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Speaker 2: Previously on Red Pilled America.
Speaker 1: What makes something valuable? It's a deceptively simple question.
Speaker 2: Prior to the eighteen hundreds, the entire world production of
Speaker 2: gem quality diamonds amounted to only a few pounds a year.
Speaker 3: By around six or seven hundred BC, the first standardized
Speaker 3: coins using gold and silver, making really the birth of
Speaker 3: money as it's recognized today.
Speaker 2: Diamonds began to develop a second identity is tiny, portable
Speaker 2: storehouses of wealth.
Speaker 1: By the late eighteen eighties, really minds, we're producing staggering
Speaker 1: volumes of diamonds.
Speaker 3: If you want to have something very strong over long
Speaker 3: periods of time, it needs to have some sort of
Speaker 3: limited supply.
Speaker 1: Rhodes decided there was only one solution, monopoly. The first
Speaker 1: true diamond cartel was born. I'm Patrick Carelci.
Speaker 2: And I'm Adriana Cortes.
Speaker 1: And this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 2: This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
Speaker 2: We're all about telling stories.
Speaker 1: Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 2: The media mocks stories about everyday Americans at the globalist ignore.
Speaker 1: You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
Speaker 1: and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Red Pilled America. It's March twelfth, nineteen thirty eight, and
Speaker 1: German tanks are rolling through the streets of Vienna. Columns
Speaker 1: of soldiers march in perfect formation. Swastika banners hang from
Speaker 1: balconies and government buildings unfurled like stage curtains for history.
Speaker 1: This is not an invasion in the way the world
Speaker 1: expected one. No shots are fired, no army rises to
Speaker 1: meet them. Instead, millions of Austrians flood the streets, and
Speaker 1: women children they cheer, wave and salute. Adolf Hitler has
Speaker 1: come home to the place he was born and raised,
Speaker 1: and now he returns as the fearer of the German
Speaker 1: Reich intent on the nexing Austria and folding it into
Speaker 1: a greater Germany, a peaceful takeover. That's how it's described,
Speaker 1: a family reunion between nations that share a language, a culture,
Speaker 1: and a past. Across Europe and the United States, many
Speaker 1: are shocked by the aggressive ads, but then breathe a
Speaker 1: sigh of relief when the annexation happens without bloodshed. Maybe
Speaker 1: this isn't the start of another World war. After all,
Speaker 1: no one fired a single shot. But while the crowds
Speaker 1: cheer in Vienna, there is one man who understands that
Speaker 1: this moment is anything but peaceful, because he is watching
Speaker 1: something the rest of the world cannot see. Not tanks
Speaker 1: or troops, but massive orders for a material without which
Speaker 1: modern warfare cannot function, industrial diamonds. For years now, governments
Speaker 1: across Europe have been buying them in silence, not for jewelry,
Speaker 1: but for machines used to cut hardened steel, shaped blades
Speaker 1: and grind precision parts used in aircraft, engines, artillery, and
Speaker 1: armed vehicles. Every modern military depends on them. Nearly all
Speaker 1: of these industrial diamonds come from one company, overseen by
Speaker 1: one man, Ernest Oppenheimer, head of De Beers, the company
Speaker 1: that controls the global diamond supply, and Oppenheimer understands that
Speaker 1: these orders are not the actions of nations preparing for peace.
Speaker 1: They're preparing for war, which means the European market, the
Speaker 1: beating heart of the diamond trade, is about to go dark.
Speaker 1: We're at part two of our series of episodes entitled
Speaker 1: what makes something Valuable? We're looking for the answer to
Speaker 1: that question by telling the story of diamond powerhouse de Beers.
Speaker 2: So to pick up where we left off in our
Speaker 2: last episode. In nineteen oh two, the head of de Beers,
Speaker 2: Cecil Rhodes, died, as did his dream to extend the
Speaker 2: British Empire from Cairo to the southern tip of Africa,
Speaker 2: just forty eight years old, his body worn down by
Speaker 2: chronic heart and lung disease. He never married, he left
Speaker 2: no children, and when he was gone there was no
Speaker 2: obvious successor waiting in the wings. Instead, Cecil Rhoades did
Speaker 2: something fitting for a man, one who believed history was
Speaker 2: shaped by elites. He left most of his fortune to
Speaker 2: Oxford University, endowing what would become the Rhodes Scholarships, a
Speaker 2: pipeline to train future leaders in his image. But de
Speaker 2: Beer's was not a personal estate, it was a machine.
Speaker 2: By the time of Rhodes's death, De Beer's had already
Speaker 2: grown into a vast mining conglomerate, sprawling, profitable, and deeply
Speaker 2: entrenched in global trade. Its diamonds flowed almost entirely through
Speaker 2: a single buyer, the London Diamond Syndicate. That syndicate absorbed
Speaker 2: more than ninety percent of the world's diamond production. London
Speaker 2: was the beating heart of the diamond world. From there,
Speaker 2: stones moved outward to royal courts in France, Germany, Belgium
Speaker 2: and Russia, to aristocratic salons, to bankers, nobles and dynasties
Speaker 2: whose names filled the history books. British aristocrats and the
Speaker 2: upper middle classes drove demand, so did wealthy elites in
Speaker 2: India and the Middle East, where diamonds were still symbols
Speaker 2: of ancient prestige. By the nineteen thirties, as a whole,
Speaker 2: Europe accounted for nearly seventy percent of the global gem
Speaker 2: grade diamond consumption. Diamonds were a European luxury, refined Old
Speaker 2: World aristocratic and America America barely mattered. In the United States,
Speaker 2: diamonds were not yet the symbol they would become. Americans
Speaker 2: preferred pearls, rubies, and sapphires, colored stones with visible presents,
Speaker 2: jewelry that felt tasteful rather than regal diamonds. Too many
Speaker 2: Americans seemed foreign. The ornament of European courts, not American life. Engagement.
Speaker 2: Jewelry was often understated. Pearls and colored gems dominated. De
Speaker 2: Beers knew this and for decades didn't care because the
Speaker 2: system still worked. But with roads gone, something essential was missing.
Speaker 2: There was no single mind driving the cartel forward. The
Speaker 2: board of directors and senior partners kept the operation running.
Speaker 2: Production was managed, prices were protected, and stockpiles were guarded.
