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Pearls: Second Best Thing About Oysters · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant. Jerry's here kind of
0:17
Speaker 1: I think she went to go open the door for
0:19
Speaker 1: a delivery person. Other than that, this is stuff you
0:22
Speaker 1: should know. Hey, let's hope it's not the land Shark
0:29
Speaker 1: nine seventies Saturday Night Live fame. That's good stuff. Man. Hey,
0:36
Speaker 1: you know what I would need to shout out a
0:37
Speaker 1: listener because this was a genuine listener suggestion. Uh, we
0:45
Speaker 1: get lots of suggestions and sometimes we take them. Yeah, yeah,
0:50
Speaker 1: I go, I have one in the pipeline right now.
0:53
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I'm I'm just gonna let it be
0:56
Speaker 1: suspenseful until then. Okay, whose idea I'm trying to think
0:59
Speaker 1: of which one might be for you, because I know
1:01
Speaker 1: what's in your pipeline, buddy, Okay, we already did the animals. One.
1:05
Speaker 1: I can do that scary that scary hole. Uh. This
1:10
Speaker 1: is Jamie Boo, her nice name, and I didn't even
1:14
Speaker 1: let Jamie know. So hopefully Jamie, here's this and it'll
1:17
Speaker 1: just be a big surprise. I know there's a certain
1:19
Speaker 1: listener out there who is hoping this would be possums.
1:22
Speaker 1: But here's a little hint. If you suggest something too much,
1:26
Speaker 1: it becomes a game where we will never do it. Well,
1:29
Speaker 1: you can ask the guy who um continuously asked for
1:32
Speaker 1: the Hawaiian Overthrow episode. It's one of those we kind
1:35
Speaker 1: of did that didn't mean we did do it, And
1:36
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that you want really bad
1:38
Speaker 1: and then when you get it you regret over having
1:40
Speaker 1: asked for it. Yeah, just too much build up, right,
1:45
Speaker 1: You just gotta let things come as they come, exactly,
1:48
Speaker 1: chill out, look in your pipeline. I predict that we forgotten.
1:53
Speaker 1: We normally would have gotten to possums by seven easily.
1:58
Speaker 1: Never No, never, Right now we ut. But today we're
2:01
Speaker 1: talking about pearls, right, yeah, pearls and the big thanks
2:05
Speaker 1: to Jamie boo Her because this is one I'm surprised
2:08
Speaker 1: we hadn't done. It's very stuff. You should know. He
2:10
Speaker 1: just sort of sitting out there at the bottom of
2:12
Speaker 1: the ocean waiting for us to discover it, like a
2:16
Speaker 1: pearl diver, which weirdly was not even in this article. No,
2:20
Speaker 1: I thought it was weird too. I did a little
2:22
Speaker 1: research on it, so we'll we'll hit that in a minute.
2:25
Speaker 1: But yeah, same. I read that Steinbeck book. What was
2:29
Speaker 1: it called The Pearl Diver's Daughter. That was the original title,
2:36
Speaker 1: but he just shortened it and he just said, let's
2:37
Speaker 1: just call it the Pearl. Okay, I didn't know that
2:40
Speaker 1: was a Steinbeck book. I knew about Grapes of Wrath
2:44
Speaker 1: as I lay dying, mainly because that metal band mm
2:48
Speaker 1: HM travels with Charlie Uhson. Man, what's the canary row? One?
2:53
Speaker 1: Cannary row of mice and men? Man? Have you ever
2:56
Speaker 1: seen that? With one? The one with Gary Sinice and
3:00
Speaker 1: um John Malkovich is Lenny No. I saw the previous
3:05
Speaker 1: version when I was a kid that I want to
3:08
Speaker 1: say it was the Quaide the big boy Quade. Oh,
3:12
Speaker 1: he'd be perfect for that, Randy um And I can't
3:16
Speaker 1: remember who Lenny was. I think I saw pieces of Oh,
3:20
Speaker 1: I thought you went of the of the Malkovitch one. Okay,
3:24
Speaker 1: I thought you meant Randy Quaide was Lenny. I can't
3:26
Speaker 1: imagine him as anybody else. Maybe Curly, but now I
3:30
Speaker 1: think Curly is kind of like a Casey sa Moscow
3:33
Speaker 1: esque smaller dude. You know what I mean. Wait, who
3:36
Speaker 1: did I say? Did I get it wrong? Who did
3:37
Speaker 1: I say? Randy Quaide was? You said you couldn't remember
3:40
Speaker 1: who Lenny was. I don't remember the other guy's name,
3:42
Speaker 1: but Lenny's the one who was old Yeller at the end, right,
3:47
Speaker 1: I guess I should say spoiler alert, right of sure,
3:51
Speaker 1: But if you don't know what that is, just he's
3:53
Speaker 1: guys and Eddie. That's all you need to know. So Chuck,
3:55
Speaker 1: let's start talking about pearls at this point. What do
3:57
Speaker 1: you think? I think let's do it pretty neat, little Jim. Yeah,
4:03
Speaker 1: you can make a really good argument, and I've seen
4:05
Speaker 1: it made all over the internet, especially from pearl seller's websites,
4:08
Speaker 1: that pearls are far and away the oldest gym people
4:12
Speaker 1: have ever used to adorn themselves with. I don't know
4:16
Speaker 1: if that's true, but it's possible because you have to
4:19
Speaker 1: mind gold, you have to stumble upon it. With pearls,
4:22
Speaker 1: I could see people just you know, diving for seafood
4:25
Speaker 1: and being like, what is this thing? And oh there's
4:28
Speaker 1: another one over here, and then all of a sudden
4:30
Speaker 1: you've got, you know, these gems that are coming out
4:32
Speaker 1: of the Persian Gulf and being a big deal. Yeah,
4:36
Speaker 1: and you know it's already weird enough that people correct
4:39
Speaker 1: an oyster open and said, maybe I should eat that
4:41
Speaker 1: disgusting looking blob. I know that's kind of an angel question,
4:45
Speaker 1: is like who ate the first oyster? But uh, when
4:48
Speaker 1: they saw a little pearl in there? I mean, first
4:50
Speaker 1: of all, the interior of any We're not any, but
4:54
Speaker 1: of many mollusk shells can be beautifully iridescent and very
4:59
Speaker 1: attract of to the eye. So I could see why
5:02
Speaker 1: somebody might crack a mollusk open and say, hey, that
5:05
Speaker 1: this looks interesting. Wonder if that piece of meat is
5:08
Speaker 1: taste good? And it does, especially in a nice buttery
5:12
Speaker 1: lemon white wine sauce. M hmm. I think we should
5:15
Speaker 1: do oysters just separately at some point. But I found
5:19
Speaker 1: a little pearl. Turns out it was a blister pearl,
5:22
Speaker 1: which means it was we'll get to this, but it
5:24
Speaker 1: means it's attached to the shell. But I found a
5:27
Speaker 1: little blister pearl one time, and I can't remember if
5:30
Speaker 1: it was just dining in a restaurant or whether it
5:32
Speaker 1: was from a shell when we were like clamming or something,
5:39
Speaker 1: But I thought pearls only came from oysters, and that
5:42
Speaker 1: is not true. They can come from just about any mollusk, right,
5:47
Speaker 1: But you do make a good point. Any mollusk can
5:50
Speaker 1: make a pearl if you if you're very inclusive of
5:52
Speaker 1: what forms of pearl because their formed through the same process.
5:55
Speaker 1: Is the difference between a true pearl and a non
5:58
Speaker 1: true pearl, if you're going to be a purist, is
6:01
Speaker 1: the substance that it's made from. And even more mind
6:04
Speaker 1: boggling than that, they're made from the same substance. It's
6:07
Speaker 1: just a different structural arrangement of that same substance that
6:11
Speaker 1: produces a true pearl or a non true pearl. I
6:15
Speaker 1: think that was enough mystery. Let's let's get in okay.
