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Speaker 1: This is Red Pilled America. A quick question before we

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Speaker 1: start the show. How many shows are there out there

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Speaker 1: like Red Pilled America. You know the answer, it's zero

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Speaker 1: and why because it's hard to produce a storytelling show.

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Speaker 1: Join the fanbam and support storytelling that aligns with your values.

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Speaker 1: Just go to Redpilled America dot com and click join

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Speaker 1: in the top menu. You'll get add free access to

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Speaker 1: our entire back catalog of episodes. Help us save America,

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Speaker 1: one story at a time.

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Speaker 2: Previously on Red Pilled America.

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Speaker 1: What makes something valuable? It's a deceptively simple question.

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Speaker 2: Prior to the eighteen hundreds, the entire world production of

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Speaker 2: gem quality diamonds amounted to only a few pounds a year.

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Speaker 3: By around six or seven hundred BC, the first standardized

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Speaker 3: coins using gold and silver, making really the birth of

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Speaker 3: money as it's recognized today.

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Speaker 2: Diamonds began to develop a second identity is tiny, portable

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Speaker 2: storehouses of wealth.

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Speaker 1: By the late eighteen eighties, really minds, we're producing staggering

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Speaker 1: volumes of diamonds.

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Speaker 3: If you want to have something very strong over long

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Speaker 3: periods of time, it needs to have some sort of

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Speaker 3: limited supply.

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Speaker 1: Rhodes decided there was only one solution, monopoly. The first

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Speaker 1: true diamond cartel was born. I'm Patrick Carelci.

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Speaker 2: And I'm Adriana Cortes.

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Speaker 1: And this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.

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Speaker 2: This is not another talk show covering the day's news.

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Speaker 2: We're all about telling stories.

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Speaker 1: Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.

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Speaker 2: The media mocks stories about everyday Americans at the globalist ignore.

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Speaker 1: You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,

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Speaker 1: and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Red Pilled America. It's March twelfth, nineteen thirty eight, and

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Speaker 1: German tanks are rolling through the streets of Vienna. Columns

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Speaker 1: of soldiers march in perfect formation. Swastika banners hang from

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Speaker 1: balconies and government buildings unfurled like stage curtains for history.

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Speaker 1: This is not an invasion in the way the world

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Speaker 1: expected one. No shots are fired, no army rises to

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Speaker 1: meet them. Instead, millions of Austrians flood the streets, and

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Speaker 1: women children they cheer, wave and salute. Adolf Hitler has

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Speaker 1: come home to the place he was born and raised,

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Speaker 1: and now he returns as the fearer of the German

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Speaker 1: Reich intent on the nexing Austria and folding it into

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Speaker 1: a greater Germany, a peaceful takeover. That's how it's described,

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Speaker 1: a family reunion between nations that share a language, a culture,

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Speaker 1: and a past. Across Europe and the United States, many

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Speaker 1: are shocked by the aggressive ads, but then breathe a

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Speaker 1: sigh of relief when the annexation happens without bloodshed. Maybe

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Speaker 1: this isn't the start of another World war. After all,

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Speaker 1: no one fired a single shot. But while the crowds

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Speaker 1: cheer in Vienna, there is one man who understands that

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Speaker 1: this moment is anything but peaceful, because he is watching

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Speaker 1: something the rest of the world cannot see. Not tanks

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Speaker 1: or troops, but massive orders for a material without which

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Speaker 1: modern warfare cannot function, industrial diamonds. For years now, governments

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Speaker 1: across Europe have been buying them in silence, not for jewelry,

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Speaker 1: but for machines used to cut hardened steel, shaped blades

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Speaker 1: and grind precision parts used in aircraft, engines, artillery, and

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Speaker 1: armed vehicles. Every modern military depends on them. Nearly all

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Speaker 1: of these industrial diamonds come from one company, overseen by

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Speaker 1: one man, Ernest Oppenheimer, head of De Beers, the company

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Speaker 1: that controls the global diamond supply, and Oppenheimer understands that

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Speaker 1: these orders are not the actions of nations preparing for peace.

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Speaker 1: They're preparing for war, which means the European market, the

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Speaker 1: beating heart of the diamond trade, is about to go dark.

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Speaker 1: We're at part two of our series of episodes entitled

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Speaker 1: what makes something Valuable? We're looking for the answer to

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Speaker 1: that question by telling the story of diamond powerhouse de Beers.

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Speaker 2: So to pick up where we left off in our

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Speaker 2: last episode. In nineteen oh two, the head of de Beers,

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Speaker 2: Cecil Rhodes, died, as did his dream to extend the

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Speaker 2: British Empire from Cairo to the southern tip of Africa,

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Speaker 2: just forty eight years old, his body worn down by

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Speaker 2: chronic heart and lung disease. He never married, he left

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Speaker 2: no children, and when he was gone there was no

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Speaker 2: obvious successor waiting in the wings. Instead, Cecil Rhoades did

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Speaker 2: something fitting for a man, one who believed history was

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Speaker 2: shaped by elites. He left most of his fortune to

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Speaker 2: Oxford University, endowing what would become the Rhodes Scholarships, a

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Speaker 2: pipeline to train future leaders in his image. But de

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Speaker 2: Beer's was not a personal estate, it was a machine.

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Speaker 2: By the time of Rhodes's death, De Beer's had already

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Speaker 2: grown into a vast mining conglomerate, sprawling, profitable, and deeply

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Speaker 2: entrenched in global trade. Its diamonds flowed almost entirely through

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Speaker 2: a single buyer, the London Diamond Syndicate. That syndicate absorbed

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Speaker 2: more than ninety percent of the world's diamond production. London

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Speaker 2: was the beating heart of the diamond world. From there,

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Speaker 2: stones moved outward to royal courts in France, Germany, Belgium

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Speaker 2: and Russia, to aristocratic salons, to bankers, nobles and dynasties

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Speaker 2: whose names filled the history books. British aristocrats and the

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Speaker 2: upper middle classes drove demand, so did wealthy elites in

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Speaker 2: India and the Middle East, where diamonds were still symbols

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Speaker 2: of ancient prestige. By the nineteen thirties, as a whole,

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Speaker 2: Europe accounted for nearly seventy percent of the global gem

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Speaker 2: grade diamond consumption. Diamonds were a European luxury, refined Old

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Speaker 2: World aristocratic and America America barely mattered. In the United States,

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Speaker 2: diamonds were not yet the symbol they would become. Americans

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Speaker 2: preferred pearls, rubies, and sapphires, colored stones with visible presents,

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Speaker 2: jewelry that felt tasteful rather than regal diamonds. Too many

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Speaker 2: Americans seemed foreign. The ornament of European courts, not American life. Engagement.

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Speaker 2: Jewelry was often understated. Pearls and colored gems dominated. De

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Speaker 2: Beers knew this and for decades didn't care because the

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Speaker 2: system still worked. But with roads gone, something essential was missing.

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Speaker 2: There was no single mind driving the cartel forward. The

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Speaker 2: board of directors and senior partners kept the operation running.

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Speaker 2: Production was managed, prices were protected, and stockpiles were guarded.

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Speaker 2: But without roads, de Bier's was no longer aggressive. It

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Speaker 2: was powerful but conservative, and that made it vulnerable. Vulnerable

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Speaker 2: to new diamond discoveries beyond the mines in Kimberly, South Africa,

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Speaker 2: Vulnerable to independent producers who refused to play by cartel rules,

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Speaker 2: Vulnerable to shifts in global politics and markets that could

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Speaker 2: no longer control through habit alone. The diamond empire still stood,

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Speaker 2: but the throne was empty. Into that vacuum stepped a

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Speaker 2: man who didn't see Debiers as a tool of empire,

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Speaker 2: but as the empire itself. Within fifteen years of Rhodes's death,

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Speaker 2: a new figure would begin assembling power from the edges

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Speaker 2: of the diamond world. His name was Ernest Oppenheimer, and

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Speaker 2: he would turn to Beers into something far more powerful

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Speaker 2: than even Roads imagined. For years, de Biers believed it

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Speaker 2: understood diamonds, where they came from, where they didn't, and

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Speaker 2: who controlled them. Kimberly was the center of the diamond universe.

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Speaker 2: Everything else was a rumor. Then, in the early years

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Speaker 2: of the twentieth century, a bricklayer challenged that certainty. His

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Speaker 2: name was Thomas Major Cullinan. Colinan claimed that hundreds of

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Speaker 2: miles north of Kimberly, he had discovered something impossible, a

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Speaker 2: vast oval of yellow earth, unlike anything the diamond world

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Speaker 2: had ever seen. He insisted it was a diamond pipe,

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Speaker 2: a deep column, a volcanic rock bearing diamond rocks. To

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Speaker 2: the men running to Beers, this was nonsense. Their geologists

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Speaker 2: dismissed it outright. Diamond pipes didn't exist outside of Kimberly,

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Speaker 2: not like that. And the man who succeeded cecil Roads

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Speaker 2: at the helm of De Beer's, Frank Oates was openly contemptuous.