Speaker 2: But without roads, de Bier's was no longer aggressive. It
Speaker 2: was powerful but conservative, and that made it vulnerable. Vulnerable
Speaker 2: to new diamond discoveries beyond the mines in Kimberly, South Africa,
Speaker 2: Vulnerable to independent producers who refused to play by cartel rules,
Speaker 2: Vulnerable to shifts in global politics and markets that could
Speaker 2: no longer control through habit alone. The diamond empire still stood,
Speaker 2: but the throne was empty. Into that vacuum stepped a
Speaker 2: man who didn't see Debiers as a tool of empire,
Speaker 2: but as the empire itself. Within fifteen years of Rhodes's death,
Speaker 2: a new figure would begin assembling power from the edges
Speaker 2: of the diamond world. His name was Ernest Oppenheimer, and
Speaker 2: he would turn to Beers into something far more powerful
Speaker 2: than even Roads imagined. For years, de Biers believed it
Speaker 2: understood diamonds, where they came from, where they didn't, and
Speaker 2: who controlled them. Kimberly was the center of the diamond universe.
Speaker 2: Everything else was a rumor. Then, in the early years
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century, a bricklayer challenged that certainty. His
Speaker 2: name was Thomas Major Cullinan. Colinan claimed that hundreds of
Speaker 2: miles north of Kimberly, he had discovered something impossible, a
Speaker 2: vast oval of yellow earth, unlike anything the diamond world
Speaker 2: had ever seen. He insisted it was a diamond pipe,
Speaker 2: a deep column, a volcanic rock bearing diamond rocks. To
Speaker 2: the men running to Beers, this was nonsense. Their geologists
Speaker 2: dismissed it outright. Diamond pipes didn't exist outside of Kimberly,
Speaker 2: not like that. And the man who succeeded cecil Roads
Speaker 2: at the helm of De Beer's, Frank Oates was openly contemptuous.
Speaker 2: He declared that Colinan's so called discovery was a fraud.
Speaker 2: He accused him of seating the earth with diamonds smuggled
Speaker 2: in from Kimberly to create the illusion of a find.
Speaker 2: The Oats was wrong, painfully wrong. The ground colonin had
Speaker 2: identified became known as the Premier Mind, and it was
Speaker 2: unlike anything the world had ever seen. The pipe was
Speaker 2: four times larger than Kimberly's Big Hole mine, and the
Speaker 2: diamonds it produced weren't just plentiful, they were enormous, larger
Speaker 2: than any stones ever recovered from the Kimberly fields. When
Speaker 2: the full scale of the Premier Mind became clear, shock
Speaker 2: rippled through De Beer's leadership. According to accounts from the time,
Speaker 2: one senior figure, a governor of the company, collapsed after
Speaker 2: hearing the news, suffering a heart attack from which he
Speaker 2: never recovered. For a company built on manufacturing scarcity, the
Speaker 2: Premier Mind was an earthquake. It proved something to Beer's
Speaker 2: had refused to believe. Kimberly was not unique. Diamonds were
Speaker 2: not confined to one controlled geography and scarcity the very
Speaker 2: foundation of the diamond value was more fragile than anyone
Speaker 2: wanted to admit. Watching all of this unfold, was a
Speaker 2: man who understood the danger immediately, Earnest Oppenheimer. At the time,
Speaker 2: Oppenheimer was not inside de Beer's. He was a diamond
Speaker 2: broker turned industrialist, observant, patient, and ambitious. Where Debier saw
Speaker 2: an embarrassment, Oppenheimer saw a pattern. He saw arrogance. This
Speaker 2: monopoly believed its own mythology. He saw new diamond fields, uncontrolled, undisciplined,
Speaker 2: threatening the delicate balance that kept prices high. But most importantly,
Speaker 2: Earnest Oppenheimer saw opportunity. Because the real threat to diamonds
Speaker 2: was never discovery itself. It was what happened after discovery,
Speaker 2: when production ran wild, prices collapsed, and the illusion of
Speaker 2: rarity shattered. Oppenheimer understood something fundamental. A diamond monopoly didn't
Speaker 2: survive by owning minds alone. It survived by controlling behavior,
Speaker 2: and De Beer's for the first time since Roads was
Speaker 2: shown cracks. But Oppenheimer didn't act at the first signs
Speaker 2: of these cracks. He waited because empires don't fall all
Speaker 2: at once. They weaken first. Ernest Oppenheimer knew the diamond
Speaker 2: world from the inside out. He was a Jewish German immigrat,
Speaker 2: descended from families that had once served as court Jews
Speaker 2: in Vienna, trusted financiers and gem experts to Europe's royal
Speaker 2: houses that went back centuries. He had been trained not
Speaker 2: in mining, but in distribution, valuation, and finance, the arteries
Speaker 2: of the diamond trade itself. He understood every step of
Speaker 2: the pipeline from African soil to London syndicates, to European
Speaker 2: jewelers and royal buyers. And he understood something Cecil Roads
Speaker 2: had intuited decades earlier. The true power in diamonds was
Speaker 2: not the mine, it was control.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventeen, Oppenheimer founded the Anglo American Corporation in Johannesburg,
Speaker 1: South Africa. He did it with the backing from one
Speaker 1: of the most powerful financial institutions in the world, J. P. Morgan.
Speaker 1: This was not a prospecting venture, It was a strategic challenge.
Speaker 1: Anglo American moved quickly, acquiring promising minds, including diamond fields
Speaker 1: in Southwest Africa, places that sat outside De Beer's carefully
Speaker 1: managed orbit. Almost overnight, Oppenheimer had become more than a broker.
Speaker 1: He was now a rival. Like Rhodes before him, Oppenheimer
Speaker 1: understood that mining power without political power was fragile. In
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty four, he entered politics, winning election to the
Speaker 1: South African House of Assembly as the member from Kimberly,
Speaker 1: the symbolic heart of the diamond world. From there he
Speaker 1: shaped mining policy from the inside. But his most brilliant
Speaker 1: move came quietly. Whenever Oppenheimer acquired diamond fields that threatened
Speaker 1: to Beer's monopoly, he did not fight the cartel had on. Instead,
Speaker 1: he made not He proposed trading those disruptive properties, the
Speaker 1: very minds that could destabilize diamond prices, in exchange for
Speaker 1: large blocks of De Beer's stock. De Biers accepted again
Speaker 1: and again. With each transaction, Oppenheimer gained something more valuable
Speaker 1: than land. He gained ownership. Behind the scenes, his relatives
Speaker 1: and allies also quietly accumulated shares. By nineteen twenty seven,
Speaker 1: Ernest Oppenheimer had become the single most powerful individual in
Speaker 1: the global diamond industry without ever declaring war onto Beer's.