6:18
Speaker 1: So one of the things that we need to know
6:20
Speaker 1: about pearls, and one of the reasons why they've been,
6:22
Speaker 1: you know, for thousands of years they were like the
6:24
Speaker 1: great signifier of wealth, is because they're exceedingly rare in nature.
6:30
Speaker 1: Just kind of globally, you'll find a pearl in about
6:34
Speaker 1: one and ten thousand mollusks. That's not very many pearls
6:38
Speaker 1: hanging around out there. So you can imagine that when
6:40
Speaker 1: a really nice pearl was found. It was you know,
6:44
Speaker 1: very much treasured um. And every single pearl, no matter
6:48
Speaker 1: what kind of pearl it is, starts because the little
6:52
Speaker 1: mollusk that forms the pearl is irritated. That's right. Uh.
6:59
Speaker 1: You've often heard a grain of sand can turn into
7:01
Speaker 1: a pearl. That is true. It can be a little
7:04
Speaker 1: chunk of the shell. Um. Most times it's a little parasite,
7:09
Speaker 1: and it's almost like an allergic reaction takes place inside
7:13
Speaker 1: the mollusk and that they mount a defense by coding
7:18
Speaker 1: this foreign thing that gets in their shell, because you know,
7:20
Speaker 1: their shell is is ideally sealed up pretty tight, uh,
7:23
Speaker 1: and they like to keep it nice and clean. Um.
7:26
Speaker 1: But they something gets in there and they go, all right,
7:29
Speaker 1: something's in here, shouldn't be. I'm going to coat this
7:31
Speaker 1: thing with a substance and we'll get to what that
7:35
Speaker 1: is in a second. And that substance basically just builds
7:39
Speaker 1: up and eventually it makes a pearl. And you know,
7:42
Speaker 1: it can be a little blister pearl that's still attached,
7:45
Speaker 1: or you know, ideally what you're gonna get to is
7:48
Speaker 1: a perfectly spherical, lovely little thing that could someday end
7:54
Speaker 1: up on a piece of jewelry. Yeah, now we should
7:57
Speaker 1: say like that one and ten molas. Like if you
8:01
Speaker 1: if you get ten thousand mollisks together on the beach,
8:04
Speaker 1: you would find a pearl in one of them. Um,
8:07
Speaker 1: it would be even rarer than that to find a
8:09
Speaker 1: perfectly spherical or even close to spherical pearl, Like those
8:13
Speaker 1: are really really rare in nature, right, Um. But that
8:18
Speaker 1: stuff that makes that pearl, depending on what kind of
8:20
Speaker 1: mollusk it comes from, if it's a true pearl, the
8:23
Speaker 1: stuff that they build up to kind of isolate that
8:25
Speaker 1: grain of sand or that parasite or whatever, is called
8:28
Speaker 1: naker and naker is this combination of um, a kind
8:33
Speaker 1: of calcium carbonate called aragonite, and then another substance kind
8:38
Speaker 1: of like an organic binder called concleolin. And as different
8:43
Speaker 1: layers are put down at a little bit of water,
8:46
Speaker 1: slowly by but surely like the layer kind of gets
8:50
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger and bigger, and a pearl forms around that. Again,
8:54
Speaker 1: you have to remember this, this thing that we prize
8:55
Speaker 1: and value and think is one of the most beautiful
8:57
Speaker 1: things in the world, is a Pearl's Like you said,
9:00
Speaker 1: an allergic reaction to an irritant. That's what it's doing.
9:04
Speaker 1: It just so happens that we find them gorgeous and
9:07
Speaker 1: like to wear them on our foreheads. Forehead, it's a
9:11
Speaker 1: great place for a pearl. How did you pronounce that
9:14
Speaker 1: second word, naker or oh con con conchiolian? Yeah, thrown
9:19
Speaker 1: that ellen there. It's very easy to want to do.
9:23
Speaker 1: Can I get the earth? Yeah? Conkylin uh and naker
9:27
Speaker 1: by the way, spelled in a c R E for
9:30
Speaker 1: those of you who love it when I just randomly
9:32
Speaker 1: spell things, um and naker. You know, I talked about
9:34
Speaker 1: that beautiful iridescence. Um, it's it's mother of pearl. That
9:38
Speaker 1: is Naker. So when you look at the inside of
9:40
Speaker 1: a of a mollusk, of a shellfish that has that
9:43
Speaker 1: wonderful sort of rainbow iridescent look, that is the Naker
9:47
Speaker 1: and it's really super strong. Um. And I believe it
9:50
Speaker 1: they've been you know, it's it's part of the structural
9:52
Speaker 1: integrity of keeping the mollusks strong, right right, Yeah, It's
9:56
Speaker 1: like that's um, what what we would consider like what
9:59
Speaker 1: our bones are made out of. That's what the mollusk's
10:02
Speaker 1: hardness is made out of. I think, Yeah, exactly, at
10:05
Speaker 1: least the interior part. So then there's the other non
10:08
Speaker 1: true pearls. They're called non nacreous pearl because they're not
10:11
Speaker 1: made with nacre They're made with a calcareous concretion, which
10:16
Speaker 1: again is made from calcium carbonate crystals, but it's a
10:18
Speaker 1: different arrangement of calcium carbonate called calcite, and calcite is
10:23
Speaker 1: more stable than aragonite, but it's more fragile, and it's
10:29
Speaker 1: just not the same thing as a pearl. Yeah, these
10:32
Speaker 1: are the non acreous are I'm sometimes pink or brown. Uh,
10:38
Speaker 1: And they generally come from the Queen conk. We say conk, right,
10:41
Speaker 1: and we say conch conk. That's what I always said.
10:44
Speaker 1: But I also heard people say conch one time, and
10:46
Speaker 1: I thought it was mispronouncing they were they were dead wrong, okay, uh.
10:52
Speaker 1: And this conk mollusk, the queen conk is in the
10:55
Speaker 1: Caribbean or is it Caribbean because I heard someone say
10:59
Speaker 1: it's the Caribbean. Yeah. You have to say it like
11:03
Speaker 1: you're about to sing the Billy Ocean song. Yeah, queen, Yeah,
11:06
Speaker 1: but you have to just leave everybody hanging you. Well,
11:11
Speaker 1: you've never noticed in that song he goes Caribbean queen
11:15
Speaker 1: conk in the background. Uh. I do want to recommend
11:21
Speaker 1: this story that we're not going to get into here,
11:24
Speaker 1: but Olivia, who helped us with this, was kind enough
11:27
Speaker 1: to tease us with a story from one about a
11:31
Speaker 1: Tai fisherman who found a mellow pearl m e l
11:34
Speaker 1: o and that's um one of the other kinds of
11:36
Speaker 1: non ne creus uh mollusk pearls, and it was worth
11:42
Speaker 1: about three grand. These things are really really rare. They're uh,
11:47
Speaker 1: you can't make them in nature, so that's why they're rare,
11:49
Speaker 1: and we get to or you can't make them, you know,
11:51
Speaker 1: by human hands, I should say. Uh. So they're super
11:55
Speaker 1: rare and they're very um fragile. Uh and as a result,
11:59
Speaker 1: they're really expensive. But is there's a really good story
12:02
Speaker 1: about this Thai fisherman who found one worth a lot
12:04
Speaker 1: of money and just go look it up on the
12:06
Speaker 1: internet and read about it. But it's it's pretty involved. So,
12:09
Speaker 1: like you said, the non acreous pearls are made by
12:12
Speaker 1: the mellow mellow sea snail or the queen conk mollusk,
12:15
Speaker 1: but the true pearls are typically made by saltwater oysters.
