April 3, 2012 • 40 mins
There's no denying that diamonds are pretty -- but where do they come from, and why are they so expensive? Join Chuck and Josh as they explore everything about diamonds, from their formation to the mining process and the history of the DeBeers cartel.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, I'm welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles t. W Chuck
Bryant and uh where Stuff you Should Know Crew with
(00:25):
the Juice Crew, Big Daddy Kane. I'm Big Daddy Kane.
All right, I'm Biz Markie. I'll take it. You're red
headed King Pim. Yes, okay, you don't remember that guy. No. Sorry,
we're still talking about our music sampling podcast, which we
just recorded. Instead, we're gonna talk about something else, something
(00:46):
called diamonds. I kind of hate diamonds. Now, by the way,
do you this is this article is? Yeah? Well I
thought it was good, but after reading all this stuff,
I'm just like, it's just a big false market. Well,
i mean, they're still pretty, but yeah, they have a
lot of they got a lot of problems, all right, Chuck. Yes,
(01:09):
have you ever heard of a magazine called The Atlantic? Yeah?
I used to get that. Have you ever heard of
a year called nine eight two? Okay, well, in nineteen
eighty two, in that magazine, The Atlantic didn't. I didn't either.
I was six. I wasn't reading The Atlantic yet. I
came when I was ten. Um. In nineteen two, a
(01:31):
guy named ever j Epstein wrote an article for The
Atlantic called have You ever Tried to Sell the Diamond?
And I got this from Neto Rama by the way, um.
And in the in the article he wrote about someone
else who who conducted an experiment to try to find
out what's going on with the aftermarket for diamonds. Right.
(01:51):
So this guy for magazine called Money, which magazine I
don't understand the name at all. Um. In nineteen seventy Uh,
the guy bought a one point four two carrot diamond
for seven five pounds. That's a pretty good deal these days,
but back then I would say it was an average price. Right.
(02:12):
So he waits for a year to allow it to appreciate,
because supposedly diamonds appreciate in value, right, And then he
takes it around to all of the gem dealers in
London and the highest offer he got for what he
paid the year before seven pounds was five d sixty
eight pounds. So he's like, huh, I want to figure
(02:33):
out what maybe if I let it appreciate a little longer,
it will work. And this guy obviously had other freelance
work in the meantime, because he waited until nineteen seventy
four and did it again. This time he finds out
that his diamond shrunk from one point four two carrots
to one point oh four carets because one of the
dealers switched the diamond out on him when he was
(02:53):
having it a praise V one. That's not even the worst.
The guy buys another diamond one point four carrots, right,
takes it around. He buys it for two thousand pounds
in four I think, Um, he waited a week, it
took it around, and the highest offergot was a thousand
(03:14):
pounds hemorrhaging money. Right. But the point is is the
reason why these things are like cadillacs the moment you
drive them off a lot and they never come back
and value is because there is no aftermarket. And the
reason that there is no aftermarket for for diamonds is
(03:35):
because of one single diamond cartel and their advertising campaigns
to beers um, which we'll talk about in this But
there's a lot more to diamonds than just all the
shady business. The monopolies and the cartels and the artificial
markets created. There is billions of years of history. One
of the cool things about a diamond is that when
(03:57):
you're wearing this, when looking at a diamond holding it,
you're beholding possibly a mineral that's that was created a
billion years ago. That is cool, very cool. I love that,
and I very much appreciate the craftsmanship what goes into
making a diamond in its final form, because, as every
(04:18):
kid knows, diamonds are as hard as it kids supposedly,
and they're a girl's best friend. That's another thing too.
There's a lot of slogans around diamonds, all created by
the beers. Let's let's talk about diamonds. Where are they
made of? Because they're so expensive, it must be made
up of like kryptonite and um in diamond and yeah,
in diamonds, no, Josh, you know you're benkoy. They are
(04:42):
made of carbon. It is basically carbon, and it's most
concentrated form. And carbon is a pretty common elements, one
of the four essential ingredients to life. We breathe it.
We're made up of carbon. Pencils are like at least
sixty carbon uh, and diamonds if you want to get
down to brass, acts are not rare at all. Um.
(05:02):
There are many many more precious gems that are much
rarer than diamonds, including some types of diamonds. Colored diamonds
what we're mainly talking about, and this one is transparent
diamonds typical like white diamonds. But yeah, colored diamond and
naturally colored diamond is nice. So um ice, let's call
(05:25):
it ice? Yeah? Or bling? Do you remember when bling
used to be called bling bling? Like there were two
blings bling bling? No? Did they just shorten it to
one bling at some point? Who's they? Who decides the stuff?
Mtvay Urban Dictionary. Yeah? Um, so you've got carbon. It's
pretty uh, pretty ubiquitous, Yes, very abundant. It naturally occurs
(05:47):
in three forms, right, graphite, diamond fairly soft, diamond, very hard,
and then fullerite John fullerite, which is uh. It's a
mineral made of per quickly spherical molecules of exactly sixty
carbon atoms, and it was only recently discovered and supposedly
(06:09):
diamonds are no longer the strongest um mineral. Somebody synthetically
figured out how to um combine fuller right, into and
know something else and it's like eleven harder than diamonds
on the most depth scale. Sorry, by that that sampling
(06:30):
episode really had an effect the rest of the day.
Then it's carrying over UM diamonds. Uh So basically, if
you have graphite, you have a misformed diamond. Is one
way to look at it. Diamonds form under very specific
conditions UM that are found typically about a hundred miles
or a hundred and sixty one kilometers beneath the Earth's
(06:52):
surface in the mantle. As long as temperatures are above
four I'm sorry, as long as temperatures are seven hundred
and fifty two degrees fahrenheit four hundred degrees saleseness UM,
and there's at least four hundred and thirty five thousand,
one hundred and thirteen pounds per square inch of pressure,
(07:13):
you will form diamond when there's carbon, and carbon will
make a diamond. If either of those two things are
not met, you're gonna get graphite. Right. So these diamonds
that we're looking at today, like we said, reformed like
fifty million, hundred millions up to billions of years ago
under these conditions, and UM more recently say I think
(07:40):
twenty million, between twenty million and one point one billion
years ago, heavy magma um eruptions that are about three
times from depths, about three times that that blew up
Mount St. Helen. Um pushed diamonds towards the surface and
form what are called kimberlight pipes. Magma is one of
(08:00):
my favorite works, by the way, I don't know why.
Uh yeah, And basically they act as like an elevator
and they pushed the diamonds and other stuff up through
the mantle. Happened very quickly, over a matter of hours.
And but it's all underground, so it's not like it
wasn't like a mounta Saint Helens. It's still impressive. It's
very impressive. Um. The magma cooled inside the pipes and
(08:23):
left behind these veins of kimber light rock, and that's
where the diamonds are, right, and kimber lights bluish and
I guess the diamonds are inside the kimber light. Yeah.
I looked up kimber light and that's what it looked like.
It looked like a big bluish rock with spots of crystals, right,
and you crack that open, you have raw diamonds. That's right. Uh,
that's not the only place you can find diamonds, though.
You can find them alluvial diamond sits or river beds
(08:46):
that were originally they all came from from the mantle,
but they get pushed around by things like glaciers and
water and they can end up thousands of miles from
where they started. Those are called alluvial diamond sights. That's yeah.
Did you say that that did? Are you sure? I'm
positive I don't think you did. Um. Diamonds, like you said,
(09:08):
they're not as rare as they have been artificially made
to be. They can be found all over the world. Um.
Some of the major sites are in Russia, Borneo, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Venezuela, Canada. Yeah,
I didn't know that, um. And they're often found in
(09:30):
these things called archie and cratons in the center of
a continent. Well, Africa too, we gotta say Africa. Oh yeah,
it's Africa's huge. I think come from Africa for sure.
I can't believe I left that out. And that's right, um.
But if you you're more likely to find diamonds in
the center of the continent, and these things called archaean cratons,
cratons and archie and craton is basically a horizontal piece
(09:53):
of earth that is kind of relatively immune to geological
events like earthquakes and tech tonic movement and all that.