Speaker 1: The final step required one more ally, Lord Rothschild. The
Speaker 1: Rothchild family was Europe's preeminent banking dynasty, and for decades
Speaker 1: they had been deeply embedded in diamond finance. They had
Speaker 1: funded merchants, underwritten syndicates, finance cutters in Antwerp and Amsterdam,
Speaker 1: and even arranged jewel purchases for royalty itself. Oppenheimer appealed
Speaker 1: directly to them, and they hitched up to the Oppenheimer train.
Speaker 1: With Rothchild support. The balance tipped. In nineteen twenty nine.
Speaker 1: Ernest Oppenheimer became chairman of the Beers. Soon after he
Speaker 1: was knighted by the King of England. Sir Ernest Oppenheimer
Speaker 1: now controlled the cartel cecil Roads had built, but he
Speaker 1: did not see it the same way Rhodes had viewed
Speaker 1: diamonds as a tool of British empire. Oppenheimer saw diamonds
Speaker 1: as an empire unto itself, and he intended to make
Speaker 1: De Beers, in his own words, the absolute controlling factor
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
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer secured his position at the top of de Beers,
Speaker 1: something fundamental had changed. Cecil Rhoades had built a monopoly
Speaker 1: as a means to an end. For Roads, diamonds were
Speaker 1: a tool, a way to finance empire, to project British
Speaker 1: power across Africa, to bend territory and politics to his will.
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer saw something else. Entirely for him, the diamond monopoly
Speaker 1: wasn't a means to an end. It was the prize.
Speaker 1: Rhodes had believed in empire, Oppenheimer believed in systems. In
Speaker 1: the system he envisioned had no flag, no national loyalty,
Speaker 1: and no permanent home. It would be global, it would
Speaker 1: be disciplined, and above all, it would be absolute. In
Speaker 1: a private letter to his brother, Oppenheimer put his ambitions
Speaker 1: in unmistakable terms. His goal, he wrote, was to make debiers.
Speaker 4: The absolute controlling factor in the diamond world.
Speaker 1: That word absolute mattered. Oppenheimer did not mean control of
Speaker 1: a mine, or a region, or even a continent. He
Speaker 1: meant control of everything, from the moment a diamond emerged
Speaker 1: from the ground to the moment it was sordid, priced, cut, marketed,
Speaker 1: and finally sold. Oppenheimer wanted to control every link in
Speaker 1: the chain because he understood something that even Rhodes had
Speaker 1: only partially grasped. Diamonds were not valuable because they were rare.
Speaker 1: They were valuable because they were controlled. In Oppenheimer's view,
Speaker 1: the real threat to diamonds wasn't the discovery of a
Speaker 1: new mine. It was chaos.
Speaker 4: The danger to the security of the diamond industry is
Speaker 4: not the discovery of a new, rich diamond field, but
Speaker 4: the irrational exploitation of it.
Speaker 1: Unmanaged competition, producers dumping stones onto the market, prices swinging wildly,
Speaker 1: public confidence collapsing. That was how diamonds lost their mystique.
Speaker 1: That was how they became just another rock. So Oppenheimer
Speaker 1: moved methodically the same mining interests he had built through
Speaker 1: Anglo am maamer the ones that had once threatened to Beers,
Speaker 1: were now folded back into it. Through a complex series
Speaker 1: of share swaps and quiet negotiations, Anglo American emerged not
Speaker 1: as a rival, but as the controlling shareholder of de
Speaker 1: Beers itself. The monopoly didn't fracture, it hardened. Ownership consolidated,
Speaker 1: decision making centralized. By the end of the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: the diamond world had a new ruling family. Oppenheimer now
Speaker 1: sat where roads once had, but with a different philosophy
Speaker 1: to rule through restraint, and for a time it worked.
Speaker 1: The diamond cartel became more sophisticated than ever before, quieter,
Speaker 1: more international, and far more resilient. But even the most
Speaker 1: perfectly engineered system has one weakness. It depends on the
Speaker 1: world's staying predictable, and in the nineteen thirties the world
Speaker 1: was about to become anything but The diamond cartel had
Speaker 1: survived wars, revolutions, new minds, and political upheaval, but it
Speaker 1: was about to face something far more dangerous, a collapse
Speaker 1: in belief. In October nineteen twenty nine, the global economy
Speaker 1: gave away. Markets crashed, credit evaporated, and gold was increasingly accumulated,
Speaker 1: primarily by central banks and individuals seeking safety.
Speaker 3: The thing that people need to understand about central banks is,
Speaker 3: first of all, they don't speculate. They prepare for failure,
Speaker 3: they prepare for war, they prepare for their country having issues.
Speaker 1: That's Kevin de Merritt, founder of Lear Capital, one of
Speaker 1: the largest precious metal firms in the United States.
Speaker 3: And so when you prepare for failure, you need to
Speaker 3: have something stored in your central bank that is going
Speaker 3: to match up with that. Gold and silver match up
Speaker 3: with that almost perfectly. Gold and silver have no counterparty risk.
Speaker 3: They don't rely on a promise. They don't rely on
Speaker 3: technology or a grading system or a marketing campaign to
Speaker 3: make them valuable. Gold as universally accepted. It's instantly liquid.
Speaker 3: It functions outside of the financial system right you can
Speaker 3: barter with it in times of crisis, wars, currency collapses,
Speaker 3: debt defaults. Gold is what remains when confidence disappears. Diamonds
Speaker 3: and pearls are electric goods. Gold is a monetary insurance,
Speaker 3: so central banks don't store what's fashionable. They store what
Speaker 3: works when everything else breaks.
Speaker 1: This gold accumulation phenomenon is seen throughout history. During times
Speaker 1: of great uncertainty, when systems become unstable, people consistently gravitate
Speaker 1: toward things they trust or remain valuable, regardless of who's
Speaker 1: in charge. Value isn't created and calm, it's revealed in crisis,
Speaker 1: and during the onset of the Great Depression, the smart
Speaker 1: money began accumulating gold, but luxury spending vanished almost overnight,
Speaker 1: and diamonds once whispered about in royal courts and locked
Speaker 1: away in velvet line Safes only had no buyers. The
Speaker 1: London Diamond Syndicate, the financial heart of the cartel, could
Speaker 1: no longer absorb the steady flow of stones coming out
Speaker 1: of Africa. Diamonds kept arriving, but demand had disappeared. By
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, the situation had turned desperate. From London,
Speaker 1: a cable was sent to Kimberly. It was blunt, panicked
Speaker 1: and unprecedented.
Speaker 5: No sell possible.
Speaker 1: Best offers for small quantities were well below cost price.
Speaker 2: Market quite demoralized. Inform Sir Ernest Oppenheimer.