12:18
Speaker 1: Or freshwater mussels. Like when you're thinking of a pearl, pearl,
12:23
Speaker 1: it probably came from a mussel, possibly from Ohio or Tennessee,
12:26
Speaker 1: of all places, the Tennessee River. That was one of
12:29
Speaker 1: the most mind blowing things I've ever heard. Or if
12:32
Speaker 1: it's saltwater oysters, it might be on the northern coast
12:36
Speaker 1: of South America. It might be on the in the Baja,
12:40
Speaker 1: the Gulf of California, off the Baja in Mexico. Um,
12:44
Speaker 1: those are some really good spots for it, too. Or
12:46
Speaker 1: it could also be in places in Japan as we'll
12:49
Speaker 1: see too. Yeah, and the Tennessee River and a couple
12:52
Speaker 1: of these other places are some of the some of
12:55
Speaker 1: the only places where people still dive for pearls, because again,
12:59
Speaker 1: as you'll see, most pearls that we see today are
13:01
Speaker 1: made by people, Uh well, people and mollusks, sure in conjunction. Yeah, um,
13:10
Speaker 1: but you know, we can talk just for a little
13:11
Speaker 1: bit about pearl diving. That was how they used to
13:13
Speaker 1: find pearls. And if you think, well, I get oysters,
13:16
Speaker 1: you know, I live in I live near the ocean,
13:18
Speaker 1: and I get oysters just in my oyster trap a
13:21
Speaker 1: few feet down those are almost certainly not going to
13:24
Speaker 1: be making pearls. The pearl bearing mollusks are generally very
13:30
Speaker 1: very very deep, and these divers it was kind of
13:33
Speaker 1: the I don't know if it was the reason people
13:36
Speaker 1: started free diving so deep, but people who were really
13:39
Speaker 1: good at free diving so deep, uh, often became pearl
13:43
Speaker 1: divers in you know, free diving, or the people that
13:46
Speaker 1: eventually they would get a mask, but they would you know,
13:48
Speaker 1: you just go down there with your lungs and swim
13:50
Speaker 1: super super super deep. And that's what the Steinbeck novel
13:54
Speaker 1: is about. So so, like I saw that a pearl
13:57
Speaker 1: diver might dive down to any feet undred and fifty feet. Yeah,
14:03
Speaker 1: that's like fifty meters if you're paying attention, Um, that
14:06
Speaker 1: is extremely deep. That's actually beyond like the recreational scuba
14:10
Speaker 1: divers limits. I think that's like ninety hundred feet. So
14:14
Speaker 1: these people are free diving that deep, and yeah, they're
14:16
Speaker 1: having to hold their breath for many, many minutes, but
14:18
Speaker 1: they're pretty good at it. And the reason why I
14:21
Speaker 1: think they have to dive so low and the reason
14:23
Speaker 1: why you're not going to find a pearl in an
14:25
Speaker 1: oyster along them, the shoreline is because the flow of
14:30
Speaker 1: water has to be below a certain speed or else
14:34
Speaker 1: the nakers just not going to form correctly or at all,
14:37
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, So they're gonna be just
14:39
Speaker 1: sitting real still. Yeah, exactly, for sure. Should we take
14:43
Speaker 1: a break. Sure, we'll take a break, and we'll come
14:45
Speaker 1: back and talk a little history, because it turns out
14:47
Speaker 1: people have like pearls for a really long time. So Chuck,
15:12
Speaker 1: we're back and we're talking pearl history and um. From
15:15
Speaker 1: what I could tell, for about four thousand years, the
15:19
Speaker 1: vast majority of pearls came from around the Persian Gulf,
15:23
Speaker 1: the Red Sea, or the Gulf of Mannar by Sri Lanka.
15:27
Speaker 1: And that was just the way it was. If you
15:29
Speaker 1: had a pearl before about the nineteen twenties or thirties,
15:33
Speaker 1: it was very likely that it came from one of
15:35
Speaker 1: those areas. And in about the Middle East or Southeast Asia. Yeah,
15:39
Speaker 1: and they were, like you said, they were always prized. Um. Obviously,
15:43
Speaker 1: if you look at a pearl, um, it's a anytime
15:46
Speaker 1: something really that beautiful comes from nature, that's that rare um.
15:50
Speaker 1: It becomes a precious item. And from the very beginning
15:53
Speaker 1: in I mean you name it. In most ancient places
15:58
Speaker 1: where you could get pearls, they were written about. They
16:01
Speaker 1: were prized and warned by the nobility. Maybe nobility definitely
16:07
Speaker 1: kings and queens, maybe sometimes only kings and queens, and
16:11
Speaker 1: not even like lower nobility. They were that rare, but
16:14
Speaker 1: they also kind of hoarded them, like their stories of
16:18
Speaker 1: you know, uh, ancient queens having like hundreds and hundreds
16:21
Speaker 1: of pearls. Uh, It's not like they just had like, oh,
16:24
Speaker 1: we found one and the rest, you know, other people
16:27
Speaker 1: can wear. Yeah. I think the oldest pearl necklace that
16:30
Speaker 1: was found is come comes from about twenty four hundred
16:33
Speaker 1: years ago or twenty three hundred years ago in a
16:35
Speaker 1: place that was called Susa, which we now recognizes Iran,
16:39
Speaker 1: And it was in a princess's sarcophagus, and it was
16:42
Speaker 1: a pearl necklace of two hundred and sixteen pearlstears. It
16:46
Speaker 1: is a lot of pearls, especially considering again like just
16:49
Speaker 1: any normal pearl is found in one in ten thousand mollusks,
16:53
Speaker 1: and this this princess had two hundred and sixteen pearls,
16:55
Speaker 1: So she would have been what you would call fabulously
16:57
Speaker 1: wealthy at the time. Uh. Uh. Native American cultures prized
17:02
Speaker 1: the pearl as well as you'll see. If you can
17:05
Speaker 1: find them in the Tennessee River, Uh, then you can.
17:08
Speaker 1: There are other places in the Midwest of the United
17:10
Speaker 1: States where you can find pearls still today. So they
17:14
Speaker 1: love them and use them. I think Mother of Pearl
17:16
Speaker 1: has always been used. The ancient Egyptians definitely used it
17:21
Speaker 1: as far as BC, even though they got pearls much later. Yeah,
17:27
Speaker 1: apparently it wasn't until they were conquered by the Persian
17:30
Speaker 1: Empire about the sixth yes, sixth century BC um that
17:36
Speaker 1: they finally got pearls, which does not make sense to me,
17:38
Speaker 1: but you know them's the Brakes history. Uh. This cleopatri
17:43
Speaker 1: story is pretty interesting. I think we talked about this
17:46
Speaker 1: in our Cleopatric episode. I'm pretty sure it sounds awfully familiar.
17:49
Speaker 1: It did. As the legend goes, she bet Mark Antony
17:53
Speaker 1: that she could present the most expensive dinner ever made,
17:57
Speaker 1: and he was like, all right, let's see what got
18:01
Speaker 1: I think there's a catch. And there was a catch
18:03
Speaker 1: because supposedly pearl earrings were crushed into powder and dissolved
18:08
Speaker 1: into wine, and she went game on. She famously went
18:15
Speaker 1: and then down her pearl shot of vinegar. Yeah, and
18:19
Speaker 1: supposedly he said, no, thank you, No, that's too opulent
18:22
Speaker 1: from waw. Yeah, I can't. I don't know if that
18:25
Speaker 1: would be bad for you or probably just benign. Well,
18:28
Speaker 1: it depends, because there's a lot of cultures over the years,
18:31
Speaker 1: as we'll see, that have basically prized pearls for all
18:34
Speaker 1: sorts of medicinal values along the way, Like everybody from
18:38
Speaker 1: the Hindus to the Daoists to um ancient Sanskrit medical
18:42
Speaker 1: texts like the Chakara Samhita all basically said, hey, pearls
18:47
Speaker 1: are really good for everything from prolonging youth to curing
18:51
Speaker 1: weak eyes. It's an elixir to restore strength. Like I
18:55
Speaker 1: think anytime there's something that's valuable as a thing of beauty,
18:59
Speaker 1: they also just assume that it has some sort of
19:02
Speaker 1: healthful properties as well, And pearls are definitely in that
19:05
Speaker 1: in that um realm. I'm curious if there's anything to
19:09
Speaker 1: any of that, if there's been like modern studies on
19:12
Speaker 1: pearl dust. Well, I know they put pearl dust in
19:16
Speaker 1: some skin creams too, and it supposedly adds a youthful
19:19
Speaker 1: glow to your skin. But that's smax to me of
19:21
Speaker 1: basically the same thing as Sanskrit medical texts saying it
19:25
Speaker 1: restores strength and youthfulness. And you know that because you
19:29
Speaker 1: use it right, maybe it's still worth a try. Um.