And this is usually a pretty good site to find diamonds. Yeah,
it says here they've they're found in the center of
most of the seven continents, six of them. Yeah, Like,
why don't they just say there's only seven things. I
(10:13):
don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Okay, Um,
when they find diamonds, Josh, they're rough. Have you ever
seen a big rough diamond stone? It's crystal on TV? Yeah,
it doesn't look like much. It looks like a crystal
like that you would dig up from the earth. There's
like yeah, um, but you have to process it, um
(10:35):
obviously by by carbon the sucker up and then making
it pretty and then making it shiny, right, which is
quite get specifically into that, but that's that's the base basics. Well,
you said, um, that's one of the things you like
about diamonds is the cristmanship. Yeah, and it takes a while.
You want to talk about it, all right, Cutting diamonds Josh,
(10:55):
which again, this is not the easiest thing in the
world to do, and it takes special tape nicks. Like cleaving. Yeah,
this is my favorite cleaving is when they they take
the diamond as it is weak, it's point, which is
the tetrahedral plane. We'll talk about that in a second.
Oh you know about that because I looked it up
and I can only come to guesses about what that is. Oh, well,
(11:16):
I don't know what the plane is, but I know,
I just figured it was the point where the well,
I guess, I don't know, so sort of assumed it
was where that there were fewer links of the atoms. Yeah,
I think like so the lattice, the lattice um connection
between carbon atoms and the diamond is what makes it strong.
So each carbon atom is connected to four others instead
(11:40):
of just one. It's like the the five side of
a dice of a die. Right, I connect all those
and you have your You're on your way to forming
a diamond. Whereas with carbon or graphite um, the five
are connected in a ring, so one's only connected to
one other one, which is why it's weaker. Right, But
if you look, if you kind of plot out um
(12:01):
a tetrahedral um lattice work of carbon atoms. If you
go straight across, there's a point where each of them
where you're only cutting through one atom at the time,
there's only one connection. Yeah, that's gotta be it. Then,
that's what I would think it is. That's my guess.
I think you're right, Josh. So they find this tetrahedral
plane where it's weakest, and they hold the diamond in
(12:24):
like cement or wax or something. They cut a little
groove and then they put a steel blade in that
groove and in one big whack they cleave this sucker
into two pieces. And I'll bet that is nerve wracking work.
I couldn't find a video of it. Oh yeah, I
could imagine it's probably pretty well guarded. I mean I
saw an old video from like old black and white thing,
(12:44):
but it was I don't know if there was a
new method now or whatever. Uh. Then, Uh, sometimes you
can't just cleave it. Sometimes there's no plane of weakness
and you have to saw it. And there's probably always
a plane of weakness in the diamond. But for the
angle that you're trying to get too, I imagine that
there's not necessarily going you you can't find that tetrahedral plane. Yeah,
(13:05):
because you're cutting it in specific places for a reason.
You're not just like, hey, let me cut the sucker
in two. You're cutting it very specifically for what you
want the end result to be, whether it's I want
to get five different cut diamonds out of this single
rock or whatever. Yeah, And you need to think like
that many steps ahead. And for each diamond, you the
first thing you do is figure out where the table is,
(13:25):
which is the top of the diamond. It's the most
exposed surface area. And then you figure out what the
girdle is and that is the part of the diamond
with the largest diameter. Um. And once you once you
established those two things and everything else, it just makes
sense because there's just a certain way to cut diamonds
and can go crazy make like a squirrel. Diamonds are
(13:45):
shaped like diamonds exactly. That interesting. Yeah. Um, So you've
got you've got cleaving, you've got sawing and sawing. You're
using a special tool called the phosphor bronze blade. That rope,
it's a RPMs. I did see this online. That's crazy.
It's pretty crazy. Um, you can also use a laser,
(14:06):
but that takes forever. Um. Yeah, I got the feeling
lasers aren't really the way to go, which is surprising.
I thought it'd be like whoop, yeah exactly. You know,
I've seen seen James Bond movies. Lasers can you all
sorts of cool stuff? Uh, if you want to shape
your diamond, which you will want to do if you
ever want to sell it. Um, if it's one of
the lucky of diamonds, because I think it's only that
(14:27):
actually make it to market. Oh is it that? Yeah,
used for like sol blades and other industrial uses, embraces, embraces, Yeah,
diamond dust bowls, racis, pianos. Brooding or cutting gives the
diamond the shape, and brooding is when you do it
(14:48):
by hand, and cutting is when you use a machine.
And I couldn't find out how many diamonds are hand cut,
like percentage wise. I'm curious about that. I don't know
if it's a lost art or if that just means
it's a higher quality because it's handcut. Do you know, No,
I don't. Both of them seem to use uh a
lot of human intervention though. Brooding and cutting and other
(15:11):
diamonds to brooding is kind of like taking two pipes,
filling them with cement and then putting a diamond in
it so that there's just a little bit sticking out
and then rubbing him together using a diamond to cut
of diamond, which is the only thing you can cut
a diamond with. Do you want to talk about the
most scale real quick? Yeah, because you can only cut
a diamond the diamond because as we said, UM, it's
(15:34):
pretty much the hardest substance on Earth, right, anything but
beneath that is not going to scratch it. And there's
actually um a scale to uh describe the strength of
um minerals by a guy named Friedrich Mose. Yeah, the
Mose Hardness scale. Yeah, and he was a German mineral
mineral ologists, mineralogist jee man from the thirties. I think
(15:57):
who created this scale goes from one to ten or
although you said now eleven, I guess it goes to eleven. Well,
it's eleven percent harder than diamond, so it's got to
be above diamond, right, it's gotta be above diamond level.
Platinum level. We start out with talc. You can scratch
talk with your fingernail it's such a wimpy little thing.
Gypsum you can scratch with your fingernail barely calcite. You
(16:21):
can scratch it with a copper coin and it scratches
a copper coin, okay, which is a measurement. And it's
quite a duel. Yeah, I'll get you yoursite versus copper fluora.
You cannot get scratched by copper coin. And it does
not scratch glass. It just kind of sits there. Yeah,
doing this thing. Um appetite. I think it is appetite.
(16:44):
Appetite either way, I'm hungry. Um. It scratches glass sort of,
or just scratches glass, and it's easily scratched by a knife.
I remember when I was a kid, I didn't understand
what the word barely meant. And I was playing kick
ball in one of like the older kids. Is like, man,
just go out there and just barely kicked the ball,
(17:04):
and he's telling me to bunt. Basically he kicked it
like a bear would. No, I thought, barely meant like
to just just barely miss it, not just barely make
contact with something. So I kept going out there and
like just perfectly barely missing it, and the kid was
going crazy. I'm like, I don't understand you. You're in
my yard. Go home? Is that your excuse for why
(17:24):
I struck out a kickball growing up? I struck out
at t ball even Yeah, and like they give you
like six strikes and they still would be like ghost,
sit down, Josh. That makes me feel bad. Um Ortho
Clays Josh is number six, um quartz is number seven.
Then you got topaz, correndum, courrond, dumber is like sapphires
(17:46):
and rubies, and then the diamond and that is the
most hardness scale and um so as you can see,
since diamonds the last because the most scale hasn't been updated.
Uh the you have to use a diamond to cut
a dime, which some of those the industrial uses of
diamonds is diamond cutting tools. Yeah. I have a diamond
(18:06):
sal blade, nuts be rolling in it. I'm loaded, dude.
It also has diamonds just bedazzled all over the saw itself.
Uh So, we talked about brooding and then cutting. You
would use a lathe, which is something that spins it
(18:27):
around very fast. That's one of my favorite words. Lathe.
I used to work with the wood lathe back in
the day, a lot of fun and then you want
to polish it if you want to. By the way,
there's only five major cutting centers in the world. Yeah, Like,
if you're gonna get your diamonds cut, they get shipped
to New York, Bombay, Israel, Antwerp, or Johannesburg generally Johannesburg
(18:49):
either way. So, like I said, you want to polish
it because you want it all shiny and pretty, and uh,
it's a polishing wheel coated with once again diamond powder.
Are you starting to see a pattern here? Diamonds cut diamonds. Um. So,
once you once your diamonds cut and you say, hey,
this is pretty good diamond, I'm going to try to
sell it to somebody for you know, too much money,
(19:13):
right exactly. Um. One of the things that you're going
to use to describe this diamond and increase its value
are the four seas. Right, You've got cut, clarity, carrot,
and color. And we'll start with cut. So basically cut
is how well the diamonds cut and what shape it's
(19:33):
cut in. There's all sorts of different cuts, including the
most confusing of all, the emerald cut diamond UM, and
the one we're referring to initially was I think just
the round cut. That's like the standard diamond shape. So
you got cut right, you have clarity and that measures UM.
