February 13, 2015 • 48 mins
Diamonds: according to the ads, they're a girl's best friend, and the only thing worth picking for an engagement ring. But how did diamonds become so important -- and why?
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs to ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and
I'm Ben, and today we have a very special guest
(00:23):
with us. Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to introduce you
someone you probably already know if you have checked out
any How Stuff Works podcast. That is Lauren Vogel Bam.
How's it going, Lauren? Not too bad? How about you guys?
It's going pretty well? Yes, nice to see you in
here with us. Yeah, with our super producer Knowles, and
I like. I like what you guys do with the
studio for for this podcast. It's kind of bright and
(00:44):
cheery when I'm in here for Forward Thinking. But there's
kind of this miasma rising up from the floor grates,
which I didn't even know that we had, so that's
very fancy. Yeah, that's the miasthma switch over there by
the on error like I missed it. So, Lauren you
are you are a numerous podcast with How Stuff Works? Right? Uh?
(01:05):
Currently I am on Forward Thinking and then I'm also
onto video shows which you know because you're on them
with me. Then brain Stuff and also what the Stuff. Yes,
and recently you did a fantastic brain Stuff episode about
uh diamond rings, which inspired us to uh to ask
(01:28):
you to come beyond this podcast. And I don't know
about you, Matt, but I'm super excited that she's here.
Oh yeah, I got to watch the video a couple
of times now, just to make sure I understood some
of the facts, because I think you laid out a
lot of the things we're going to talk about um
in some disturbing detail. Yeah. I was trying in the
brain Stuff episode to be really straightforward about it. The
(01:50):
episode was about why diamonds appear in engagement rings so frequently,
because that was not always the case, and as it
turns out, it's due to advertising. And I have a
lot of feelings of at it that I could not
put in that episode, because, yeah, we were trying not
to piss everyone on YouTube off entirely. I wanted to
present the facts right, Yeah, and we I think there
(02:11):
was a there was a definite diplomatic tone to to
that episode, but we wanted to delve into some of
the dirty secrets, the things you might not know about diamonds,
and what show better than stuff they want you to
know for this, and what guest host better than our
(02:32):
resident diamond expert. Now okay, no pressure, sure, thanks, thanks.
Let's get into the science of what a diamond is.
Just to set up some background here, a diamond is
nothing more than highly compressed carbon, the stuff that makes
up you and me and all of the life that
lives on this planet that can be considered living, at
(02:55):
least that we know of and on this planet. Yeah,
it's a if we want to get fancy, if you
want to get fancy, it's a meta stable allotrope of carbon,
which is what you should say if you want to
look like a nerd at the jewelry store. And we'll
talk about we'll talk about whether you should go to
a jeweler at some point. Yea wait, let me get
(03:15):
that again. Meta what is it? Meta stable allotrope of carbon.
Meta stable. That means that it's really crystallized. Okay, it's crystallized. Um, yeah,
which is part of the big the big draw for diamonds, right. Well, yeah,
they're I mean, they're super awesome when you get down
to it. They are crystallized a hundred miles below the
Earth's surface under these tremendous pressures and temperatures um and
(03:39):
I can say the numbers out loud, and two or
four takes at least uh, it's four hundred and thirty thousand,
one hundred and thirteen pounds per square inch and temperatures
of above uh four hundred degrees celsius, which equals out
to about seven degrees fahrenheit, which is really warm. It's
not it's not chilly. No, No, it's actually the the
(04:02):
fact that diamonds are made from carbon. As a kid,
this was always really interesting to me because I don't
know about you guys, but had my spider sense tingling
when I first learned that diamonds we may have carbon
as a child, and I thought, wait, isn't carbon just everywhere?
Is it? Is it just me? Or is this an
emperor's new clothes situation? And then I didn't think about
(04:24):
it for years. But it's weird because diamonds are the
most popular gym, right and Uh, while they're often portrayed
as a very rare commodity, what we're going to find
out is that that is not entirely uh the case,
and not the case, it's just flat not and well,
well it was before the eighteen seventies or so. Yes,
(04:46):
in eighteen seventies, specific thing happened that blew the market
right open. Yeah, and we're going to find out what
that thing is. So as gems go, diamonds are actually
the most common. And it sounds weird, but if you
think about it, there's a reason why seventy of brides
in the US where a diamond ring. Right, That's a
stat that I didn't just make up. It comes from
(05:08):
a guy named Kenneth Gassman, who is president of the
Jewelry Industry Research Institute, which is what a what a
when an institute? What a weird job? To explain what
do you do work at the institute? I would just
say the institute ever, all of them, just no matter
what it is, any institute. All right, So well, let's
(05:29):
go ahead and talk about the elephant in the room then,
de Beers. What's what's up with de Beers? Well, de
Beers is a company that controls much of the world's
diamond supply in their South Africa based company, and well,
they it's interesting we refer to them a lot as
the cartel, the the de Beers Cartel, and this is fascinating.
(05:51):
I've been I wonder if you could go into a
little bit about why we call them the cartel because
they're Diamond Cartel met right, because they're they're a bunch
of people, a bunch of separate groups almost, that came
together to form this thing. That's what we we've talked
about Cartel's before, and you have to imagine it when
we talk about conspiracies a lot of times we I
(06:13):
know I'm going a little off book here, sorry, but
we we talk about groups of people who conspire together
to get things done that may or may not be
above board, and this group really just meets those qualifications
really well, yeah we should, we should. Yeah. So we
also know that this group debars although they get a
(06:35):
lot of bad press and they get a lot of
good press. I assume, uh, they are just inundated in
the conspiracy world because of their founders, Cecil Roads or
maybe it's pronounced Cecil. I imagine he was. He was
a British fellow. So yeah, so it was Cecil. Yeah.
Oh that's great. Okay, Well, now I like him more
so he I don't know if I should. That's kind
(06:58):
of an arbitrary of reason, but he didn't just starts.
Uh No, well, okay, So in eighteen seventy eight, deposit
of diamonds was discovered in South Africa, and this was
the first time that a large number of diamonds had
ever been found anywhere before then you had to pan
them individually out of rivers. It was backbreaking, silly work
because like, who knows where a diamond's gonna show up? Nobody, um.
(07:20):
And that's why, that's why they were so valued, because
there weren't any of them basically anywhere. Um. And then
all of a sudden, this this mine opened up. There
was a huge boom, similar to the gold boom here
in the United States, and Uh, this this dude, this
British dude, Cecil Roads, moved in and uh started buying
up all of this property around South Africa, including the
(07:42):
farm of two brothers by the names of Didric and
Johannes de Beer. Yes yes where the name comes from. Uh.
Cecil started out renting some pumping machines to people and
as he began playing this real life man Coppoly game
acquiring land, he uh he started to work with these
(08:05):
people to uh to I guess maybe the right word
at this point is to develop the mining infrastructure, right
and uh along the way, cecilta very busy life. So
those of you who are familiar with Cecil Rhodes probably
want us to mention the founding of Rhodesia, the land,
the racially motivated land grabs. Uh, the let's see what else,
(08:29):
the Rhodes scholarship, the various secret societies that this man
is accused of either being a member of or founding himself. Uh.
Some of those accusations holds, some holdsome truth, right, the
racism and stuff, and other ones have yet to be proven.
Is probably the nicest thing we could say about them.
But this we know. He met those brothers, right and
(08:52):
he uh, he said, guys, diamonds, I see, I see
you have a nice little farm there. Yeah, I think
I'd like to on that. And then he did, Um,
I'm not I'm not sure. Actually I've not heard the
story of how De Beers became the name of the company. Uh. Yeah,
I think it's found in the partnership because Cecil partnered
(09:13):
up with a couple of other people. Currently believed the
Beers is still owned by the Oppenheimer family Yeah, they
purchased it in nine in fact, so that was a
little bit down the road. Now, something that you mentioned
learned that I think we kind of really have to
hit on here is that diamonds were not all over
the place. Um, I mean, at least you couldn't just
(09:34):
go out and get a bunch of diamonds anywhere. And
what they did they found this huge amount of them.
So they had to they had to find a way
to sell these things, right, because they're they're cool gems.
They look really shiny and pretty and people like those things.
But you've got to find a reason that some that
ex wealthy person is going to want to buy one
(09:56):
of these and for a lot of money, because you're
spending quite a bit of money to get them out
of the ground. Um, it's not easy. I would not
want to do it personally. Oh no, no, it's yeah.
We're we'll get into that too. And one of the
coolest things we're going to talk about is the story
of how diamonds became a necessary part of the everyday life. Yes,
(10:18):
the conspiracy is a foot not a theory and act
and actual conspiracy. So we know that we know that
de Beers was enormously successful and and funny thing. I
feel so bad for those brothers because they sold their claim,
so they didn't get any benefit from this massive global entity.
(10:38):
I wonder what their grandchildren think about it. They're probably
so tired of hearing that question, you know, say, oh, oh,
de Beers, right, you're one of those people, so you
want to buy me a drink? And they're likely were broke. Yeah,
they probably quit drinking because of that question. But the
we know that the company itself is enormously successful. When
(11:01):
Cecil Rhodes died in nineteen o two, Beers controlled around
nine of the world's UH diamond market. But where did
this market come from? That, as you said, it didn't
really exist prior to eighteen seventy. And we know, as
as we said, that they are fairly rare. They certainly
were not considered the hallmark of love and commitment or
(11:25):
whatever that they are considered to day. So so you
think about it. They they stumbled upon this treasure trove
of diamonds, this giant box of the open level diamonds.
