Stuff You Should Know - How Diamonds Work

Episode Date: April 3, 2012

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we're Stuff You Should Know crew.

We're the juice crew. Yeah, Big Daddy Kane. I'm Big Daddy Kane. All right, I'm Bismarcky. I'll take it. You're Red Headed Kingpin. 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 going to talk about something else, something called diamonds. I kind of hate diamonds now, by the way. This article is... 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. Let me tell you a story. All right. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever heard of a magazine called The Atlantic? Yeah, I used to get that. Have you ever heard of a

year called 1982? I was 11. Okay. Well, in 1982, in that magazine, The Atlantic... I didn't get back then. I didn't either. I was six. I wasn't reading The Atlantic yet. I came when I was 10. In 1982, a guy named Ever J. Epstein wrote an article for The Atlantic called, Have you ever tried to sell a diamond? I got this from Nido Rama, by the way. Okay. And in the article, he wrote about someone else who conducted an experiment to try to find out what's going on with the aftermarket for diamonds, right? Okay. So this guy for a magazine called Money Witch Magazine. I don't understand the name at all. In 1970, the guy bought a 1.42 carat diamond for £745. That's a pretty good deal these days. But back then, I would say it was an average price, right? Sure. So he waits for

a year to allow it to appreciate because supposedly diamonds appreciate in value, right? Yeah. 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 £745 was £568. So he's like, huh, I want to figure out what maybe if I let it appreciate a little longer, it'll work. And this guy obviously had other freelance work in the meantime, because he waited until 1974 and did it again. This time, he finds out that his diamond shrunk from 1.42 carats to 1.04 carats, because one of the dealers switched the diamond out on and when he was having it appraised in 1971. What? The same in the worst. The guy buys another diamond, 1.4 carats, right? Okay. Takes it around. He buys it for £2,595 in 1974, I think.

He waited a week, took it around, and the highest offer he got was £1,000. Boy, this guy's, he's just a dummy. 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 in value, is because there is no aftermarket. And the reason that there is no aftermarket for diamonds is because of one single diamond cartel and their advertising campaigns to beers, which we'll talk about in this. But there's a lot more to diamonds than just all the shady business or new 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 you're wearing this,

looking at a diamond, holding it, you're beholding possibly a mineral that was created a billion years ago. That is cool. Very cool. I love that. And I very much appreciate the craftsmanship behind what goes into making a diamond in its final form. Because, as every kid knows, diamonds are as hard as it gets, supposedly. And they're a girl's best friend. That's another thing, too. There's a lot of slogans around diamonds. Yeah, all created by the beers. Let's talk about diamonds. What are they made of? Because they're so expensive, they must be made up of like kryptonite and... And diamonds. Unicornite and yeah, diamonds, right? No, Josh. You know, you're being coy. They are made of carbon. It is basically carbon in its most concentrated form.

Right. And carbon is a pretty common element for essential ingredients to life. We breathe it. We're made up of 18% carbon. Pencils are like at least 60% carbon. And diamonds, if you want to get down to brass tacks, are not rare at all. There are many, many more precious gems that are much rarer than diamonds. Including some types of diamonds. Colored diamonds. Yeah. What we're mainly talking about in this one is transparent diamonds. Yeah. Typical like white diamonds. Yeah. But yeah, colored diamond and naturally colored diamond is... Nice. Ice. Let's call it ice. Yeah. Or bling. Do you remember when bling used to be called bling bling? Like there were two blings? Bling bling. Yeah. No, did they just shorten it

to one bling at some point? Who's they? Who decides the stuff? MTV. Okay. Urban dictionary. Yeah. So you got carbon. It's pretty ubiquitous. Yes, very abundant. It naturally occurs in three forms, right? Graphite. Diamond. Fairly soft. Yes. Diamond. Very hard. And then fullerite. John fullerite. Which is... It's a mineral made of perfectly spherical molecules of exactly 60 carbon atoms. Yeah. And it was only recently discovered in 1990. Yeah. And supposedly diamonds are no longer the strongest mineral. Oh, really? Somebody synthetically figured out how to combine fullerite into something else. And it's like 11% harder than diamonds. Huh. On the most depth scale? Sorry. Boy, that sampling episode really had an effect the rest of the day, didn't it? Yeah.

