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How Diamonds Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, I'm welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles t. W Chuck
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Speaker 1: Bryant and uh where Stuff you Should Know Crew with
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Speaker 1: the Juice Crew, Big Daddy Kane. I'm Big Daddy Kane.
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Speaker 1: All right, I'm Biz Markie. I'll take it. You're red
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Speaker 1: headed King Pim. Yes, okay, you don't remember that guy. No. Sorry,
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Speaker 1: we're still talking about our music sampling podcast, which we
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Speaker 1: just recorded. Instead, we're gonna talk about something else, something
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Speaker 1: called diamonds. I kind of hate diamonds. Now, by the way,
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Speaker 1: do you this is this article is? Yeah? Well I
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Speaker 1: thought it was good, but after reading all this stuff,
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Speaker 1: I'm just like, it's just a big false market. Well,
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Speaker 1: i mean, they're still pretty, but yeah, they have a
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Speaker 1: lot of they got a lot of problems, all right, Chuck. Yes,
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Speaker 1: have you ever heard of a magazine called The Atlantic? Yeah?
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Speaker 1: I used to get that. Have you ever heard of
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Speaker 1: a year called nine eight two? Okay, well, in nineteen
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Speaker 1: eighty two, in that magazine, The Atlantic didn't. I didn't either.
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Speaker 1: I was six. I wasn't reading The Atlantic yet. I
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Speaker 1: came when I was ten. Um. In nineteen two, a
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Speaker 1: guy named ever j Epstein wrote an article for The
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Speaker 1: Atlantic called have You ever Tried to Sell the Diamond?
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Speaker 1: And I got this from Neto Rama by the way, um.
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Speaker 1: And in the in the article he wrote about someone
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Speaker 1: else who who conducted an experiment to try to find
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Speaker 1: out what's going on with the aftermarket for diamonds. Right.
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Speaker 1: So this guy for magazine called Money, which magazine I
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Speaker 1: don't understand the name at all. Um. In nineteen seventy Uh,
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Speaker 1: the guy bought a one point four two carrot diamond
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Speaker 1: for seven five pounds. That's a pretty good deal these days,
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Speaker 1: but back then I would say it was an average price. Right.
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Speaker 1: So he waits for a year to allow it to appreciate,
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Speaker 1: because supposedly diamonds appreciate in value, right, And then he
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Speaker 1: takes it around to all of the gem dealers in
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Speaker 1: London and the highest offer he got for what he
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Speaker 1: paid the year before seven pounds was five d sixty
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Speaker 1: eight pounds. So he's like, huh, I want to figure
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Speaker 1: out what maybe if I let it appreciate a little longer,
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Speaker 1: it will work. And this guy obviously had other freelance
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Speaker 1: work in the meantime, because he waited until nineteen seventy
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Speaker 1: four and did it again. This time he finds out
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Speaker 1: that his diamond shrunk from one point four two carrots
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Speaker 1: to one point oh four carets because one of the
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Speaker 1: dealers switched the diamond out on him when he was
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Speaker 1: having it a praise V one. That's not even the worst.
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Speaker 1: The guy buys another diamond one point four carrots, right,
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Speaker 1: takes it around. He buys it for two thousand pounds
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Speaker 1: in four I think, Um, he waited a week, it
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Speaker 1: took it around, and the highest offergot was a thousand
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Speaker 1: pounds hemorrhaging money. Right. But the point is is the
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Speaker 1: reason why these things are like cadillacs the moment you
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Speaker 1: drive them off a lot and they never come back
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Speaker 1: and value is because there is no aftermarket. And the
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Speaker 1: reason that there is no aftermarket for for diamonds is
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Speaker 1: because of one single diamond cartel and their advertising campaigns
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Speaker 1: to beers um, which we'll talk about in this But
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Speaker 1: there's a lot more to diamonds than just all the
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Speaker 1: shady business. The monopolies and the cartels and the artificial
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Speaker 1: markets created. There is billions of years of history. One
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Speaker 1: of the cool things about a diamond is that when
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Speaker 1: you're wearing this, when looking at a diamond holding it,
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Speaker 1: you're beholding possibly a mineral that's that was created a
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Speaker 1: billion years ago. That is cool, very cool. I love that,
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Speaker 1: and I very much appreciate the craftsmanship what goes into
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Speaker 1: making a diamond in its final form, because, as every
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Speaker 1: kid knows, diamonds are as hard as it kids supposedly,
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Speaker 1: and they're a girl's best friend. That's another thing too.