Speaker 1: For the first time in modern history, diamonds were in
Speaker 1: danger of becoming worthless. If de Beers released even a
Speaker 1: fraction of its stockpile onto the open market, prices would
Speaker 1: collapse completely. The illusion of rarity, carefully maintained for decades
Speaker 1: would shatter. But if Deber's refused to sell, the company
Speaker 1: would run out of cash. The cartel was strapped. This
Speaker 1: was the moment Ernest Oppenheimer fully understood the difference between
Speaker 1: diamonds and true stores of value. Gold had survived crashes
Speaker 1: before silver had survived empires rising and falling. They had
Speaker 1: been money openly publicly for centuries they had deep markets,
Speaker 1: universal acceptance, a long memory of trust. Diamonds had none
Speaker 1: of that. Before the discoveries in South Africa, diamonds were
Speaker 1: indeed rare, precious and held their worth, so they became
Speaker 1: a storehouse of wealth. Only a few pounds were gathered
Speaker 1: per year from riverbeds in India and Brazil. But once
Speaker 1: diamonds were discovered in Kimberly, their rarity became from managed scarcity.
Speaker 1: If that manufactured belief died, diamonds would not recover. Oppenheimer
Speaker 1: saw the truth clearly. Diamonds were not money. They were
Speaker 1: a confidence game, and confidence, once broken, does not come back.
Speaker 1: So he made a decision no one else could make.
Speaker 1: It took over the London Syndicate himself. The Beers would
Speaker 1: no longer merely mine diamonds. It would sell them, sort them,
Speaker 1: stockpile them, release them, or withhold them at will. Production
Speaker 1: and distribution would now sit under one roof, managed by
Speaker 1: one mind. From that moment on, to Beers was no
Speaker 1: longer just a mining company. It was the market and
Speaker 1: Ernest Oppenheimer had just placed his hands on the lever
Speaker 1: that controlled the entire diamond world. But even absolute control
Speaker 1: would not be enough, because something else was coming, something
Speaker 1: that would force de Beers to do what it had
Speaker 1: never done before, create demand, not in Europe but somewhere
Speaker 1: entirely new.
Speaker 2: By the early nineteen thirties, Ernest Oppenheimer had done what
Speaker 2: no one before him had ever attempted. He had seized
Speaker 2: control not just of the mines, not just of distribution,
Speaker 2: but of the very flow of diamonds into the world. And,
Speaker 2: now facing the greatest economic collapse in modern history, he
Speaker 2: reached for the most extreme lever of all. He slammed
Speaker 2: the brakes. In nineteen thirty the world's diamond mines produced
Speaker 2: more than two million carrots. By nineteen thirty three, Oppenheimer
Speaker 2: reduced production to just fourteen thousand, not fourteen thousand per mine,
Speaker 2: fourteen thousand carrots total. One by one, de Beers shut
Speaker 2: down South Africa's diamond operations. Entire mining towns went dark,
Speaker 2: shafts were sealed, workers were sent home. The richest diamond
Speaker 2: fields on Earth were deliberately silenced, not because the diamonds
Speaker 2: were gone, but because there were too many of them.
Speaker 2: Yet even that wasn't enough. As prices continued to slide,
Speaker 2: new threats emerged. Far from Kimberly diamonds were discovered in
Speaker 2: the Belgian Congo, then in Portuguese and Gola. Under normal circumstances,
Speaker 2: new discoveries would have met prosperity. Under these conditions, they
Speaker 2: met catastrophe. If those stones reached the open market, they
Speaker 2: would confirm what Oppenheimer feared most. The diamonds were not
Speaker 2: rare at all. So debiers did what only a cartel
Speaker 2: could do. It scooped them up. Anything to keep those
Speaker 2: diamonds from being dumped into a collapsing market, and still
Speaker 2: the numbers were terrifying. By nineteen thirty two, total global
Speaker 2: diamond sales had fallen to roughly one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Between nineteen thirty and nineteen thirty two, diamond prices plunged
Speaker 2: by about fifty percent, and by nineteen thirty seven, de
Speaker 2: Beers was sitting on a mountain of unsold stones forty
Speaker 2: million carrots locked away in bolts. That wasn't a seasonal surplus.
Speaker 2: That was the equivalent of twenty years of supply, even
Speaker 2: by pre depression standards. At one point Oppenheimer considered a
Speaker 2: solution so drastic it bordered on madness. If creditors forced
Speaker 2: de Beers into liquidation. If the vault we pride open,
Speaker 2: he would dump the diamonds into the ocean. Tons of
Speaker 2: them sunk into the North Sea to preserve the value
Speaker 2: of what remained. Diamonds once symbols of eternity were now
Speaker 2: treated like toxic waste. But just as it appeared to
Speaker 2: Beers was going to drown under the weight of its stockpile.
Speaker 2: The modern industrial world stumbled into a problem only diamonds
Speaker 2: could solve. For decades, mass production had relied on steel,
Speaker 2: steel tools to cut steel parts, Steel dyes stamped steel components,
Speaker 2: but steel wore down quickly, Blades dulled, dies cracked. Accurate
Speaker 2: machining required constant replacement and maintenance. Then, in the early
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, engineers at the German industrial giant CRUP introduced
Speaker 2: something radically new, tungsten carbide. It was harder than steel,
Speaker 2: far more resistant to heat, able to withstand stress that
Speaker 2: would shatter traditional tools. Tungsten carbide, dies and blades promised
Speaker 2: a revolution in manufacturing, faster production, tighter tolerance's, longer tool life.
Speaker 2: There was just one problem. Tungsten carbide was too hard.
Speaker 2: Steel couldn't cut it, shape it or sharpen. It only
Speaker 2: one substance on Earth could diamond, Not the glittering stones
Speaker 2: locked in velvet boxes, but the ugly ones, the cloudy,
Speaker 2: misshapen fragments, the small, poorly crystallized stones that jewelers rejected outright,
Speaker 2: basically scrap diamonds they called bort. For decades, jabers had
Speaker 2: treated bort as an inconvenience, a byproduct to be stockpiled, discounted,
Speaker 2: and quietly discarded. But now bort suddenly became indispensable. Engineers
Speaker 2: discovered that, when crushed into powder and embedded into metal wheels,
Speaker 2: diamonds could grind shape and sharpen tungsten carbide with unmatched accuracy.
Speaker 2: The diamond grinding wheel was born corn, a metal surface
Speaker 2: impregnated with crushed diamond dust, and overnight, diamonds became the
Speaker 2: backbone of modern industry. Automobile manufacturing, aircraft production, machine tools, armaments.