(19:55):
The diamonds natural flaws, so um you have the flaws
are also called inclusions, and you have a flawless down
to slightly included in between you have very very slight,
very slight and then slightly and then there's different degrees
of that like vs one VVS two s I two,
(20:17):
and it just keeps going until you're like you need
to we'll use this as as a sol blade. I
like a little flaw in my diamond. Well, that's nice, Chuck.
That just shows what kind of guy I am. That's
also a way that diamonds are catalog like a specific
diamond is cataloged and tract is by its inclusions because
they're frequently for for diamonds, they're solding as gem stones there.
(20:39):
The flaws are so infrequent that they're almost like um birthmarks, right,
They're they're birth marks for diamonds. Uh. Carrot Josh is
the third scene, and that is the weight a carrot
is about two d milligrams, right, and that actually came
out of India. Um. The carib seed was used as
a weight for um for diamonds, and that be and
(21:00):
carrot instead of ca. And then you've got color, and
we're talking about transparent diamonds. So basically what you've got
is totally colorless, which means it's a carbon. There's no
other mineral or element in this diamond um all the
way to h a light yellow and that's ranked but
(21:22):
from d diz so weird. I've never understood that. I
don't know. There's a lot I don't understand about diamonds.
And then you also have transparency, luster, and dispersion of light. Fire, yeah, fire,
that's right, fire. I think brilliance and then the other
word for it, probably and that's all dispersion of light. Yeah,
I think virus, which is means you can see different
(21:43):
you know, when you hold it up to light, you
see different colors, and it's like the discobalt quality of
the diamond exactly. Um. So we we also mentioned that
the truly rare diamonds are colored ones and they come
in like a rainbow of expense tons. Yeah, there's black diamonds,
there's yellow diamonds. Even though transparent diamonds go down to
(22:06):
light yellow. Those aren't yellow diamonds. Yellow diamonds, yellow diamond
They're awesome. Um, you've got pale green, pink pinker popular
with rich people. What I've seen they go with. I
think j Lo had a big pink diamond from one
of her husbands. Is that right? I think so? I don't.
(22:28):
I don't know why I knew that. You benefit. You
know how things get caught up in your brain that
should not be there, and then you can't forget it
no matter what. Now you'll always remember that. M hold on,
I'm getting rid of it right now. Shoot, donkey eating
grass and done. Okay. Um, so let's talk about the
history and why diamonds are. I haven't always been so
(22:49):
popular with the Americans. Um, they were not always a
an engagement ring. No. Before that, it was like colored
Joe stone, like a nice looking ruby. Yeah, well, why
wouldn't you give that to somebody? You like to look
at it? It's gorgeous. And then the Beers came about.
That's right. De Beers is a cartel. If you don't
(23:10):
know what, a cartel is founded by a Mr Rhodes,
who um Rhodesia is named after, and the Rhodes scholarship,
and the Beers is the family name of the people
whose farm he bought initially in South Africa. If you
don't know what a cartel is, it is a syndicate
of competing firms that all gets together and says, hey,
let's fix prices on all our stuff, create a monopoly
(23:35):
and let's run the show. Yes, and that's what De
Beers is. It is a consult De Beers Consolidated Minds
Ltd pretty much says it all. It's the all the
different uh well, not all. Up until like two thousand
it was mostly all Yeah. I think that's something like
(23:55):
of all the diamonds are controlled by them. They produced
he used to be, but they also go around and
buy up diamonds from the market and sit on them
and then every year through these things called um sites.
I think the sales because there's only two people, are
groups that are licensed to buy from the Beers and
(24:18):
they have like I think ten sales a year where
they say you're you. Two hundred people are are allowed
to come buy diamonds from us. And they so tightly
control the market that they control the price of diamonds,
and that's why diamonds are so expensive ten weeks out
of the year. That's it, is it, right? And they
could buy in packages from I think like one to
(24:40):
two million or something like that of uncut diamonds and
then the site holders take them to go get created
by people who cleave. That's right. Uh. And in two
thousand um I said that their monopoly sort of ended.
Um Russia, Canada, Australia basically said enough of this and
they went outside to beers, and that in really ended
their big monopoly, although they still what is it, half
(25:03):
the world diamond supply and they control about two thirds
of the whole world market, right, but it used to
be close to how did they do this, Chuck? How
does the company do this? I mean obviously by buying diamonds,
but how did they take the diamond and make it
the this precious sowed after Gemstone. Well, when you control supply,
(25:24):
obviously you can say it's rare. But then they did
it through clever marketing. Basically, as about all there was
to it. Diamond diamond is Forever in the nineteen forties
was voted in two thousand as the ad campaign slogan
of the twentieth century. That's pretty big. That's huge. And
that that basically sold the American public and Japan. Japan
(25:44):
in the sixties America in the late forties sold them
on the fact that a diamond was, uh what you
needed to save up two months salary for and uh
and spend on your wife for her engagement right or
on your fiance right. Um. And then following that the
beers said, hey, we should get rid of the aftermarket.
(26:05):
And they said, by the way, that diamond you bought
is an engagement, that's a family heirloom. You want to
hang on to that, which keeps diamonds off of the market.
And it's what's so, this is why I said I
don't like diamonds. It's just none of it was true. Yeah.
It was just a cartel that got together and said
we're gonna snow the American and Japanese public on the
(26:27):
fact that these are really rare, precious gems, when they
should have just said, you know what, we've got lots
of diamonds actually and appreciate the craftsmanship and pay a
decent price for it and everyone's happy. It doesn't sound
like something the beers would say. Um. So, in addition
to the fact that the industry is virtually controlled by
a cartel. Um diamonds also have. They routinely get bad
(26:52):
pressed for um conflict diamonds blood diamonds, which are essentially
diamonds that are mined illegally to fund as far as UM.
The people who oversee such things rebel groups there are
that seek to destabilize legitimate governments. Right, yeah, we have
a whole article on that. I think, Yeah, I think
(27:13):
our blood diamond's making a comeback, comeback or something. Yeah. Um,
So they've come up with this thing called the the
what is it, the Kimberly the Kimberly process certification scheme
and scheme. And I hate it when they use scheme
like that, even though it's correct, it always sounds bad
and the use words scheme, but it's really just a plan.
(27:33):
And they call it the Kimberly Process. The u N
and the Conflict Free Diamond Council got together to basically
monitor the diamond at every point of its production process,
so they know basically the birth certificate of the diamond
all the way through to the until it's on the
little ladies finger. So supposedly that's what's supposed to happen,
but really, what the Kimberly Um. The Kimberley process entails
(27:57):
now is getting governments to control their imports and exports
of diamonds and certify them. So like if you are
shipping a certification or a bunch of diamonds that each
in each diamond doesn't have a certification, you can't get
the shipment. Um. You're supposed to package them in tamper
free UM or tamper proof uh containers, So people can't
(28:20):
slip blood diamonds into these shipments mid shipment. Yeah, that
makes sense, um, But the problem is what you were saying,
like they control every aspect. That's not true, cutting, polishing, um,
all of these things aren't overseen. Yeah, which leads to
a lot of possibility. You can introduce blood diamonds at
the beginning of this stream and they just become bona
(28:43):
fide through a shipment. So when the u N says
that they're ninety nine point eight percent of diamonds now
and market are conflict free, is that not Also the
other criticism of the Kimberly processes, it depends on your
your definition of conflicts. The u N and the Kimberly
scheme people well are basically saying it's a rebel group
that can produce a blood diamond and this is a
(29:05):
this is a human rights organization above all else. But
they're turning a blind eye to human rights abuses by
these legitimate governments like Robert Mugabe's um government of Zimbabwe.
Hugo Chavez apparently his government in Venezuela has some human
right abuses regarding diamonds, but these are still considered legitimate diamonds,
(29:26):
not blood diamonds, even though they are still conflict diamonds. Well,
in uh two thousand one, UM Bill Clinton signed Executive
Order one which basically said America is not no longer
gonna get any roughs from Sierra Leone. And then uh
W came along later that year and signed another executive
(29:49):
order saying no more RUSS from Liberia. And then in
two thousand three, we passed in the United States the
Clean Diamond Trade Act, which supposedly has legis slation that
helps implement in the Kimberly process. Yeah, and it sounds
like a big scam. Now, if you buy it's not
a scam, it's just flawed. It has inclusions to say
(30:09):
that um and if you buy a diamond you can UM,
you can request to see it's UM kimberly processed certificate. UM.