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Speaker 1: There's a lot of slogans around diamonds, all created by
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Speaker 1: the beers. Let's let's talk about diamonds. Where are they
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Speaker 1: made of? Because they're so expensive, it must be made
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Speaker 1: up of like kryptonite and um in diamond and yeah,
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Speaker 1: in diamonds, no, Josh, you know you're benkoy. They are
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Speaker 1: made of carbon. It is basically carbon, and it's most
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Speaker 1: concentrated form. And carbon is a pretty common elements, one
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Speaker 1: of the four essential ingredients to life. We breathe it.
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Speaker 1: We're made up of carbon. Pencils are like at least
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Speaker 1: sixty carbon uh, and diamonds if you want to get
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Speaker 1: down to brass, acts are not rare at all. Um.
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Speaker 1: There are many many more precious gems that are much
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Speaker 1: rarer than diamonds, including some types of diamonds. Colored diamonds
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Speaker 1: what we're mainly talking about, and this one is transparent
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Speaker 1: diamonds typical like white diamonds. But yeah, colored diamond and
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Speaker 1: naturally colored diamond is nice. So um ice, let's call
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Speaker 1: it ice? Yeah? Or bling? Do you remember when bling
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Speaker 1: used to be called bling bling? Like there were two
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Speaker 1: blings bling bling? No? Did they just shorten it to
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Speaker 1: one bling at some point? Who's they? Who decides the stuff?
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Speaker 1: Mtvay Urban Dictionary. Yeah? Um, so you've got carbon. It's
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Speaker 1: pretty uh, pretty ubiquitous, Yes, very abundant. It naturally occurs
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Speaker 1: in three forms, right, graphite, diamond fairly soft, diamond, very hard,
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Speaker 1: and then fullerite John fullerite, which is uh. It's a
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Speaker 1: mineral made of per quickly spherical molecules of exactly sixty
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Speaker 1: carbon atoms, and it was only recently discovered and supposedly
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Speaker 1: diamonds are no longer the strongest um mineral. Somebody synthetically
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Speaker 1: figured out how to um combine fuller right, into and
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Speaker 1: know something else and it's like eleven harder than diamonds
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Speaker 1: on the most depth scale. Sorry, by that that sampling
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Speaker 1: episode really had an effect the rest of the day.
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Speaker 1: Then it's carrying over UM diamonds. Uh So basically, if
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Speaker 1: you have graphite, you have a misformed diamond. Is one
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Speaker 1: way to look at it. Diamonds form under very specific
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Speaker 1: conditions UM that are found typically about a hundred miles
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Speaker 1: or a hundred and sixty one kilometers beneath the Earth's
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Speaker 1: surface in the mantle. As long as temperatures are above
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Speaker 1: four I'm sorry, as long as temperatures are seven hundred
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Speaker 1: and fifty two degrees fahrenheit four hundred degrees saleseness UM,
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Speaker 1: and there's at least four hundred and thirty five thousand,
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Speaker 1: one hundred and thirteen pounds per square inch of pressure,
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Speaker 1: you will form diamond when there's carbon, and carbon will
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Speaker 1: make a diamond. If either of those two things are
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Speaker 1: not met, you're gonna get graphite. Right. So these diamonds
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Speaker 1: that we're looking at today, like we said, reformed like
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Speaker 1: fifty million, hundred millions up to billions of years ago
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Speaker 1: under these conditions, and UM more recently say I think
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Speaker 1: twenty million, between twenty million and one point one billion
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Speaker 1: years ago, heavy magma um eruptions that are about three
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Speaker 1: times from depths, about three times that that blew up
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Speaker 1: Mount St. Helen. Um pushed diamonds towards the surface and
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Speaker 1: form what are called kimberlight pipes. Magma is one of
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Speaker 1: my favorite works, by the way, I don't know why.