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Speaker 2: He declared that Colinan's so called discovery was a fraud.

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Speaker 2: He accused him of seating the earth with diamonds smuggled

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Speaker 2: in from Kimberly to create the illusion of a find.

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Speaker 2: The Oats was wrong, painfully wrong. The ground colonin had

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Speaker 2: identified became known as the Premier Mind, and it was

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Speaker 2: unlike anything the world had ever seen. The pipe was

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Speaker 2: four times larger than Kimberly's Big Hole mine, and the

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Speaker 2: diamonds it produced weren't just plentiful, they were enormous, larger

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Speaker 2: than any stones ever recovered from the Kimberly fields. When

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Speaker 2: the full scale of the Premier Mind became clear, shock

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Speaker 2: rippled through De Beer's leadership. According to accounts from the time,

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Speaker 2: one senior figure, a governor of the company, collapsed after

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Speaker 2: hearing the news, suffering a heart attack from which he

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Speaker 2: never recovered. For a company built on manufacturing scarcity, the

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Speaker 2: Premier Mind was an earthquake. It proved something to Beer's

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Speaker 2: had refused to believe. Kimberly was not unique. Diamonds were

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Speaker 2: not confined to one controlled geography and scarcity the very

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Speaker 2: foundation of the diamond value was more fragile than anyone

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Speaker 2: wanted to admit. Watching all of this unfold, was a

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Speaker 2: man who understood the danger immediately, Earnest Oppenheimer. At the time,

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Speaker 2: Oppenheimer was not inside de Beer's. He was a diamond

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Speaker 2: broker turned industrialist, observant, patient, and ambitious. Where Debier saw

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Speaker 2: an embarrassment, Oppenheimer saw a pattern. He saw arrogance. This

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Speaker 2: monopoly believed its own mythology. He saw new diamond fields, uncontrolled, undisciplined,

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Speaker 2: threatening the delicate balance that kept prices high. But most importantly,

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Speaker 2: Earnest Oppenheimer saw opportunity. Because the real threat to diamonds

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Speaker 2: was never discovery itself. It was what happened after discovery,

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Speaker 2: when production ran wild, prices collapsed, and the illusion of

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Speaker 2: rarity shattered. Oppenheimer understood something fundamental. A diamond monopoly didn't

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Speaker 2: survive by owning minds alone. It survived by controlling behavior,

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Speaker 2: and De Beer's for the first time since Roads was

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Speaker 2: shown cracks. But Oppenheimer didn't act at the first signs

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Speaker 2: of these cracks. He waited because empires don't fall all

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Speaker 2: at once. They weaken first. Ernest Oppenheimer knew the diamond

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Speaker 2: world from the inside out. He was a Jewish German immigrat,

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Speaker 2: descended from families that had once served as court Jews

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Speaker 2: in Vienna, trusted financiers and gem experts to Europe's royal

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Speaker 2: houses that went back centuries. He had been trained not

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Speaker 2: in mining, but in distribution, valuation, and finance, the arteries

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Speaker 2: of the diamond trade itself. He understood every step of

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Speaker 2: the pipeline from African soil to London syndicates, to European

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Speaker 2: jewelers and royal buyers. And he understood something Cecil Roads

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Speaker 2: had intuited decades earlier. The true power in diamonds was

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Speaker 2: not the mine, it was control.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen seventeen, Oppenheimer founded the Anglo American Corporation in Johannesburg,

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Speaker 1: South Africa. He did it with the backing from one

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Speaker 1: of the most powerful financial institutions in the world, J. P. Morgan.

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Speaker 1: This was not a prospecting venture, It was a strategic challenge.

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Speaker 1: Anglo American moved quickly, acquiring promising minds, including diamond fields

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Speaker 1: in Southwest Africa, places that sat outside De Beer's carefully

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Speaker 1: managed orbit. Almost overnight, Oppenheimer had become more than a broker.

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Speaker 1: He was now a rival. Like Rhodes before him, Oppenheimer

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Speaker 1: understood that mining power without political power was fragile. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenty four, he entered politics, winning election to the

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Speaker 1: South African House of Assembly as the member from Kimberly,

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Speaker 1: the symbolic heart of the diamond world. From there he

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Speaker 1: shaped mining policy from the inside. But his most brilliant

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Speaker 1: move came quietly. Whenever Oppenheimer acquired diamond fields that threatened

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Speaker 1: to Beer's monopoly, he did not fight the cartel had on. Instead,

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Speaker 1: he made not He proposed trading those disruptive properties, the

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Speaker 1: very minds that could destabilize diamond prices, in exchange for

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Speaker 1: large blocks of De Beer's stock. De Biers accepted again

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Speaker 1: and again. With each transaction, Oppenheimer gained something more valuable

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Speaker 1: than land. He gained ownership. Behind the scenes, his relatives

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Speaker 1: and allies also quietly accumulated shares. By nineteen twenty seven,

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Speaker 1: Ernest Oppenheimer had become the single most powerful individual in

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Speaker 1: the global diamond industry without ever declaring war onto Beer's.

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Speaker 1: The final step required one more ally, Lord Rothschild. The

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Speaker 1: Rothchild family was Europe's preeminent banking dynasty, and for decades

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Speaker 1: they had been deeply embedded in diamond finance. They had

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Speaker 1: funded merchants, underwritten syndicates, finance cutters in Antwerp and Amsterdam,

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Speaker 1: and even arranged jewel purchases for royalty itself. Oppenheimer appealed

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Speaker 1: directly to them, and they hitched up to the Oppenheimer train.

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Speaker 1: With Rothchild support. The balance tipped. In nineteen twenty nine.

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Speaker 1: Ernest Oppenheimer became chairman of the Beers. Soon after he

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Speaker 1: was knighted by the King of England. Sir Ernest Oppenheimer

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Speaker 1: now controlled the cartel cecil Roads had built, but he

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Speaker 1: did not see it the same way Rhodes had viewed

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Speaker 1: diamonds as a tool of British empire. Oppenheimer saw diamonds

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Speaker 1: as an empire unto itself, and he intended to make

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Speaker 1: De Beers, in his own words, the absolute controlling factor

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Speaker 1: in the diamond world. Life can be pretty stressful these days.

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Red Pilled America. By the time Ernest

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Speaker 1: Oppenheimer secured his position at the top of de Beers,

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Speaker 1: something fundamental had changed. Cecil Rhoades had built a monopoly

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Speaker 1: as a means to an end. For Roads, diamonds were

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Speaker 1: a tool, a way to finance empire, to project British

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Speaker 1: power across Africa, to bend territory and politics to his will.

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Speaker 1: Oppenheimer saw something else. Entirely for him, the diamond monopoly

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Speaker 1: wasn't a means to an end. It was the prize.

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Speaker 1: Rhodes had believed in empire, Oppenheimer believed in systems. In

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Speaker 1: the system he envisioned had no flag, no national loyalty,

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Speaker 1: and no permanent home. It would be global, it would

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Speaker 1: be disciplined, and above all, it would be absolute. In

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Speaker 1: a private letter to his brother, Oppenheimer put his ambitions

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Speaker 1: in unmistakable terms. His goal, he wrote, was to make debiers.

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Speaker 4: The absolute controlling factor in the diamond world.

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Speaker 1: That word absolute mattered. Oppenheimer did not mean control of

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Speaker 1: a mine, or a region, or even a continent. He

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Speaker 1: meant control of everything, from the moment a diamond emerged

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Speaker 1: from the ground to the moment it was sordid, priced, cut, marketed,

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Speaker 1: and finally sold. Oppenheimer wanted to control every link in

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Speaker 1: the chain because he understood something that even Rhodes had

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Speaker 1: only partially grasped. Diamonds were not valuable because they were rare.

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Speaker 1: They were valuable because they were controlled. In Oppenheimer's view,

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Speaker 1: the real threat to diamonds wasn't the discovery of a

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Speaker 1: new mine. It was chaos.

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Speaker 4: The danger to the security of the diamond industry is

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Speaker 4: not the discovery of a new, rich diamond field, but

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Speaker 4: the irrational exploitation of it.

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Speaker 1: Unmanaged competition, producers dumping stones onto the market, prices swinging wildly,

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Speaker 1: public confidence collapsing. That was how diamonds lost their mystique.

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Speaker 1: That was how they became just another rock. So Oppenheimer

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Speaker 1: moved methodically the same mining interests he had built through

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Speaker 1: Anglo am maamer the ones that had once threatened to Beers,

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Speaker 1: were now folded back into it. Through a complex series

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Speaker 1: of share swaps and quiet negotiations, Anglo American emerged not

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Speaker 1: as a rival, but as the controlling shareholder of de

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Speaker 1: Beers itself. The monopoly didn't fracture, it hardened. Ownership consolidated,

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Speaker 1: decision making centralized. By the end of the nineteen twenties,

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Speaker 1: the diamond world had a new ruling family. Oppenheimer now

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Speaker 1: sat where roads once had, but with a different philosophy

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Speaker 1: to rule through restraint, and for a time it worked.