Oh what are we gonna do with all these? So
they've got a massive amount of supply but very little demand. Well,
relatively little demand at the time. I mean, up until say,
the end of the First World War, things were going
(11:48):
really well for them. They were controlling the market very carefully. Um,
they were consolidating all of these smaller diamond corporations leading
up to them controlling into the world's uh supply of it,
and brought all of this together into such a successful
business model that was just insidious and shiny at the
(12:10):
same time. Um brilliant. You might say, uh, yeah, um,
I've already used that punt. I apologized, guys. Um that
was in the video as well. But but yeah, so
it was. It was going along like gangbusters right up
until a whole bunch of world market kind of things
lead to diamonds decreasing in popularity pretty intensely. Uh. They
(12:35):
were considered such a frivolty. In between the First and
Second World Wars, there were depressions going on all over
the world that no one wanted to buy these things. Right.
The idea would be, if you have any scratch at all,
then you should be spending it on something that is
a necessity. So diamonds became this, um the domain of
(12:55):
the super wealthy. Yeah, only if you have enough money
to throw just literally throw away at this diamond. Uh yeah. Yeah.
A very important person who will come up in conversation
very shortly said that at the time, diamonds were considered
just absolutely money down the drain. Yeah. Yeah, it's so
(13:17):
funny how diamonds are viewed now, just that idea, right, yeah,
because so we all know a tail as old as
time you meet somebody, you fall in love and you say, hey,
let's make this official. Here's some jewelry, let's do stuff.
I don't know how it works. I'm just so uh so,
(13:37):
where where did this come from? We know they weren't
common beforehand. People wanted gems that seemed more exotic, right Yeah.
I think sapphires, opals, and rubies the most popular engagement
stones before the nineties. Yeah what what what happened to that?
It turns out that the concept of a diamond engagement
ring or a wedding band is not some ancient tradition
(14:00):
and dating back to days of your and living in caves. No,
it's the work of one one ad agency. Yeah, I'm
pretty impressed by Actually, yeah, should I should even say
the name of the ad agency? Eat? Or should we
get into that later? We say it three times, they
appear before us. Right, Okay, let's not then, let's just
(14:21):
be judicious. Go ahead, say it all right once, but
not three times in a row. N w Airs and Sons.
Now they were fascinating. There's if you go on archive
dot org, you can find a couple of I guess
it was. I can't tell what the intent was for
these pamphlets or these short books that they put out,
but one of them was I can forget the name
(14:41):
of it, but it was about their advertising technique. And
you can look through this whole book and it teaches you, well,
really it's more like just somebody kind of boasting about
how awesome they're ad agency is that's what it feels
like to me, not an ad man doing well. It
goes into numbers and how big they are and all
the great advertisers that they control. But it's fascinating to
(15:04):
get an insight on this company, and you can kind
of see they're thinking, almost just by reading a couple
of these pamphlets on how they worked the diamond business.
They were already really famous by the nineteen thirties for
doing this deep market research and uh and pulling in
psychological research as well, and it was creepy, it was.
(15:28):
They were really good at what they did. And so
when de Beers found themselves in this tight spot, I
believe it was the heir to the Oppenheimer Empire, and
he was like twenty nine at the time something like that,
like definitely under the age of thirty, and he like
went and had a business lunch or something with the
head of n W AIR and set up this deal
(15:50):
to have Air look into how they could sell diamonds. Yeah,
because there was a problem. The business was still going,
but it was ignating, and the markets affected by the
war UH were heavy blow to two Beers because so
few people would actually buy diamonds, you know. Yeah, only
(16:10):
some ten percent of US engagement rings at the time
bore diamonds, and that was a fancy ten percent. And additionally,
the total number of diamonds in the United States had
declined almost in the United States since the close of
World War One. UH. Europe at the time torn apart
by war or has burgeoning wars, depending on which country
(16:32):
you're looking at. UH, and so it they couldn't be
a diamond market anymore. They were busy trying to stay
alive and the beers have mastered the supply side, but
the beers needed to get this UH to create the
demand as well. And so the clever folks at in
w air UH did their weird market research thing, which
(16:56):
again I totally agree with you guys, it's so creepy,
especially for that time period. Yeah, and if you think
about it, it it was actually a fairly on the surface,
a fairly simple process. They would they would go out
and just get basically the lay of the lands. Ask people, hey,
what do you think about diamonds? So what's your perception
of diamonds. Let's talk about who would own a diamond?
(17:18):
Where where should a diamond go? And after talking to people,
they found that they were seen, like we said, as
a luxury item, something that only someone very rich would have. UM.
So they figured out that they definitely wanted to market
to the US. UH like hardcore. They wanted to just
go all in and we were going to sell diamonds
to these Americans no matter if they like it or not. UM.
(17:42):
And again primarily because we as we discussed, Europe was
now engaged in the beginnings of World War two, so
they really targeted the U S and they targeted the
us mind, the American mind. Ah, and here we have.
I think now it's time to our one of our protagonists.
Or maybe she's more of an antihero. Uh. Into the story,
(18:06):
there is a young copywriter who changes the world and
makes the probably the most successful ad campaign in modern history.
I know, was rated as the ad campaign of the
century uh in two thousand. But but who are we
talking about? Francis Garrity, a young ad woman who had
(18:28):
actually just been hired in nineteen forty three by nw air.
She is she is the person. You can read an
amazing story about her in New York Times. She's the
person who is racking her brain thinking what do I do?
How do I how do I convince people that this
thing they absolutely don't need is necessary? Oh? Yeah. She
(18:49):
was hired to UM to replace a woman who had
just left nw air, and at the time women were
hired to sell things to women. It was considered a
job only a woman ad copywriter could possibly do. UM
and she was paired with with another lady of her
publicity named Dorothy dig Dignam. Yeah, yeah, she's a she's
(19:11):
really cool because she had this This is the lady
who had a list of questions that guys would ask
her about women, like stupid questions like her dude co
workers would come up and be like, is this an
inverted pleet seem And she just kept a list of
these like under her typewriter. She considered this great market
research for things a woman is supposed to know. And
(19:33):
these two people formed this dynamic duo changing the US
and then later the global perception of diamonds. So the
piece of trivia here that you should walk away with
is that Francis Garrity ladies and gentlemen, is the woman
responsible for a diamond is forever. Yes. She wrote that
in nineteen seven. Um they were. She had been on
(19:55):
the on the team since ninety three, working with n
w Aer and Beers. However, they were looking for a
kind of an all encompassing slogan and she kind of
jotted it down by the bedside one night, realizing that
she had failed to come up with anything that day.
And when in the next morning and presented it to
the team, and nobody cared. Everyone everyone was like, was like,
(20:17):
that kind of sucks, but I guess it's the best one.
Let's go with it. Whatever. More Martini's I imagine it's
what's going on that's so funny. Now, some of these
ads that were developed around that time are pretty out there.
Oh they're great, They're so beautiful. Yeah, that's that's We
have a we have a couple queued up that we
(20:38):
were hoping ladies and gentlemen you would enjoy hearing. And again,
this is just a piece of history. I don't think
people write ads this way anymore, at least not in English. Uh.
There there's some magazine ads that I think have longer copy,
not along these lines. Though, not along these lines, h nett.
Do you want? Do you want to read one for us? Sure?
(20:59):
So there's one here called the Star of Hope, and
I'm just gonna read it for you. The engagement diamond
on her finger is as bright as a tear, but
not with sadness like her eyes. It holds a promise
of cool dawns together, of life grown rich and full
and tranquil. It's lovely assurance, shines through all the hours
(21:20):
of waiting, to kindle with joy and precious meaning at
the beginning of their new life, to be bravo beautiful. Yeah,
maybe I was wrong about diamonds. I think I need sound. Yeah,
the My reading is not going to be quite as
dramatically interpretive as as yours. Come on, don't sell yourself.
(21:43):
Sure you can do this. This this one was called
Majesty of Love, told in starlight. Yes, all right, I'm
on board. Inflaming glory, kingly Leo stands exalted at the sky,
a star bright on our lover's look too, as they dream.
Even before sears first sighted, this royal symbol one star
(22:06):
was formed in the earth to someday shine for you.
Your engagement diamond with noble fire reflects the greatness of
your love and all its majesty man. And that's where
I had to stop transcribing because I was laughing too.
It's beautiful writing. Actually, it's just what I'm noticing here
(22:29):
with both of these. It's really nice. It's a different time. Yeah.
I mean if someone had written that to me, I
would have been like, I'm not sure why you're selling
me stuff, But that's really nice. Thank you didn't know
you cared. So yeah, this capitalized on this thing. They said, Okay,
if diamond doesn't have an intrinsic physical value, right, it's
(22:49):
not ductile like gold. It's uh. It is widely used
in industrial applications, but not so much at the time.