Another way to get around this all together, to make
sure that there's no way that your blood, that your
diamonds of blood diamond is to buy synthetic. Yeah, and
there's plenty of them, plenty of different varieties out there, yep.
(30:32):
Growing up in the seventies, we all heard about the
Cubic Zirconia the c Z and uh it's a lab
gym that was made in a lab and it's been
on the market since seventy six. Yeah, the Russians created it, right, Yeah,
and it's hard. It's an eight point five on the
most scale. Um. And the problem with the c Z
(30:52):
is it's too perfect, Yeah, so perfect. It looks fake.
It's like the diamond that hit the Uncanny Valley, right,
Like there's something wrong with it because it's just too good. So,
I mean it looks artificial when you look at it,
because it is. They have manufactured it too perfectly. So
nowadays sometimes they will put slight inclusions in there, which
(31:15):
is just so funny. That's like the like the new
stuff that like the hat you get at Abercombie, that's
fraid I'm the bill. Um. There's also moistonite, which is
named after Dr Henri Moisson, who discovered diamonds in a
meteorite in Arizona in and somehow managed to replicate it. Yeah,
(31:37):
and if if it was just moisonite, like the natural moistonite,
it would be one of the rarest things on the planet,
the asteroid version of the meteorite version. Yeah, the non
man made moistonite um, because it's essentially just silicon carbide.
But it's really really rare to get the real thing.
It's like a crystallized version of diamonds. Yeah. And so
(31:58):
in the eighties, come an called cre Incorporated developed a
way of producing silicon carbide crystals, and moistonite was now
available as of the late nineties too, you know, to
take the place of your natural diamond are they I
couldn't get a price on those. I don't think moizonite
is cheap. Uh, I don't know. I know that man
(32:21):
made diamonds that's a different class. It's a different category
from even moistonite. Yeah, Moissonite and cubics arconia are synthetic
man made. No manmade is synthetic. Cubans cubic zarconia moistenite
are simulants. They're not actually made from carbon. Manmade diamonds
(32:41):
are made from carbon, but they're made in a few
days rather than you know, eons um and they are
structurally diamonds, so much of that the Deemological Institute of
America recognizes them as diamonds. But they sell for about
thirty of a natural diamond um and those are I guess,
second most expensive. So I would think moisture night is
(33:03):
cheaper than that, probably, And uh uh. The man made
are sometimes so hard to tell apart from the real
thing that gemalogists can't even tell, and jewelers can't tell.
And so they are now selling machines that helped jewelers
determine whether or not it's a real diamond or it's
man made. And who makes that machine? Josh, I couldn't
(33:26):
begin to guess. The beers the beers in November last year,
um late last year, the Anglo American company which the
Global Mining Company acquired. Oh, it was the Oppenheimer family
who was one of the original the Oppenheimer fun people.
Now it was from the They were one of the
original families for the de Beers Cartel, I think. Um,
(33:47):
but they bought out the Oppenheimer families of their Steak
into Beers for five point one billion dollars in cash
and cash, yeah, not like stock certificates or future promises.
And now they raised their steak to because they already
had forty five So the Oppenheimer's are a longer part
(34:07):
of that, but they are rolling in the cash. They
went straight. Um. I think we would be remissed. There's
plenty of famous diamonds, but I think we'd be remiss
if we didn't talk about probably the most famous diamond,
the Hope Diamond. The Pink Panther. Is that real? I
don't know. It was a real movie. Yeah, A really
good movie about a diamond in a great cartoon. Yeah. Um,
(34:30):
but the Hope Diamond. Have you seen it at the
Smithsonian which is big, um? And it was there. It
has a curse associated with it, you know that. Um.
There was a newspaper in nineteen eleven. Um. Well, I
guess several of them wrote about the curse of the
(34:52):
Hope Diamond. That's when it started to come about. Um.
And in a book in the Mystery of the Hope Diamond.
Really like kind of established its um lower in popular culture.
But UM starting with a guy named Jean Baptiste Tavernier.
He stole the Hope Diamond and was um torn apart
by wild dogs. That was the first bad thing that
(35:14):
happened associated with the Hope Diamond. Uh. Louis lost his
head during the revolution. Louis his head, Yeah, Louis the
fourteenth had it. He died of gang green Um. George
the fourth died deep in debt UM. All the way
to UH, one of my favorites uh Mademoiselle laurens Ldu
(35:37):
borrowed the diamond from her lover Ivan, who had been
murdered by Russian revolutionaries, and she was murdered before he
could be murdered by Russian revolutionaries. UM. And then all
the way down to the Abdul Hamid, the second Sultan
of Turkey. He paid four grand for it, and it
just brought horrible luck to everybody, from his um, his
(35:59):
favorite member of his harem, to his royal guards UM.
And then finally Harry Winston got his hands on it
from Pierre Cartier, and Harry Winston decided to just end
it all and send this thing to the Smithsonian and
he sent the Hope Diamond just regular postal. Regular post
(36:19):
didn't tell him it was coming. I mean they knew
that they were negotiating. He's like, okay, I'll send it,
and it just arrived very unceremoniously. And a guy named
James Todd is the mailman who brought it Hope Diamond
to the Smithsonian. And um, he later crushed his leg
in a truck accident, his head was injured in an
automobile accident, and he lost his home in a fire.
(36:40):
I'm not laughing at him. Boy, the Madden Curse has
nothing on that. No, that's crazy, no way. So that's
it for diamonds. Do you got anything else? What are
we at? Like an hour and a half now, okay,
let's end it. Then. Um, if you want to learn
more about diamonds, type diamond into the search bar. How
stuff works, like to common opening up a lot cool stuff?
(37:01):
And I said search bar. So it's not for a
listener mail. Yeah. In addition to diamonds, it was blood diamonds,
and there was an also an article about diamond thieves.
I'm wanna look into that, have you? Yeah, I was
kind of a history of diamond thoughts it wasn't um
okay this from Liz, and I'm gonna call this pickpocketing.
(37:22):
For spring break, during my junior year of high school,
I went to Europe as a part of a group
trip organized by my school's art club. There were maybe
thirty of us in total, spending three days each in London, Paris,
and Madrid. Before we left, our art teacher, who had
put together the entire trip, warned us repeatedly about pickpockets.
We even had an in club project where we made
little bags for our passports to hang around our necks
(37:44):
and under our shirts. During this trip, we did have
occasional brushes with suspicious people, including one lady who stepped
onto a crowded subway train, pushed against my mother, and
immediately started unzipping her purse, which was hanging in front
of her. When she saw my mom looking to eckly
at her, she turned and walked off the train right
before the doors closed, about five or six seconds in
(38:05):
that entire exchange. The big story, though, was one night
in Madrid where a group of the adult chaperones and
anyone old enough to drink went out to a pub.
By sheer chance. The Swedish rugby team was also there
that night. The smallest among them was about six ft
six and they were all built like mac trucks. And
they were already very drunk and very rowdy, but also
(38:28):
very friendly. So you got big, burly, drunk friendly rugby.
Uh they were Swedish, yes, but that was a handsome
group of guys. Now I had went back to our hotel,
but this was the story related to me. Our our
teacher was chatting with the coach of the rugby team.
She felt a hand reached inside of her purse. She
grabbed at it as it was pulling out, and realized
(38:50):
that the pickpocket had her wallet, passport, and two passports
of my classmates. The entire team rushed the guy and
took him outside, where they recovered at least two other
wallets that have been stolen at the same bar. I
can't say what else they did, but I'm fairly certain
he wasn't picking any pockets for a while. That is
from Liz in Philadelphia, a k a. New York LIGHTE. Nice.
(39:14):
Thank you very much, Liza. It was a pretty cool
It's a good pickpocketing story, and go Swedish rugby team
for beating up people. Who's steal. Yeah, any anybody who
beats up people who's steal It's pretty great. Unless it's
one of those kind of like morally gray things from Lameyserab.