It's carrying over. Diamonds... So basically, if you have graphite, you have a misinformed diamond. Yes. There's one way to look at it. Sure. Diamonds form under very specific conditions that are found typically about 100 miles or 161 kilometers beneath the Earth's surface. Yes, in the mantle. As long as temperatures are above 400... I'm sorry. As long as temperatures are above 752 degrees Fahrenheit, 400 degrees Celsius, and there's at least 435,113 pounds per square inch of pressure, you will form diamond when there's carbon. Heat and pressure. Yes. And carbon will make a diamond. If either of those two things are not met, you're going to get graphite. Right. So these diamonds that we're looking at today,

like we said, were formed like 50 million, 100 million, up to billions... That's pretty cool. ...of years ago under these conditions. And more recently, say, I think 20 million, between 20 million and 1.1 billion years ago, heavy magma eruptions that are about three times from depths about three times that blew up Mount St. Helen pushed diamonds toward the surface and formed what are called kimberlite pipes. Yeah, magma's one of my favorite parts, by the way. Yeah. I don't know why. Yeah, and basically they act as like an elevator and they push the diamonds and other stuff up through the mantle, happen very quickly over a matter of hours, but it's all underground, so it's not like it wasn't like in Mount St. Helens. It's still impressive.

It's very impressive. Yeah. The magma cooled inside the pipes and left behind these veins of kimberlite rock, and that's where the diamonds are. Right, and kimberlite's bluish, and I guess the diamonds are inside the kimberlite? Yeah, I looked up kimberlite, 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. That's not the only place you can find diamonds, though. You can find them alluvial diamond sites or riverbeds that were originally, they all came 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 sites. That's right. Yeah. Did you say that? I did. Are you sure? I'm positive. I don't think you did. Okay. Diamonds, like you said, they're not as rare as they have been artificially made to be. They can be found all over the world. Some of the major sites are in Russia, Borneo, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Venezuela, Canada. Yeah. I didn't know that. And they're often found in these things called archaean cratons in the center of the continent. Well, Africa, too. We got to say Africa. Oh, yeah. Africa's huge. 50%, I think, come from Africa. For sure. I can't believe I left that out. That's right. But if you're more likely to find diamonds in the center of the continent, and these things called archaean cratons, and archaean craton is

basically a horizontal piece of earth that is relatively immune to geological events like earthquakes and tectonic movement and all that, and this is usually a pretty good site to find diamonds. Yeah, it says here they're found in the center of most of the seven continents. Six of them. Yeah, like what? They just say there's only seven things. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Okay. 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 or something. Like quartz, yeah. Yeah. But you have to process it. Obviously, by carbon, this sucker up and then making it pretty and then making it

shiny. Right, which is going to get specifically into that. But that's that's the basics. Well, you said that's one of the things you like about diamonds is the craftsmanship. Yeah, and it takes a lot. You want to talk about it? All right, cutting diamonds, Josh, which again, this is not the easiest thing in the world to do. And it takes some special techniques. Like cleaving. Yeah, this is my favorite. Cleaving is when they they take the diamond at its weakest 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, 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 that there were fewer links of the atoms. Yeah, I think like so the lattice the lattice connection between carbon atoms and a diamond is what makes it strong. Yeah, so each carbon atom is connected to four others. Yeah, instead of just one, it's like the the five side of a dice of a die, right? I connect all those and you have you're on your way to forming a diamond. Whereas with carbon or graphite, the five are connected in a ring. So one's only connected to one other one, right, which is why it's weaker, right? Right. But if you look, if you kind of plot out a tetrahedral lattice work of carbon atoms, you if you go straight across, there's a point where each of them where you're

only cutting through one atom at a time, there's only one connection. Yeah, that's got to be it then. That's what I would think it is. Yeah, that's my guess. I think you're right, Josh. Josh. So they find this tetrahedral plane where it's weakest and they hold the diamond in 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 his nerve rack can 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, but it was, I don't know if there was a new method now or whatever. Yeah. Then 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 to, I imagine that makes it not necessarily going, you can't find that tetrahedral plane. Yeah, because you're cutting it in specific places for a reason. You're not just like, Hey, let me cut this sucker in two. Right. 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, which is the top of the diamond. It's the most exposed

surface area. Yeah. And then you figure out what the girdle is. And that is the part of the diamond with the largest diameter. Right. And once you, once you establish those two things and everything else, it just makes sense because there's just a certain way to cut diamonds. And I'm going to go crazy and make like a little squirrel diamonds or shape like diamonds. Exactly. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. So you've got, you've got cleaving, you've got sawing and sawing using a special tool called the phosphor bronze blade that rotates at 15,000 RPM. I did see this online. That's crazy. It's pretty crazy. You can also use a laser, but that takes forever. Yeah. I got the feeling lasers aren't really the way to go. Which is surprising. I thought it'd be like, whoop, whoop. Yeah, exactly.