They just had a well load of diamonds, several boatloads
of diamonds, and they said, well, how do we convince
people we need these? We do it with this, this
flowery language. We give you an emotional attachment, this love
(23:10):
or this diamond becomes a symbol of love. And they said, wait, wait, wait, wait,
people break up though. Yeah, I know, even in the
forties people broke up. So, uh, we've got to make
sure that they don't resell these diamonds. Yeah, we can't
have them just flooding the market again afterwards. Yeah. By
controlling the market, you have to control the after sale
as well. Yes, it's worth more if they keep them forever. Ah, yes,
(23:35):
because you wouldn't want to throw away uh Grandma's engagement ring. Right,
that's a precious family heirloom. It means way more to
you than it could possibly mean if you tried to
sell it back, which is lucky because if you do
try to sell a diamond back, you're not really going
to get any money for it. Right. Yeah, it's it's
like buying a boat or something. You lose so much
(23:56):
value as soon as you leave the store. Uh. The
so the agency saw tremendous success. Uh. And the beers
of course saw success. In between n the sales in
diamonds in the United States, which was tumbling downward, increased
by fifty Yeah in what in four years? That's crazy, Okay, Yeah,
(24:23):
from I can imagine those meetings, like the top company meeting,
and there's like, oh, well, great job everyone, Bonus for you,
bonus for you, bonus for you. I hope Francis got
something because she, as she was, she was later going
to be instrumental in this right. She she reportedly did
not see a whole lot of success during during certainly
(24:47):
her her time at n w AIR. I've read and
and this mayor may not be apocryphal. I haven't like
double checked and found primary sources. I haven't talked to
her because she passed away, but um, but she, Yeah,
definitely hit that glass ceiling that was so common, especially
for women, especially in ad agencies agencies at the time,
(25:07):
which is a shame, because they had some brilliant and
innovative ideas. And I believe it was the publicist who
started saying, if we'll get the little ones rather the
the less money customers by getting them to emulate the
big ones. Right, oh right, Yeah, she uh really pushed
diamonds to be to be rented out or not even rented,
(25:29):
but just loaned out to celebrities and socialites and people
like that for photo shoots and engagement shoots, for movies,
for the red carpet, anything like that. Brilliant. Yeah, she
wrote a newspaper article that would describe celebrities, but it
was totally diamond advertisement column. She was she was writing
(25:53):
under a fake names. Yeah, yeah, it was like diamond
Dot or something. Yeah, as we said, a little a
little little bit heavy handed, but it worked. They also
created the four seas criteria and that's uh, what are
the clarity, clarity, cut, color, and carrot weight. Yeah, that
actually wouldn't come into play until the nineteen sixties, and
(26:15):
that was because another mind was discovered in Siberia and
because they realized that the conditions were kind of similar.
So they had all of these people out looking for
minds in Russia around that time, or I suppose the
the USSR as it was then in history. Oh, yes,
that it was. We've I love that time. It's very
interesting time. And I bring up the topic of these
(26:37):
Russian or Soviet minds, because the diamonds that were found
in these minds were very much smaller than the South
African diamonds they I mean relatively tiny, and so they
had this huge influx of very small diamonds. People had
previously been taught to buy bigger and bigger diamonds as
the more worthwhile ones, and so now they were like,
(26:57):
how are we going to get people to buy these
tiny things? And they were like, well, a small diamond
can still be worth just as much if it's really
uh quality. Okay, they changed the criteria for the valuation
of the stone. Okay, But anyway, another thing happened in
the sixties in Japan, which was kind of a Western
(27:20):
culture invasion that was occurring. So there's a whole another
market that beers could look at and go, hey, let's
exploit this one now, guys. Yeah, post war, they started
expanding throughout Europe and Japan. They saw enormous success and
they would repeat um the success of their US market
in half the time. Jeez, and guys, we know it
(27:41):
might sound like we're being a little bit snarky and
maybe think that we're giving to beers the short end
of some figurative stick. I will say that we have
several proven horrible things, and horrible is a fair word.
So let's talk just a little bit about the uh,
(28:02):
the actual diamonds conspiracies, right really quickly. Before we get
into the conspiratorial part, I just have to say, because
there's some really dark things in here, and it makes
me feel pretty terrible about my previous actions. Um. But,
as most of you know, I am married. I got
married in two thousand nine, and I did buy a
diamond ring for my wife and I. It was when
(28:24):
I bought it, it was right around the time of
the crash in two thousand seven, tight, and there was
a diamond business going out of business in the mall
where we used to work, and it was like eighty
percent off. Oh I remember this eighty percent off and
it's I think, I don't. I mean, I bought this
(28:46):
thing for nothing and it was a fairly large Like
there's no way I could have afforded this diamond unless
it was this you know, cheap, and even then I
had to spend way more money than I should have
on it. But the numbers I've seen our like one
percent retail markup. That's insane to me, and I was.
I felt tremendous pressure, not only from society but not
(29:11):
necessarily from my wife and her family, but just I
felt like I had to get something that would make
her feel like she's worth more. Right, Yeah, and and
I don't know how much of that would put on myself.
But still it's crazy to think that I could have
saved that money or do you've done something else with
(29:32):
we could have use that money for our house that
we ended up buying. I mean, it's just really it's
really interesting when I look at myself and how I
was somewhat a lot manipulated, were totally suckered into more
wing suits. Well, okay, two things before before you move on.
First of all, it's you and like of the U
(29:55):
S population, And that's a relatively low estimate, like I've
seen it as high. So you are not alone in
this um and and too. This is something of a
side note, but I but I forgot to mention it earlier.
Another interesting thing that happened with marriage in the nineteen
thirties and forties that I think possibly helped helped diamonds
boom out was that UM marriage laws were changing. Okay,
(30:18):
previous two. Then there was a law in place in
most states that allowed women who had been engaged I
if the engagement broke off, they could sue their ex
fiance for damages. By damages, I mean they had maybe
had premarital sex and then she would be less marriageable
(30:38):
and so a lady could sue. Um. Those laws started
being stricken down in the nineteen thirties and forties, and so, uh,
I think that that it was a happy chance for
to Beers that these diamond engagement rings were suddenly seen
as assurance of value. Yeah, insurance insurance, absolutely, yeah, And
(31:01):
you're you're absolutely right and with this with this market,
and I don't know, I I think you guys are
right because it has to be somewhat of a happy accident.
You can't we can't say that the Beer's somehow changed
marriage laws, you know, and they just happened to be
around at the same time. And uh, maybe they did.
(31:23):
I don't know. You have money in the right hands.
Oppenheimer was a big, big, powerful family, yes, and still
are to this day. Uh. And now we can talk
about some of the things that the Beers has done
in the past and in the future to get a
diamond from the ground to you if you were a
person buying diamonds. They do restrict access, we know that
(31:46):
to ensure a higher price for stone, and they do
it through a very interesting I think interesting is a
fair work, very interesting method. There are fewer than two
people or entities that come by these uncut diamonds. The
beers does uncut diamonds, and uncut diamonds are not that impressive, right,
(32:07):
the courts almost like it could be just a crystal. Yes.
So these people who these two hundred in that rarefied air,
they're called site holders, and they purchased the diamonds through
something called the central Selling organization, which is a thing
that the beer zones. Right, They sell a parcel of
these uncut diamonds to one of these site holders. The
(32:28):
site holder then sends the diamonds to a cutting facility,
and then it goes to distributors. And then you get
the advertisement which is so famous in our neck of
the woods. Uh, you get the Shane company guy, right, yeah,
do you want? And I know, I know that I'm
(32:49):
putting you on the spot, but it's a really good one. Alright.
Let's let's see if I can find him the Shane company.
Now you have a friend in the diamond business. You
were killing it with the voices today, the right man.
I'm trying really hard. I'm trying to impress you guys.
Well it is working cool. So uh So, we we
(33:09):
have this this strange business model and it is so
successful that even other diamond producers who are not associated
with the beers, there are a few, uh in Russia
and Australia, are still affected by the prices set by
this Cso you've got to understand that the actual supply
that's just out in distribution is so smaller, so much
(33:33):
smaller than the actual number of diamonds that are ready
to be sent out if they need be So I mean,
what do they just have giant warehouses full of them?
No way, Yep, yes they do, like Indiana Jones style. Yeah,
top men. Yeah, there is a warehouse in London that
just has a lot of uncut stones waiting for that
(33:58):
distribution period where they talk to to the site holders
who will later send stuff to the diamond cutters. Now,
one of the big things that if you're listening to
this now you probably tuned in expecting to hear, would
be some of the facts about blood diamonds or conflict diamonds,
which is the less sensational term. But what are they?
(34:19):
What what's going on with these? Well, like we said earlier,
the process of collecting and getting diamonds out of the
earth is not an easy one. It's not a glamorous
one and it's not a high paying job in any
way whatsoever. It's it's not really easily mechanized either. No,
this is done by hand, and it's done in places
(34:42):
that a lot of times have been destabilized or are
just not stable. Um I should have put that the
other way, if they're not stable or they've been destabilized.
But yeah, they there is conflict in that area. A
lot of it's in South Africa, at least Bridge originally
especially that's where it was done. So this, this idea
(35:05):
here is that these diamonds sales are fueling local malitious
or what would essentially be terrorist groups, right and uh.
Separatist factions are able to garner control of a mind
and then sell the uncut stones under the table to
unscrupulous suppliers who then give them cash that these groups
(35:27):
will use to buy more weapons. Typically, I mean they're
not buying wingsuits. It's the same black market situation that
we've talked about a lot of their podcast, especially like
the drug trade. Black markets that are created when something
is outlawed. But in this situation, there's nothing that's outlawed.
It's just you've got a lot of guns and you
can take control over an area. Um. It's a very
(35:50):
dangerous situation near a lot of these minds, um, and
a lot of the you don't really know if the
gems that you're getting, Like before this thing that we're
going about to talk about, you didn't know if the
gems you're getting are clean. Let's say we're not. Arguably
still don't. Oh sure. Well, there was a there was
(36:11):
a big I believe, media blitz that occurred in what
the yeah, um that brought this to the public's attention.