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Speaker 1: The diamond cartel became more sophisticated than ever before, quieter,

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Speaker 1: more international, and far more resilient. But even the most

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Speaker 1: perfectly engineered system has one weakness. It depends on the

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Speaker 1: world's staying predictable, and in the nineteen thirties the world

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Speaker 1: was about to become anything but The diamond cartel had

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Speaker 1: survived wars, revolutions, new minds, and political upheaval, but it

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Speaker 1: was about to face something far more dangerous, a collapse

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Speaker 1: in belief. In October nineteen twenty nine, the global economy

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Speaker 1: gave away. Markets crashed, credit evaporated, and gold was increasingly accumulated,

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Speaker 1: primarily by central banks and individuals seeking safety.

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Speaker 3: The thing that people need to understand about central banks is,

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Speaker 3: first of all, they don't speculate. They prepare for failure,

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Speaker 3: they prepare for war, they prepare for their country having issues.

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Speaker 1: That's Kevin de Merritt, founder of Lear Capital, one of

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Speaker 1: the largest precious metal firms in the United States.

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Speaker 3: And so when you prepare for failure, you need to

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00:19:47,280 --> 00:19:50,919
Speaker 3: have something stored in your central bank that is going

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00:19:50,960 --> 00:19:53,359
Speaker 3: to match up with that. Gold and silver match up

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Speaker 3: with that almost perfectly. Gold and silver have no counterparty risk.

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Speaker 3: They don't rely on a promise. They don't rely on

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00:19:58,720 --> 00:20:01,720
Speaker 3: technology or a grading system or a marketing campaign to

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Speaker 3: make them valuable. Gold as universally accepted. It's instantly liquid.

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00:20:05,840 --> 00:20:09,120
Speaker 3: It functions outside of the financial system right you can

298
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Speaker 3: barter with it in times of crisis, wars, currency collapses,

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Speaker 3: debt defaults. Gold is what remains when confidence disappears. Diamonds

300
00:20:17,760 --> 00:20:20,600
Speaker 3: and pearls are electric goods. Gold is a monetary insurance,

301
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Speaker 3: so central banks don't store what's fashionable. They store what

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Speaker 3: works when everything else breaks.

303
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Speaker 1: This gold accumulation phenomenon is seen throughout history. During times

304
00:20:30,840 --> 00:20:35,480
Speaker 1: of great uncertainty, when systems become unstable, people consistently gravitate

305
00:20:35,520 --> 00:20:39,520
Speaker 1: toward things they trust or remain valuable, regardless of who's

306
00:20:39,520 --> 00:20:48,840
Speaker 1: in charge. Value isn't created and calm, it's revealed in crisis,

307
00:20:49,000 --> 00:20:51,639
Speaker 1: and during the onset of the Great Depression, the smart

308
00:20:51,640 --> 00:20:57,200
Speaker 1: money began accumulating gold, but luxury spending vanished almost overnight,

309
00:20:57,600 --> 00:21:00,800
Speaker 1: and diamonds once whispered about in royal courts and locked

310
00:21:00,840 --> 00:21:04,720
Speaker 1: away in velvet line Safes only had no buyers. The

311
00:21:04,800 --> 00:21:08,200
Speaker 1: London Diamond Syndicate, the financial heart of the cartel, could

312
00:21:08,240 --> 00:21:11,080
Speaker 1: no longer absorb the steady flow of stones coming out

313
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Speaker 1: of Africa. Diamonds kept arriving, but demand had disappeared. By

314
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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, the situation had turned desperate. From London,

315
00:21:21,160 --> 00:21:24,360
Speaker 1: a cable was sent to Kimberly. It was blunt, panicked

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Speaker 1: and unprecedented.

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Speaker 5: No sell possible.

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Speaker 1: Best offers for small quantities were well below cost price.

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Speaker 2: Market quite demoralized. Inform Sir Ernest Oppenheimer.

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Speaker 1: For the first time in modern history, diamonds were in

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Speaker 1: danger of becoming worthless. If de Beers released even a

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Speaker 1: fraction of its stockpile onto the open market, prices would

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Speaker 1: collapse completely. The illusion of rarity, carefully maintained for decades

324
00:21:52,080 --> 00:21:55,760
Speaker 1: would shatter. But if Deber's refused to sell, the company

325
00:21:55,800 --> 00:21:59,520
Speaker 1: would run out of cash. The cartel was strapped. This

326
00:21:59,720 --> 00:22:03,439
Speaker 1: was the moment Ernest Oppenheimer fully understood the difference between

327
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Speaker 1: diamonds and true stores of value. Gold had survived crashes

328
00:22:07,880 --> 00:22:12,080
Speaker 1: before silver had survived empires rising and falling. They had

329
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Speaker 1: been money openly publicly for centuries they had deep markets,

330
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Speaker 1: universal acceptance, a long memory of trust. Diamonds had none

331
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Speaker 1: of that. Before the discoveries in South Africa, diamonds were

332
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Speaker 1: indeed rare, precious and held their worth, so they became

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Speaker 1: a storehouse of wealth. Only a few pounds were gathered

334
00:22:31,200 --> 00:22:34,760
Speaker 1: per year from riverbeds in India and Brazil. But once

335
00:22:34,840 --> 00:22:39,200
Speaker 1: diamonds were discovered in Kimberly, their rarity became from managed scarcity.

336
00:22:39,560 --> 00:22:44,400
Speaker 1: If that manufactured belief died, diamonds would not recover. Oppenheimer

337
00:22:44,400 --> 00:22:47,399
Speaker 1: saw the truth clearly. Diamonds were not money. They were

338
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Speaker 1: a confidence game, and confidence, once broken, does not come back.

339
00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:54,440
Speaker 1: So he made a decision no one else could make.

340
00:22:54,760 --> 00:22:58,200
Speaker 1: It took over the London Syndicate himself. The Beers would

341
00:22:58,240 --> 00:23:01,960
Speaker 1: no longer merely mine diamonds. It would sell them, sort them,

342
00:23:02,200 --> 00:23:06,680
Speaker 1: stockpile them, release them, or withhold them at will. Production

343
00:23:06,840 --> 00:23:10,720
Speaker 1: and distribution would now sit under one roof, managed by

344
00:23:10,800 --> 00:23:13,879
Speaker 1: one mind. From that moment on, to Beers was no

345
00:23:13,960 --> 00:23:17,240
Speaker 1: longer just a mining company. It was the market and

346
00:23:17,400 --> 00:23:20,639
Speaker 1: Ernest Oppenheimer had just placed his hands on the lever

347
00:23:20,840 --> 00:23:24,760
Speaker 1: that controlled the entire diamond world. But even absolute control

348
00:23:24,800 --> 00:23:28,359
Speaker 1: would not be enough, because something else was coming, something

349
00:23:28,359 --> 00:23:30,600
Speaker 1: that would force de Beers to do what it had

350
00:23:30,760 --> 00:23:35,000
Speaker 1: never done before, create demand, not in Europe but somewhere

351
00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:35,920
Speaker 1: entirely new.

352
00:23:36,680 --> 00:23:40,199
Speaker 2: By the early nineteen thirties, Ernest Oppenheimer had done what

353
00:23:40,400 --> 00:23:43,520
Speaker 2: no one before him had ever attempted. He had seized

354
00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:47,080
Speaker 2: control not just of the mines, not just of distribution,

355
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Speaker 2: but of the very flow of diamonds into the world. And,

356
00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:55,280
Speaker 2: now facing the greatest economic collapse in modern history, he

357
00:23:55,400 --> 00:23:58,919
Speaker 2: reached for the most extreme lever of all. He slammed

358
00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:07,560
Speaker 2: the brakes. In nineteen thirty the world's diamond mines produced

359
00:24:07,680 --> 00:24:11,840
Speaker 2: more than two million carrots. By nineteen thirty three, Oppenheimer

360
00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:17,280
Speaker 2: reduced production to just fourteen thousand, not fourteen thousand per mine,

361
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:21,680
Speaker 2: fourteen thousand carrots total. One by one, de Beers shut

362
00:24:21,720 --> 00:24:26,520
Speaker 2: down South Africa's diamond operations. Entire mining towns went dark,

363
00:24:27,040 --> 00:24:31,280
Speaker 2: shafts were sealed, workers were sent home. The richest diamond

364
00:24:31,320 --> 00:24:35,360
Speaker 2: fields on Earth were deliberately silenced, not because the diamonds

365
00:24:35,359 --> 00:24:38,120
Speaker 2: were gone, but because there were too many of them.