You know, I've seen, seen James Bond movies. Lasers can do all sorts of cool stuff. If you want to shape your diamond, which you will want to do, if you ever want to sell it, if it's one of the lucky 20% of diamonds, because I think it's only 20% that actually make it to to market. Oh, is it that? Yeah. And 80% are used for like saw blades and other industrial uses. Abraces. Abraces. Yeah. Diamond dust. Bowling balls. Really? Barracis pianos. Brooding or cutting gives the diamond the shape. And brooding is when you do it 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. Yeah. I don't know

if it's a lost art or if that just means it's a higher quality because it's hand cut. Yeah. Do you know? No, I don't. Okay. Both of them seem to use a lot of human intervention, though, brooding and cutting and other diamonds. So 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 them together using a diamond to cut a diamond. Yeah, which is the only thing you can cut a diamond with. You want to talk about the Mohs scale real quick? Yeah. Because you can only cut a diamond with a diamond because, as we said, it's pretty much the hardest substance on earth, right? Anything beneath that is not going to scratch

it. And there's actually a scale to describe the strength of minerals by a guy named Friedrich Mohs. Yeah, the Mohs hardness scale. Yeah. And he was a German mineral, mineralologist, mineralologist. Geez, man. From the 30s, I think, who created this scale. Yeah, it goes from one to 10, although you said now 11. I guess. It goes to 11. Well, it's 11% harder than diamond, so it's got to be above diamond. Right. It's got to be above diamond level. It's platinum level. We start out with talc. You can scratch talc with your fingernail. It's such a wimpy little thing. Gypsum, you can scratch with your fingernail, barely. Calcite, you can scratch it with a copper coin. And it scratches a copper coin, which is a measurement as well. That's quite a dual.

Yeah, I'll get you. Calcite versus copper. Fluorite, you cannot get scratched by copper coin, and it does not scratch glass. It just kind of sits there. Yeah, doing its thing. Apatite? I think it is apatite. Apatite? Either way. I'm hungry. It scratches glass, sort of, or just scratches glass, and it's easily scratched by a knife. Yeah. It's crazy. I remember when I was a kid, I didn't understand what the word barely meant, and I was playing kickball, and one of the older kids was like, man, just go out there and just barely kick the ball, and he was telling me to bunt, basically. He kicked it like a bare wood. No, I thought barely meant to just barely miss it, not just barely make contact with something. So I kept

going out there and 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 you struck out at kickball growing up? I struck out at t-ball even. Wow. Yeah. And they give me like six strikes. Wow. And they still would be like, go sit down, Josh. Oh, that makes me feel bad. Ortho-clays, Josh, is number six. Quartz is number seven. Then you got topaz, corundum. Corundum is like sapphires and rubies. Yeah. And then the diamond, and that is the most hardness scale. And so as you can see, since diamonds the last, because the most scale hasn't been updated, you have to use a diamond to cut a diamond, which some of those industrial uses

of diamonds is diamond cutting tools. Yeah, I have a diamond saw blade. Crazy. I know. You must be rolling in it. I'm loaded, dude. It also has diamonds just bedazzled all over the saw itself. It spells chuck and diamonds. So we talked about brooding and then cutting, you would use a lathe, which is something that spins it around very fast. That's one of my favorite words. Lathe. I used to work with a wood lathe back in the day. Yeah, a lot of fun. And then you want to polish it if you want to. Oh, by the way, there's only five major cutting centers in the world. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like if you're going to get your diamonds cut, they get shipped to New York, Bombay, Israel, Antwerp or Johannesburg, generally. Okay.