Speaker 2: Industrial diamonds were no longer decorative luxuries. They were essential infrastructure,
Speaker 2: and de Beers owned them all. Through its control of
Speaker 2: global diamond mining and distribution, de Beers held a complete
Speaker 2: monopoly on industrial diamonds, every grinding wheel, every precision tool,
Speaker 2: every factory that wanted to modernize had to pass through
Speaker 2: Oppenheimer's hands. What had once been a worthless gravel was
Speaker 2: now strategic material Sir Ernest Oppenheimer immediately understood the significance.
Speaker 2: This wasn't just a new revenue stream. It was a
Speaker 2: signal because industrial demand didn't rise with fashion or romance.
Speaker 2: It rose with the quiet mobilization of nations preparing for
Speaker 2: something larger armaments. By nineteen thirty seven, European orders from
Speaker 2: de Beers for industrial diamonds began to climb steadily, then sharply,
Speaker 2: and Oppenheimer understood what that meant. Because every order flowed
Speaker 2: through his choke point, there was no competition. De Beers
Speaker 2: controlled the global supply of industrial diamonds. Every pound of
Speaker 2: diamond powder, every grinding wheel, every abrasive passed across Ernest
Speaker 2: Oppenheimer's desk. That meant something no intelligence agency on Earth
Speaker 2: could match. Oppenheimer could see who was rearming and how
Speaker 2: fast they were building tanks and aircrafts and artillery. Like
Speaker 2: gold was a proxy for economic instability, industrial diamond orders
Speaker 2: became a proxy for war preparation. So when Nazi troops
Speaker 2: crossed into Austria in March of nineteen thirty eight, when
Speaker 2: the world saw cheering crowds, flowers, and bloodless annexation, Oppenheimer
Speaker 2: saw trouble brewing in Europe, the primary market for the
Speaker 2: much higher margin luxury side of the business, Gem diamonds.
Speaker 2: For Gem Diamonds, a luxury dependent on peace, confidence and excess,
Speaker 2: war was a lead environment. If Europe went to war,
Speaker 2: that market wouldn't as slow, it would vanish for years.
Speaker 2: But across the Atlantic there was another world, America. The
Speaker 2: United States was still in the depths of the depression,
Speaker 2: but it was different, vastly different. It had the largest
Speaker 2: consumer base on earth, a stable political system, no war
Speaker 2: on its soil, a growing middle class that, even in
Speaker 2: hard times, still believed in aspiration, romance, and the promise
Speaker 2: of a better future. And perhaps most importantly, America had
Speaker 2: something Europe did not, a mass media culture, radio, magazines, movies,
Speaker 2: advertising agencies that didn't just sell products, they shaped desire.
Speaker 2: To Oppenheimer, the contrast was unmistakable. Europe was becoming a
Speaker 2: continent of rationing and rearmament. America was becoming a nation
Speaker 2: of stories, and stories, he understood, could create demand where
Speaker 2: none had existed before. But there was an uncomfortable truth
Speaker 2: facing de Beers in the late nineteen thirty.
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Speaker 1: fanbam and help us save America one story at a time.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So, by the late
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, de Beers was facing an uncomfortable truth. America
Speaker 2: didn't care much about diamonds. Before this moment, the United
Speaker 2: States accounted for less than ten percent of the global
Speaker 2: diamond purchases. There was no deep diamond tradition, no cultural obsession,
Speaker 2: no inherited expectation that diamonds were necessary or even particularly desirable.
Speaker 2: Americans preferred pearls, rubies, sapphires, colored stones that felt warmer,
Speaker 2: more expressive, less aristocratic. Diamonds, by contrast, still carried a
Speaker 2: whiff of Europe, of old money, royal courts and inherited wealth.
Speaker 2: Engagement rings existed, of course, but they were modest, often
Speaker 2: pearl centered, not jeweled at all. To most Americans, diamonds
Speaker 2: were not symbols of romance. They were symbols of somebody
Speaker 2: else's culture, and that posed an existential problem for Oppenheimer.
Speaker 2: If the gem diamond market was going to collapse in Europe,
Speaker 2: he would have to invent demand in the only place
Speaker 2: left to grow, the United States. But his monopoly power
Speaker 2: could not do this. What was required was something to
Speaker 2: Bier's had never truly needed before a cultural transformation. Oppenheimer
Speaker 2: needed storytellers.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty eight, de Beers turned to one of
Speaker 1: the most powerful advertising agencies in the United States, nw
Speaker 1: Air and Sun. This was not a small firm. Nw
Speaker 1: Air had already proven it could change behavior at scale.
Speaker 1: It had turned Morton salt into a household staple with
Speaker 1: a single phrase, when it rains, it pours. It had
Speaker 1: also helped make camel cigarettes synonymous with modern masculinity. Air
Speaker 1: didn't just sell products, it engineered habits, and de Beers
Speaker 1: gave them and audacious mandate make Americans see diamonds as
Speaker 1: the ultimate symbol of love, glamour, and aspiration. But the
Speaker 1: problem was America already had a queen of gems, that
Speaker 1: being pearls, long before diamonds became symbols of romance or status.
Speaker 1: Pearls carried an aura that felt almost supernatural. They appeared
Speaker 1: in the ancient world not as something mined from the earth,
Speaker 1: but as something born alive, pulled from the depths of
Speaker 1: the sea at tremendous risk in the ancient Persian Gulf.
Speaker 1: In India and China, pearls were prized as treasures of nature,
Speaker 1: gifts from the gods, symbols of purity and power. In
Speaker 1: some cultures, they were trusted as objects of value and
Speaker 1: were even used as a form of exchange, a kind
Speaker 1: of protocurrency, because, unlike diamonds in the pre modern world,
Speaker 1: pearls could be more easily sorted by size, luster and quality.
Speaker 1: Natural pearls were astonishingly rare. Only about one in ten
Speaker 1: thousand oysters produced a gem quality pearl, and finding that
Speaker 1: oyster meant sending divers into dark waters with no breathing equipment,
Speaker 1: no safety lines, and no guarantees they would return alive.
Speaker 1: That danger became part of the pearl's mystique. Pearls weren't
Speaker 1: just beautiful, they were earned at the edge of death.
Speaker 1: That rarity gave pearls their reputation as the Queen of
Speaker 1: the gems. They became objects of elite wealth, portable, prestigious,
Speaker 1: and instantly recognizable. But unlike gold and silver, pearls had limits.
Speaker 1: They were fragile, They couldn't be melted, standardized, or easily analyzed.