You know it's tough yet. Well, if you have a
(39:34):
cool uh story about um, I don't know, Western justice
doled out by Swedes or other nationalities, we want to
hear about it. Sure, you can tweet to us at
s y s K podcast. You can join us on
Facebook at facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know,
and you can uh send us an email at Stuff
(39:57):
Podcast at Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out
our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how
Stework staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two
(40:17):
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, I'm welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles t. W Chuck
Bryant and uh where Stuff you Should Know Crew with
(00:25):
the Juice Crew, Big Daddy Kane. I'm Big Daddy Kane.
All right, I'm Biz Markie. I'll take it. You're red
headed King Pim. Yes, okay, you don't remember that guy. No. Sorry,
we're still talking about our music sampling podcast, which we
just recorded. Instead, we're gonna talk about something else, something
(00:46):
called diamonds. I kind of hate diamonds. Now, by the way,
do you this is this article is? Yeah? Well I
thought it was good, but after reading all this stuff,
I'm just like, it's just a big false market. Well,
i mean, they're still pretty, but yeah, they have a
lot of they got a lot of problems, all right, Chuck. Yes,
(01:09):
have you ever heard of a magazine called The Atlantic? Yeah?
I used to get that. Have you ever heard of
a year called nine eight two? Okay, well, in nineteen
eighty two, in that magazine, The Atlantic didn't. I didn't either.
I was six. I wasn't reading The Atlantic yet. I
came when I was ten. Um. In nineteen two, a
(01:31):
guy named ever j Epstein wrote an article for The
Atlantic called have You ever Tried to Sell the Diamond?
And I got this from Neto Rama by the way, um.
And in the in the article he wrote about someone
else who who conducted an experiment to try to find
out what's going on with the aftermarket for diamonds. Right.
(01:51):
So this guy for magazine called Money, which magazine I
don't understand the name at all. Um. In nineteen seventy Uh,
the guy bought a one point four two carrot diamond
for seven five pounds. That's a pretty good deal these days,
but back then I would say it was an average price. Right.
(02:12):
So he waits for a year to allow it to appreciate,
because supposedly diamonds appreciate in value, right, And then he
takes it around to all of the gem dealers in
London and the highest offer he got for what he
paid the year before seven pounds was five d sixty
eight pounds. So he's like, huh, I want to figure
(02:33):
out what maybe if I let it appreciate a little longer,
it will work. And this guy obviously had other freelance
work in the meantime, because he waited until nineteen seventy
four and did it again. This time he finds out
that his diamond shrunk from one point four two carrots
to one point oh four carets because one of the
dealers switched the diamond out on him when he was
(02:53):
having it a praise V one. That's not even the worst.
The guy buys another diamond one point four carrots, right,
takes it around. He buys it for two thousand pounds
in four I think, Um, he waited a week, it
took it around, and the highest offergot was a thousand
(03:14):
pounds hemorrhaging money. Right. But the point is is the
reason why these things are like cadillacs the moment you
drive them off a lot and they never come back
and value is because there is no aftermarket. And the
reason that there is no aftermarket for for diamonds is
(03:35):
because of one single diamond cartel and their advertising campaigns
to beers um, which we'll talk about in this But
there's a lot more to diamonds than just all the
shady business. The monopolies and the cartels and the artificial
markets created. There is billions of years of history. One
of the cool things about a diamond is that when
(03:57):
you're wearing this, when looking at a diamond holding it,
you're beholding possibly a mineral that's that was created a
billion years ago. That is cool, very cool. I love that,
and I very much appreciate the craftsmanship what goes into
making a diamond in its final form, because, as every
(04:18):
kid knows, diamonds are as hard as it kids supposedly,
and they're a girl's best friend. That's another thing too.
There's a lot of slogans around diamonds, all created by
the beers. Let's let's talk about diamonds. Where are they
made of? Because they're so expensive, it must be made
up of like kryptonite and um in diamond and yeah,
in diamonds, no, Josh, you know you're benkoy. They are
(04:42):
made of carbon. It is basically carbon, and it's most
concentrated form. And carbon is a pretty common elements, one
of the four essential ingredients to life. We breathe it.
We're made up of carbon. Pencils are like at least
sixty carbon uh, and diamonds if you want to get
down to brass, acts are not rare at all. Um.
(05:02):
There are many many more precious gems that are much
rarer than diamonds, including some types of diamonds. Colored diamonds
what we're mainly talking about, and this one is transparent
diamonds typical like white diamonds. But yeah, colored diamond and
naturally colored diamond is nice. So um ice, let's call
(05:25):
it ice? Yeah? Or bling? Do you remember when bling
used to be called bling bling? Like there were two
blings bling bling? No? Did they just shorten it to
one bling at some point? Who's they? Who decides the stuff?
Mtvay Urban Dictionary. Yeah? Um, so you've got carbon. It's
pretty uh, pretty ubiquitous, Yes, very abundant. It naturally occurs
(05:47):
in three forms, right, graphite, diamond fairly soft, diamond, very hard,
and then fullerite John fullerite, which is uh. It's a
mineral made of per quickly spherical molecules of exactly sixty
carbon atoms, and it was only recently discovered and supposedly
(06:09):
diamonds are no longer the strongest um mineral. Somebody synthetically
figured out how to um combine fuller right, into and
know something else and it's like eleven harder than diamonds
on the most depth scale. Sorry, by that that sampling
(06:30):
episode really had an effect the rest of the day.
Then it's carrying over UM diamonds. Uh So basically, if
you have graphite, you have a misformed diamond. Is one
way to look at it. Diamonds form under very specific
conditions UM that are found typically about a hundred miles
or a hundred and sixty one kilometers beneath the Earth's
(06:52):
surface in the mantle. As long as temperatures are above
four I'm sorry, as long as temperatures are seven hundred
and fifty two degrees fahrenheit four hundred degrees saleseness UM,
and there's at least four hundred and thirty five thousand,
one hundred and thirteen pounds per square inch of pressure,
(07:13):
you will form diamond when there's carbon, and carbon will
make a diamond. If either of those two things are
not met, you're gonna get graphite. Right. So these diamonds
that we're looking at today, like we said, reformed like
fifty million, hundred millions up to billions of years ago
under these conditions, and UM more recently say I think
(07:40):
twenty million, between twenty million and one point one billion
years ago, heavy magma um eruptions that are about three
times from depths, about three times that that blew up
Mount St. Helen. Um pushed diamonds towards the surface and
form what are called kimberlight pipes. Magma is one of
(08:00):
my favorite works, by the way, I don't know why.
Uh yeah, And basically they act as like an elevator
and they pushed the diamonds and other stuff up through
the mantle. Happened very quickly, over a matter of hours.
And but it's all underground, so it's not like it
wasn't like a mounta Saint Helens. It's still impressive. It's
very impressive. Um. The magma cooled inside the pipes and
(08:23):
left behind these veins of kimber light rock, and that's
where the diamonds are, right, and kimber lights bluish and
I guess the diamonds are inside the kimber light. Yeah.
I looked up kimber light and that's what it looked like.
It looked like a big bluish rock with spots of crystals, right,
and you crack that open, you have raw diamonds. That's right. Uh,
that's not the only place you can find diamonds, though.
You can find them alluvial diamond sits or river beds
(08:46):
that were originally they all came from from the mantle,
but they get pushed around by things like glaciers and
water and they can end up thousands of miles from
where they started. Those are called alluvial diamond sights. That's yeah.
Did you say that that did? Are you sure? I'm
positive I don't think you did. Um. Diamonds, like you said,
(09:08):
they're not as rare as they have been artificially made
to be. They can be found all over the world. Um.
Some of the major sites are in Russia, Borneo, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Venezuela, Canada. Yeah,
I didn't know that, um. And they're often found in
(09:30):
these things called archie and cratons in the center of
a continent. Well, Africa too, we gotta say Africa. Oh yeah,
it's Africa's huge. I think come from Africa for sure.
I can't believe I left that out. And that's right, um.
But if you you're more likely to find diamonds in
the center of the continent, and these things called archaean cratons,
cratons and archie and craton is basically a horizontal piece
(09:53):
of earth that is kind of relatively immune to geological
events like earthquakes and tech tonic movement and all that.
And this is usually a pretty good site to find diamonds. Yeah,
it says here they've they're found in the center of
most of the seven continents, six of them. Yeah, Like,
why don't they just say there's only seven things. I
(10:13):
don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Okay, Um,
when they find diamonds, Josh, they're rough. Have you ever
seen a big rough diamond stone? It's crystal on TV? Yeah,
it doesn't look like much. It looks like a crystal
like that you would dig up from the earth. There's
like yeah, um, but you have to process it, um
(10:35):
obviously by by carbon the sucker up and then making
it pretty and then making it shiny, right, which is
quite get specifically into that, but that's that's the base basics. Well,
you said, um, that's one of the things you like
about diamonds is the cristmanship. Yeah, and it takes a while.