366
00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:43,520
Speaker 2: Yet even that wasn't enough. As prices continued to slide,

367
00:24:43,720 --> 00:24:48,199
Speaker 2: new threats emerged. Far from Kimberly diamonds were discovered in

368
00:24:48,240 --> 00:24:53,960
Speaker 2: the Belgian Congo, then in Portuguese and Gola. Under normal circumstances,

369
00:24:54,119 --> 00:24:58,360
Speaker 2: new discoveries would have met prosperity. Under these conditions, they

370
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:02,439
Speaker 2: met catastrophe. If those stones reached the open market, they

371
00:25:02,480 --> 00:25:06,359
Speaker 2: would confirm what Oppenheimer feared most. The diamonds were not

372
00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:13,280
Speaker 2: rare at all. So debiers did what only a cartel

373
00:25:13,320 --> 00:25:16,760
Speaker 2: could do. It scooped them up. Anything to keep those

374
00:25:16,800 --> 00:25:20,639
Speaker 2: diamonds from being dumped into a collapsing market, and still

375
00:25:20,800 --> 00:25:25,800
Speaker 2: the numbers were terrifying. By nineteen thirty two, total global

376
00:25:25,840 --> 00:25:30,200
Speaker 2: diamond sales had fallen to roughly one hundred thousand dollars.

377
00:25:31,400 --> 00:25:35,560
Speaker 2: Between nineteen thirty and nineteen thirty two, diamond prices plunged

378
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:39,359
Speaker 2: by about fifty percent, and by nineteen thirty seven, de

379
00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:43,119
Speaker 2: Beers was sitting on a mountain of unsold stones forty

380
00:25:43,240 --> 00:25:47,919
Speaker 2: million carrots locked away in bolts. That wasn't a seasonal surplus.

381
00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:51,680
Speaker 2: That was the equivalent of twenty years of supply, even

382
00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:56,080
Speaker 2: by pre depression standards. At one point Oppenheimer considered a

383
00:25:56,080 --> 00:26:00,760
Speaker 2: solution so drastic it bordered on madness. If creditors forced

384
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:03,720
Speaker 2: de Beers into liquidation. If the vault we pride open,

385
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:07,679
Speaker 2: he would dump the diamonds into the ocean. Tons of

386
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:11,400
Speaker 2: them sunk into the North Sea to preserve the value

387
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:15,960
Speaker 2: of what remained. Diamonds once symbols of eternity were now

388
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:20,159
Speaker 2: treated like toxic waste. But just as it appeared to

389
00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:23,080
Speaker 2: Beers was going to drown under the weight of its stockpile.

390
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:27,560
Speaker 2: The modern industrial world stumbled into a problem only diamonds

391
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:31,840
Speaker 2: could solve. For decades, mass production had relied on steel,

392
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:37,080
Speaker 2: steel tools to cut steel parts, Steel dyes stamped steel components,

393
00:26:37,280 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 2: but steel wore down quickly, Blades dulled, dies cracked. Accurate

394
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:46,680
Speaker 2: machining required constant replacement and maintenance. Then, in the early

395
00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:51,200
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, engineers at the German industrial giant CRUP introduced

396
00:26:51,240 --> 00:26:56,000
Speaker 2: something radically new, tungsten carbide. It was harder than steel,

397
00:26:56,359 --> 00:26:59,399
Speaker 2: far more resistant to heat, able to withstand stress that

398
00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:07,640
Speaker 2: would shatter traditional tools. Tungsten carbide, dies and blades promised

399
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:13,320
Speaker 2: a revolution in manufacturing, faster production, tighter tolerance's, longer tool life.

400
00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:17,280
Speaker 2: There was just one problem. Tungsten carbide was too hard.

401
00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:21,000
Speaker 2: Steel couldn't cut it, shape it or sharpen. It only

402
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:25,560
Speaker 2: one substance on Earth could diamond, Not the glittering stones

403
00:27:25,600 --> 00:27:28,960
Speaker 2: locked in velvet boxes, but the ugly ones, the cloudy,

404
00:27:29,040 --> 00:27:34,040
Speaker 2: misshapen fragments, the small, poorly crystallized stones that jewelers rejected outright,

405
00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:40,159
Speaker 2: basically scrap diamonds they called bort. For decades, jabers had

406
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 2: treated bort as an inconvenience, a byproduct to be stockpiled, discounted,

407
00:27:45,040 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 2: and quietly discarded. But now bort suddenly became indispensable. Engineers

408
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:55,240
Speaker 2: discovered that, when crushed into powder and embedded into metal wheels,

409
00:27:55,400 --> 00:28:00,520
Speaker 2: diamonds could grind shape and sharpen tungsten carbide with unmatched accuracy.

410
00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:04,600
Speaker 2: The diamond grinding wheel was born corn, a metal surface

411
00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:09,680
Speaker 2: impregnated with crushed diamond dust, and overnight, diamonds became the

412
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:16,879
Speaker 2: backbone of modern industry. Automobile manufacturing, aircraft production, machine tools, armaments.

413
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:22,399
Speaker 2: Industrial diamonds were no longer decorative luxuries. They were essential infrastructure,

414
00:28:22,600 --> 00:28:25,560
Speaker 2: and de Beers owned them all. Through its control of

415
00:28:25,600 --> 00:28:29,000
Speaker 2: global diamond mining and distribution, de Beers held a complete

416
00:28:29,040 --> 00:28:33,440
Speaker 2: monopoly on industrial diamonds, every grinding wheel, every precision tool,

417
00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:36,600
Speaker 2: every factory that wanted to modernize had to pass through

418
00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:40,440
Speaker 2: Oppenheimer's hands. What had once been a worthless gravel was

419
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:46,200
Speaker 2: now strategic material Sir Ernest Oppenheimer immediately understood the significance.

420
00:28:46,760 --> 00:28:49,400
Speaker 2: This wasn't just a new revenue stream. It was a

421
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:53,360
Speaker 2: signal because industrial demand didn't rise with fashion or romance.

422
00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:56,959
Speaker 2: It rose with the quiet mobilization of nations preparing for

423
00:28:57,000 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 2: something larger armaments. By nineteen thirty seven, European orders from

424
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:06,720
Speaker 2: de Beers for industrial diamonds began to climb steadily, then sharply,

425
00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:10,800
Speaker 2: and Oppenheimer understood what that meant. Because every order flowed

426
00:29:10,800 --> 00:29:14,520
Speaker 2: through his choke point, there was no competition. De Beers

427
00:29:14,560 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 2: controlled the global supply of industrial diamonds. Every pound of

428
00:29:18,480 --> 00:29:22,840
Speaker 2: diamond powder, every grinding wheel, every abrasive passed across Ernest

429
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:27,080
Speaker 2: Oppenheimer's desk. That meant something no intelligence agency on Earth

430
00:29:27,120 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 2: could match. Oppenheimer could see who was rearming and how

431
00:29:30,520 --> 00:29:34,480
Speaker 2: fast they were building tanks and aircrafts and artillery. Like

432
00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:38,760
Speaker 2: gold was a proxy for economic instability, industrial diamond orders

433
00:29:38,800 --> 00:29:42,760
Speaker 2: became a proxy for war preparation. So when Nazi troops

434
00:29:42,800 --> 00:29:45,960
Speaker 2: crossed into Austria in March of nineteen thirty eight, when

435
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:50,640
Speaker 2: the world saw cheering crowds, flowers, and bloodless annexation, Oppenheimer

436
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 2: saw trouble brewing in Europe, the primary market for the

437
00:29:53,640 --> 00:29:56,960
Speaker 2: much higher margin luxury side of the business, Gem diamonds.

438
00:29:57,560 --> 00:30:01,800
Speaker 2: For Gem Diamonds, a luxury dependent on peace, confidence and excess,

439
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:05,560
Speaker 2: war was a lead environment. If Europe went to war,

440
00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 2: that market wouldn't as slow, it would vanish for years.

441
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:14,680
Speaker 2: But across the Atlantic there was another world, America. The

442
00:30:14,840 --> 00:30:17,280
Speaker 2: United States was still in the depths of the depression,

443
00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 2: but it was different, vastly different. It had the largest

444
00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:24,960
Speaker 2: consumer base on earth, a stable political system, no war

445
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:28,080
Speaker 2: on its soil, a growing middle class that, even in

446
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:31,920
Speaker 2: hard times, still believed in aspiration, romance, and the promise

447
00:30:32,040 --> 00:30:36,000
Speaker 2: of a better future. And perhaps most importantly, America had

448
00:30:36,040 --> 00:30:41,320
Speaker 2: something Europe did not, a mass media culture, radio, magazines, movies,

449
00:30:41,520 --> 00:30:45,120
Speaker 2: advertising agencies that didn't just sell products, they shaped desire.

450
00:30:45,680 --> 00:30:49,800
Speaker 2: To Oppenheimer, the contrast was unmistakable. Europe was becoming a

451
00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:53,800
Speaker 2: continent of rationing and rearmament. America was becoming a nation

452
00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:57,600
Speaker 2: of stories, and stories, he understood, could create demand where

453
00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:01,000
Speaker 2: none had existed before. But there was an uncomfortable truth

454
00:31:01,080 --> 00:31:03,160
Speaker 2: facing de Beers in the late nineteen thirty.