And of course, of course Beers wasn't really happy about
loss of sales. I'm sure they were also not happy
about loss of life. Maybe they didn't know that this
kind of thing was going on. I'm not saying they're heartless, yeah,
(36:37):
But so they got together with the u N and created,
uh this this Kimberly process. Yeah, that's the way of
authenticating a diamond and saying this came from a legit mind,
that it was not used to fuel atrocities. I think
that they should call them legit diamonds, not conflict free diamonds. Yeah, yeah,
(37:00):
cause you still immediately think of the conflict, right, and
we should start working for airs. You guys are just
the beers directly. You've got some great ideas. You know,
we call them clear conscience diamonds. I don't know. I
like that, Yeah, I get their Yeah. And also it's
one of the four seas clear right now it's five season.
(37:20):
Well now we're now we're becoming the bad guys here.
The thing with the Kimberley process is that it does
not track individual stones, attracts batches of stones, and it
has a lot of criticism. You will see you will
see ratings as high as of diamonds being conflict free.
(37:42):
Now thinks the Kimberley process. But it hinges on what
you define. Uh, it hinges on your definition terms. Right,
Maybe maybe all of the bad batches of of conflict
diamonds are in that warehouse in London. Maybe they can
till they can pass. It must be like customs till
they can pass customs under assumed diamond didnic That's what
(38:02):
it is. I'm joking around, but but, but, but it
is a really unsettling issue. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm
being so joky about it. This is a horrifying reality.
It's it's it's almost impossible I find to to not
kind of be light about this sort of thing, just
so that I'm not in here just sobbing onto the
(38:22):
microphone cover, especially when I think about the diamonds that
are on my wife's finger. So yeah, well, they you
know it's doing something, But candidly speaking, the the effects
are middling and into at least if you listen to
the critics. In fact, one of the nonprofit groups that's
(38:43):
created the Kimberly process, this place called Global Witness, they're
not going to participate in it. In two thousand eleven, Yeah,
they said they're out of it, and they called it
an accomplice to diamond laundering. Because, yeah, the weakness of
the Kimberly process is that it depends upon paperwork and
bureaucracy in some of the easily most corrupt areas of
(39:06):
the world. So how much do you have to pay
somebody to stamp your diamonds? And launder them. When you
own a diamond cartel, you have money to do it.
So yeah, Also, diamond launderer just sounds like a cool job.
I like that. Uh. And I am going to Matt.
(39:26):
I feel like I've unfairly put you on the spot
asking you to do some voices. So I'm gonna do
Leonardo DiCaprio from Blood Diamonds. So I've been waiting for this.
They have a wood the people locked me and bom too.
It means what mining Knifrica. That's it. That's all I got.
That was great. That's pretty good. Better than my Leonardo DiCaprio.
(39:48):
Do you have a Leonardo di Caprio? That's okay? All right, Well,
if you want to play then in surprises with it.
We we could definitely use some lighthearted stuff in As
we said, very a very heavy and difficult issue because
the conflict diamonds, or the the price that people pay
(40:09):
in human life doesn't stop at the mind. In India,
where the vast majority of the world, smaller diamonds are cut,
it depends upon child labor. There's no way around that.
And that's because of the size of the diamonds, right,
and because their tiny hands are the best getting Oh,
that's okay, yep, that's okay, the truth. Yeah, and there
(40:31):
are all kinds of effects on kids who work in
this kind of field, if you won't even call it that.
There's all kinds of things like severe eyestream motion injuries,
long infections from inhaling diamond dust when they're cutting diamonds.
And those are just a few of the things that
that these children are affective with. And and that's that's
(40:52):
freaking depressing. Yeah. Our Valentine's episode is turned out to
be kind of a down in you guys. So the
beer has also has some legal issues. They can't exist
in countries with antitrust laws, which, although Comcast may not
have heard, the United States still has uh. The The
antitrust laws in the United States, while not perfect, do
(41:14):
UH create a large obstacle for de beers, which is
why you see it working through intermediaries, retail jewelers. You
see those vague ad campaigns. There was one where there's
just two silhouettes meeting and only over the range is visible,
which I thought was pretty cool actually. Uh. Numerous academics
have also accused of beers of either accidentally supporting conflicts
(41:38):
in Sierra Leone, South Africa other areas of the continent,
or purposefully destabilizing an area to gain control of a mind. No,
you don't like it. I don't like it one bit. However,
the Beers was in you escorts as recently as two
(42:01):
thousand and four when they pled guilty to price fixing
in an effort to get into the United States. Uh.
And you'll be glad to know, Matt, that the United
States remains the biggest single market in the in the
diamond business. Oh well, good, well, I'm not the only sucker.
Thank you. Also learned for your reassurance earlier. There's one
(42:23):
other thing we should talk about, though, and that's the
future of diamonds, right, which which is going to be
changing due to the advent of synthetic diamonds. Yeah. Lab
created diamonds are pretty nifty and probably conflict free. I mean,
there might be people arguing in the lab, but I
don't know how far they went with it. Through a
(42:44):
process called chemical vapor deposition, Uh, these these diamonds can
be created to a point where they are as good
as a natural diamonds, so much so that the differences
are indiscernible. It can even be more pure more. Uh,
it can be created better. We can make them better
and we faster, more seductive, right And the coolest thing
(43:07):
to me is that we can recreate those pressures and
the heat that exists so deep in the earth. Yeah
yeah um. And traditionally I think this process has been
used for uh scientific diamonds, because diamonds are are tremendously
useful in certain lab applications, mostly involving lasers and cool
pepe stuff like that. Yeah uh. And the lower quality
(43:31):
ones are the ones that you're going to see on
a on a saw or something like that. You probably
don't need to turn to a lab to create a
diamond good enough to grind up and put on a
saw blade, but maybe you should. Maybe that would really
be better for all of us. And and the prices
are starting to come down. I think as this technology
uh improves, improves is a good word, yes, And so
(43:55):
hopefully I'm personally crossing my fingers that this will be
able to create a second market, or I guess the
third market, because there's a second market of of vintage diamonds, right, yeah,
the heirlooms you find at estate sales in the culture.
I would say is arguably shifting away at least slightly
(44:16):
from diamonds. And I remember I had the conversation with
my wife before purchasing a diamond whether or not we
should get a diamond because of things like that movie
that we kind of made fun of. But the Blood
Diamonds movie and awareness that was created around that time. Uh,
for me at least and maybe my generation, we almost
(44:37):
didn't get one, but then we did. Also, I wasn't
making fun of that movie. I watched it this week
early nice Okay, Okay, I just don't why. I don't
want people to feel like I'm unfairly dismissing Blood diamond
and on this show we do try to be fair.
This leads us to some interesting questions. Two beers. The
(45:01):
organization itself UM has has clearly and provably done terrible
things in the past. But is the Beers wrong for
convincing the world that they need this thing that they
don't need? Is that wrong or is that business that's wrong?
(45:23):
Flat out not? Okay? Um, Well, I mean it's very
clever business. It's mind blowing lee impressive what they have
done with this commodity that was previously worthless that is
now on the finger of a near countless number of
people around the world. Yeah, it's kind of like lobster.
You know how people used to hate lobster was food
(45:45):
for orphans. Yeah yeah, Well in certain areas where where
there was too much, too much lobster going around, you know,
its servants had to had to. There was a law
that was placed in New England and way back in
the day that was like, y'all cannot service lobster more
than three times a week for serious because you start
to get that rabbit starvation that's all you eat. But
(46:06):
I guess that's a podcast for a different day, along
with many of the other conflict resources on the African continent,
including if you're listening to this on a smartphone, some
of the stuff inside your phone as you hold it
right now. I don't know, I don't know where we
go from there, and yeah, yeah, I'm like, yeah, the
world is terrible. Oh yeah, yeah, Okay, So let's let's
(46:27):
bring an up note waren. We want to thank you
so much for coming onto our podcast. Where's the best
place for people to catch you in uh? In the meantime? UM,
in general, you can go to brain stuff show dot
com or just how Stuff Works dot com and my
pictures up there, the one with the bangs. You'll find
(46:48):
me and you can find learn on YouTube dot com
slash how Stuff Works and YouTube dot com slash Brain
Stuff Show. Oh yeah, and uh f w thing game
dot com. So yeah, like we said, you're pretty much
everywhere on the internet. Yeah, and thank you guys so
much for for having me on the show. This has
(47:08):
been so much fun, depressing way. Oh yeah, we're gonna
have to go look at some photos or puppies or something.
But baby hedgehogs, yeah, baby hedgehogs. Really that's the go
to now. So if you want to send us an
uplifting picture of a cute animal, if you enjoyed this podcast,
(47:30):
well I don't know if enjoyed is the right word,
but if you thought this podcast was worthwhile, then please
let us know. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter.
You can check out every single podcast we have ever
done on our website. Stuff they don't want you to
know dot com. Man, that's a long name. It's the
best one, though, is it? Every time we say it.
I part way through saying it, I go wow, I'm
(47:52):
still saying that name. You got such authority. It's just
it's so huge. Yeah, it will crush you with its
LETTERY might lettery might I like get so, Matt. We
have a lot of listeners who don't really care for
the social media rigamarole. What if they want to send
us a topic that we should cover in the future
and just talk directly to us. Well, here's the thing
(48:13):
that you can send us an email. We are conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com. From more on this topic,
another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff.