You want to talk about it, all right, Cutting diamonds Josh,
(10:55):
which again, this is not the easiest thing in the
world to do, and it takes special tape nicks. Like cleaving. Yeah,
this is my favorite cleaving is when they they take
the diamond as it is weak, it's point, which is
the tetrahedral plane. We'll talk about that in a second.
Oh you know about that because I looked it up
and I can only come to guesses about what that is. Oh, well,
(11:16):
I don't know what the plane is, but I know,
I just figured it was the point where the well,
I guess, I don't know, so sort of assumed it
was where that there were fewer links of the atoms. Yeah,
I think like so the lattice, the lattice um connection
between carbon atoms and the diamond is what makes it strong.
So each carbon atom is connected to four others instead
(11:40):
of just one. It's like the the five side of
a dice of a die. Right, I connect all those
and you have your You're on your way to forming
a diamond. Whereas with carbon or graphite um, the five
are connected in a ring, so one's only connected to
one other one, which is why it's weaker. Right, But
if you look, if you kind of plot out um
(12:01):
a tetrahedral um lattice work of carbon atoms. If you
go straight across, there's a point where each of them
where you're only cutting through one atom at the time,
there's only one connection. Yeah, that's gotta be it. Then,
that's what I would think it is. That's my guess.
I think you're right, Josh. So they find this tetrahedral
plane where it's weakest, and they hold the diamond in
(12:24):
like cement or wax or something. They cut a little
groove and then they put a steel blade in that
groove and in one big whack they cleave this sucker
into two pieces. And I'll bet that is nerve wracking work.
I couldn't find a video of it. Oh yeah, I
could imagine it's probably pretty well guarded. I mean I
saw an old video from like old black and white thing,
(12:44):
but it was I don't know if there was a
new method now or whatever. Uh. Then, Uh, sometimes you
can't just cleave it. Sometimes there's no plane of weakness
and you have to saw it. And there's probably always
a plane of weakness in the diamond. But for the
angle that you're trying to get too, I imagine that
there's not necessarily going you you can't find that tetrahedral plane. Yeah,
(13:05):
because you're cutting it in specific places for a reason.
You're not just like, hey, let me cut the sucker
in two. You're cutting it very specifically for what you
want the end result to be, whether it's I want
to get five different cut diamonds out of this single
rock or whatever. Yeah, And you need to think like
that many steps ahead. And for each diamond, you the
first thing you do is figure out where the table is,
(13:25):
which is the top of the diamond. It's the most
exposed surface area. And then you figure out what the
girdle is and that is the part of the diamond
with the largest diameter. Um. And once you once you
established those two things and everything else, it just makes
sense because there's just a certain way to cut diamonds
and can go crazy make like a squirrel. Diamonds are
(13:45):
shaped like diamonds exactly. That interesting. Yeah. Um, So you've
got you've got cleaving, you've got sawing and sawing. You're
using a special tool called the phosphor bronze blade. That rope,
it's a RPMs. I did see this online. That's crazy.
It's pretty crazy. Um, you can also use a laser,
(14:06):
but that takes forever. Um. Yeah, I got the feeling
lasers aren't really the way to go, which is surprising.
I thought it'd be like whoop, yeah exactly. You know,
I've seen seen James Bond movies. Lasers can you all
sorts of cool stuff? Uh, if you want to shape
your diamond, which you will want to do if you
ever want to sell it. Um, if it's one of
the lucky of diamonds, because I think it's only that
(14:27):
actually make it to market. Oh is it that? Yeah,
used for like sol blades and other industrial uses, embraces, embraces, Yeah,
diamond dust bowls, racis, pianos. Brooding or cutting gives the
diamond the shape, and brooding is when you do it
(14:48):
by hand, and cutting is when you use a machine.
And I couldn't find out how many diamonds are hand cut,
like percentage wise. I'm curious about that. I don't know
if it's a lost art or if that just means
it's a higher quality because it's handcut. Do you know, No,
I don't. Both of them seem to use uh a
lot of human intervention though. Brooding and cutting and other
(15:11):
diamonds to brooding is kind of like taking two pipes,
filling them with cement and then putting a diamond in
it so that there's just a little bit sticking out
and then rubbing him together using a diamond to cut
of diamond, which is the only thing you can cut
a diamond with. Do you want to talk about the
most scale real quick? Yeah, because you can only cut
a diamond the diamond because as we said, UM, it's
(15:34):
pretty much the hardest substance on Earth, right, anything but
beneath that is not going to scratch it. And there's
actually um a scale to uh describe the strength of
um minerals by a guy named Friedrich Mose. Yeah, the
Mose Hardness scale. Yeah, and he was a German mineral
mineral ologists, mineralogist jee man from the thirties. I think
(15:57):
who created this scale goes from one to ten or
although you said now eleven, I guess it goes to eleven. Well,
it's eleven percent harder than diamond, so it's got to
be above diamond, right, it's gotta be above diamond level.
Platinum level. We start out with talc. You can scratch
talk with your fingernail it's such a wimpy little thing.
Gypsum you can scratch with your fingernail barely calcite. You
(16:21):
can scratch it with a copper coin and it scratches
a copper coin, okay, which is a measurement. And it's
quite a duel. Yeah, I'll get you yoursite versus copper fluora.
You cannot get scratched by copper coin. And it does
not scratch glass. It just kind of sits there. Yeah,
doing this thing. Um appetite. I think it is appetite.
(16:44):
Appetite either way, I'm hungry. Um. It scratches glass sort of,
or just scratches glass, and it's easily scratched by a knife.
I remember when I was a kid, I didn't understand
what the word barely meant. And I was playing kick
ball in one of like the older kids. Is like, man,
just go out there and just barely kicked the ball,
(17:04):
and he's telling me to bunt. Basically he kicked it
like a bear would. No, I thought, barely meant like
to just just barely miss it, not just barely make
contact with something. So I kept going out there and
like just perfectly barely missing it, and the kid was
going crazy. I'm like, I don't understand you. You're in
my yard. Go home? Is that your excuse for why
(17:24):
I struck out a kickball growing up? I struck out
at t ball even Yeah, and like they give you
like six strikes and they still would be like ghost,
sit down, Josh. That makes me feel bad. Um Ortho
Clays Josh is number six, um quartz is number seven.
Then you got topaz, correndum, courrond, dumber is like sapphires
(17:46):
and rubies, and then the diamond and that is the
most hardness scale and um so as you can see,
since diamonds the last because the most scale hasn't been updated.
Uh the you have to use a diamond to cut
a dime, which some of those the industrial uses of
diamonds is diamond cutting tools. Yeah. I have a diamond
(18:06):
sal blade, nuts be rolling in it. I'm loaded, dude.
It also has diamonds just bedazzled all over the saw itself.
Uh So, we talked about brooding and then cutting. You
would use a lathe, which is something that spins it
(18:27):
around very fast. That's one of my favorite words. Lathe.
I used to work with the wood lathe back in
the day, a lot of fun and then you want
to polish it if you want to. By the way,
there's only five major cutting centers in the world. Yeah, Like,
if you're gonna get your diamonds cut, they get shipped
to New York, Bombay, Israel, Antwerp, or Johannesburg generally Johannesburg
(18:49):
either way. So, like I said, you want to polish
it because you want it all shiny and pretty, and uh,
it's a polishing wheel coated with once again diamond powder.
Are you starting to see a pattern here? Diamonds cut diamonds. Um. So,
once you once your diamonds cut and you say, hey,
this is pretty good diamond, I'm going to try to
sell it to somebody for you know, too much money,
(19:13):
right exactly. Um. One of the things that you're going
to use to describe this diamond and increase its value
are the four seas. Right, You've got cut, clarity, carrot,
and color. And we'll start with cut. So basically cut
is how well the diamonds cut and what shape it's
(19:33):
cut in. There's all sorts of different cuts, including the
most confusing of all, the emerald cut diamond UM, and
the one we're referring to initially was I think just
the round cut. That's like the standard diamond shape. So
you got cut right, you have clarity and that measures UM.