19:35
Speaker 1: Once the Crusades got going in the medieval era, they
19:39
Speaker 1: started trading with Asia, all these pearls were coming to
19:43
Speaker 1: Europe and again, and once they made their way to Europe,
19:45
Speaker 1: they were basically off limits. They're actually sumptuary laws that
19:50
Speaker 1: said you can't have them, common people, you can't have
19:53
Speaker 1: anything nice. That's what all these laws are about. Yeah,
19:55
Speaker 1: supposedly it was to to really keep the class delineations
19:59
Speaker 1: in a order, but also it's supposedly to prevent the
20:02
Speaker 1: lower classes from engaging in in wanton spending that they
20:07
Speaker 1: couldn't afford, you know, in a like a form of vice,
20:11
Speaker 1: like luxury. Basically, Um, the thing is that we have
20:14
Speaker 1: credit cards right right, It's the opposite of a sumptuary law. Um.
20:18
Speaker 1: The thing is, apparently Scotland has really nice pearls. And
20:22
Speaker 1: I saw in more than one place that the story
20:25
Speaker 1: goes that Caesar actually invaded Britain because he was after
20:30
Speaker 1: um Uk pearls at the time, although it was in
20:32
Speaker 1: the UK. You know what I'm saying. We still get
20:36
Speaker 1: those emails all the time. For sure, we could, like
20:39
Speaker 1: if you put a gun to our head, we could
20:40
Speaker 1: come up with it. But just sometimes on the fly
20:42
Speaker 1: it's hard to remember. Well. And sometimes when we say
20:46
Speaker 1: English or England, we're talking about England. I think the
20:49
Speaker 1: official right, right, but yeah, exactly, but I think the
20:51
Speaker 1: official thing is the United Kingdom of Great Britain in
20:54
Speaker 1: northern Ireland. I think I can hear some people in
20:58
Speaker 1: Europe clamping right now. Uh well, speaking of them, uh,
21:02
Speaker 1: the colonizers. Of course, once they started making their way
21:05
Speaker 1: around the world and plundering everything, they obviously took wherever
21:10
Speaker 1: there were pearls, they would take and harvest those pearls
21:14
Speaker 1: and send them back to Europe again, whether it was
21:18
Speaker 1: Panama or Mexico or places in South America. Wherever they
21:21
Speaker 1: went and they had pearls, they were for the right,
21:24
Speaker 1: for the taken, and again they went back to the courts. Generally,
21:28
Speaker 1: um men wore pearl ear rings. Apparently in Henry's court,
21:32
Speaker 1: um Elizabeth had thousands and thousands of pearls that were
21:37
Speaker 1: you know, hey, a pearl button looks much nicer than
21:41
Speaker 1: a real button or just a pearl adornment, and so
21:43
Speaker 1: let's just use those instead of regular buttons. Yeah. One
21:46
Speaker 1: thing that I found mind blowing was that um that
21:50
Speaker 1: her gowns would have thousands of pearls sewn into them,
21:54
Speaker 1: and that when you clean the gown you had to
21:56
Speaker 1: you had to take all the pearls off and then
21:59
Speaker 1: clean it and then sew all the pearls back onto.
22:02
Speaker 1: Can you imagine you know what? I bet if you
22:06
Speaker 1: told that story back then and Elizabeth was in the room,
22:09
Speaker 1: she would say, really, they do that right, probably, And
22:13
Speaker 1: by the way, off with your head right for telling
22:17
Speaker 1: me that story. I don't like guilt man. That was
22:20
Speaker 1: a great Elizabeth the first impression. Thank you, so onward
22:25
Speaker 1: and upward, Chuck. Because in the late late nineteenth century,
22:29
Speaker 1: and in particular, a guy named guest Tom Vives became
22:34
Speaker 1: the first human being, as far as we know, to
22:37
Speaker 1: set up a genuine, large scale commercial oyster farming operation
22:43
Speaker 1: with the express purpose of producing as many pearls as possible.
22:48
Speaker 1: Pretty good idea in eighteen it is. And because the
22:53
Speaker 1: the you know, the the um what's the word, I'm
22:56
Speaker 1: looking for where something happens and like in ratio for
23:00
Speaker 1: warm um the how about okay, I know where you're going.
23:06
Speaker 1: How about this, Because pearls are so rare, Vives said,
23:11
Speaker 1: I'm going to overcome this by just having gobs and
23:13
Speaker 1: gobs and gobs of oysters. Um, so that just I'll
23:16
Speaker 1: beat the odds. And in fact, he beat the odds
23:19
Speaker 1: big time because he was farming oysters and harvesting anywhere
23:24
Speaker 1: between four to fourteen pearls per one hundred oysters. So
23:28
Speaker 1: he was having a four to fourteen percent yield of
23:31
Speaker 1: of pearls. Pretty good, right, well, I mean way better
23:34
Speaker 1: than what we said to begin with, which is one
23:36
Speaker 1: in ten, right, which is so he was harvesting up
23:39
Speaker 1: to fourteen percent of pearls, or harvesting pearls from fourteen
23:42
Speaker 1: percent of his oysters. The worldwide estimate would be harvesting
23:46
Speaker 1: pearls from point zero zero zero one percent of oysters
23:50
Speaker 1: that you would find. Yeah, and I don't think we
23:53
Speaker 1: said this is in Mexico, And of course these are
23:57
Speaker 1: reports that this happened in fourteen percent is the very
24:01
Speaker 1: highest end. It was four to fourteen. But that's even
24:04
Speaker 1: let's say it's four percent. That's still a lot more.
24:07
Speaker 1: And the only thing that people can reckon is that
24:10
Speaker 1: it was just a place where, uh, they had a
24:14
Speaker 1: lot more pearls, because that can happen. Yeah, the conditions
24:17
Speaker 1: must have just been just perfect right there in the
24:19
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico. Um. That yeah, so good for guests,
24:23
Speaker 1: tom vvs. But one really important thing to remember about
24:26
Speaker 1: Vivez's operation is he was farming them naturally. Again, he
24:31
Speaker 1: was overcoming the odds just by sheer numbers of oysters
24:33
Speaker 1: he was raising. But he also figured out some really
24:35
Speaker 1: important stuff too that the better you take care of
24:38
Speaker 1: your oysters, the more you protect them from predators, the
24:41
Speaker 1: more you protect them from disease, the more you scrub
24:45
Speaker 1: them free of barnacles several times a year, the likelier
24:48
Speaker 1: they are to produce a really nice pearl. Uh. And
24:51
Speaker 1: so he established some techniques that I believe are still
24:53
Speaker 1: kind of foundational in pearl culturing today. But he did
24:57
Speaker 1: not try to artificially implant or or get um I guess,
25:02
Speaker 1: jump start pearl creation in oysters. He was just letting
25:06
Speaker 1: it happen naturally. So he wasn't technically culturing pearls. He
25:10
Speaker 1: was just farming oysters for their pearls. Yeah, cultivating, right,
25:15
Speaker 1: I'd say culturing. No, I mean he would have been cultivating,
25:19
Speaker 1: oh sure, sure, grooming, breeding, um raising, Uh, beating the odds. Uh.