455
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 1: Want to listen to Red Pilled America ad free, then

456
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:11,480
Speaker 1: become a backstage subscriber. Just go to Redpilled America dot

457
00:31:11,480 --> 00:31:14,480
Speaker 1: com and click join in the top menu. Join the

458
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 1: fanbam and help us save America one story at a time.

459
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So, by the late

460
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:25,959
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, de Beers was facing an uncomfortable truth. America

461
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:29,880
Speaker 2: didn't care much about diamonds. Before this moment, the United

462
00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:32,680
Speaker 2: States accounted for less than ten percent of the global

463
00:31:32,720 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 2: diamond purchases. There was no deep diamond tradition, no cultural obsession,

464
00:31:37,360 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 2: no inherited expectation that diamonds were necessary or even particularly desirable.

465
00:31:42,520 --> 00:31:47,400
Speaker 2: Americans preferred pearls, rubies, sapphires, colored stones that felt warmer,

466
00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:52,640
Speaker 2: more expressive, less aristocratic. Diamonds, by contrast, still carried a

467
00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:56,800
Speaker 2: whiff of Europe, of old money, royal courts and inherited wealth.

468
00:31:57,480 --> 00:32:01,320
Speaker 2: Engagement rings existed, of course, but they were modest, often

469
00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:06,200
Speaker 2: pearl centered, not jeweled at all. To most Americans, diamonds

470
00:32:06,200 --> 00:32:09,080
Speaker 2: were not symbols of romance. They were symbols of somebody

471
00:32:09,120 --> 00:32:13,520
Speaker 2: else's culture, and that posed an existential problem for Oppenheimer.

472
00:32:13,960 --> 00:32:17,040
Speaker 2: If the gem diamond market was going to collapse in Europe,

473
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:19,840
Speaker 2: he would have to invent demand in the only place

474
00:32:19,960 --> 00:32:23,480
Speaker 2: left to grow, the United States. But his monopoly power

475
00:32:23,520 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 2: could not do this. What was required was something to

476
00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:31,520
Speaker 2: Bier's had never truly needed before a cultural transformation. Oppenheimer

477
00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:32,760
Speaker 2: needed storytellers.

478
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:36,000
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty eight, de Beers turned to one of

479
00:32:36,040 --> 00:32:40,040
Speaker 1: the most powerful advertising agencies in the United States, nw

480
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:43,560
Speaker 1: Air and Sun. This was not a small firm. Nw

481
00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:47,360
Speaker 1: Air had already proven it could change behavior at scale.

482
00:32:47,720 --> 00:32:50,720
Speaker 1: It had turned Morton salt into a household staple with

483
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 1: a single phrase, when it rains, it pours. It had

484
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:58,720
Speaker 1: also helped make camel cigarettes synonymous with modern masculinity. Air

485
00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: didn't just sell products, it engineered habits, and de Beers

486
00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:07,000
Speaker 1: gave them and audacious mandate make Americans see diamonds as

487
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:11,160
Speaker 1: the ultimate symbol of love, glamour, and aspiration. But the

488
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:15,160
Speaker 1: problem was America already had a queen of gems, that

489
00:33:15,320 --> 00:33:20,040
Speaker 1: being pearls, long before diamonds became symbols of romance or status.

490
00:33:20,200 --> 00:33:24,680
Speaker 1: Pearls carried an aura that felt almost supernatural. They appeared

491
00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:27,840
Speaker 1: in the ancient world not as something mined from the earth,

492
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:30,920
Speaker 1: but as something born alive, pulled from the depths of

493
00:33:30,960 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 1: the sea at tremendous risk in the ancient Persian Gulf.

494
00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 1: In India and China, pearls were prized as treasures of nature,

495
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:42,520
Speaker 1: gifts from the gods, symbols of purity and power. In

496
00:33:42,560 --> 00:33:46,000
Speaker 1: some cultures, they were trusted as objects of value and

497
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:48,720
Speaker 1: were even used as a form of exchange, a kind

498
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:52,400
Speaker 1: of protocurrency, because, unlike diamonds in the pre modern world,

499
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:56,080
Speaker 1: pearls could be more easily sorted by size, luster and quality.

500
00:33:56,600 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 1: Natural pearls were astonishingly rare. Only about one in ten

501
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:04,200
Speaker 1: thousand oysters produced a gem quality pearl, and finding that

502
00:34:04,280 --> 00:34:09,000
Speaker 1: oyster meant sending divers into dark waters with no breathing equipment,

503
00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:12,520
Speaker 1: no safety lines, and no guarantees they would return alive.

504
00:34:13,160 --> 00:34:16,880
Speaker 1: That danger became part of the pearl's mystique. Pearls weren't

505
00:34:16,920 --> 00:34:19,560
Speaker 1: just beautiful, they were earned at the edge of death.

506
00:34:20,200 --> 00:34:23,680
Speaker 1: That rarity gave pearls their reputation as the Queen of

507
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:28,120
Speaker 1: the gems. They became objects of elite wealth, portable, prestigious,

508
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:32,920
Speaker 1: and instantly recognizable. But unlike gold and silver, pearls had limits.

509
00:34:33,120 --> 00:34:37,279
Speaker 1: They were fragile, They couldn't be melted, standardized, or easily analyzed.

510
00:34:37,520 --> 00:34:40,080
Speaker 1: They varied too much to form the backbone of a

511
00:34:40,080 --> 00:34:44,640
Speaker 1: true monetary system. Gold and silver, easily weighed, coined, and trusted,

512
00:34:44,800 --> 00:34:51,600
Speaker 1: became money. Pearls remained something else, status symbols. By the

513
00:34:51,680 --> 00:34:54,919
Speaker 1: late nineteenth and early twentieth century, pearls reached the height

514
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:58,520
Speaker 1: of their power. Cardier and other elite jewelers sold natural

515
00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:02,080
Speaker 1: pearl strands that cost small fortunes, and in nineteen seventeen,

516
00:35:02,360 --> 00:35:06,760
Speaker 1: pearl value reached its most legendary moment. Pierre Cartier traded

517
00:35:06,800 --> 00:35:09,840
Speaker 1: a double strand natural pearl necklace for a mansion on

518
00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:13,000
Speaker 1: Fifth Avenue in New York City. In today's money, that

519
00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:15,760
Speaker 1: necklace would likely be valued in the tens of millions

520
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:20,719
Speaker 1: of dollars, because pearls were considered irreplaceable. Then came Hollywood

521
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:27,360
Speaker 1: in the silent film era. In the earliest talkies, pearls

522
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:30,760
Speaker 1: became the perfect cinematic jewel. On black and white film,

523
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:34,440
Speaker 1: pearls popped on the screen long strands of white pearls

524
00:35:34,600 --> 00:35:38,800
Speaker 1: glowed against dark gowns, catching light with every movement. Flapper

525
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:43,600
Speaker 1: culture made them iconic. Studio stylists at Paramount, MGM and

526
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:48,440
Speaker 1: other major studios routinely selected pearls for publicity stills, premieres,

527
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:53,200
Speaker 1: and magazine spreads. Screen queens appeared draped in ropes of pearls,

528
00:35:53,239 --> 00:35:57,319
Speaker 1: reinforcing the idea that pearls were elegance itself. In the

529
00:35:57,360 --> 00:36:00,719
Speaker 1: early nineteen thirties, diamonds were present in Hollywood, but they

530
00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:04,560
Speaker 1: were not dominant. Pearls were still bill the undisputed glamour

531
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:08,400
Speaker 1: jewel and that posed a serious problem because just as

532
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:11,560
Speaker 1: Debiers was preparing to reinvent diamonds for the American public,

533
00:36:11,920 --> 00:36:16,440
Speaker 1: the throne of glamour was already occupied. But behind the scenes,

534
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:19,440
Speaker 1: the pearl world was about to experience a disruption that

535
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:21,600
Speaker 1: would make its rarity a thing of the past.

536
00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:25,960
Speaker 2: Before nineteen thirty, only about one in ten thousand oysters

537
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:30,560
Speaker 2: produced a natural pearl worthy of jewelry. That rarity wasn't marketing,

538
00:36:30,800 --> 00:36:34,560
Speaker 2: it was biology, and it made pearls precious. But a

539
00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:37,440
Speaker 2: man in Japan set out to change that equation. His

540
00:36:37,560 --> 00:36:41,320
Speaker 2: name was Kokichi Mikimoto. He wasn't a jeweler. He was

541
00:36:41,360 --> 00:36:45,560
Speaker 2: an entrepreneur with an obsession. Mikimoto believed that pearls did

542
00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:48,600
Speaker 2: not have to be left to chance. Instead of waiting

543
00:36:48,640 --> 00:36:51,880
Speaker 2: for nature to accidentally create a gem, he asked a

544
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:55,440
Speaker 2: dangerous question, what if you could help the oyster along.

