoinette's reputation was already tarnished by gossip in 1784, but was completely ruined by the implication that she defrauded the crown jewelers, conning them out of a dazzling, expensive diamond necklace. That's the short summary -- but the story itself is a start ...  Show more

The world experienced its first economic bubble when the Dutch went bonkers for tulips in the 1630s.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

Cautionary Tales returns with a new episode on May 2nd. Both of the world’s greatest economists, Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes, thought they could see into the future and make a killing on the stock market - and then both were wiped out by the Wall Street Crash. One died ...  Show more

This week’s picks from our YouTube channel feature a look at the housing bubbles that are looking increasingly shaky in a number of countries and a little tale of what happened when Instagram fact-checked a meme I posted about CBDCs. A home of one’s own is a big deal for many peo ...  Show more

Steve and Phil have described the island of Coinucopia in previous editions of the podcast. It started as a place where only coins were legal tender, and the supply of coins didn’t increase. They explained how that created deflation and inhibited growth, so the government st ...  Show more