25:27
Speaker 1: If you want to talk about making pearls, culturing pearls,
25:31
Speaker 1: of course, you got to look to ancient China. They're
25:33
Speaker 1: the first people that kind of started doing that. They
25:35
Speaker 1: put little molds. This is very cool. They put little
25:38
Speaker 1: molds that had different things, but chiefly little Buddha images
25:44
Speaker 1: into muscles freshwater muscles around five CE, and they would
25:48
Speaker 1: develop those blister pearls that I talked about that I
25:50
Speaker 1: found one time that are attached to the interior of
25:54
Speaker 1: the shell, and it would be in about the same shape.
25:57
Speaker 1: It's not like it produced a perfect little Buddha blister pearl,
26:02
Speaker 1: but looked enough like it to where it was, you know,
26:05
Speaker 1: a pretty ingenious thing. Um, they were not, they were
26:09
Speaker 1: you know, I think the blister pearls are called like
26:11
Speaker 1: half pearls or hemispherical. They're not obviously prized and the
26:15
Speaker 1: kind that you want to put on a necklace. But
26:18
Speaker 1: it kind of got the ball rolling as far as uh,
26:21
Speaker 1: knowing that we can culture pearls. They would say it
26:25
Speaker 1: either looks like Buddha or Abraham Lincoln guaranteed. So a
26:31
Speaker 1: long time after that, UM, people started like really trying
26:33
Speaker 1: to figure out how to intensively cultivate pearls or culture pearls.
26:38
Speaker 1: I'm confused, but UM. There was a guy named WILLIAMS.
26:41
Speaker 1: Seville Kent who was English, believe it or not, and
26:44
Speaker 1: he was a marine biologist working in Australia. UM, and
26:48
Speaker 1: he said, you know, I really think this guest on
26:50
Speaker 1: Vivez guy is is onto something. UM, but I think
26:55
Speaker 1: he's he's missing the point. He's just kind of letting
26:57
Speaker 1: nature take its course, beating the odds, you could say. UM.
27:03
Speaker 1: And instead, Seville Kent wanted to kind of like hasten
27:06
Speaker 1: nature to kind of like increase his chances even further
27:09
Speaker 1: by trying to figure out how to make pearls happen unnaturally,
27:15
Speaker 1: I guess. And he never got any further than creating
27:18
Speaker 1: blister pearls, which from what I can tell, is the
27:20
Speaker 1: easiest pearl you could possibly make. And he died eight
27:24
Speaker 1: and it just he just never cracked that code. But
27:27
Speaker 1: shortly after that, in another part of the world, in Japan,
27:30
Speaker 1: there were some guys who've been working on this independently,
27:33
Speaker 1: and they did crack that quote. Finally they did. And
27:37
Speaker 1: we should mention the reason that they wanted to speed
27:39
Speaker 1: up the pearl nous of the world was not only
27:43
Speaker 1: just to obviously make more money if they could control
27:45
Speaker 1: something like that, but in Australia and in Japan, uh,
27:49
Speaker 1: they were, um, these moments were overfished at the time,
27:52
Speaker 1: which meant obviously they were under pearled, and so they
27:56
Speaker 1: kind of had like there was a need created for
27:58
Speaker 1: pearls that wasn't being met. So all of a sudden
28:01
Speaker 1: they started saying, hey, we can If we can make
28:03
Speaker 1: a blister pearl, maybe we can carry this over and
28:06
Speaker 1: make regular real pearls. And in Japan there's the akoya
28:10
Speaker 1: oyster okoya oyster sorrd to say fast and abalone, which
28:16
Speaker 1: is like a big, very expensive kind of seafood. It's
28:20
Speaker 1: a sea snail and huh it is, yeah, yeah, what
28:26
Speaker 1: do you think it was? I thought it was more
28:28
Speaker 1: clam like than snail like that. Well, it's called a
28:31
Speaker 1: sea snail, but it looks like a clam. Okay, that's
28:34
Speaker 1: one of those things sort of like never mind, I'm gonna.
28:38
Speaker 1: I want to know, you have to text it to me.
28:40
Speaker 1: Oh that's okay, Well, yeah, I'll text it to you.
28:43
Speaker 1: Um So, these two things, the Akoya oyster and the
28:47
Speaker 1: abalone uh in Japan and the waters around Japan had
28:51
Speaker 1: very um nice natural pearls being produced again under pearl
28:56
Speaker 1: because of overfishing. And in eighteen eight he ate there
29:00
Speaker 1: was an oyster farmer who figures very highly in the
29:03
Speaker 1: story name Uh. And this gets a little confusing because
29:06
Speaker 1: a lot of names are similar, but his name was
29:10
Speaker 1: Kokichi Miki Moto, and he started working with a professor
29:14
Speaker 1: name Kochi Ki is that right? Kakichi Kaikichi uh Mitsukuri Uh.
29:21
Speaker 1: And he was from Tokyo Imperial University, and they started
29:24
Speaker 1: working together trying to get a technique going for initially
29:28
Speaker 1: growing these blistered pearls. And they were successful in that
29:31
Speaker 1: not only could they get that going, but they could
29:33
Speaker 1: actually industrialize it and make it like a really ramp
29:36
Speaker 1: up the process and get a lot of them going. Yeah.
29:39
Speaker 1: Mickey Moto's aim for for starting to cultivate pearls was
29:43
Speaker 1: because he wanted to democratize pearls. He wanted anybody at
29:46
Speaker 1: the time to be able to wear a pearl necklace.
29:48
Speaker 1: And that's why he was, you know, he said about
29:50
Speaker 1: trying to figure this out. And again, like you said,
29:53
Speaker 1: the best they could come up with blister pearls, and
29:55
Speaker 1: they call them half pearls for a reason because you
29:57
Speaker 1: have to break them off of the shell, that inner shell,
30:01
Speaker 1: and so you've ruined one side of it, whereas a
30:03
Speaker 1: true pearl um will form inside the oyster and can
30:07
Speaker 1: just be kind of plucked out rather easily, and it's
30:10
Speaker 1: it's a whole it's a whole pearl that's not attached
30:13
Speaker 1: to the shell. So it seems like if you could
30:17
Speaker 1: make a blister pearl, you could make a true pearl,
30:19
Speaker 1: and it just was not that easy. UM and neither
30:22
Speaker 1: Mickey Moto nor Mitsukuri ever figured it out. Really, it
30:26
Speaker 1: was actually a student of Mitsukuries, a guy named Tokichi Nishikawa,
30:30
Speaker 1: who UM actually came up with the the way to
30:34
Speaker 1: create a genuine pearl through cultivation practices, and the same
30:40
Speaker 1: process is essentially UM used today. Yeah, it's basically what
30:45
Speaker 1: they did was they said, hey, let's take what nature does,
30:49
Speaker 1: and that's like what we have to sit around and
30:51
Speaker 1: wait every ten thousand molesks to see happen, and let's
30:55
Speaker 1: let's just do it ourselves. Let's figure out a way
30:57
Speaker 1: to speed it up and do it by hand. And
31:00
Speaker 1: they did. They would cut out that you know we
31:02
Speaker 1: talked about the naker. They would cut out the part
31:05
Speaker 1: of the oyster, which is the mantle that secretes that naker.
31:08
Speaker 1: They would artificially put in a little bit of shell. Uh.
31:12
Speaker 1: Instead of like a grain of sand, they would use.
31:14
Speaker 1: I think they found that a little like round cutting
31:17
Speaker 1: of that iridescent shell works best, right. I think they
31:20
Speaker 1: found that muscle shells work best for some reason. But yeah,
31:23
Speaker 1: they would make them round or spherical, right, and then
31:26
Speaker 1: they would put that back into another oyster. I think
31:31
Speaker 1: of the same variety. I don't think they mix and matched.