545
00:36:56,000 --> 00:37:00,200
Speaker 2: Through years of trial and failure, Mikimoto and his collaborators

546
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:05,040
Speaker 2: developed a method that mimicked nature. The process was deceptively simple.

547
00:37:05,600 --> 00:37:09,719
Speaker 2: A technician would carefully open an oyster. A tiny nucleus,

548
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:13,880
Speaker 2: often a polished bead, would be implanted inside. The oyster

549
00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:17,720
Speaker 2: was then returned to water. Irritated by the foreign object,

550
00:37:17,840 --> 00:37:20,400
Speaker 2: the oyster did what it always did. It coated the

551
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:24,120
Speaker 2: irritant and layers of nacre a calcium carbonate secretion of

552
00:37:24,160 --> 00:37:27,560
Speaker 2: a mollusc. Month after month, year after year. When the

553
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:33,080
Speaker 2: oyster was harvested, a pearl emerged round, lustrous and remarkably consistent.

554
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:37,600
Speaker 2: It wasn't found, it was grown. They became known as

555
00:37:37,760 --> 00:37:42,040
Speaker 2: cultured pearls. The rarity of a natural pearl was always

556
00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:46,399
Speaker 2: vulnerable because it was a chemical problem, unlike gold, which

557
00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:49,640
Speaker 2: is a nuclear problem. For gold, you must change the

558
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:53,759
Speaker 2: number of protons in an atom. That requires nuclear transmutation.

559
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:59,160
Speaker 2: It demands enormous energy, infrastructure, and cost. It can technically

560
00:37:59,200 --> 00:38:01,960
Speaker 2: be done, but add up to a billion dollars per ounce.

561
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 2: There is no chemical shortcut again Kevin de merit of

562
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:06,680
Speaker 2: lear capital.

563
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:10,560
Speaker 3: So gold and silver can't be manufactured. Every ounce on

564
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:14,919
Speaker 3: Earth came from a fian night geological process that took

565
00:38:15,040 --> 00:38:15,960
Speaker 3: millions of years.

566
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:19,640
Speaker 2: Pearls, on the other hand, form under chemical processes that

567
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:24,400
Speaker 2: humans can easily replicate. When pearl price is skyrocketed enough

568
00:38:24,400 --> 00:38:27,400
Speaker 2: to wear a strand could buy a New York City penthouse,

569
00:38:27,680 --> 00:38:30,719
Speaker 2: it created an incentive for entrepreneurs to make them in

570
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:33,279
Speaker 2: a lab. All that needed to be done was to

571
00:38:33,280 --> 00:38:41,520
Speaker 2: make production scalable, cheap, and indistinguishable from natural stones. At first,

572
00:38:41,719 --> 00:38:46,800
Speaker 2: cultured pearls were treated with suspicion, purest scoffed, dealers questioned

573
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:50,200
Speaker 2: whether buyers would accept them. But by the early nineteen thirties,

574
00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:55,640
Speaker 2: Mickeymoto had solved the hardest problem of all scale. By

575
00:38:55,719 --> 00:38:59,600
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five, Japan was exporting millions of cultured pearls

576
00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:05,520
Speaker 2: every year. Cultured pearls looked virtually indistinguishable from natural ones.

577
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:11,080
Speaker 2: Same glow, same smooth's surface, same elegant presence, and for

578
00:39:11,160 --> 00:39:14,880
Speaker 2: the average buyer, the distinction barely mattered. A pearl was

579
00:39:14,920 --> 00:39:18,080
Speaker 2: a pearl. The effect on the pearl market was immediate

580
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:23,799
Speaker 2: and devastating. Natural pearl prices collapsed. Collections that had once

581
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:27,960
Speaker 2: been worth fortunes were suddenly competing with cultured pearls sold

582
00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:32,040
Speaker 2: by the strand Pearls, once the exclusive domain of royalty

583
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:36,240
Speaker 2: and industrial magnates, were now appearing in department stores. Middle

584
00:39:36,239 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 2: class women could own what queens once wore. Pearls had

585
00:39:40,080 --> 00:39:45,120
Speaker 2: been democratized, and in doing so, something essential was lost exclusivity.

586
00:39:45,719 --> 00:39:48,919
Speaker 2: For the first time in modern history, a luxury gem

587
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:56,399
Speaker 2: had been technologically disrupted. A symbol of elite status had

588
00:39:56,440 --> 00:40:02,600
Speaker 2: been transformed into an accessible accessory. Pearls didn't disappear. They

589
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:06,440
Speaker 2: remained and classic, but their meaning began to shift. The

590
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:09,960
Speaker 2: pearl was vulnerable to something with a better story, and

591
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:12,399
Speaker 2: De Beer's was about to turn to someone to help

592
00:40:12,440 --> 00:40:13,560
Speaker 2: deliver that narrative.

593
00:40:14,440 --> 00:40:18,040
Speaker 1: When De Beer's hired the American advertising firm nw Air

594
00:40:18,200 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty eight, the mandate wasn't subtle. Don't sell

595
00:40:22,200 --> 00:40:27,040
Speaker 1: diamonds as stones, sell them as destiny. Ayr immediately identified

596
00:40:27,040 --> 00:40:30,480
Speaker 1: Hollywood as the lever that could move American culture, not

597
00:40:30,680 --> 00:40:34,239
Speaker 1: just because movies reached millions, but because they taught Americans

598
00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:39,239
Speaker 1: how to desire. What actresses war on screen became aspiration.

599
00:40:39,880 --> 00:40:44,279
Speaker 1: Ayer's internal strategy was simple. Put diamonds where Americans were

600
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:48,120
Speaker 1: already looking on movie stars and love stories at the

601
00:40:48,200 --> 00:40:58,160
Speaker 1: exact moment when romance turned into commitment. If pearls were

602
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 1: the queen of old world elegance, Diamonds would become the

603
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:05,480
Speaker 1: symbol of modern love. The campaign moved quickly and quietly.

604
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:09,480
Speaker 1: In a nineteen forty report to Debier's, Ayer detailed its

605
00:41:09,560 --> 00:41:13,799
Speaker 1: early victories inside Hollywood studios. After a long series of

606
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:17,600
Speaker 1: meetings with paramount executives, the agency succeeded in changing the

607
00:41:17,680 --> 00:41:20,880
Speaker 1: title of a film from Diamonds Are Dangerous to something

608
00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:23,799
Speaker 1: far more flattering, Adventure in Diamonds.

609
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:26,800
Speaker 2: One day in London, a dreary day, I saw a

610
00:41:26,840 --> 00:41:27,520
Speaker 2: travel poster.

611
00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 5: It showed bright mountains against the blue sky rsit races

612
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:33,040
Speaker 5: and diamond mines.

613
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:34,279
Speaker 1: It was gay.

614
00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:38,160
Speaker 5: It said, come to South Africa, and so it came.

615
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:42,440
Speaker 1: In another film, Skylark, the ad agency managed to insert

616
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 1: an extended scene centered entirely on the selection of diamond jewelry.

617
00:41:47,080 --> 00:41:50,280
Speaker 5: These scripts are very popular. Oom that kind of pretty

618
00:41:50,920 --> 00:41:54,760
Speaker 5: how much twenty one hundred dollars twenty one hundred smackaroos.

619
00:41:54,960 --> 00:42:00,600
Speaker 1: The camera lingered, the diamonds sparkled, the audience watched. These

620
00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:05,359
Speaker 1: weren't advertisements, they were cultural in plants. Nw AIR wasn't

621
00:42:05,440 --> 00:42:08,560
Speaker 1: asking audiences to buy diamonds from de beers. It was

622
00:42:08,640 --> 00:42:11,720
Speaker 1: teaching them that diamonds were already part of the world

623
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:15,640
Speaker 1: they wanted to live in. Air understood something de beers

624
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:20,200
Speaker 1: never had. Americans didn't reject diamonds, They simply hadn't been

625
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:23,759
Speaker 1: trained to want them. Yet. In one internal memo, the

626
00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:26,920
Speaker 1: agency put it bluntly. Americans, it noted.

627
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:30,560
Speaker 5: Have not been conditioned by their environment to diamond purchases.

628
00:42:31,120 --> 00:42:34,640
Speaker 1: Outside of engagement rings. There was no diamond tradition. But

629
00:42:34,760 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 1: Air added the crucial line, the one that unlocked the

630
00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:41,480
Speaker 1: entire campaign. They would be influenced by what they saw

631
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:45,600
Speaker 1: their favorite movie stars wear. Hollywood wouldn't just display diamonds,

632
00:42:45,680 --> 00:42:50,120
Speaker 1: it would romanticize them and slowly replace pearls as the

633
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:54,279
Speaker 1: symbol of glamour, love, and permanence. The battleground had been

634
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:57,400
Speaker 1: chosen the war for America's heart was about to begin.