You can also get in touch on Twitter at the
handle at conspiracy stuff.
From UFOs to ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and
I'm Ben, and today we have a very special guest
(00:23):
with us. Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to introduce you
someone you probably already know if you have checked out
any How Stuff Works podcast. That is Lauren Vogel Bam.
How's it going, Lauren? Not too bad? How about you guys?
It's going pretty well? Yes, nice to see you in
here with us. Yeah, with our super producer Knowles, and
I like. I like what you guys do with the
studio for for this podcast. It's kind of bright and
(00:44):
cheery when I'm in here for Forward Thinking. But there's
kind of this miasma rising up from the floor grates,
which I didn't even know that we had, so that's
very fancy. Yeah, that's the miasthma switch over there by
the on error like I missed it. So, Lauren you
are you are a numerous podcast with How Stuff Works? Right? Uh?
(01:05):
Currently I am on Forward Thinking and then I'm also
onto video shows which you know because you're on them
with me. Then brain Stuff and also what the Stuff. Yes,
and recently you did a fantastic brain Stuff episode about
uh diamond rings, which inspired us to uh to ask
(01:28):
you to come beyond this podcast. And I don't know
about you, Matt, but I'm super excited that she's here.
Oh yeah, I got to watch the video a couple
of times now, just to make sure I understood some
of the facts, because I think you laid out a
lot of the things we're going to talk about um
in some disturbing detail. Yeah. I was trying in the
brain Stuff episode to be really straightforward about it. The
(01:50):
episode was about why diamonds appear in engagement rings so frequently,
because that was not always the case, and as it
turns out, it's due to advertising. And I have a
lot of feelings of at it that I could not
put in that episode, because, yeah, we were trying not
to piss everyone on YouTube off entirely. I wanted to
present the facts right, Yeah, and we I think there
(02:11):
was a there was a definite diplomatic tone to to
that episode, but we wanted to delve into some of
the dirty secrets, the things you might not know about diamonds,
and what show better than stuff they want you to
know for this, and what guest host better than our
(02:32):
resident diamond expert. Now okay, no pressure, sure, thanks, thanks.
Let's get into the science of what a diamond is.
Just to set up some background here, a diamond is
nothing more than highly compressed carbon, the stuff that makes
up you and me and all of the life that
lives on this planet that can be considered living, at
(02:55):
least that we know of and on this planet. Yeah,
it's a if we want to get fancy, if you
want to get fancy, it's a meta stable allotrope of carbon,
which is what you should say if you want to
look like a nerd at the jewelry store. And we'll
talk about we'll talk about whether you should go to
a jeweler at some point. Yea wait, let me get
(03:15):
that again. Meta what is it? Meta stable allotrope of carbon.
Meta stable. That means that it's really crystallized. Okay, it's crystallized. Um, yeah,
which is part of the big the big draw for diamonds, right. Well, yeah,
they're I mean, they're super awesome when you get down
to it. They are crystallized a hundred miles below the
Earth's surface under these tremendous pressures and temperatures um and
(03:39):
I can say the numbers out loud, and two or
four takes at least uh, it's four hundred and thirty thousand,
one hundred and thirteen pounds per square inch and temperatures
of above uh four hundred degrees celsius, which equals out
to about seven degrees fahrenheit, which is really warm. It's
not it's not chilly. No, No, it's actually the the
(04:02):
fact that diamonds are made from carbon. As a kid,
this was always really interesting to me because I don't
know about you guys, but had my spider sense tingling
when I first learned that diamonds we may have carbon
as a child, and I thought, wait, isn't carbon just everywhere?
Is it? Is it just me? Or is this an
emperor's new clothes situation? And then I didn't think about
(04:24):
it for years. But it's weird because diamonds are the
most popular gym, right and Uh, while they're often portrayed
as a very rare commodity, what we're going to find
out is that that is not entirely uh the case,
and not the case, it's just flat not and well,
well it was before the eighteen seventies or so. Yes,
(04:46):
in eighteen seventies, specific thing happened that blew the market
right open. Yeah, and we're going to find out what
that thing is. So as gems go, diamonds are actually
the most common. And it sounds weird, but if you
think about it, there's a reason why seventy of brides
in the US where a diamond ring. Right, That's a
stat that I didn't just make up. It comes from
(05:08):
a guy named Kenneth Gassman, who is president of the
Jewelry Industry Research Institute, which is what a what a
when an institute? What a weird job? To explain what
do you do work at the institute? I would just
say the institute ever, all of them, just no matter
what it is, any institute. All right, So well, let's
(05:29):
go ahead and talk about the elephant in the room then,
de Beers. What's what's up with de Beers? Well, de
Beers is a company that controls much of the world's
diamond supply in their South Africa based company, and well,
they it's interesting we refer to them a lot as
the cartel, the the de Beers Cartel, and this is fascinating.
(05:51):
I've been I wonder if you could go into a
little bit about why we call them the cartel because
they're Diamond Cartel met right, because they're they're a bunch
of people, a bunch of separate groups almost, that came
together to form this thing. That's what we we've talked
about Cartel's before, and you have to imagine it when
we talk about conspiracies a lot of times we I
(06:13):
know I'm going a little off book here, sorry, but
we we talk about groups of people who conspire together
to get things done that may or may not be
above board, and this group really just meets those qualifications
really well, yeah we should, we should. Yeah. So we
also know that this group debars although they get a
(06:35):
lot of bad press and they get a lot of
good press. I assume, uh, they are just inundated in
the conspiracy world because of their founders, Cecil Roads or
maybe it's pronounced Cecil. I imagine he was. He was
a British fellow. So yeah, so it was Cecil. Yeah.
Oh that's great. Okay, Well, now I like him more
so he I don't know if I should. That's kind
(06:58):
of an arbitrary of reason, but he didn't just starts.
Uh No, well, okay, So in eighteen seventy eight, deposit
of diamonds was discovered in South Africa, and this was
the first time that a large number of diamonds had
ever been found anywhere before then you had to pan
them individually out of rivers. It was backbreaking, silly work
because like, who knows where a diamond's gonna show up? Nobody, um.
(07:20):
And that's why, that's why they were so valued, because
there weren't any of them basically anywhere. Um. And then
all of a sudden, this this mine opened up. There
was a huge boom, similar to the gold boom here
in the United States, and Uh, this this dude, this
British dude, Cecil Roads, moved in and uh started buying
up all of this property around South Africa, including the
(07:42):
farm of two brothers by the names of Didric and
Johannes de Beer. Yes yes where the name comes from. Uh.
Cecil started out renting some pumping machines to people and
as he began playing this real life man Coppoly game
acquiring land, he uh he started to work with these
(08:05):
people to uh to I guess maybe the right word
at this point is to develop the mining infrastructure, right
and uh along the way, cecilta very busy life. So
those of you who are familiar with Cecil Rhodes probably
want us to mention the founding of Rhodesia, the land,
the racially motivated land grabs. Uh, the let's see what else,
(08:29):
the Rhodes scholarship, the various secret societies that this man
is accused of either being a member of or founding himself. Uh.
Some of those accusations holds, some holdsome truth, right, the
racism and stuff, and other ones have yet to be proven.
Is probably the nicest thing we could say about them.
But this we know. He met those brothers, right and
(08:52):
he uh, he said, guys, diamonds, I see, I see
you have a nice little farm there. Yeah, I think
I'd like to on that. And then he did, Um,
I'm not I'm not sure. Actually I've not heard the
story of how De Beers became the name of the company. Uh. Yeah,
I think it's found in the partnership because Cecil partnered
(09:13):
up with a couple of other people. Currently believed the
Beers is still owned by the Oppenheimer family Yeah, they
purchased it in nine in fact, so that was a
little bit down the road. Now, something that you mentioned
learned that I think we kind of really have to
hit on here is that diamonds were not all over
the place. Um, I mean, at least you couldn't just
(09:34):
go out and get a bunch of diamonds anywhere. And
what they did they found this huge amount of them.
So they had to they had to find a way
to sell these things, right, because they're they're cool gems.
They look really shiny and pretty and people like those things.
But you've got to find a reason that some that
ex wealthy person is going to want to buy one
(09:56):
of these and for a lot of money, because you're
spending quite a bit of money to get them out
of the ground. Um, it's not easy. I would not
want to do it personally. Oh no, no, it's yeah.
We're we'll get into that too. And one of the
coolest things we're going to talk about is the story
of how diamonds became a necessary part of the everyday life. Yes,
(10:18):
the conspiracy is a foot not a theory and act
and actual conspiracy. So we know that we know that
de Beers was enormously successful and and funny thing. I
feel so bad for those brothers because they sold their claim,
so they didn't get any benefit from this massive global entity.
(10:38):
I wonder what their grandchildren think about it. They're probably
so tired of hearing that question, you know, say, oh, oh,
de Beers, right, you're one of those people, so you
want to buy me a drink? And they're likely were broke. Yeah,
they probably quit drinking because of that question. But the
we know that the company itself is enormously successful. When
(11:01):
Cecil Rhodes died in nineteen o two, Beers controlled around
nine of the world's UH diamond market. But where did
this market come from? That, as you said, it didn't
really exist prior to eighteen seventy. And we know, as
as we said, that they are fairly rare. They certainly
were not considered the hallmark of love and commitment or
(11:25):
whatever that they are considered to day. So so you
think about it. They they stumbled upon this treasure trove
of diamonds, this giant box of the open level diamonds.