Speaker 1: They varied too much to form the backbone of a
Speaker 1: true monetary system. Gold and silver, easily weighed, coined, and trusted,
Speaker 1: became money. Pearls remained something else, status symbols. By the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth and early twentieth century, pearls reached the height
Speaker 1: of their power. Cardier and other elite jewelers sold natural
Speaker 1: pearl strands that cost small fortunes, and in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: pearl value reached its most legendary moment. Pierre Cartier traded
Speaker 1: a double strand natural pearl necklace for a mansion on
Speaker 1: Fifth Avenue in New York City. In today's money, that
Speaker 1: necklace would likely be valued in the tens of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars, because pearls were considered irreplaceable. Then came Hollywood
Speaker 1: in the silent film era. In the earliest talkies, pearls
Speaker 1: became the perfect cinematic jewel. On black and white film,
Speaker 1: pearls popped on the screen long strands of white pearls
Speaker 1: glowed against dark gowns, catching light with every movement. Flapper
Speaker 1: culture made them iconic. Studio stylists at Paramount, MGM and
Speaker 1: other major studios routinely selected pearls for publicity stills, premieres,
Speaker 1: and magazine spreads. Screen queens appeared draped in ropes of pearls,
Speaker 1: reinforcing the idea that pearls were elegance itself. In the
Speaker 1: early nineteen thirties, diamonds were present in Hollywood, but they
Speaker 1: were not dominant. Pearls were still bill the undisputed glamour
Speaker 1: jewel and that posed a serious problem because just as
Speaker 1: Debiers was preparing to reinvent diamonds for the American public,
Speaker 1: the throne of glamour was already occupied. But behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: the pearl world was about to experience a disruption that
Speaker 1: would make its rarity a thing of the past.
Speaker 2: Before nineteen thirty, only about one in ten thousand oysters
Speaker 2: produced a natural pearl worthy of jewelry. That rarity wasn't marketing,
Speaker 2: it was biology, and it made pearls precious. But a
Speaker 2: man in Japan set out to change that equation. His
Speaker 2: name was Kokichi Mikimoto. He wasn't a jeweler. He was
Speaker 2: an entrepreneur with an obsession. Mikimoto believed that pearls did
Speaker 2: not have to be left to chance. Instead of waiting
Speaker 2: for nature to accidentally create a gem, he asked a
Speaker 2: dangerous question, what if you could help the oyster along.
Speaker 2: Through years of trial and failure, Mikimoto and his collaborators
Speaker 2: developed a method that mimicked nature. The process was deceptively simple.
Speaker 2: A technician would carefully open an oyster. A tiny nucleus,
Speaker 2: often a polished bead, would be implanted inside. The oyster
Speaker 2: was then returned to water. Irritated by the foreign object,
Speaker 2: the oyster did what it always did. It coated the
Speaker 2: irritant and layers of nacre a calcium carbonate secretion of
Speaker 2: a mollusc. Month after month, year after year. When the
Speaker 2: oyster was harvested, a pearl emerged round, lustrous and remarkably consistent.
Speaker 2: It wasn't found, it was grown. They became known as
Speaker 2: cultured pearls. The rarity of a natural pearl was always
Speaker 2: vulnerable because it was a chemical problem, unlike gold, which
Speaker 2: is a nuclear problem. For gold, you must change the
Speaker 2: number of protons in an atom. That requires nuclear transmutation.
Speaker 2: It demands enormous energy, infrastructure, and cost. It can technically
Speaker 2: be done, but add up to a billion dollars per ounce.
Speaker 2: There is no chemical shortcut again Kevin de merit of
Speaker 2: lear capital.
Speaker 3: So gold and silver can't be manufactured. Every ounce on
Speaker 3: Earth came from a fian night geological process that took
Speaker 3: millions of years.
Speaker 2: Pearls, on the other hand, form under chemical processes that
Speaker 2: humans can easily replicate. When pearl price is skyrocketed enough
Speaker 2: to wear a strand could buy a New York City penthouse,
Speaker 2: it created an incentive for entrepreneurs to make them in
Speaker 2: a lab. All that needed to be done was to
Speaker 2: make production scalable, cheap, and indistinguishable from natural stones. At first,
Speaker 2: cultured pearls were treated with suspicion, purest scoffed, dealers questioned
Speaker 2: whether buyers would accept them. But by the early nineteen thirties,
Speaker 2: Mickeymoto had solved the hardest problem of all scale. By
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five, Japan was exporting millions of cultured pearls
Speaker 2: every year. Cultured pearls looked virtually indistinguishable from natural ones.
Speaker 2: Same glow, same smooth's surface, same elegant presence, and for
Speaker 2: the average buyer, the distinction barely mattered. A pearl was
Speaker 2: a pearl. The effect on the pearl market was immediate
Speaker 2: and devastating. Natural pearl prices collapsed. Collections that had once
Speaker 2: been worth fortunes were suddenly competing with cultured pearls sold
Speaker 2: by the strand Pearls, once the exclusive domain of royalty
Speaker 2: and industrial magnates, were now appearing in department stores. Middle
Speaker 2: class women could own what queens once wore. Pearls had
Speaker 2: been democratized, and in doing so, something essential was lost exclusivity.
Speaker 2: For the first time in modern history, a luxury gem
Speaker 2: had been technologically disrupted. A symbol of elite status had
Speaker 2: been transformed into an accessible accessory. Pearls didn't disappear. They
Speaker 2: remained and classic, but their meaning began to shift. The
Speaker 2: pearl was vulnerable to something with a better story, and
Speaker 2: De Beer's was about to turn to someone to help
Speaker 2: deliver that narrative.
Speaker 1: When De Beer's hired the American advertising firm nw Air
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty eight, the mandate wasn't subtle. Don't sell
Speaker 1: diamonds as stones, sell them as destiny. Ayr immediately identified
Speaker 1: Hollywood as the lever that could move American culture, not
Speaker 1: just because movies reached millions, but because they taught Americans
Speaker 1: how to desire. What actresses war on screen became aspiration.
Speaker 1: Ayer's internal strategy was simple. Put diamonds where Americans were
Speaker 1: already looking on movie stars and love stories at the
Speaker 1: exact moment when romance turned into commitment. If pearls were
Speaker 1: the queen of old world elegance, Diamonds would become the
Speaker 1: symbol of modern love. The campaign moved quickly and quietly.
Speaker 1: In a nineteen forty report to Debier's, Ayer detailed its
Speaker 1: early victories inside Hollywood studios. After a long series of
Speaker 1: meetings with paramount executives, the agency succeeded in changing the
Speaker 1: title of a film from Diamonds Are Dangerous to something
Speaker 1: far more flattering, Adventure in Diamonds.