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Speaker 1: Uh yeah, And basically they act as like an elevator
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Speaker 1: and they pushed the diamonds and other stuff up through
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Speaker 1: the mantle. Happened very quickly, over a matter of hours.
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Speaker 1: And but it's all underground, so it's not like it
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Speaker 1: wasn't like a mounta Saint Helens. It's still impressive. It's
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Speaker 1: very impressive. Um. The magma cooled inside the pipes and
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Speaker 1: left behind these veins of kimber light rock, and that's
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Speaker 1: where the diamonds are, right, and kimber lights bluish and
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Speaker 1: I guess the diamonds are inside the kimber light. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I looked up kimber light and that's what it looked like.
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Speaker 1: It looked like a big bluish rock with spots of crystals, right,
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Speaker 1: and you crack that open, you have raw diamonds. That's right. Uh,
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Speaker 1: that's not the only place you can find diamonds, though.
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Speaker 1: You can find them alluvial diamond sits or river beds
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Speaker 1: that were originally they all came from from the mantle,
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Speaker 1: but they get pushed around by things like glaciers and
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Speaker 1: water and they can end up thousands of miles from
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Speaker 1: where they started. Those are called alluvial diamond sights. That's yeah.
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Speaker 1: Did you say that that did? Are you sure? I'm
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Speaker 1: positive I don't think you did. Um. Diamonds, like you said,
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Speaker 1: they're not as rare as they have been artificially made
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Speaker 1: to be. They can be found all over the world. Um.
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Speaker 1: Some of the major sites are in Russia, Borneo, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Venezuela, Canada. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I didn't know that, um. And they're often found in
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Speaker 1: these things called archie and cratons in the center of
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Speaker 1: a continent. Well, Africa too, we gotta say Africa. Oh yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's Africa's huge. I think come from Africa for sure.
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Speaker 1: I can't believe I left that out. And that's right, um.
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Speaker 1: But if you you're more likely to find diamonds in
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Speaker 1: the center of the continent, and these things called archaean cratons,
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Speaker 1: cratons and archie and craton is basically a horizontal piece
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Speaker 1: of earth that is kind of relatively immune to geological
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Speaker 1: events like earthquakes and tech tonic movement and all that.
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Speaker 1: And this is usually a pretty good site to find diamonds. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it says here they've they're found in the center of
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Speaker 1: most of the seven continents, six of them. Yeah, Like,
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Speaker 1: why don't they just say there's only seven things. I
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Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Okay, Um,
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Speaker 1: when they find diamonds, Josh, they're rough. Have you ever
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Speaker 1: seen a big rough diamond stone? It's crystal on TV? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it doesn't look like much. It looks like a crystal
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Speaker 1: like that you would dig up from the earth. There's
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Speaker 1: like yeah, um, but you have to process it, um
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Speaker 1: obviously by by carbon the sucker up and then making
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Speaker 1: it pretty and then making it shiny, right, which is
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Speaker 1: quite get specifically into that, but that's that's the base basics. Well,
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Speaker 1: you said, um, that's one of the things you like
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Speaker 1: about diamonds is the cristmanship. Yeah, and it takes a while.
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Speaker 1: You want to talk about it, all right, Cutting diamonds Josh,
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Speaker 1: which again, this is not the easiest thing in the
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Speaker 1: world to do, and it takes special tape nicks. Like cleaving. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: this is my favorite cleaving is when they they take
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Speaker 1: the diamond as it is weak, it's point, which is
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Speaker 1: the tetrahedral plane. We'll talk about that in a second.