Oh what are we gonna do with all these? So
they've got a massive amount of supply but very little demand. Well,
relatively little demand at the time. I mean, up until say,
the end of the First World War, things were going
(11:48):
really well for them. They were controlling the market very carefully. Um,
they were consolidating all of these smaller diamond corporations leading
up to them controlling into the world's uh supply of it,
and brought all of this together into such a successful
business model that was just insidious and shiny at the
(12:10):
same time. Um brilliant. You might say, uh, yeah, um,
I've already used that punt. I apologized, guys. Um that
was in the video as well. But but yeah, so
it was. It was going along like gangbusters right up
until a whole bunch of world market kind of things
lead to diamonds decreasing in popularity pretty intensely. Uh. They
(12:35):
were considered such a frivolty. In between the First and
Second World Wars, there were depressions going on all over
the world that no one wanted to buy these things. Right.
The idea would be, if you have any scratch at all,
then you should be spending it on something that is
a necessity. So diamonds became this, um the domain of
(12:55):
the super wealthy. Yeah, only if you have enough money
to throw just literally throw away at this diamond. Uh yeah. Yeah.
A very important person who will come up in conversation
very shortly said that at the time, diamonds were considered
just absolutely money down the drain. Yeah. Yeah, it's so
(13:17):
funny how diamonds are viewed now, just that idea, right, yeah,
because so we all know a tail as old as
time you meet somebody, you fall in love and you say, hey,
let's make this official. Here's some jewelry, let's do stuff.
I don't know how it works. I'm just so uh so,
(13:37):
where where did this come from? We know they weren't
common beforehand. People wanted gems that seemed more exotic, right Yeah.
I think sapphires, opals, and rubies the most popular engagement
stones before the nineties. Yeah what what what happened to that?
It turns out that the concept of a diamond engagement
ring or a wedding band is not some ancient tradition
(14:00):
and dating back to days of your and living in caves. No,
it's the work of one one ad agency. Yeah, I'm
pretty impressed by Actually, yeah, should I should even say
the name of the ad agency? Eat? Or should we
get into that later? We say it three times, they
appear before us. Right, Okay, let's not then, let's just
(14:21):
be judicious. Go ahead, say it all right once, but
not three times in a row. N w Airs and Sons.
Now they were fascinating. There's if you go on archive
dot org, you can find a couple of I guess
it was. I can't tell what the intent was for
these pamphlets or these short books that they put out,
but one of them was I can forget the name
(14:41):
of it, but it was about their advertising technique. And
you can look through this whole book and it teaches you, well,
really it's more like just somebody kind of boasting about
how awesome they're ad agency is that's what it feels
like to me, not an ad man doing well. It
goes into numbers and how big they are and all
the great advertisers that they control. But it's fascinating to
(15:04):
get an insight on this company, and you can kind
of see they're thinking, almost just by reading a couple
of these pamphlets on how they worked the diamond business.
They were already really famous by the nineteen thirties for
doing this deep market research and uh and pulling in
psychological research as well, and it was creepy, it was.
(15:28):
They were really good at what they did. And so
when de Beers found themselves in this tight spot, I
believe it was the heir to the Oppenheimer Empire, and
he was like twenty nine at the time something like that,
like definitely under the age of thirty, and he like
went and had a business lunch or something with the
head of n W AIR and set up this deal
(15:50):
to have Air look into how they could sell diamonds. Yeah,
because there was a problem. The business was still going,
but it was ignating, and the markets affected by the
war UH were heavy blow to two Beers because so
few people would actually buy diamonds, you know. Yeah, only
(16:10):
some ten percent of US engagement rings at the time
bore diamonds, and that was a fancy ten percent. And additionally,
the total number of diamonds in the United States had
declined almost in the United States since the close of
World War One. UH. Europe at the time torn apart
by war or has burgeoning wars, depending on which country
(16:32):
you're looking at. UH, and so it they couldn't be
a diamond market anymore. They were busy trying to stay
alive and the beers have mastered the supply side, but
the beers needed to get this UH to create the
demand as well. And so the clever folks at in
w air UH did their weird market research thing, which
(16:56):
again I totally agree with you guys, it's so creepy,
especially for that time period. Yeah, and if you think
about it, it it was actually a fairly on the surface,
a fairly simple process. They would they would go out
and just get basically the lay of the lands. Ask people, hey,
what do you think about diamonds? So what's your perception
of diamonds. Let's talk about who would own a diamond?
(17:18):
Where where should a diamond go? And after talking to people,
they found that they were seen, like we said, as
a luxury item, something that only someone very rich would have. UM.
So they figured out that they definitely wanted to market
to the US. UH like hardcore. They wanted to just
go all in and we were going to sell diamonds
to these Americans no matter if they like it or not. UM.
(17:42):
And again primarily because we as we discussed, Europe was
now engaged in the beginnings of World War two, so
they really targeted the U S and they targeted the
us mind, the American mind. Ah, and here we have.
I think now it's time to our one of our protagonists.
Or maybe she's more of an antihero. Uh. Into the story,
(18:06):
there is a young copywriter who changes the world and
makes the probably the most successful ad campaign in modern history.
I know, was rated as the ad campaign of the
century uh in two thousand. But but who are we
talking about? Francis Garrity, a young ad woman who had
(18:28):
actually just been hired in nineteen forty three by nw air.
She is she is the person. You can read an
amazing story about her in New York Times. She's the
person who is racking her brain thinking what do I do?
How do I how do I convince people that this
thing they absolutely don't need is necessary? Oh? Yeah. She
(18:49):
was hired to UM to replace a woman who had
just left nw air, and at the time women were
hired to sell things to women. It was considered a
job only a woman ad copywriter could possibly do. UM
and she was paired with with another lady of her
publicity named Dorothy dig Dignam. Yeah, yeah, she's a she's
(19:11):
really cool because she had this This is the lady
who had a list of questions that guys would ask
her about women, like stupid questions like her dude co
workers would come up and be like, is this an
inverted pleet seem And she just kept a list of
these like under her typewriter. She considered this great market
research for things a woman is supposed to know. And
(19:33):
these two people formed this dynamic duo changing the US
and then later the global perception of diamonds. So the
piece of trivia here that you should walk away with
is that Francis Garrity ladies and gentlemen, is the woman
responsible for a diamond is forever. Yes. She wrote that
in nineteen seven. Um they were. She had been on
(19:55):
the on the team since ninety three, working with n
w Aer and Beers. However, they were looking for a
kind of an all encompassing slogan and she kind of
jotted it down by the bedside one night, realizing that
she had failed to come up with anything that day.
And when in the next morning and presented it to
the team, and nobody cared. Everyone everyone was like, was like,
(20:17):
that kind of sucks, but I guess it's the best one.
Let's go with it. Whatever. More Martini's I imagine it's
what's going on that's so funny. Now, some of these
ads that were developed around that time are pretty out there.
Oh they're great, They're so beautiful. Yeah, that's that's We
have a we have a couple queued up that we
(20:38):
were hoping ladies and gentlemen you would enjoy hearing. And again,
this is just a piece of history. I don't think
people write ads this way anymore, at least not in English. Uh.
There there's some magazine ads that I think have longer copy,
not along these lines. Though, not along these lines, h nett.
Do you want? Do you want to read one for us? Sure?
(20:59):
So there's one here called the Star of Hope, and
I'm just gonna read it for you. The engagement diamond
on her finger is as bright as a tear, but
not with sadness like her eyes. It holds a promise
of cool dawns together, of life grown rich and full
and tranquil. It's lovely assurance, shines through all the hours
(21:20):
of waiting, to kindle with joy and precious meaning at
the beginning of their new life, to be bravo beautiful. Yeah,
maybe I was wrong about diamonds. I think I need sound. Yeah,
the My reading is not going to be quite as
dramatically interpretive as as yours. Come on, don't sell yourself.
(21:43):
Sure you can do this. This this one was called
Majesty of Love, told in starlight. Yes, all right, I'm
on board. Inflaming glory, kingly Leo stands exalted at the sky,
a star bright on our lover's look too, as they dream.
Even before sears first sighted, this royal symbol one star
(22:06):
was formed in the earth to someday shine for you.
Your engagement diamond with noble fire reflects the greatness of
your love and all its majesty man. And that's where
I had to stop transcribing because I was laughing too.
It's beautiful writing. Actually, it's just what I'm noticing here
(22:29):
with both of these. It's really nice. It's a different time. Yeah.
I mean if someone had written that to me, I
would have been like, I'm not sure why you're selling
me stuff, But that's really nice. Thank you didn't know
you cared. So yeah, this capitalized on this thing. They said, Okay,
if diamond doesn't have an intrinsic physical value, right, it's
(22:49):
not ductile like gold. It's uh. It is widely used
in industrial applications, but not so much at the time.