Speaker 2: One day in London, a dreary day, I saw a
Speaker 2: travel poster.
Speaker 5: It showed bright mountains against the blue sky rsit races
Speaker 5: and diamond mines.
Speaker 1: It was gay.
Speaker 5: It said, come to South Africa, and so it came.
Speaker 1: In another film, Skylark, the ad agency managed to insert
Speaker 1: an extended scene centered entirely on the selection of diamond jewelry.
Speaker 5: These scripts are very popular. Oom that kind of pretty
Speaker 5: how much twenty one hundred dollars twenty one hundred smackaroos.
Speaker 1: The camera lingered, the diamonds sparkled, the audience watched. These
Speaker 1: weren't advertisements, they were cultural in plants. Nw AIR wasn't
Speaker 1: asking audiences to buy diamonds from de beers. It was
Speaker 1: teaching them that diamonds were already part of the world
Speaker 1: they wanted to live in. Air understood something de beers
Speaker 1: never had. Americans didn't reject diamonds, They simply hadn't been
Speaker 1: trained to want them. Yet. In one internal memo, the
Speaker 1: agency put it bluntly. Americans, it noted.
Speaker 5: Have not been conditioned by their environment to diamond purchases.
Speaker 1: Outside of engagement rings. There was no diamond tradition. But
Speaker 1: Air added the crucial line, the one that unlocked the
Speaker 1: entire campaign. They would be influenced by what they saw
Speaker 1: their favorite movie stars wear. Hollywood wouldn't just display diamonds,
Speaker 1: it would romanticize them and slowly replace pearls as the
Speaker 1: symbol of glamour, love, and permanence. The battleground had been
Speaker 1: chosen the war for America's heart was about to begin.
Speaker 1: By the early nineteen forties, the beers had solved the
Speaker 1: hardest problem in business. They had started to create demand
Speaker 1: where none had existed before. In America. While currencies wobbled
Speaker 1: and borders shifted, diamonds were framed as untouched by chaos,
Speaker 1: a luxury that survived uncertainty, and a symbol of permanence
Speaker 1: in a temporary world. In nineteen forty six, w Air
Speaker 1: escalated the campaign. They launched a weekly publicity service called
Speaker 1: Hollywood Personalities. Every week, one hundred and twenty five of
Speaker 1: the most influential newspapers in America received curated material descriptions
Speaker 1: of diamond necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, photos of stars wearing them,
Speaker 1: blurbs describing who wore what, when and where. It normalized
Speaker 1: diamonds as part of everyday American aspiration. They were what
Speaker 1: the beautiful people wore. Ayr understood something fundamental about the
Speaker 1: human psychology. People didn't want to copy royalty. They wanted
Speaker 1: to copy celebrities, so they shifted focus not to diamonds alone,
Speaker 1: but to romance. Newspaper stories highlighted newly engaged actresses, close
Speaker 1: ups of their diamond rings, speculation about carrot size. The
Speaker 1: equation was subtle, but devastatingly effective. True love meant a
Speaker 1: diamond ring. A bigger diamond meant deeper love. Love itself
Speaker 1: became something measurable. Carrots replaced poetry. No de Beer's logo
Speaker 1: ever appeared. It didn't need to. They controlled a monopoly
Speaker 1: that owned the source. The results were immediate. Since the
Speaker 1: Hollywood focused campaign began, US diamond sales rose by roughly
Speaker 1: fifty five percent, reversing years of decline. Diamonds had crossed
Speaker 1: a cultural threshold. They were no longer foreign, aristocratic, or optional.
Speaker 1: They were becoming inevitable. By the end of World War II,
Speaker 1: de Beers had pulled off something extraordinary. Against all odds,
Speaker 1: against depression, against war, against collapsing luxury markets, diamonds had survived.
Speaker 1: The Bible wasn't enough. Ernest Oppenheimer and his partners at
Speaker 1: Debier's understood something crucial. If diamonds were going to endure
Speaker 1: in the modern world, they needed more than scarcity. They
Speaker 1: needed meaning. And meaning in America was manufactured through advertising.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty seven, inside the offices of NW Air
Speaker 1: and Son, a young copywriter named Mary Francis Garrity was
Speaker 1: given a simple but daunting assignment explain why a diamond mattered,
Speaker 1: not in terms of geology or rarity, but in human terms.
Speaker 1: According to company lore, Garretty stared at her notes late
Speaker 1: into the night, and then she wrote four words that
Speaker 1: would catapult the diamond industry into new heights. A diamond
Speaker 1: is forever. It was more than a slogan. It was
Speaker 1: a spell because embedded in that single sentence were three
Speaker 1: powerful ideas. First, romance, A diamond wasn't just a gift.
Speaker 1: It was a symbol of eternal love. Second, permanence. Unlike
Speaker 1: flowers or clothes, a diamond, Americans were told, was meant
Speaker 1: to last. And third value unspoken but unmistakable. If a
Speaker 1: diamond was forever, then surely it's worth was too. The
Speaker 1: slogan quietly discouraged resale. You don't sell something that represents
Speaker 1: true love. You don't trade away eternity. This was crucial because,
Speaker 1: unlike gold, diamonds don't trade like money. Gold has a
Speaker 1: transparent global spot price quoted twenty four hours a day,
Speaker 1: seven days a week, and it can be sold immediately
Speaker 1: to bullyon dealers, banks, refiners, and jewelers. So gold is
Speaker 1: liquid and has generally gone up dramatically since nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: when it was thirty five dollars per ounce. Diamonds don't
Speaker 1: behave this way. There is no universal spot price for diamonds.
Speaker 1: Try selling it to a jeweler. They'll likely laugh you
Speaker 1: out of the store. Bring it to a pawn shop.
Speaker 1: You'll be lucky to get twenty to thirty percent of
Speaker 1: what you paid for it. A diamond dealer may buy
Speaker 1: it at a wholesale price, if at all. That's a liquidity.
Speaker 1: Once a diamond is sold, its price collapses like a
Speaker 1: vehicle off the car lot. But a diamond is forever
Speaker 1: solved that problem psychologically, it turned diamonds from commodities into
Speaker 1: emotional anchors. Then came another subtle shift. Somewhere in Air's
Speaker 1: internal memos. A new idea began to circulate a guideline.
Speaker 1: The suggestion was simple and revolutionary. A man, they argued,
Speaker 1: should spend one month's salary on an engagement ring. Later, quietly,
Speaker 1: that number would drift upward to two months, sometimes more.
