Diamonds Are Forever

Diamonds Are Forever

For most of human history, diamonds were genuinely rare. Then in 1867, on a sheep farm near the Orange River in South Africa, a fifteen-year-old boy picked up a shiny pebble that turned out to be a 21-carat diamond. Within a few years, the world's diamond supply had multiplied beyond anything the markets had ever seen. By every law of supply and demand, the price should have collapsed.

It didn't. And the reason it didn't is one of the most successful, sustained, and openly documented market manipulations in modern history.In this episode, Brian traces the full arc, from Cecil Rhodes consolidating the South African mines into De Beers in 1888, to the Oppenheimer family running the cartel for three generations, to the 1947 night a young copywriter named Frances Gerety scrawled four words on a piece of paper that would rewrite the meaning of marriage across two continents.

We get into the secret deal with the Soviet Union, the vaults full of stones nobody was allowed to see, Edward Jay Epstein's blistering 1982 Atlantic exposé, the conflict-diamond catastrophe in Sierra Leone, and the lab-grown technology that has, in roughly a decade, taken the cartel's century-old story and broken it in half.This is not a conspiracy theory. Every detail is documented.

What the documentation shows is something stranger and more unsettling than a conspiracy. It shows what happens when an entire industry, working in plain sight, spends a hundred years convincing the world to believe something that was never true. If you've ever bought a ring, looked at one, or wondered why a piece of crystallized carbon costs what it costs, this one is for you.

Reach out anytime at brian@paranormalworldproductions.com.

Have a forgotten historical mystery, disturbing event, unsolved crime, or hidden conspiracy you think deserves investigation?

Send your suggestions to brian@paranormalworldproductions.com.

Disturbing History is a dark history podcast exploring unsolved mysteries, secret societies, historical conspiracies, lost civilizations, and the shadowy stories buried beneath the surface of the past.

Follow the show and enable automatic downloads so you never miss a deep dive into history’s most unsettling secrets.

Because sometimes the truth is darker than fiction.

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Episoder(154)

The 1990's

The 1990's

On July 16, 1990, Time magazine put a group of young adults on its cover beneath the word “twentysomething” and asked whether they were laid back, late blooming, or simply lost. The story said they st...

30 Sep 1h 12min

The Siege At Ruby Ridge

The Siege At Ruby Ridge

Listener discretion is advised. This episode contains descriptions of real-life violence and death, including the shooting deaths of a fourteen-year-old boy, his mother, and a federal law enforcement ...

27 Sep 1h 18min

The 1980's

The 1980's

The 1980s began with 52 Americans still being held hostage in Tehran and ended with crowds tearing open the Berlin Wall. Between those two moments came one of the most turbulent, contradictory decades...

25 Sep 1h 9min

Halley's Comet

Halley's Comet

On the night of May 18, 1910, people across the world waited for Halley’s Comet to kill them.Hotels in New York opened their rooftops. Miners in Pennsylvania refused to go underground. A religious sec...

23 Sep 1h 1min

The Freeway Killer

The Freeway Killer

This episode discusses sexual violence against children and teenagers, torture, and murder and is not suitable for younger audiences. Listener discretion is strongly advised. On the night of June 11, ...

21 Sep 1h 19min

The 1970's

The 1970's

The 1970s opened in conflict.On April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon announced the expansion of U.S. military operations into Cambodia.Days later, four students were killed by the Ohio National Gua...

18 Sep 1h 2min

The Bystander Effect

The Bystander Effect

On March 27, 1964, The New York Times published a story that would become one of the most famous examples of human indifference ever told. According to the report, 38 people in Queens watched as 28-ye...

16 Sep 1h

The 1960's

The 1960's

Everybody knows the line: “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.” It became shorthand for an entire generation, even though the man who said it was a 24-year-old Berkeley graduate student who would turn thi...

13 Sep 1h 2min

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