They just had a well load of diamonds, several boatloads
of diamonds, and they said, well, how do we convince
people we need these? We do it with this, this
flowery language. We give you an emotional attachment, this love
(23:10):
or this diamond becomes a symbol of love. And they said, wait, wait, wait, wait,
people break up though. Yeah, I know, even in the
forties people broke up. So, uh, we've got to make
sure that they don't resell these diamonds. Yeah, we can't
have them just flooding the market again afterwards. Yeah. By
controlling the market, you have to control the after sale
as well. Yes, it's worth more if they keep them forever. Ah, yes,
(23:35):
because you wouldn't want to throw away uh Grandma's engagement ring. Right,
that's a precious family heirloom. It means way more to
you than it could possibly mean if you tried to
sell it back, which is lucky because if you do
try to sell a diamond back, you're not really going
to get any money for it. Right. Yeah, it's it's
like buying a boat or something. You lose so much
(23:56):
value as soon as you leave the store. Uh. The
so the agency saw tremendous success. Uh. And the beers
of course saw success. In between n the sales in
diamonds in the United States, which was tumbling downward, increased
by fifty Yeah in what in four years? That's crazy, Okay, Yeah,
(24:23):
from I can imagine those meetings, like the top company meeting,
and there's like, oh, well, great job everyone, Bonus for you,
bonus for you, bonus for you. I hope Francis got
something because she, as she was, she was later going
to be instrumental in this right. She she reportedly did
not see a whole lot of success during during certainly
(24:47):
her her time at n w AIR. I've read and
and this mayor may not be apocryphal. I haven't like
double checked and found primary sources. I haven't talked to
her because she passed away, but um, but she, Yeah,
definitely hit that glass ceiling that was so common, especially
for women, especially in ad agencies agencies at the time,
(25:07):
which is a shame, because they had some brilliant and
innovative ideas. And I believe it was the publicist who
started saying, if we'll get the little ones rather the
the less money customers by getting them to emulate the
big ones. Right, oh right, Yeah, she uh really pushed
diamonds to be to be rented out or not even rented,
(25:29):
but just loaned out to celebrities and socialites and people
like that for photo shoots and engagement shoots, for movies,
for the red carpet, anything like that. Brilliant. Yeah, she
wrote a newspaper article that would describe celebrities, but it
was totally diamond advertisement column. She was she was writing
(25:53):
under a fake names. Yeah, yeah, it was like diamond
Dot or something. Yeah, as we said, a little a
little little bit heavy handed, but it worked. They also
created the four seas criteria and that's uh, what are
the clarity, clarity, cut, color, and carrot weight. Yeah, that
actually wouldn't come into play until the nineteen sixties, and
(26:15):
that was because another mind was discovered in Siberia and
because they realized that the conditions were kind of similar.
So they had all of these people out looking for
minds in Russia around that time, or I suppose the
the USSR as it was then in history. Oh, yes,
that it was. We've I love that time. It's very
interesting time. And I bring up the topic of these
(26:37):
Russian or Soviet minds, because the diamonds that were found
in these minds were very much smaller than the South
African diamonds they I mean relatively tiny, and so they
had this huge influx of very small diamonds. People had
previously been taught to buy bigger and bigger diamonds as
the more worthwhile ones, and so now they were like,
(26:57):
how are we going to get people to buy these
tiny things? And they were like, well, a small diamond
can still be worth just as much if it's really
uh quality. Okay, they changed the criteria for the valuation
of the stone. Okay, But anyway, another thing happened in
the sixties in Japan, which was kind of a Western
(27:20):
culture invasion that was occurring. So there's a whole another
market that beers could look at and go, hey, let's
exploit this one now, guys. Yeah, post war, they started
expanding throughout Europe and Japan. They saw enormous success and
they would repeat um the success of their US market
in half the time. Jeez, and guys, we know it
(27:41):
might sound like we're being a little bit snarky and
maybe think that we're giving to beers the short end
of some figurative stick. I will say that we have
several proven horrible things, and horrible is a fair word.
So let's talk just a little bit about the uh,
(28:02):
the actual diamonds conspiracies, right really quickly. Before we get
into the conspiratorial part, I just have to say, because
there's some really dark things in here, and it makes
me feel pretty terrible about my previous actions. Um. But,
as most of you know, I am married. I got
married in two thousand nine, and I did buy a
diamond ring for my wife and I. It was when
(28:24):
I bought it, it was right around the time of
the crash in two thousand seven, tight, and there was
a diamond business going out of business in the mall
where we used to work, and it was like eighty
percent off. Oh I remember this eighty percent off and
it's I think, I don't. I mean, I bought this
(28:46):
thing for nothing and it was a fairly large Like
there's no way I could have afforded this diamond unless
it was this you know, cheap, and even then I
had to spend way more money than I should have
on it. But the numbers I've seen our like one
percent retail markup. That's insane to me, and I was.
I felt tremendous pressure, not only from society but not
(29:11):
necessarily from my wife and her family, but just I
felt like I had to get something that would make
her feel like she's worth more. Right, Yeah, and and
I don't know how much of that would put on myself.
But still it's crazy to think that I could have
saved that money or do you've done something else with
(29:32):
we could have use that money for our house that
we ended up buying. I mean, it's just really it's
really interesting when I look at myself and how I
was somewhat a lot manipulated, were totally suckered into more
wing suits. Well, okay, two things before before you move on.
First of all, it's you and like of the U
(29:55):
S population, And that's a relatively low estimate, like I've
seen it as high. So you are not alone in
this um and and too. This is something of a
side note, but I but I forgot to mention it earlier.
Another interesting thing that happened with marriage in the nineteen
thirties and forties that I think possibly helped helped diamonds
boom out was that UM marriage laws were changing. Okay,
(30:18):
previous two. Then there was a law in place in
most states that allowed women who had been engaged I
if the engagement broke off, they could sue their ex
fiance for damages. By damages, I mean they had maybe
had premarital sex and then she would be less marriageable
(30:38):
and so a lady could sue. Um. Those laws started
being stricken down in the nineteen thirties and forties, and so, uh,
I think that that it was a happy chance for
to Beers that these diamond engagement rings were suddenly seen
as assurance of value. Yeah, insurance insurance, absolutely, yeah, And
(31:01):
you're you're absolutely right and with this with this market,
and I don't know, I I think you guys are
right because it has to be somewhat of a happy accident.
You can't we can't say that the Beer's somehow changed
marriage laws, you know, and they just happened to be
around at the same time. And uh, maybe they did.
(31:23):
I don't know. You have money in the right hands.
Oppenheimer was a big, big, powerful family, yes, and still
are to this day. Uh. And now we can talk
about some of the things that the Beers has done
in the past and in the future to get a
diamond from the ground to you if you were a
person buying diamonds. They do restrict access, we know that
(31:46):
to ensure a higher price for stone, and they do
it through a very interesting I think interesting is a
fair work, very interesting method. There are fewer than two
people or entities that come by these uncut diamonds. The
beers does uncut diamonds, and uncut diamonds are not that impressive, right,
(32:07):
the courts almost like it could be just a crystal. Yes.
So these people who these two hundred in that rarefied air,
they're called site holders, and they purchased the diamonds through
something called the central Selling organization, which is a thing
that the beer zones. Right, They sell a parcel of
these uncut diamonds to one of these site holders. The
(32:28):
site holder then sends the diamonds to a cutting facility,
and then it goes to distributors. And then you get
the advertisement which is so famous in our neck of
the woods. Uh, you get the Shane company guy, right, yeah,
do you want? And I know, I know that I'm
(32:49):
putting you on the spot, but it's a really good one. Alright.
Let's let's see if I can find him the Shane company.
Now you have a friend in the diamond business. You
were killing it with the voices today, the right man.
I'm trying really hard. I'm trying to impress you guys.
Well it is working cool. So uh So, we we
(33:09):
have this this strange business model and it is so
successful that even other diamond producers who are not associated
with the beers, there are a few, uh in Russia
and Australia, are still affected by the prices set by
this Cso you've got to understand that the actual supply
that's just out in distribution is so smaller, so much
(33:33):
smaller than the actual number of diamonds that are ready
to be sent out if they need be So I mean,
what do they just have giant warehouses full of them?
No way, Yep, yes they do, like Indiana Jones style. Yeah,
top men. Yeah, there is a warehouse in London that
just has a lot of uncut stones waiting for that
(33:58):
distribution period where they talk to to the site holders
who will later send stuff to the diamond cutters. Now,
one of the big things that if you're listening to
this now you probably tuned in expecting to hear, would
be some of the facts about blood diamonds or conflict diamonds,
which is the less sensational term. But what are they?
(34:19):
What what's going on with these? Well, like we said earlier,
the process of collecting and getting diamonds out of the
earth is not an easy one. It's not a glamorous
one and it's not a high paying job in any
way whatsoever. It's it's not really easily mechanized either. No,
this is done by hand, and it's done in places
(34:42):
that a lot of times have been destabilized or are
just not stable. Um I should have put that the
other way, if they're not stable or they've been destabilized.
But yeah, they there is conflict in that area. A
lot of it's in South Africa, at least Bridge originally
especially that's where it was done. So this, this idea
(35:05):
here is that these diamonds sales are fueling local malitious
or what would essentially be terrorist groups, right and uh.
Separatist factions are able to garner control of a mind
and then sell the uncut stones under the table to
unscrupulous suppliers who then give them cash that these groups
(35:27):
will use to buy more weapons. Typically, I mean they're
not buying wingsuits. It's the same black market situation that
we've talked about a lot of their podcast, especially like
the drug trade. Black markets that are created when something
is outlawed. But in this situation, there's nothing that's outlawed.
It's just you've got a lot of guns and you
can take control over an area. Um. It's a very
(35:50):
dangerous situation near a lot of these minds, um, and
a lot of the you don't really know if the
gems that you're getting, Like before this thing that we're
going about to talk about, you didn't know if the
gems you're getting are clean. Let's say we're not. Arguably
still don't. Oh sure. Well, there was a there was
(36:11):
a big I believe, media blitz that occurred in what
the yeah, um that brought this to the public's attention.