31:35
Speaker 1: And that would basically cause that process to start. They
31:39
Speaker 1: would say something's in me that shouldn't be in me,
31:42
Speaker 1: and it would create a little pearl sack has that
31:44
Speaker 1: little seed in the middle, and it started just coating
31:47
Speaker 1: it with that substance. Yeah, And so they would surgically
31:51
Speaker 1: implant shell pieces and like a piece of mantle from
31:55
Speaker 1: another oyster, which is kind of mangola esque if you
31:57
Speaker 1: think about it. And they would use little, tiny modified
32:00
Speaker 1: dental tools to create this surgery um and it was
32:03
Speaker 1: really hard to do because you can't open an oyster
32:07
Speaker 1: shell more than two to three centimeters, which is not much,
32:10
Speaker 1: or else it's it's either going to kill them the oyster,
32:14
Speaker 1: or it's going to upset it so much that it's
32:16
Speaker 1: going to reject this this implanted nucleus the seed for
32:20
Speaker 1: the pearl. So it's really hard to do. And again
32:23
Speaker 1: this is still the way that they do this, and
32:25
Speaker 1: it turns out, strangely, there was an entirely other guy
32:29
Speaker 1: UH named um Tatsuey miss A who was a carpenter
32:33
Speaker 1: and he was working on his own version of the
32:36
Speaker 1: exact same thing, apparently independently at the same time in Japan,
32:41
Speaker 1: and he Uh and Nishikawa went to go patent their methods,
32:45
Speaker 1: found that the other one had applied for a patent
32:48
Speaker 1: for the exact same thing, and came to an agreement,
32:50
Speaker 1: which I think is really sweet because had it been
32:52
Speaker 1: like Thomas Edison or somebody, that would have been like
32:55
Speaker 1: legal battles and murders of elephants and all that stuff.
32:58
Speaker 1: These guys just came to an agreement to call this
33:00
Speaker 1: process the Nishikawa method. Right. Uh, some people say that, um,
33:06
Speaker 1: we talked about Seville Kent, who died without having perfected
33:09
Speaker 1: the non blistered process. Uh. Some accounts do say that
33:14
Speaker 1: both of these people, which is, you know, basically how
33:16
Speaker 1: they were working independently on the same process, got their
33:20
Speaker 1: process from notes from Seville Kent. But I don't think
33:24
Speaker 1: that's been like proven out, so who knows, It's just
33:26
Speaker 1: part of the lore. Well yea at this point. I mean, Plus,
33:28
Speaker 1: the Ville Kent never cracked the blister, the blister pearl barrier. Yeah,
33:35
Speaker 1: he'll he'll b BP yeah or b P B B
33:38
Speaker 1: b B blister yeah, the BP B. So Mickey Moto,
33:44
Speaker 1: who just as a refresher was that original oyster farmer,
33:49
Speaker 1: was a really good promoter, really good marketer. UM had
33:55
Speaker 1: a pretty good operation going. In fact, they still the
33:57
Speaker 1: company is still around today and they still make pearl
33:59
Speaker 1: jew reach. But they would build these big pearl structures
34:03
Speaker 1: at displays that expo shows. And he would go around
34:07
Speaker 1: and talk to like governments and say, hey, this jewelry
34:10
Speaker 1: is like I know, we're making them by hand, but
34:13
Speaker 1: it's still like a real pearl, Like look at these
34:16
Speaker 1: things and sort of had to overcome the uh, these
34:19
Speaker 1: aren't true pearls argument, Yeah, the diamonique challenge. Yeah, but
34:24
Speaker 1: you did overcome it. The thing is is they're just
34:27
Speaker 1: not as valuable, not because they're not real pearls. They
34:30
Speaker 1: are real pearls that are made from the same stuff
34:32
Speaker 1: and everything. It's just that humans have intervened and taken
34:35
Speaker 1: happenstance out of the out of the process. Right. The
34:39
Speaker 1: reason that they're not as expensive is because there's so
34:41
Speaker 1: many of them. You can produce them so much more easily.
34:44
Speaker 1: And so Mickey Moto actually did what he set out
34:47
Speaker 1: to accomplish, democratized pearls. And now you can get a
34:50
Speaker 1: strand of pearl like a pearl necklace for like a
34:54
Speaker 1: hundred bucks if you want. And they're beautiful, gorgeous pearls
34:57
Speaker 1: that if somebody came up and said which one is
34:59
Speaker 1: the natural pearl and which one is the cultivated pearl? Uh,
35:02
Speaker 1: you would not be able to tell no, not at all. Uh.
35:06
Speaker 1: They were brought over to America and at a really
35:09
Speaker 1: bad time, just before the Great Depression in nine eight,
35:14
Speaker 1: but they hung around and then after the Great Depression,
35:17
Speaker 1: um people started buying pearls and pearl necklaces. And another
35:21
Speaker 1: thing that happened was they started making just straight up
35:24
Speaker 1: imitation pearls and these look great too. And Jackie Kennedy's
35:30
Speaker 1: very famous pearl necklace was not real. It was a
35:33
Speaker 1: gift from her mother. Uh, they were artificial pearls. I
35:37
Speaker 1: think a lot of times the pearl necklaces that you
35:39
Speaker 1: see um can be artificial. And uh they sell like
35:43
Speaker 1: hotcakes too. Yeah. I looked it up. I could not
35:46
Speaker 1: find for certain what Jackie Kennedy's um pearls were made of.
35:50
Speaker 1: But the closest I saw was a guess at glass
35:53
Speaker 1: that they were made of glass. Everybody, you know, there's
35:56
Speaker 1: been apparently all kinds of things glass alabaster, and then
36:00
Speaker 1: they would put everything from egg white to fish scales
36:03
Speaker 1: to snail slimeh to create that. You know, pearl has
36:07
Speaker 1: a certain look. It's not just like a plastic wind
36:09
Speaker 1: looks plastic for a reason, but a good artificial pearl
36:13
Speaker 1: has a little magic to it as well. Do we
36:16
Speaker 1: take a break? I think so, all right, we'll take
36:19
Speaker 1: our last break and we'll come back and finish up
36:21
Speaker 1: with what's going on today in the world of pearls.
36:45
Speaker 1: All right. Uh, we're in modern times now and things
36:48
Speaker 1: are still about the same about the pearls, like genuine
36:53
Speaker 1: pearls that you're going to get our cultured Uh it is.
36:57
Speaker 1: If you'd say I want a pearl necklace and I
36:59
Speaker 1: wanted to be the pearls found from that are natural pearls,
37:03
Speaker 1: then you got a lot of money laying around and
37:05
Speaker 1: you're pretty picky. Uh yeah, yeah, that's yeah. But you
37:10
Speaker 1: can thank Mickeymoto for not having to have to have
37:12
Speaker 1: a lot of money laying around or to be particularly picky. Um.
37:16
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of types of cultured pearls. Uh.
37:19
Speaker 1: There's a koya, south Sea, Tahitian and fresh water and
37:22
Speaker 1: depending on the type of mollusk that's used, it's going
37:26
Speaker 1: to produce different colored gems. Basically, because I don't know
37:29
Speaker 1: if we said are not. A pearl is considered a
37:31
Speaker 1: gem even though it's not um like a mineral in
37:34
Speaker 1: the sense that like a diamond is, but it's still
37:38
Speaker 1: it still has a crystalline structure, so I guess it's
37:40
Speaker 1: considered a gem. Plus people just like to wear them
37:42
Speaker 1: on their foreheads. As I said, But if you want
37:45
Speaker 1: a black pearl you're gonna have to go down to
37:47
Speaker 1: Tahiti and get one from the black lip oyster, which
37:51
Speaker 1: is just a yeah, they're cool, and they're not necessarily
37:54
Speaker 1: all black. They can be gray, they can be browned,
37:56
Speaker 1: they can be black, but they'll also they'll also have
38:00
Speaker 1: like kind of iridescent hints of like greens or purples,
38:03
Speaker 1: even pink. I saw oh pink pearls, well, pink black pearls,
38:07
Speaker 1: which is uh if you if you're talking about just
38:11
Speaker 1: sort of the standard traditional classic pearl. Uh. They are
38:15
Speaker 1: produced in Japan and China, and those are those original
38:18
Speaker 1: cultured a koya pearls still to this day. Um. And
38:23
Speaker 1: then I guess you know the fresh water pearls. Those
38:25
Speaker 1: are the ones that come from the Tennessee River, among
38:28
Speaker 1: other places. Uh, fresh water mussels produced them. They are
38:32
Speaker 1: um not as expensive. They come in all kinds of
38:35
Speaker 1: shapes and sizes from lakes and ponds and I guess
38:38
Speaker 1: rivers if it's the Tennessee River. And uh, they're also
38:42
Speaker 1: little things called like rice pearls that look like what
38:45
Speaker 1: you would think look like little grains of rice. Um.