(19:55):
The diamonds natural flaws, so um you have the flaws
are also called inclusions, and you have a flawless down
to slightly included in between you have very very slight,
very slight and then slightly and then there's different degrees
of that like vs one VVS two s I two,
(20:17):
and it just keeps going until you're like you need
to we'll use this as as a sol blade. I
like a little flaw in my diamond. Well, that's nice, Chuck.
That just shows what kind of guy I am. That's
also a way that diamonds are catalog like a specific
diamond is cataloged and tract is by its inclusions because
they're frequently for for diamonds, they're solding as gem stones there.
(20:39):
The flaws are so infrequent that they're almost like um birthmarks, right,
They're they're birth marks for diamonds. Uh. Carrot Josh is
the third scene, and that is the weight a carrot
is about two d milligrams, right, and that actually came
out of India. Um. The carib seed was used as
a weight for um for diamonds, and that be and
(21:00):
carrot instead of ca. And then you've got color, and
we're talking about transparent diamonds. So basically what you've got
is totally colorless, which means it's a carbon. There's no
other mineral or element in this diamond um all the
way to h a light yellow and that's ranked but
(21:22):
from d diz so weird. I've never understood that. I
don't know. There's a lot I don't understand about diamonds.
And then you also have transparency, luster, and dispersion of light. Fire, yeah, fire,
that's right, fire. I think brilliance and then the other
word for it, probably and that's all dispersion of light. Yeah,
I think virus, which is means you can see different
(21:43):
you know, when you hold it up to light, you
see different colors, and it's like the discobalt quality of
the diamond exactly. Um. So we we also mentioned that
the truly rare diamonds are colored ones and they come
in like a rainbow of expense tons. Yeah, there's black diamonds,
there's yellow diamonds. Even though transparent diamonds go down to
(22:06):
light yellow. Those aren't yellow diamonds. Yellow diamonds, yellow diamond
They're awesome. Um, you've got pale green, pink pinker popular
with rich people. What I've seen they go with. I
think j Lo had a big pink diamond from one
of her husbands. Is that right? I think so? I don't.
(22:28):
I don't know why I knew that. You benefit. You
know how things get caught up in your brain that
should not be there, and then you can't forget it
no matter what. Now you'll always remember that. M hold on,
I'm getting rid of it right now. Shoot, donkey eating
grass and done. Okay. Um, so let's talk about the
history and why diamonds are. I haven't always been so
(22:49):
popular with the Americans. Um, they were not always a
an engagement ring. No. Before that, it was like colored
Joe stone, like a nice looking ruby. Yeah, well, why
wouldn't you give that to somebody? You like to look
at it? It's gorgeous. And then the Beers came about.
That's right. De Beers is a cartel. If you don't
(23:10):
know what, a cartel is founded by a Mr Rhodes,
who um Rhodesia is named after, and the Rhodes scholarship,
and the Beers is the family name of the people
whose farm he bought initially in South Africa. If you
don't know what a cartel is, it is a syndicate
of competing firms that all gets together and says, hey,
let's fix prices on all our stuff, create a monopoly
(23:35):
and let's run the show. Yes, and that's what De
Beers is. It is a consult De Beers Consolidated Minds
Ltd pretty much says it all. It's the all the
different uh well, not all. Up until like two thousand
it was mostly all Yeah. I think that's something like
(23:55):
of all the diamonds are controlled by them. They produced
he used to be, but they also go around and
buy up diamonds from the market and sit on them
and then every year through these things called um sites.
I think the sales because there's only two people, are
groups that are licensed to buy from the Beers and
(24:18):
they have like I think ten sales a year where
they say you're you. Two hundred people are are allowed
to come buy diamonds from us. And they so tightly
control the market that they control the price of diamonds,
and that's why diamonds are so expensive ten weeks out
of the year. That's it, is it, right? And they
could buy in packages from I think like one to
(24:40):
two million or something like that of uncut diamonds and
then the site holders take them to go get created
by people who cleave. That's right. Uh. And in two
thousand um I said that their monopoly sort of ended.
Um Russia, Canada, Australia basically said enough of this and
they went outside to beers, and that in really ended
their big monopoly, although they still what is it, half
(25:03):
the world diamond supply and they control about two thirds
of the whole world market, right, but it used to
be close to how did they do this, Chuck? How
does the company do this? I mean obviously by buying diamonds,
but how did they take the diamond and make it
the this precious sowed after Gemstone. Well, when you control supply,
(25:24):
obviously you can say it's rare. But then they did
it through clever marketing. Basically, as about all there was
to it. Diamond diamond is Forever in the nineteen forties
was voted in two thousand as the ad campaign slogan
of the twentieth century. That's pretty big. That's huge. And
that that basically sold the American public and Japan. Japan
(25:44):
in the sixties America in the late forties sold them
on the fact that a diamond was, uh what you
needed to save up two months salary for and uh
and spend on your wife for her engagement right or
on your fiance right. Um. And then following that the
beers said, hey, we should get rid of the aftermarket.
(26:05):
And they said, by the way, that diamond you bought
is an engagement, that's a family heirloom. You want to
hang on to that, which keeps diamonds off of the market.
And it's what's so, this is why I said I
don't like diamonds. It's just none of it was true. Yeah.
It was just a cartel that got together and said
we're gonna snow the American and Japanese public on the
(26:27):
fact that these are really rare, precious gems, when they
should have just said, you know what, we've got lots
of diamonds actually and appreciate the craftsmanship and pay a
decent price for it and everyone's happy. It doesn't sound
like something the beers would say. Um. So, in addition
to the fact that the industry is virtually controlled by
a cartel. Um diamonds also have. They routinely get bad
(26:52):
pressed for um conflict diamonds blood diamonds, which are essentially
diamonds that are mined illegally to fund as far as UM.
The people who oversee such things rebel groups there are
that seek to destabilize legitimate governments. Right, yeah, we have
a whole article on that. I think, Yeah, I think
(27:13):
our blood diamond's making a comeback, comeback or something. Yeah. Um,
So they've come up with this thing called the the
what is it, the Kimberly the Kimberly process certification scheme
and scheme. And I hate it when they use scheme
like that, even though it's correct, it always sounds bad
and the use words scheme, but it's really just a plan.
(27:33):
And they call it the Kimberly Process. The u N
and the Conflict Free Diamond Council got together to basically
monitor the diamond at every point of its production process,
so they know basically the birth certificate of the diamond
all the way through to the until it's on the
little ladies finger. So supposedly that's what's supposed to happen,
but really, what the Kimberly Um. The Kimberley process entails
(27:57):
now is getting governments to control their imports and exports
of diamonds and certify them. So like if you are
shipping a certification or a bunch of diamonds that each
in each diamond doesn't have a certification, you can't get
the shipment. Um. You're supposed to package them in tamper
free UM or tamper proof uh containers, So people can't
(28:20):
slip blood diamonds into these shipments mid shipment. Yeah, that
makes sense, um, But the problem is what you were saying,
like they control every aspect. That's not true, cutting, polishing, um,
all of these things aren't overseen. Yeah, which leads to
a lot of possibility. You can introduce blood diamonds at
the beginning of this stream and they just become bona
(28:43):
fide through a shipment. So when the u N says
that they're ninety nine point eight percent of diamonds now
and market are conflict free, is that not Also the
other criticism of the Kimberly processes, it depends on your
your definition of conflicts. The u N and the Kimberly
scheme people well are basically saying it's a rebel group
that can produce a blood diamond and this is a
(29:05):
this is a human rights organization above all else. But
they're turning a blind eye to human rights abuses by
these legitimate governments like Robert Mugabe's um government of Zimbabwe.
Hugo Chavez apparently his government in Venezuela has some human
right abuses regarding diamonds, but these are still considered legitimate diamonds,
(29:26):
not blood diamonds, even though they are still conflict diamonds. Well,
in uh two thousand one, UM Bill Clinton signed Executive
Order one which basically said America is not no longer
gonna get any roughs from Sierra Leone. And then uh
W came along later that year and signed another executive
(29:49):
order saying no more RUSS from Liberia. And then in
two thousand three, we passed in the United States the
Clean Diamond Trade Act, which supposedly has legis slation that
helps implement in the Kimberly process. Yeah, and it sounds
like a big scam. Now, if you buy it's not
a scam, it's just flawed. It has inclusions to say
(30:09):
that um and if you buy a diamond you can UM,
you can request to see it's UM kimberly processed certificate. UM.