And of course, of course Beers wasn't really happy about
loss of sales. I'm sure they were also not happy
about loss of life. Maybe they didn't know that this
kind of thing was going on. I'm not saying they're heartless, yeah,
(36:37):
But so they got together with the u N and created,
uh this this Kimberly process. Yeah, that's the way of
authenticating a diamond and saying this came from a legit mind,
that it was not used to fuel atrocities. I think
that they should call them legit diamonds, not conflict free diamonds. Yeah, yeah,
(37:00):
cause you still immediately think of the conflict, right, and
we should start working for airs. You guys are just
the beers directly. You've got some great ideas. You know,
we call them clear conscience diamonds. I don't know. I
like that, Yeah, I get their Yeah. And also it's
one of the four seas clear right now it's five season.
(37:20):
Well now we're now we're becoming the bad guys here.
The thing with the Kimberley process is that it does
not track individual stones, attracts batches of stones, and it
has a lot of criticism. You will see you will
see ratings as high as of diamonds being conflict free.
(37:42):
Now thinks the Kimberley process. But it hinges on what
you define. Uh, it hinges on your definition terms. Right,
Maybe maybe all of the bad batches of of conflict
diamonds are in that warehouse in London. Maybe they can
till they can pass. It must be like customs till
they can pass customs under assumed diamond didnic That's what
(38:02):
it is. I'm joking around, but but, but, but it
is a really unsettling issue. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm
being so joky about it. This is a horrifying reality.
It's it's it's almost impossible I find to to not
kind of be light about this sort of thing, just
so that I'm not in here just sobbing onto the
(38:22):
microphone cover, especially when I think about the diamonds that
are on my wife's finger. So yeah, well, they you
know it's doing something, But candidly speaking, the the effects
are middling and into at least if you listen to
the critics. In fact, one of the nonprofit groups that's
(38:43):
created the Kimberly process, this place called Global Witness, they're
not going to participate in it. In two thousand eleven, Yeah,
they said they're out of it, and they called it
an accomplice to diamond laundering. Because, yeah, the weakness of
the Kimberly process is that it depends upon paperwork and
bureaucracy in some of the easily most corrupt areas of
(39:06):
the world. So how much do you have to pay
somebody to stamp your diamonds? And launder them. When you
own a diamond cartel, you have money to do it.
So yeah, Also, diamond launderer just sounds like a cool job.
I like that. Uh. And I am going to Matt.
(39:26):
I feel like I've unfairly put you on the spot
asking you to do some voices. So I'm gonna do
Leonardo DiCaprio from Blood Diamonds. So I've been waiting for this.
They have a wood the people locked me and bom too.
It means what mining Knifrica. That's it. That's all I got.
That was great. That's pretty good. Better than my Leonardo DiCaprio.
(39:48):
Do you have a Leonardo di Caprio? That's okay? All right, Well,
if you want to play then in surprises with it.
We we could definitely use some lighthearted stuff in As
we said, very a very heavy and difficult issue because
the conflict diamonds, or the the price that people pay
(40:09):
in human life doesn't stop at the mind. In India,
where the vast majority of the world, smaller diamonds are cut,
it depends upon child labor. There's no way around that.
And that's because of the size of the diamonds, right,
and because their tiny hands are the best getting Oh,
that's okay, yep, that's okay, the truth. Yeah, and there
(40:31):
are all kinds of effects on kids who work in
this kind of field, if you won't even call it that.
There's all kinds of things like severe eyestream motion injuries,
long infections from inhaling diamond dust when they're cutting diamonds.
And those are just a few of the things that
that these children are affective with. And and that's that's
(40:52):
freaking depressing. Yeah. Our Valentine's episode is turned out to
be kind of a down in you guys. So the
beer has also has some legal issues. They can't exist
in countries with antitrust laws, which, although Comcast may not
have heard, the United States still has uh. The The
antitrust laws in the United States, while not perfect, do
(41:14):
UH create a large obstacle for de beers, which is
why you see it working through intermediaries, retail jewelers. You
see those vague ad campaigns. There was one where there's
just two silhouettes meeting and only over the range is visible,
which I thought was pretty cool actually. Uh. Numerous academics
have also accused of beers of either accidentally supporting conflicts
(41:38):
in Sierra Leone, South Africa other areas of the continent,
or purposefully destabilizing an area to gain control of a mind. No,
you don't like it. I don't like it one bit. However,
the Beers was in you escorts as recently as two
(42:01):
thousand and four when they pled guilty to price fixing
in an effort to get into the United States. Uh.
And you'll be glad to know, Matt, that the United
States remains the biggest single market in the in the
diamond business. Oh well, good, well, I'm not the only sucker.
Thank you. Also learned for your reassurance earlier. There's one
(42:23):
other thing we should talk about, though, and that's the
future of diamonds, right, which which is going to be
changing due to the advent of synthetic diamonds. Yeah. Lab
created diamonds are pretty nifty and probably conflict free. I mean,
there might be people arguing in the lab, but I
don't know how far they went with it. Through a
(42:44):
process called chemical vapor deposition, Uh, these these diamonds can
be created to a point where they are as good
as a natural diamonds, so much so that the differences
are indiscernible. It can even be more pure more. Uh,
it can be created better. We can make them better
and we faster, more seductive, right And the coolest thing
(43:07):
to me is that we can recreate those pressures and
the heat that exists so deep in the earth. Yeah
yeah um. And traditionally I think this process has been
used for uh scientific diamonds, because diamonds are are tremendously
useful in certain lab applications, mostly involving lasers and cool
pepe stuff like that. Yeah uh. And the lower quality
(43:31):
ones are the ones that you're going to see on
a on a saw or something like that. You probably
don't need to turn to a lab to create a
diamond good enough to grind up and put on a
saw blade, but maybe you should. Maybe that would really
be better for all of us. And and the prices
are starting to come down. I think as this technology
uh improves, improves is a good word, yes, And so
(43:55):
hopefully I'm personally crossing my fingers that this will be
able to create a second market, or I guess the
third market, because there's a second market of of vintage diamonds, right, yeah,
the heirlooms you find at estate sales in the culture.
I would say is arguably shifting away at least slightly
(44:16):
from diamonds. And I remember I had the conversation with
my wife before purchasing a diamond whether or not we
should get a diamond because of things like that movie
that we kind of made fun of. But the Blood
Diamonds movie and awareness that was created around that time. Uh,
for me at least and maybe my generation, we almost
(44:37):
didn't get one, but then we did. Also, I wasn't
making fun of that movie. I watched it this week
early nice Okay, Okay, I just don't why. I don't
want people to feel like I'm unfairly dismissing Blood diamond
and on this show we do try to be fair.
This leads us to some interesting questions. Two beers. The
(45:01):
organization itself UM has has clearly and provably done terrible
things in the past. But is the Beers wrong for
convincing the world that they need this thing that they
don't need? Is that wrong or is that business that's wrong?
(45:23):
Flat out not? Okay? Um, Well, I mean it's very
clever business. It's mind blowing lee impressive what they have
done with this commodity that was previously worthless that is
now on the finger of a near countless number of
people around the world. Yeah, it's kind of like lobster.
You know how people used to hate lobster was food
(45:45):
for orphans. Yeah yeah, Well in certain areas where where
there was too much, too much lobster going around, you know,
its servants had to had to. There was a law
that was placed in New England and way back in
the day that was like, y'all cannot service lobster more
than three times a week for serious because you start
to get that rabbit starvation that's all you eat. But
(46:06):
I guess that's a podcast for a different day, along
with many of the other conflict resources on the African continent,
including if you're listening to this on a smartphone, some
of the stuff inside your phone as you hold it
right now. I don't know, I don't know where we
go from there, and yeah, yeah, I'm like, yeah, the
world is terrible. Oh yeah, yeah, Okay, So let's let's
(46:27):
bring an up note waren. We want to thank you
so much for coming onto our podcast. Where's the best
place for people to catch you in uh? In the meantime? UM,
in general, you can go to brain stuff show dot
com or just how Stuff Works dot com and my
pictures up there, the one with the bangs. You'll find
(46:48):
me and you can find learn on YouTube dot com
slash how Stuff Works and YouTube dot com slash Brain
Stuff Show. Oh yeah, and uh f w thing game
dot com. So yeah, like we said, you're pretty much
everywhere on the internet. Yeah, and thank you guys so
much for for having me on the show. This has
(47:08):
been so much fun, depressing way. Oh yeah, we're gonna
have to go look at some photos or puppies or something.
But baby hedgehogs, yeah, baby hedgehogs. Really that's the go
to now. So if you want to send us an
uplifting picture of a cute animal, if you enjoyed this podcast,
(47:30):
well I don't know if enjoyed is the right word,
but if you thought this podcast was worthwhile, then please
let us know. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter.
You can check out every single podcast we have ever
done on our website. Stuff they don't want you to
know dot com. Man, that's a long name. It's the
best one, though, is it? Every time we say it.
I part way through saying it, I go wow, I'm
(47:52):
still saying that name. You got such authority. It's just
it's so huge. Yeah, it will crush you with its
LETTERY might lettery might I like get so, Matt. We
have a lot of listeners who don't really care for
the social media rigamarole. What if they want to send
us a topic that we should cover in the future
and just talk directly to us. Well, here's the thing
(48:13):
that you can send us an email. We are conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com. From more on this topic,
another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff.
You can also get in touch on Twitter at the
handle at conspiracy stuff.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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