38:48
Speaker 1: They tried to perfect the process of getting them less
38:51
Speaker 1: rice like over the years and found that if they
38:54
Speaker 1: just switched the species of muscle, then they could do
38:57
Speaker 1: that and it worked. Yes, And here is a little
39:00
Speaker 1: tipped for you. If you want to impress everyone at
39:02
Speaker 1: the country club, you obviously belong to. UM. Next time
39:05
Speaker 1: you see somebody wearing pearls that are not spherical, tell
39:08
Speaker 1: them you love their baroque pearls, because a baroque pearl
39:12
Speaker 1: is anything but around shaped pearl. Yeah. If you look
39:17
Speaker 1: up baroque pearl necklace, it looks almost like a necklace
39:20
Speaker 1: of molars. Yeah, weirdly they do. Um, And that's a
39:25
Speaker 1: that's a natural looking pearl. Again, a perfectly spherical, even
39:30
Speaker 1: close to perfectly spherical pearl is really rare in nature. Um.
39:35
Speaker 1: And so more often than not, you're going to see
39:37
Speaker 1: everything from like blobby misshapen ones that, like you said,
39:40
Speaker 1: look like molars, ones that are like teardrop shape. There's
39:44
Speaker 1: a bunch of different cool shapes that that you know,
39:47
Speaker 1: it can be produced as natural pearls, and all of
39:50
Speaker 1: those are broke right. UM. It is still kind of
39:55
Speaker 1: a rare thing to cultivate successfully, or to culture successfully, UM,
39:59
Speaker 1: a pearl old they've gotten the process down pretty good.
40:02
Speaker 1: But uh, it takes about ten to eighteen months, and
40:04
Speaker 1: about half of the oysters even survive that nucleation process,
40:09
Speaker 1: like you were talking about, because it's really just very
40:13
Speaker 1: very precise and it is very finicky. Uh. And of
40:16
Speaker 1: those half, only about five percent will end up producing
40:19
Speaker 1: a high quality pearl. So when you're pearl uh culturing,
40:24
Speaker 1: I was about to say farming, I guess it's farming
40:25
Speaker 1: in a way. Um, you are making most of your
40:29
Speaker 1: profit about from those that five percent of the fifty
40:35
Speaker 1: percent end up becoming high quality pearls. And you can
40:38
Speaker 1: still do some stuff with a non high quality, but
40:40
Speaker 1: you're not going to get the big top dollar prices.
40:42
Speaker 1: And again that's just from cultured pearls. Again, it just
40:46
Speaker 1: kind of reminds you how how really rare the really
40:48
Speaker 1: nice natural ones are. And you said that it takes
40:51
Speaker 1: ten to eighteen months. I saw in some cases they'll
40:53
Speaker 1: they'll give the pearl up to four years to develop.
40:57
Speaker 1: And while they're while they're cultivating or cult during the
41:00
Speaker 1: the oysters, the pearls in the oysters, um, they will
41:04
Speaker 1: scrub the oysters three times a year protect them from
41:08
Speaker 1: predators and disease. These are like the most well cared
41:11
Speaker 1: for oysters, which is great, but again they've had some
41:15
Speaker 1: other foreign objects surgically implanted in them, and then when
41:18
Speaker 1: the pearl is taken out, I don't believe the oyster
41:21
Speaker 1: typically survives that process, which, if you really stop and
41:26
Speaker 1: think about it, is is pretty mean. It's actually a
41:28
Speaker 1: really mean, tortuous process. They're cared for while they're being raised,
41:32
Speaker 1: it's true, but they're killed to get the pearl out
41:35
Speaker 1: of them. They're just basically a machine to produce a pearl.
41:39
Speaker 1: Is how the pearl industry views oysters or other mollusks
41:42
Speaker 1: that that produce pearls for it, well, hopefully they become
41:45
Speaker 1: dinner and then nope, part of someone's driveway. They definitely
41:49
Speaker 1: do not. They don't need really know and one of
41:51
Speaker 1: the I think what Gaston Vivez actually might have come
41:54
Speaker 1: up with this technique if it's not older, but I
41:56
Speaker 1: think it's still in Useton places build harvest the oysters
42:00
Speaker 1: when it's pearl harvesting time, and just to make the
42:02
Speaker 1: process easier, they'll dump the oysters into huge piles. Cover
42:06
Speaker 1: the piles so that things can't get to them, like
42:09
Speaker 1: predators or like vultures or whatever. Um, and let the
42:12
Speaker 1: oysters rot, and then the pearls are just easier to
42:15
Speaker 1: retrieve after the fleshy part of the oysters gone. Truly,
42:19
Speaker 1: some of those dudes are eating oysters. Some of them are.
42:22
Speaker 1: And if you how about this, chuck, I've got a little,
42:24
Speaker 1: a little fact for you that's going to keep you
42:26
Speaker 1: off the oysters forever. Um, you you don't. If you're
42:31
Speaker 1: eating a raw oyster, you're not dead oyster. Everyone does that.
42:35
Speaker 1: It's really I didn't realize that really. Yeah, No, I'd
42:39
Speaker 1: never really thought about it. But there's there's they're probably dead,
42:42
Speaker 1: but if they're dead, they're freshly dead, and they're so
42:44
Speaker 1: freshly dead it's possible that they're not actually dead yet.
42:47
Speaker 1: So you might be eating them live when you eat
42:49
Speaker 1: them raw. I hadn't thought about that. It makes me sad. Yeah,
42:52
Speaker 1: I think they once you, I mean you've shucked oysters before, really, no,
42:58
Speaker 1: I might have my oysters for me. Well. Part of
43:02
Speaker 1: the shucking process involves cutting it loose from its shell
43:06
Speaker 1: where it's attached, and I think that's that's that lifeline. Um, yeah,
43:10
Speaker 1: I mean, hey, it's just it's a renewable resource. But uh,
43:14
Speaker 1: Peter obviously is going to say, now, making pearls is
43:17
Speaker 1: not something people do just because you're you're messing with
43:20
Speaker 1: an animal to get something from it. Yeah, so pet
43:22
Speaker 1: is of course going to be against us. Sure, and
43:24
Speaker 1: there is like a moral question about it is morally questionable,
43:28
Speaker 1: but there are some real upsides to it. One is
43:31
Speaker 1: it gives another industry to um to areas that might
43:35
Speaker 1: be subject to over fishing, so that they don't have
43:38
Speaker 1: to over fish just to make money. They can raise
43:40
Speaker 1: oysters as well for pearls. Um. The oysters definitely clean
43:45
Speaker 1: the water in the area that they filter out all
43:48
Speaker 1: sorts of impurities and problems. UM. So that actually does
43:51
Speaker 1: make the water cleaner and um as long as they're
43:54
Speaker 1: not messing with like the coral reefs or the local
43:57
Speaker 1: ecosystems to to create these farms, and they're doing it
44:00
Speaker 1: in a more sustainable manner, it actually is a fairly
44:02
Speaker 1: sustainable industry. It's just again mean to the oysters or
44:06
Speaker 1: other mollusks. Are you off oysters now? I don't know.