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Speaker 1: Oh you know about that because I looked it up
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Speaker 1: and I can only come to guesses about what that is. Oh, well,
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Speaker 1: I don't know what the plane is, but I know,
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Speaker 1: I just figured it was the point where the well,
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Speaker 1: I guess, I don't know, so sort of assumed it
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Speaker 1: was where that there were fewer links of the atoms. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I think like so the lattice, the lattice um connection
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Speaker 1: between carbon atoms and the diamond is what makes it strong.
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Speaker 1: So each carbon atom is connected to four others instead
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Speaker 1: of just one. It's like the the five side of
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Speaker 1: a dice of a die. Right, I connect all those
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Speaker 1: and you have your You're on your way to forming
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Speaker 1: a diamond. Whereas with carbon or graphite um, the five
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Speaker 1: are connected in a ring, so one's only connected to
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Speaker 1: one other one, which is why it's weaker. Right, But
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Speaker 1: if you look, if you kind of plot out um
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Speaker 1: a tetrahedral um lattice work of carbon atoms. If you
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Speaker 1: go straight across, there's a point where each of them
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Speaker 1: where you're only cutting through one atom at the time,
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Speaker 1: there's only one connection. Yeah, that's gotta be it. Then,
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Speaker 1: that's what I would think it is. That's my guess.
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Speaker 1: I think you're right, Josh. So they find this tetrahedral
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Speaker 1: plane where it's weakest, and they hold the diamond in
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Speaker 1: like cement or wax or something. They cut a little
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Speaker 1: groove and then they put a steel blade in that
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Speaker 1: groove and in one big whack they cleave this sucker
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Speaker 1: into two pieces. And I'll bet that is nerve wracking work.
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Speaker 1: I couldn't find a video of it. Oh yeah, I
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Speaker 1: could imagine it's probably pretty well guarded. I mean I
12:42
Speaker 1: saw an old video from like old black and white thing,
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Speaker 1: but it was I don't know if there was a
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Speaker 1: new method now or whatever. Uh. Then, Uh, sometimes you
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Speaker 1: can't just cleave it. Sometimes there's no plane of weakness
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Speaker 1: and you have to saw it. And there's probably always
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Speaker 1: a plane of weakness in the diamond. But for the
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Speaker 1: angle that you're trying to get too, I imagine that
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Speaker 1: there's not necessarily going you you can't find that tetrahedral plane. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: because you're cutting it in specific places for a reason.
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Speaker 1: You're not just like, hey, let me cut the sucker
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Speaker 1: in two. You're cutting it very specifically for what you
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Speaker 1: want the end result to be, whether it's I want
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Speaker 1: to get five different cut diamonds out of this single
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Speaker 1: rock or whatever. Yeah, And you need to think like
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Speaker 1: that many steps ahead. And for each diamond, you the
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Speaker 1: first thing you do is figure out where the table is,
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Speaker 1: which is the top of the diamond. It's the most
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Speaker 1: exposed surface area. And then you figure out what the
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Speaker 1: girdle is and that is the part of the diamond
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Speaker 1: with the largest diameter. Um. And once you once you
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Speaker 1: established those two things and everything else, it just makes
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Speaker 1: sense because there's just a certain way to cut diamonds
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Speaker 1: and can go crazy make like a squirrel. Diamonds are
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Speaker 1: shaped like diamonds exactly. That interesting. Yeah. Um, So you've
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Speaker 1: got you've got cleaving, you've got sawing and sawing. You're
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Speaker 1: using a special tool called the phosphor bronze blade. That rope,
14:00
Speaker 1: it's a RPMs. I did see this online. That's crazy.
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Speaker 1: It's pretty crazy. Um, you can also use a laser,
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Speaker 1: but that takes forever. Um. Yeah, I got the feeling
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Speaker 1: lasers aren't really the way to go, which is surprising.