635
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:01,759
Speaker 1: By the early nineteen forties, the beers had solved the

636
00:43:01,840 --> 00:43:05,600
Speaker 1: hardest problem in business. They had started to create demand

637
00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:10,480
Speaker 1: where none had existed before. In America. While currencies wobbled

638
00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:14,440
Speaker 1: and borders shifted, diamonds were framed as untouched by chaos,

639
00:43:14,640 --> 00:43:17,840
Speaker 1: a luxury that survived uncertainty, and a symbol of permanence

640
00:43:17,920 --> 00:43:21,680
Speaker 1: in a temporary world. In nineteen forty six, w Air

641
00:43:21,960 --> 00:43:26,000
Speaker 1: escalated the campaign. They launched a weekly publicity service called

642
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:29,799
Speaker 1: Hollywood Personalities. Every week, one hundred and twenty five of

643
00:43:29,840 --> 00:43:35,239
Speaker 1: the most influential newspapers in America received curated material descriptions

644
00:43:35,239 --> 00:43:39,839
Speaker 1: of diamond necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, photos of stars wearing them,

645
00:43:40,120 --> 00:43:44,160
Speaker 1: blurbs describing who wore what, when and where. It normalized

646
00:43:44,200 --> 00:43:48,120
Speaker 1: diamonds as part of everyday American aspiration. They were what

647
00:43:48,200 --> 00:43:52,400
Speaker 1: the beautiful people wore. Ayr understood something fundamental about the

648
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:57,160
Speaker 1: human psychology. People didn't want to copy royalty. They wanted

649
00:43:57,200 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 1: to copy celebrities, so they shifted focus not to diamonds alone,

650
00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:08,120
Speaker 1: but to romance. Newspaper stories highlighted newly engaged actresses, close

651
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:11,920
Speaker 1: ups of their diamond rings, speculation about carrot size. The

652
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:16,239
Speaker 1: equation was subtle, but devastatingly effective. True love meant a

653
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:20,680
Speaker 1: diamond ring. A bigger diamond meant deeper love. Love itself

654
00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:26,040
Speaker 1: became something measurable. Carrots replaced poetry. No de Beer's logo

655
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:29,600
Speaker 1: ever appeared. It didn't need to. They controlled a monopoly

656
00:44:29,800 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: that owned the source. The results were immediate. Since the

657
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:37,920
Speaker 1: Hollywood focused campaign began, US diamond sales rose by roughly

658
00:44:37,960 --> 00:44:42,440
Speaker 1: fifty five percent, reversing years of decline. Diamonds had crossed

659
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:46,560
Speaker 1: a cultural threshold. They were no longer foreign, aristocratic, or optional.

660
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 1: They were becoming inevitable. By the end of World War II,

661
00:44:52,440 --> 00:44:56,240
Speaker 1: de Beers had pulled off something extraordinary. Against all odds,

662
00:44:56,440 --> 00:45:03,000
Speaker 1: against depression, against war, against collapsing luxury markets, diamonds had survived.

663
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:06,680
Speaker 1: The Bible wasn't enough. Ernest Oppenheimer and his partners at

664
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:10,960
Speaker 1: Debier's understood something crucial. If diamonds were going to endure

665
00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:14,480
Speaker 1: in the modern world, they needed more than scarcity. They

666
00:45:14,560 --> 00:45:19,080
Speaker 1: needed meaning. And meaning in America was manufactured through advertising.

667
00:45:19,719 --> 00:45:23,160
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty seven, inside the offices of NW Air

668
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:26,960
Speaker 1: and Son, a young copywriter named Mary Francis Garrity was

669
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:31,480
Speaker 1: given a simple but daunting assignment explain why a diamond mattered,

670
00:45:31,800 --> 00:45:35,280
Speaker 1: not in terms of geology or rarity, but in human terms.

671
00:45:35,680 --> 00:45:39,160
Speaker 1: According to company lore, Garretty stared at her notes late

672
00:45:39,239 --> 00:45:42,480
Speaker 1: into the night, and then she wrote four words that

673
00:45:42,520 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 1: would catapult the diamond industry into new heights. A diamond

674
00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:49,759
Speaker 1: is forever. It was more than a slogan. It was

675
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:53,399
Speaker 1: a spell because embedded in that single sentence were three

676
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:58,440
Speaker 1: powerful ideas. First, romance, A diamond wasn't just a gift.

677
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:02,880
Speaker 1: It was a symbol of eternal love. Second, permanence. Unlike

678
00:46:03,080 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 1: flowers or clothes, a diamond, Americans were told, was meant

679
00:46:07,280 --> 00:46:12,279
Speaker 1: to last. And third value unspoken but unmistakable. If a

680
00:46:12,320 --> 00:46:15,960
Speaker 1: diamond was forever, then surely it's worth was too. The

681
00:46:16,040 --> 00:46:20,440
Speaker 1: slogan quietly discouraged resale. You don't sell something that represents

682
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:24,759
Speaker 1: true love. You don't trade away eternity. This was crucial because,

683
00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:28,480
Speaker 1: unlike gold, diamonds don't trade like money. Gold has a

684
00:46:28,480 --> 00:46:31,759
Speaker 1: transparent global spot price quoted twenty four hours a day,

685
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:34,560
Speaker 1: seven days a week, and it can be sold immediately

686
00:46:34,600 --> 00:46:38,719
Speaker 1: to bullyon dealers, banks, refiners, and jewelers. So gold is

687
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:42,839
Speaker 1: liquid and has generally gone up dramatically since nineteen seventy one,

688
00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:46,000
Speaker 1: when it was thirty five dollars per ounce. Diamonds don't

689
00:46:46,040 --> 00:46:49,880
Speaker 1: behave this way. There is no universal spot price for diamonds.

690
00:46:50,239 --> 00:46:52,719
Speaker 1: Try selling it to a jeweler. They'll likely laugh you

691
00:46:52,760 --> 00:46:54,960
Speaker 1: out of the store. Bring it to a pawn shop.

692
00:46:55,040 --> 00:46:57,440
Speaker 1: You'll be lucky to get twenty to thirty percent of

693
00:46:57,440 --> 00:46:59,960
Speaker 1: what you paid for it. A diamond dealer may buy

694
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:03,640
Speaker 1: it at a wholesale price, if at all. That's a liquidity.

695
00:47:04,000 --> 00:47:07,239
Speaker 1: Once a diamond is sold, its price collapses like a

696
00:47:07,320 --> 00:47:12,240
Speaker 1: vehicle off the car lot. But a diamond is forever

697
00:47:12,680 --> 00:47:17,239
Speaker 1: solved that problem psychologically, it turned diamonds from commodities into

698
00:47:17,280 --> 00:47:22,280
Speaker 1: emotional anchors. Then came another subtle shift. Somewhere in Air's

699
00:47:22,280 --> 00:47:26,399
Speaker 1: internal memos. A new idea began to circulate a guideline.

700
00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:30,600
Speaker 1: The suggestion was simple and revolutionary. A man, they argued,

701
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:35,440
Speaker 1: should spend one month's salary on an engagement ring. Later, quietly,

702
00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:39,480
Speaker 1: that number would drift upward to two months, sometimes more.

703
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 1: No law required it, no authority enforced it, but repetition did.

704
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:47,920
Speaker 1: The idea appeared in ads, in etiquette columns, in jewelers

705
00:47:47,960 --> 00:47:51,279
Speaker 1: sales pitches, and soon it felt less like a suggestion

706
00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:55,440
Speaker 1: and more like social obligation. Love now had a price tag.

707
00:47:55,800 --> 00:47:59,680
Speaker 1: By the late nineteen forties, the transformation was complete. Diamonds

708
00:47:59,680 --> 00:48:02,520
Speaker 1: were no longer just stones pulled from the earth. They

709
00:48:02,520 --> 00:48:07,000
Speaker 1: were roomed, mantic, aspirational, eternal, and de Beers, without ever

710
00:48:07,040 --> 00:48:10,720
Speaker 1: appearing in the ads, controlled nearly every diamond behind the curtain.

711
00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:14,200
Speaker 1: It was one of the most successful advertising campaigns in

712
00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:18,400
Speaker 1: human history. Hollywood had made its decision. The diamond was

713
00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:23,080
Speaker 1: the new stone, and America followed. Pearls didn't disappear. They

714
00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:25,560
Speaker 1: were still classic, but they were no longer the queen

715
00:48:25,600 --> 00:48:29,000
Speaker 1: of the gems. Pearls now shared space with something new

716
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:34,160
Speaker 1: and unsettling. For their mystique abundance, cultured pearls filled jewelry

717
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:37,880
Speaker 1: cases at affordable department stores across the country. But pearls

718
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:41,120
Speaker 1: did make one last stand. In the nineteen fifties, they

719
00:48:41,200 --> 00:48:44,920
Speaker 1: enjoyed a final wave of nostalgic glamour. A famous example

720
00:48:44,960 --> 00:48:46,680
Speaker 1: played out in a sitcom living room.