Another way to get around this all together, to make
sure that there's no way that your blood, that your
diamonds of blood diamond is to buy synthetic. Yeah, and
there's plenty of them, plenty of different varieties out there, yep.
(30:32):
Growing up in the seventies, we all heard about the
Cubic Zirconia the c Z and uh it's a lab
gym that was made in a lab and it's been
on the market since seventy six. Yeah, the Russians created it, right, Yeah,
and it's hard. It's an eight point five on the
most scale. Um. And the problem with the c Z
(30:52):
is it's too perfect, Yeah, so perfect. It looks fake.
It's like the diamond that hit the Uncanny Valley, right,
Like there's something wrong with it because it's just too good. So,
I mean it looks artificial when you look at it,
because it is. They have manufactured it too perfectly. So
nowadays sometimes they will put slight inclusions in there, which
(31:15):
is just so funny. That's like the like the new
stuff that like the hat you get at Abercombie, that's
fraid I'm the bill. Um. There's also moistonite, which is
named after Dr Henri Moisson, who discovered diamonds in a
meteorite in Arizona in and somehow managed to replicate it. Yeah,
(31:37):
and if if it was just moisonite, like the natural moistonite,
it would be one of the rarest things on the planet,
the asteroid version of the meteorite version. Yeah, the non
man made moistonite um, because it's essentially just silicon carbide.
But it's really really rare to get the real thing.
It's like a crystallized version of diamonds. Yeah. And so
(31:58):
in the eighties, come an called cre Incorporated developed a
way of producing silicon carbide crystals, and moistonite was now
available as of the late nineties too, you know, to
take the place of your natural diamond are they I
couldn't get a price on those. I don't think moizonite
is cheap. Uh, I don't know. I know that man
(32:21):
made diamonds that's a different class. It's a different category
from even moistonite. Yeah, Moissonite and cubics arconia are synthetic
man made. No manmade is synthetic. Cubans cubic zarconia moistenite
are simulants. They're not actually made from carbon. Manmade diamonds
(32:41):
are made from carbon, but they're made in a few
days rather than you know, eons um and they are
structurally diamonds, so much of that the Deemological Institute of
America recognizes them as diamonds. But they sell for about
thirty of a natural diamond um and those are I guess,
second most expensive. So I would think moisture night is
(33:03):
cheaper than that, probably, And uh uh. The man made
are sometimes so hard to tell apart from the real
thing that gemalogists can't even tell, and jewelers can't tell.
And so they are now selling machines that helped jewelers
determine whether or not it's a real diamond or it's
man made. And who makes that machine? Josh, I couldn't
(33:26):
begin to guess. The beers the beers in November last year,
um late last year, the Anglo American company which the
Global Mining Company acquired. Oh, it was the Oppenheimer family
who was one of the original the Oppenheimer fun people.
Now it was from the They were one of the
original families for the de Beers Cartel, I think. Um,
(33:47):
but they bought out the Oppenheimer families of their Steak
into Beers for five point one billion dollars in cash
and cash, yeah, not like stock certificates or future promises.
And now they raised their steak to because they already
had forty five So the Oppenheimer's are a longer part
(34:07):
of that, but they are rolling in the cash. They
went straight. Um. I think we would be remissed. There's
plenty of famous diamonds, but I think we'd be remiss
if we didn't talk about probably the most famous diamond,
the Hope Diamond. The Pink Panther. Is that real? I
don't know. It was a real movie. Yeah, A really
good movie about a diamond in a great cartoon. Yeah. Um,
(34:30):
but the Hope Diamond. Have you seen it at the
Smithsonian which is big, um? And it was there. It
has a curse associated with it, you know that. Um.
There was a newspaper in nineteen eleven. Um. Well, I
guess several of them wrote about the curse of the
(34:52):
Hope Diamond. That's when it started to come about. Um.
And in a book in the Mystery of the Hope Diamond.
Really like kind of established its um lower in popular culture.
But UM starting with a guy named Jean Baptiste Tavernier.
He stole the Hope Diamond and was um torn apart
by wild dogs. That was the first bad thing that
(35:14):
happened associated with the Hope Diamond. Uh. Louis lost his
head during the revolution. Louis his head, Yeah, Louis the
fourteenth had it. He died of gang green Um. George
the fourth died deep in debt UM. All the way
to UH, one of my favorites uh Mademoiselle laurens Ldu
(35:37):
borrowed the diamond from her lover Ivan, who had been
murdered by Russian revolutionaries, and she was murdered before he
could be murdered by Russian revolutionaries. UM. And then all
the way down to the Abdul Hamid, the second Sultan
of Turkey. He paid four grand for it, and it
just brought horrible luck to everybody, from his um, his
(35:59):
favorite member of his harem, to his royal guards UM.
And then finally Harry Winston got his hands on it
from Pierre Cartier, and Harry Winston decided to just end
it all and send this thing to the Smithsonian and
he sent the Hope Diamond just regular postal. Regular post
(36:19):
didn't tell him it was coming. I mean they knew
that they were negotiating. He's like, okay, I'll send it,
and it just arrived very unceremoniously. And a guy named
James Todd is the mailman who brought it Hope Diamond
to the Smithsonian. And um, he later crushed his leg
in a truck accident, his head was injured in an
automobile accident, and he lost his home in a fire.
(36:40):
I'm not laughing at him. Boy, the Madden Curse has
nothing on that. No, that's crazy, no way. So that's
it for diamonds. Do you got anything else? What are
we at? Like an hour and a half now, okay,
let's end it. Then. Um, if you want to learn
more about diamonds, type diamond into the search bar. How
stuff works, like to common opening up a lot cool stuff?
(37:01):
And I said search bar. So it's not for a
listener mail. Yeah. In addition to diamonds, it was blood diamonds,
and there was an also an article about diamond thieves.
I'm wanna look into that, have you? Yeah, I was
kind of a history of diamond thoughts it wasn't um
okay this from Liz, and I'm gonna call this pickpocketing.
(37:22):
For spring break, during my junior year of high school,
I went to Europe as a part of a group
trip organized by my school's art club. There were maybe
thirty of us in total, spending three days each in London, Paris,
and Madrid. Before we left, our art teacher, who had
put together the entire trip, warned us repeatedly about pickpockets.
We even had an in club project where we made
little bags for our passports to hang around our necks
(37:44):
and under our shirts. During this trip, we did have
occasional brushes with suspicious people, including one lady who stepped
onto a crowded subway train, pushed against my mother, and
immediately started unzipping her purse, which was hanging in front
of her. When she saw my mom looking to eckly
at her, she turned and walked off the train right
before the doors closed, about five or six seconds in
(38:05):
that entire exchange. The big story, though, was one night
in Madrid where a group of the adult chaperones and
anyone old enough to drink went out to a pub.
By sheer chance. The Swedish rugby team was also there
that night. The smallest among them was about six ft
six and they were all built like mac trucks. And
they were already very drunk and very rowdy, but also
(38:28):
very friendly. So you got big, burly, drunk friendly rugby.
Uh they were Swedish, yes, but that was a handsome
group of guys. Now I had went back to our hotel,
but this was the story related to me. Our our
teacher was chatting with the coach of the rugby team.
She felt a hand reached inside of her purse. She
grabbed at it as it was pulling out, and realized
(38:50):
that the pickpocket had her wallet, passport, and two passports
of my classmates. The entire team rushed the guy and
took him outside, where they recovered at least two other
wallets that have been stolen at the same bar. I
can't say what else they did, but I'm fairly certain
he wasn't picking any pockets for a while. That is
from Liz in Philadelphia, a k a. New York LIGHTE. Nice.
(39:14):
Thank you very much, Liza. It was a pretty cool
It's a good pickpocketing story, and go Swedish rugby team
for beating up people. Who's steal. Yeah, any anybody who
beats up people who's steal It's pretty great. Unless it's
one of those kind of like morally gray things from Lameyserab.
You know it's tough yet. Well, if you have a
(39:34):
cool uh story about um, I don't know, Western justice
doled out by Swedes or other nationalities, we want to
hear about it. Sure, you can tweet to us at
s y s K podcast. You can join us on
Facebook at facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know,
and you can uh send us an email at Stuff
(39:57):
Podcast at Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out
our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how
Stework staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two
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