Speaker 1: No law required it, no authority enforced it, but repetition did.
Speaker 1: The idea appeared in ads, in etiquette columns, in jewelers
Speaker 1: sales pitches, and soon it felt less like a suggestion
Speaker 1: and more like social obligation. Love now had a price tag.
Speaker 1: By the late nineteen forties, the transformation was complete. Diamonds
Speaker 1: were no longer just stones pulled from the earth. They
Speaker 1: were roomed, mantic, aspirational, eternal, and de Beers, without ever
Speaker 1: appearing in the ads, controlled nearly every diamond behind the curtain.
Speaker 1: It was one of the most successful advertising campaigns in
Speaker 1: human history. Hollywood had made its decision. The diamond was
Speaker 1: the new stone, and America followed. Pearls didn't disappear. They
Speaker 1: were still classic, but they were no longer the queen
Speaker 1: of the gems. Pearls now shared space with something new
Speaker 1: and unsettling. For their mystique abundance, cultured pearls filled jewelry
Speaker 1: cases at affordable department stores across the country. But pearls
Speaker 1: did make one last stand. In the nineteen fifties, they
Speaker 1: enjoyed a final wave of nostalgic glamour. A famous example
Speaker 1: played out in a sitcom living room.
Speaker 5: Hello, missus Foster, this is Ricky Ricardo.
Speaker 1: Oh good morning, how are you hi? Thank you On
Speaker 1: a nineteen fifty two episode of I Love Lucy, Ricky
Speaker 1: Ricardo schemed to secretly buy Lucy a real pearl necklace
Speaker 1: for their anniversary, nervously calling a jeweler's wife to ask
Speaker 1: about in employee discare count.
Speaker 5: It's Bill home.
Speaker 2: No, Bill's gone out of town for a few days.
Speaker 5: Oh I see, Well, look, I might as well tell
Speaker 5: you Monday is our wedding anniversary. And I want to
Speaker 5: get Lucy some real pearls. And well they're so darn expensive,
Speaker 5: you know. And and Bill told me that you work
Speaker 5: at Joseph Jewelry Company, and well sometimes they give the
Speaker 5: employees a discount. And I thought that maybe I can
Speaker 5: say you're twenty percent percent? All right, Sam?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, Sam, honey, want you to scrambled the price?
Speaker 5: Sam, I'll talk to you.
Speaker 1: Made a scrambled cloud.
Speaker 4: Scramble?
Speaker 3: Did Lucy just come in?
Speaker 5: That's right?
Speaker 1: Sam?
Speaker 5: Well, look, why don't you come down to my apartment
Speaker 5: and we'll talk about it.
Speaker 2: I'll be here for another half hour.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'll do that, Sam, Goodbye? Who was that?
Speaker 4: Sam?
Speaker 1: It was a funny moment, and telling pearls were still precious,
Speaker 1: but now they were precious in a middle class way.
Speaker 1: But a year later, the cultural verdict over the long
Speaker 1: battle between diamonds and pearls was delivered in technicolor. I
Speaker 1: just love finding new places to wear diamond in gentlemen
Speaker 1: preferred blondes. Marilyn Monroe stepped onto the screen in a
Speaker 1: pink satin dress and sang a song that would echo
Speaker 1: for generations.
Speaker 5: A kiss the hand made quite contmental, but diamonds.
Speaker 1: Are as best friend.
Speaker 5: Movie.
Speaker 1: Behind the scenes, nw Air made sure the imagery traveled
Speaker 1: far beyond the movie theater. Magazine spreads editorial placements, advertisements
Speaker 1: that mirrored Monroe's pose, her sparkle, her certainty. Man grow
Speaker 1: cold as girls grow old, and we all lose our.
Speaker 2: Chas the end, But squeak cut or pear shape, these
Speaker 2: rocks don't lose their shape.
Speaker 4: Diamonds are a girl's best friend.
Speaker 1: As Marilyn Monroe put the exclamation mark on diamonds. As
Speaker 1: the new Crown Jewel, cultured pearls were everywhere. They were sold, cheaply, worn,
Speaker 1: casually stripped of their mystery. The Crown had passed. Diamonds
Speaker 1: now sat at the top of luxury Araki unchallenged. The
Speaker 1: Beers had done something no company in history had ever
Speaker 1: done before. It controlled where diamonds came from, how they
Speaker 1: entered the market, how they were priced, and through Hollywood
Speaker 1: advertising and culture itself, it controlled what diamonds meant. The
Speaker 1: Beers wasn't just a mining company. It was an invisible
Speaker 1: hand behind a global belief system, the unquestioned symbol of love.
Speaker 1: They had embedded themselves in the most intimate human ritual
Speaker 1: of all marriage. The Beers sat at the center of
Speaker 1: it all, holding a global monopoly not just on gem
Speaker 1: grade diamonds, but on industrial diamonds as well. From engagement
Speaker 1: rings to aircraft engines, diamonds were everywhere. This was the peak,
Speaker 1: and from the outside it looked unassailable. But just as
Speaker 1: to Beers reached the pinnacle of its power, a new
Speaker 1: kind of diamond appeared. Just a year after Marilyn Monroe
Speaker 1: made diamonds a Girl's Best Friend, scientists at the General
Speaker 1: Electric Company achieved something that until then had been considered impossible.
Speaker 1: They created a diamond in a laboratory. At first, the
Speaker 1: diamonds were small, too small for engagement rings. They were
Speaker 1: industrial useful for cutting, grinding, and manufacturing, making them easy
Speaker 1: to dismiss, but for the first time in human history,
Speaker 1: diamonds no longer belonged exclusively to the Earth and to beers.
Speaker 1: The company that had spent decades convincing the world that
Speaker 1: diamonds were returned, no rare and naturally scarce, now face
Speaker 1: to question. It could no longer control the same question
Speaker 1: that had destroyed the reign of the natural pearl. If
Speaker 1: diamonds could be made, what were they really worth?
Speaker 2: Coming up on Red Pilled America, I think conventional wisdom
Speaker 2: would say that diamonds only come from the ground, and
Speaker 2: that notion is it's not true.
Speaker 5: The company calls the creations culture diamonds, like cultural pearls.
Speaker 2: Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned
Speaker 2: and produced by Patrick Carrelci and me Adriana Cortez for
Speaker 2: Informed Ventures. Now you can get ad free access to
Speaker 2: our entire catalog of episodes by becoming a backstage subscriber.
Speaker 2: To subscribe, just visit Redpilled America dot com and could
Speaker 2: join in the top menu. Thanks for listening,