Johannesburg. Either way. So like I said, you want to polish it because you want it all shiny and pretty. And it's a polishing wheel coated with, once again, diamond powder. Yeah. Are you starting to see a pattern here? Diamonds cut diamonds. So once your diamonds cut and you say, hey, this is pretty good diamond, I'm going to try to sell it to somebody for too much money. Right, exactly. One of the things that you're going to use to describe this diamond and increase its value are the four C's, right? That's right. You've got cut, clarity, carrot and color. And we'll start with cut. So basically, cut is how well a diamond is cut and what shape it's cut in. Yeah. There's all sorts of different

cuts, including the most confusing of all, the emerald cut diamond. Yeah. And the one we were referring to initially was, I think, just the round cut. That's like the standard diamond shape. Okay. So you've got cut, right? Yeah. You have clarity and that measures the diamond's natural flaws. That's a big C. So you have the flaws are also called conclusions. Yeah. 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 VS1, VVS2, SI2. And it just keeps going until you're like, you need to use this as a saw blade. I like a little flaw in my diamond. That's nice, Chuck. That just shows what kind of guy I am. That's also a way that diamonds

are catalogued. Like a specific diamond is catalogued and tracked is by its inclusions. Right. Because they're frequently for diamonds that are sold as gemstones. The flaws are so infrequent that they're almost like birthmarks. Right. They're birthmarks for diamonds. Carrot, Josh is a third seed and that is the weight. A carrot is about 200 milligrams. Right. And that actually came out of India. The carob seed was used as a weight for diamonds and that became carrot instead of carob. And then you've got color. And we were talking about transparent diamonds. So basically what you've got is totally colorless, which means it's 100% carbon. There's no other mineral or element in this diamond. Right. All the way to a light yellow and that's

ranked from D to Z. 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 brilliant. Isn't that the other word for it? Probably. And that's all dispersion of light. Yeah. I think fire is, which is means you can see different, you know, when you hold it up to light, you see different colors. And it's like the disco ball quality of the diamond. Exactly. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs.

They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

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Yeah, there's black diamonds. There's yellow diamonds, even though transparent diamonds go down to light yellow, those aren't yellow diamonds. Yeah, yellow diamonds, yellow diamond. They're awesome. You've got pale green pink. Yeah, they're popular with rich people. Are they? What I've seen. Yeah. They go with chihuahuas. I think J.Lo had a big pink diamond. Yeah. From one of her husbands. Is that right? I think so. You track such things? No, I don't. I don't know why I knew that. You're a 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. Yeah. Now you'll always remember that. Hold on. I'm getting rid of it right now. Ah, shoot. Donkey eating grass and done.

Okay. So let's talk about the history and why diamonds are, haven't always been so popular with the Americans. They were not always an engagement ring. No, before that it was like colored gemstones. Yeah, like a nice looking ruby. Yeah. Well, why wouldn't you give that to somebody you like? Sure. Look at it. It's gorgeous. And then De Beers came about. Yes, right. De Beers is a cartel. If you don't know what a cartel is. Founded by a Mr. Rhodes who Rhodesia is named after and the Rhodes Scholarship. That's right. And De 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. Yeah. It's illegal. Let's create a monopoly and let's run the show. Yes. And that's what De Beers is. It is a, De Beers Consolidated Minds, LTD pretty much says it all. It's all the different, well, not all up until like 2000. It was mostly all. Yeah. I think that's something like 70 to 80% of all the diamonds are controlled by them. They produce like 50%. It used to be like 90 to 95%. But they also go around and buy up diamonds from the market and sit on them. And then every year through these things called sites, I think, the sales, because there's only 200 people or groups that are licensed to buy from De Beers. And they have like, I think 10 sales a year where they say you 200 people 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. 10 weeks out of the year. That's it. Is that right? Yeah. And they could buy in packages from, I think, like one to 200 million or something like that. That's crazy. Of uncut diamonds. And then the site holders take them to go get created by people who cleave. That's right. And in 2000, I said that their monopoly sort of ended Russia, Canada, Australia, basically said enough of this. And they went outside De Beers. And that essentially ended their big monopoly, although they still, what is it, half the world diamond supply. And they control about two thirds of the whole world market.