44:10
Speaker 1: You'll have to ask me when somebody presents me with
44:12
Speaker 1: a platter of them and some crackers and and uh,
44:17
Speaker 1: mignon Net, Mignonett. You gotta order that stuff? Uh, you
44:21
Speaker 1: just randomly get presented with platters of oysters? What kind
44:24
Speaker 1: of life you live in at the country club when
44:26
Speaker 1: I wear my string of molar pearls? Uh? Should we
44:30
Speaker 1: go over kind of quickly a couple of these um
44:33
Speaker 1: expensive famous pearls. Yeah, definitely, so you know, if you
44:38
Speaker 1: want to talk about super expensive, super huge pearls, Uh,
44:41
Speaker 1: there are a handful that. Um, you know, sometimes they
44:45
Speaker 1: look like super large molar Sometimes they look like Olivia
44:48
Speaker 1: described one as looking like a giant white brain. Um,
44:52
Speaker 1: they're they're not very good looking. Um, yet they can
44:55
Speaker 1: be really expensive, just as prized collectibles. I think. Um,
45:00
Speaker 1: it's not like I don't think they've discovered a process
45:02
Speaker 1: where they can take a big, large brain looking oyster
45:06
Speaker 1: and break it down into a pearl and break it
45:08
Speaker 1: down into like five thousand perfect little pearls, right, No,
45:11
Speaker 1: not that I know of. No, it's more just like
45:14
Speaker 1: they prize it for its weirdness and rarity. Yeah, yeah,
45:17
Speaker 1: there's one. I think the biggest one we could find
45:19
Speaker 1: is the seventy five pound pearl of Puerto And the
45:22
Speaker 1: thing is, whenever one of these comes out. Everybody's like,
45:24
Speaker 1: that's so expensive, it's so valuable. That one was valued
45:27
Speaker 1: at a hundred million dollars and it was found by
45:30
Speaker 1: a fisherman who kept it under his bed for a
45:32
Speaker 1: decade in the Philippines. Now, all of a sudden, he's
45:34
Speaker 1: sitting on a hundred million dollar pearl um or I
45:37
Speaker 1: should say, sleeping over one um. But it's never been sold,
45:41
Speaker 1: so no one knows if it actually is worth that.
45:43
Speaker 1: It's worth whatever somebody will pay for it, basically exactly.
45:47
Speaker 1: It's a very good point. But there is one called
45:49
Speaker 1: La Peregrina, and it is arguably the most famous pearl
45:52
Speaker 1: in the world. Is an egg shaped pearl. It's been
45:55
Speaker 1: um fashioned into different necklaces and different jewelry. It's appeared
45:59
Speaker 1: in poor tricks of queens, including I believe Elizabeth the
46:02
Speaker 1: First and then a bunch of Spanish queens over the
46:06
Speaker 1: years because it was part of the Spanish Crown jewels.
46:09
Speaker 1: And then it finally made its way into a necklace
46:11
Speaker 1: that Richard Burton bought for Elizabeth Taylor in nine very
46:15
Speaker 1: famously so in that need, imagine wearing a piece of
46:18
Speaker 1: jewelry that you knew was in a portrait of a
46:21
Speaker 1: queen that was made hundreds several hundred years ago, and
46:24
Speaker 1: now you're wearing it too, Like that's just cool. That's
46:27
Speaker 1: one thing I like about stuff like this, Like a
46:29
Speaker 1: pearl is something that can you know, make its way
46:31
Speaker 1: through time and history from from person to person. Yeah,
46:35
Speaker 1: and part of Hollywood history. I mean, one of the
46:37
Speaker 1: great offen on romances in Hollywood history. Some people would
46:42
Speaker 1: prize it just for that, from Richard Burton to Elizabeth
46:45
Speaker 1: Taylor's neck. And uh, I think we should also mention
46:49
Speaker 1: at least the people like, come on, I don't care
46:51
Speaker 1: about giant Mueller's brain looking things. Guys, what is the
46:56
Speaker 1: biggest like pearl pearl, Like the biggest really round owned
47:00
Speaker 1: natural looking pearl. Uh? And I think the biggest one
47:04
Speaker 1: they found is about and it's pretty big if you
47:07
Speaker 1: think about a near spherical pearl um about point seven
47:11
Speaker 1: inches right, um, and that's big. It's thirty three carrots.
47:15
Speaker 1: If you know anything about diamonds of thirties, imagine a
47:17
Speaker 1: thirty three caret diamond, but a pearl instead. And I
47:20
Speaker 1: think it's sold for a million dollars in two thousand fourteen,
47:23
Speaker 1: appropriately enough a million buckaroos. Uh, yeah, you've got anything else?
47:29
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. All right, well, Chuck's got nothing else.
47:32
Speaker 1: I've got nothing else. And since I just said that
47:34
Speaker 1: out loud, that means it's time for listener mail. Uh.
47:39
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna call this do do, which is usually
47:43
Speaker 1: your trumpet. Powell would like, yeah, please do do do do. Oh.
47:48
Speaker 1: You went an octave higher. Yeah, very impressive. The stuff
47:52
Speaker 1: you should know five k is all set and ready
47:55
Speaker 1: for another year. If you're listening, you don't know what
47:58
Speaker 1: this is. The stuff you should know Army on the
48:00
Speaker 1: Facebook page, they get together, they plan out a five
48:03
Speaker 1: k race uh slash walk and it's just a very
48:07
Speaker 1: fun community event that happens all over the world. I
48:10
Speaker 1: think it's not like they all meet together in Kansas
48:13
Speaker 1: that Aaron Cooper's house and run from his driveway to
48:17
Speaker 1: the nearest grocery store, which is at least five k Uh.
48:22
Speaker 1: They do this at the same time in the spirit
48:24
Speaker 1: of all being together. And the dates are October twenty
48:29
Speaker 1: one to October one, so it's a rolling race, Uh
48:34
Speaker 1: it is. They took a vote online and the title
48:37
Speaker 1: of the race this year is the s y five
48:42
Speaker 1: k is ready are you in commemoration of the tenure
48:46
Speaker 1: anniversary of the camera ad that ran. It's probably still
48:49
Speaker 1: running for all I know. It definitely is on some
48:51
Speaker 1: episode somewhere. Um there is an event page if you
48:56
Speaker 1: want to find out more. They're getting all the details
48:58
Speaker 1: worked out still, but I wanted to drop this early.
49:01
Speaker 1: Just go to this Stuff you Should Know Army facebook page,
49:04
Speaker 1: do a little search for the five K. They probably
49:06
Speaker 1: have something pinned. Uh. There is someone named the listener
49:11
Speaker 1: named Sarah Denny what Moore who is suggested a costume element.
49:14
Speaker 1: If people are into that and they're working out the
49:17
Speaker 1: prizes and things, and uh, it's all going. So if
49:20
Speaker 1: you're into community and exercise and being a part of
49:24
Speaker 1: something cool, go check it out. Uh. And this, of
49:26
Speaker 1: course was an update from Aaron Mizzell. Aaron Mizell, Aaron,
49:31
Speaker 1: I don't know which way I've said it in the past,
49:33
Speaker 1: but I'm saying Mozzelle, Mozzelle. It's probably just Mozzell. Aaron's great,
49:37
Speaker 1: She's been around forever. She was a movie crush or
49:39
Speaker 1: two and that was still a thing. Yeah, and she's
49:41
Speaker 1: a long time member of the Stuff You Should Not Army,
49:44
Speaker 1: And maybe even the chair of the Stuff you Should
49:46
Speaker 1: Know five K I'm not sure. She's definitely up there. Um.
49:50
Speaker 1: And if you want to be like Aaron and let
49:51
Speaker 1: us know something awesome happening, we want to hear about it.
49:55
Speaker 1: You can send it to us in an email to
49:57
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot m H. Stuff you
50:03
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50:06
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50:15
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