721
00:48:46,760 --> 00:48:49,200
Speaker 5: Hello, missus Foster, this is Ricky Ricardo.

722
00:48:49,280 --> 00:48:52,080
Speaker 1: Oh good morning, how are you hi? Thank you On

723
00:48:52,120 --> 00:48:54,640
Speaker 1: a nineteen fifty two episode of I Love Lucy, Ricky

724
00:48:54,680 --> 00:48:58,320
Speaker 1: Ricardo schemed to secretly buy Lucy a real pearl necklace

725
00:48:58,360 --> 00:49:01,799
Speaker 1: for their anniversary, nervously calling a jeweler's wife to ask

726
00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:03,400
Speaker 1: about in employee discare count.

727
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:04,279
Speaker 5: It's Bill home.

728
00:49:04,560 --> 00:49:06,800
Speaker 2: No, Bill's gone out of town for a few days.

729
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:10,560
Speaker 5: Oh I see, Well, look, I might as well tell

730
00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:15,960
Speaker 5: you Monday is our wedding anniversary. And I want to

731
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 5: get Lucy some real pearls. And well they're so darn expensive,

732
00:49:22,160 --> 00:49:26,120
Speaker 5: you know. And and Bill told me that you work

733
00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:32,600
Speaker 5: at Joseph Jewelry Company, and well sometimes they give the

734
00:49:32,640 --> 00:49:36,719
Speaker 5: employees a discount. And I thought that maybe I can

735
00:49:36,760 --> 00:49:41,640
Speaker 5: say you're twenty percent percent? All right, Sam?

736
00:49:43,760 --> 00:49:47,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, Sam, honey, want you to scrambled the price?

737
00:49:47,120 --> 00:49:48,200
Speaker 5: Sam, I'll talk to you.

738
00:49:48,280 --> 00:49:49,560
Speaker 1: Made a scrambled cloud.

739
00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:51,280
Speaker 4: Scramble?

740
00:49:51,560 --> 00:49:52,640
Speaker 3: Did Lucy just come in?

741
00:49:53,000 --> 00:49:53,440
Speaker 5: That's right?

742
00:49:53,520 --> 00:49:53,800
Speaker 1: Sam?

743
00:49:54,000 --> 00:49:57,240
Speaker 5: Well, look, why don't you come down to my apartment

744
00:49:57,200 --> 00:49:58,239
Speaker 5: and we'll talk about it.

745
00:49:58,520 --> 00:50:00,000
Speaker 2: I'll be here for another half hour.

746
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:06,520
Speaker 5: Okay, I'll do that, Sam, Goodbye? Who was that?

747
00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:09,560
Speaker 4: Sam?

748
00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:13,200
Speaker 1: It was a funny moment, and telling pearls were still precious,

749
00:50:13,440 --> 00:50:16,160
Speaker 1: but now they were precious in a middle class way.

750
00:50:16,880 --> 00:50:19,759
Speaker 1: But a year later, the cultural verdict over the long

751
00:50:19,800 --> 00:50:23,480
Speaker 1: battle between diamonds and pearls was delivered in technicolor. I

752
00:50:23,640 --> 00:50:27,160
Speaker 1: just love finding new places to wear diamond in gentlemen

753
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:30,360
Speaker 1: preferred blondes. Marilyn Monroe stepped onto the screen in a

754
00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:33,280
Speaker 1: pink satin dress and sang a song that would echo

755
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:34,280
Speaker 1: for generations.

756
00:50:34,400 --> 00:50:41,160
Speaker 5: A kiss the hand made quite contmental, but diamonds.

757
00:50:40,640 --> 00:50:42,840
Speaker 1: Are as best friend.

758
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:43,240
Speaker 5: Movie.

759
00:50:43,600 --> 00:50:47,000
Speaker 1: Behind the scenes, nw Air made sure the imagery traveled

760
00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:52,200
Speaker 1: far beyond the movie theater. Magazine spreads editorial placements, advertisements

761
00:50:52,200 --> 00:50:56,759
Speaker 1: that mirrored Monroe's pose, her sparkle, her certainty. Man grow

762
00:50:56,920 --> 00:51:02,040
Speaker 1: cold as girls grow old, and we all lose our.

763
00:51:02,080 --> 00:51:08,520
Speaker 2: Chas the end, But squeak cut or pear shape, these

764
00:51:08,680 --> 00:51:10,760
Speaker 2: rocks don't lose their shape.

765
00:51:11,160 --> 00:51:14,040
Speaker 4: Diamonds are a girl's best friend.

766
00:51:15,400 --> 00:51:18,400
Speaker 1: As Marilyn Monroe put the exclamation mark on diamonds. As

767
00:51:18,440 --> 00:51:23,120
Speaker 1: the new Crown Jewel, cultured pearls were everywhere. They were sold, cheaply, worn,

768
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:27,440
Speaker 1: casually stripped of their mystery. The Crown had passed. Diamonds

769
00:51:27,480 --> 00:51:37,600
Speaker 1: now sat at the top of luxury Araki unchallenged. The

770
00:51:37,680 --> 00:51:40,480
Speaker 1: Beers had done something no company in history had ever

771
00:51:40,520 --> 00:51:46,839
Speaker 1: done before. It controlled where diamonds came from, how they

772
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:50,320
Speaker 1: entered the market, how they were priced, and through Hollywood

773
00:51:50,360 --> 00:51:54,440
Speaker 1: advertising and culture itself, it controlled what diamonds meant. The

774
00:51:54,520 --> 00:51:57,680
Speaker 1: Beers wasn't just a mining company. It was an invisible

775
00:51:57,680 --> 00:52:01,880
Speaker 1: hand behind a global belief system, the unquestioned symbol of love.

776
00:52:02,280 --> 00:52:05,520
Speaker 1: They had embedded themselves in the most intimate human ritual

777
00:52:05,600 --> 00:52:08,759
Speaker 1: of all marriage. The Beers sat at the center of

778
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:12,080
Speaker 1: it all, holding a global monopoly not just on gem

779
00:52:12,080 --> 00:52:15,840
Speaker 1: grade diamonds, but on industrial diamonds as well. From engagement

780
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:20,560
Speaker 1: rings to aircraft engines, diamonds were everywhere. This was the peak,

781
00:52:20,920 --> 00:52:25,160
Speaker 1: and from the outside it looked unassailable. But just as

782
00:52:25,160 --> 00:52:28,000
Speaker 1: to Beers reached the pinnacle of its power, a new

783
00:52:28,120 --> 00:52:31,760
Speaker 1: kind of diamond appeared. Just a year after Marilyn Monroe

784
00:52:31,840 --> 00:52:35,120
Speaker 1: made diamonds a Girl's Best Friend, scientists at the General

785
00:52:35,160 --> 00:52:40,120
Speaker 1: Electric Company achieved something that until then had been considered impossible.

786
00:52:40,520 --> 00:52:44,160
Speaker 1: They created a diamond in a laboratory. At first, the

787
00:52:44,200 --> 00:52:47,719
Speaker 1: diamonds were small, too small for engagement rings. They were

788
00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:51,840
Speaker 1: industrial useful for cutting, grinding, and manufacturing, making them easy

789
00:52:51,840 --> 00:52:54,800
Speaker 1: to dismiss, but for the first time in human history,

790
00:52:55,000 --> 00:52:59,080
Speaker 1: diamonds no longer belonged exclusively to the Earth and to beers.

791
00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:02,080
Speaker 1: The company that had spent decades convincing the world that

792
00:53:02,160 --> 00:53:06,040
Speaker 1: diamonds were returned, no rare and naturally scarce, now face

793
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:09,640
Speaker 1: to question. It could no longer control the same question

794
00:53:09,880 --> 00:53:12,960
Speaker 1: that had destroyed the reign of the natural pearl. If

795
00:53:13,000 --> 00:53:16,080
Speaker 1: diamonds could be made, what were they really worth?

796
00:53:16,680 --> 00:53:19,680
Speaker 2: Coming up on Red Pilled America, I think conventional wisdom

797
00:53:19,719 --> 00:53:22,400
Speaker 2: would say that diamonds only come from the ground, and

798
00:53:22,600 --> 00:53:23,760
Speaker 2: that notion is it's not true.

799
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:27,960
Speaker 5: The company calls the creations culture diamonds, like cultural pearls.

800
00:53:28,480 --> 00:53:31,760
Speaker 2: Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned

801
00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:35,000
Speaker 2: and produced by Patrick Carrelci and me Adriana Cortez for

802
00:53:35,080 --> 00:53:38,000
Speaker 2: Informed Ventures. Now you can get ad free access to

803
00:53:38,080 --> 00:53:41,640
Speaker 2: our entire catalog of episodes by becoming a backstage subscriber.

804
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:45,239
Speaker 2: To subscribe, just visit Redpilled America dot com and could

805
00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:47,640
Speaker 2: join in the top menu. Thanks for listening,