Right. But it used to be close to 100%. How did they do this, Chuck? How does a company do this? I mean, obviously by buying diamonds, but how did they take the diamond and make it the, this precious sought after gemstone? Well, when you control supply, obviously, you can say it's rare. But then they did it through clever marketing, basically. Yeah. That's about all there was to it. Diamond, a diamond is forever in the 1940s was voted in 2000 as the ad campaign slogan of the 20th century. That's pretty big. That's huge. And that, that basically sold the American public and Japan. Japan in the 60s. Yeah. America in the late 40s. Sold them on the fact that a diamond was what you needed to save up two months salary for

and spend on your wife for her engagement ring. Yeah. Or on your fiance. Right. And then following that De Beers said, hey, we should get rid of the aftermarket. And they said, by the way, that diamond you bought as an engagement ring, that's a family heirloom. You want to hang on to that, which keeps diamonds off of the market. And it's what 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 going to snow the American and Japanese public on the fact that these are really rare precious gems. Right. 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. No. So in addition to the fact that the industry is virtually controlled by a cartel, diamonds also have the routinely get bad press for conflict diamonds, blood diamonds, which are essentially diamonds that are mined illegally to fund as far as the people who oversee such things. Rebel groups that are that seek to destabilize legitimate governments. Right. Yeah. We have a whole article on that, I think. Yeah. I think our blood diamonds making a comeback or something. Yeah. So they come up with this thing called the, what is it, the Kimberly?

The Kimberly process certification scheme. Right. And scheme, I hate it when they use scheme like that, even though it's correct. It always sounds bad and use word scheme, but it's really just a plan. And they call it the Kimberly process. The UN 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, till it's on the little lady's finger. So supposedly that's what's supposed to happen. But really what the Kimberly, the Kimberly process entails 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 and each diamond does have a certification, you can't get the shipment. You're supposed to package them in tamper free or tamper proof containers. Right. So people can't slip blood diamonds into these shipments mid shipment. Yeah, that makes sense. But the problem is what you were saying, like they control every aspect. That's not true. Cutting, polishing, all of these things aren't overseen. Oh really? Yeah, which leads to a lot of possibility. You can introduce blood diamonds at the beginning of the stream and they just become bonafide through a shipment.

So when the UN says that they're 99.8% of diamonds now in market or conflict free, is that not true? Also the other criticism of the Kimberly process is it depends on your, your definition of conflict. Right. The UN and the Kimberly scheme people are basically saying it's a rebel group that can produce a blood diamond. And this is a, this is a human rights organization above all else. Yeah. But they're turning a blind eye to human rights abuses by these legitimate governments like Robert Mugabe's government of Zimbabwe. Right. Hugo Chavez apparently his government in Venezuela has some human right abuses regarding diamonds, but these are still considered legitimate diamonds. Right. Not blood diamonds,

even though they are still conflict diamonds. Right. Interesting. Yeah. Well, in 2001, Bill Clinton signed executive order 13194, which basically said America's no longer going to get any roughs from Sierra Leone. And then W came along later that year and signed another executive order saying no more roughs from Liberia. And then in 2003, we passed in the United States, the clean diamond trade act, which supposedly has legislation that helps implement the Kimberly process. Yeah. And it sounds like a big scam now. If you buy, it's not a scam, it's just flawed. Okay. It has inclusions. I was just about to say that. And if you buy a diamond, you can, and you can request to see it's Kimberly process certificate. Yeah. 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. Growing up in the 70s, we all heard about the cubic zirconia. Yeah. This is easy. And it's a lab gym. It was made in the lab and it's been on the market since 76. Yeah, the Russians created it, right? Yeah. And it's hard. It's an 8.5 on the most scale. And the problem with the, the CZ 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. Yeah. 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 is just so funny. That's like the, like the new stuff that like the hat you get at Abercombe that's frayed on the bill. There's also Moisonite, which is named after Dr. Henri Moison. Yeah. Who discovered diamonds in a meteorite in Arizona in 1893 and somehow managed to replicate it. Yeah. And if it was just Moisonite, like the natural Moisonite, it would be one of the rarest things on the planet. The asteroid version or the meteorite version? Yeah. The non manmade Moisonite. Yeah. 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 in the 80s, a company called Cree Incorporated developed a way of producing silicon carbide crystals and Moisonite was now available as of the late 90s to, you know, to take the place of your natural diamond. Hot. Are they, I couldn't get a price on those. I don't think Moisonite is cheap. I don't know. I know that manmade diamonds, that's a different class. It's a different category. Oh, from even Moisonite? Yeah. Moisonite and cubic zirconia are synthetic. Oh, okay. Got you. Manmade. No, manmade is synthetic. Cubic zirconia and Moisonite are simulants. They're not actually made from carbon. Manmade diamonds are made from carbon, but they're made in a few days rather than, you know, eons. And they are structurally diamonds.

So much of the geomological Institute of America recognizes them as diamonds. Yeah. But they sell for about 30% of a natural diamond. And those are, I guess, second most expensive. So I think Moisonite is cheaper than that. Probably. Yeah. And the manmade are sometimes so hard to tell, apart from the real thing, that geomologists can't even tell and jewelers can't tell. And so they are now selling machines that help jewelers determine whether or not it's a real diamond or it's manmade. And who makes that machine, Josh? I couldn't begin to guess. De Beers. That's right. De Beers. In November last year, late last year, the Anglo-American company, which is a global mining company acquired. Oh, it was the Oppenheimer family who was one of the original. The Oppenheimer

fund people? No, it was from the, they were one of the original families for the De Beers cartel, I think. Gotcha. But they bought out the Oppenheimer family's 40% of their stake in De Beers for $5.1 billion in cash. In cash. Yeah. Not like stock certificates or future promises. And now they raise their stake to 85% because they already had 45. So the Oppenheimers are no longer part of that. Wow. But they are rolling in the cash. They went straight. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I was being charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without

any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off your

pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement. Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet. Roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals. Our podcast, How to Money can help. That's right. We're two best buds who've been at it for more than five years now. And we want to see you achieve your money goals. And it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list of questions, interviewing experts and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is chock full of the personal finance knowledge that you need with guidance three

times a week. And we talk about debt payoff. If let's say you've had a particularly spend thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing and growing your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey, How to Money has got your back. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to How to Money on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I think we would be remiss. 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. Oh. Is that real? I don't know. It was a real movie.

Yeah, a really good movie. About a diamond. And a great cartoon. Yeah. But the Hope Diamond, have you seen it at the Smithsonian? Yeah. It's awesome. 45 carrots, which is big. And it has a curse associated with it. You know that? Yeah. There was a newspaper in 1911. Well, I guess several of them wrote about the curse of the Hope Diamond. That's when it started to come about. And in a book in 1929, The Mystery of the Hope Diamond really kind of established its right lower in popular culture. But starting with a guy named Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, he stole the Hope Diamond and was torn apart by wild dogs. That was the first bad thing that happened associated with the Hope Diamond. Louis the 16th lost his head during the revolution.

Louis the really lost his head. Yeah. Louis the 14th had it. He died of gangrene. George the fourth died deep in debt. All the way to one of my favorites, Mademoiselle Laurenz Leduc, 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. And then all the way down to the Abdul Hamid, the second Sultan of Turkey, he paid 400 grand for it. And it just brought horrible luck to everybody from his favorite member of his harem, to his royal guards. And then finally, Harry Winston got his hands on it from Pierre Cartier. Oh yeah. 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. What? Regular post. 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 to the Smithsonian. And 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. 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. You got anything else? No. What are we at? Like an hour and a half now? Yeah. Okay, let's end it then. If you want to learn more about diamonds, type diamond into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com and it'll bring up a lot of

cool stuff. And I said search bar, so it's time for listening to the mail. Yeah, in addition to diamonds, it was blood diamonds. And there was also an article about diamond thieves. Yeah. I want to look into that. Yeah, it was kind of a history of diamond theft. Okay, this is from Liz and I'm going to call this pickpocketing. 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 30 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 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 directly at her, she turned and walked off the train right before the doors closed. About five or six seconds in 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-foot-six, and they were all built like

Mack Trucks, and they were already very drunk and very rowdy, but also very friendly. So you got big, burly, drunk, friendly rugby dudes. Swedes? They were Swedish, yes. I bet that was a handsome group of guys. Now, I had went back to our hotel, but this was a story related to me. Our art teacher was chatting with the coach of the rugby team. She felt a hand reach inside of her purse. She grabbed at it as it was pulling out and realized 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 had 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, aka New York Light. Nice. Thank you very much, Liz. That was pretty cool. It's a good pickpocketing story. Yeah, go Swedish rugby team for beating up people who steal. Yeah. Anybody who beats up people who steal, that's pretty great, unless it's one of those morally gray things from Les Miserables.

Right. Let's talk. Well, if you have a cool story about, 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 SYSKpodcast. You can join us on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us an email at stuffpodcast at discovery.com. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Boreen. I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting ground breaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson, and so many more. New episodes around every Tuesday, many episodes out on Thursdays, where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the

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