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Speaker 1: I thought it'd be like whoop, yeah exactly. You know,
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Speaker 1: I've seen seen James Bond movies. Lasers can you all
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Speaker 1: sorts of cool stuff? Uh, if you want to shape
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Speaker 1: your diamond, which you will want to do if you
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Speaker 1: ever want to sell it. Um, if it's one of
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Speaker 1: the lucky of diamonds, because I think it's only that
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Speaker 1: actually make it to market. Oh is it that? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: used for like sol blades and other industrial uses, embraces, embraces, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: diamond dust bowls, racis, pianos. Brooding or cutting gives the
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Speaker 1: diamond the shape, and brooding is when you do it
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Speaker 1: by hand, and cutting is when you use a machine.
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Speaker 1: And I couldn't find out how many diamonds are hand cut,
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Speaker 1: like percentage wise. I'm curious about that. I don't know
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Speaker 1: if it's a lost art or if that just means
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Speaker 1: it's a higher quality because it's handcut. Do you know, No,
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Speaker 1: I don't. Both of them seem to use uh a
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Speaker 1: lot of human intervention though. Brooding and cutting and other
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Speaker 1: diamonds to brooding is kind of like taking two pipes,
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Speaker 1: filling them with cement and then putting a diamond in
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Speaker 1: it so that there's just a little bit sticking out
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Speaker 1: and then rubbing him together using a diamond to cut
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Speaker 1: of diamond, which is the only thing you can cut
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Speaker 1: a diamond with. Do you want to talk about the
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Speaker 1: most scale real quick? Yeah, because you can only cut
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Speaker 1: a diamond the diamond because as we said, UM, it's
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Speaker 1: pretty much the hardest substance on Earth, right, anything but
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Speaker 1: beneath that is not going to scratch it. And there's
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Speaker 1: actually um a scale to uh describe the strength of
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Speaker 1: um minerals by a guy named Friedrich Mose. Yeah, the
15:49
Speaker 1: Mose Hardness scale. Yeah, and he was a German mineral
15:53
Speaker 1: mineral ologists, mineralogist jee man from the thirties. I think
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Speaker 1: who created this scale goes from one to ten or
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Speaker 1: although you said now eleven, I guess it goes to eleven. Well,
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Speaker 1: it's eleven percent harder than diamond, so it's got to
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Speaker 1: be above diamond, right, it's gotta be above diamond level.
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Speaker 1: Platinum level. We start out with talc. You can scratch
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Speaker 1: talk with your fingernail it's such a wimpy little thing.
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Speaker 1: Gypsum you can scratch with your fingernail barely calcite. You
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Speaker 1: can scratch it with a copper coin and it scratches
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Speaker 1: a copper coin, okay, which is a measurement. And it's
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Speaker 1: quite a duel. Yeah, I'll get you yoursite versus copper fluora.
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Speaker 1: You cannot get scratched by copper coin. And it does
16:36
Speaker 1: not scratch glass. It just kind of sits there. Yeah,
16:39
Speaker 1: doing this thing. Um appetite. I think it is appetite.
16:44
Speaker 1: Appetite either way, I'm hungry. Um. It scratches glass sort of,
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Speaker 1: or just scratches glass, and it's easily scratched by a knife.
16:55
Speaker 1: I remember when I was a kid, I didn't understand
16:57
Speaker 1: what the word barely meant. And I was playing kick
17:00
Speaker 1: ball in one of like the older kids. Is like, man,
17:02
Speaker 1: just go out there and just barely kicked the ball,
17:04
Speaker 1: and he's telling me to bunt. Basically he kicked it
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Speaker 1: like a bear would. No, I thought, barely meant like
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Speaker 1: to just just barely miss it, not just barely make
17:13
Speaker 1: contact with something. So I kept going out there and
17:15
Speaker 1: like just perfectly barely missing it, and the kid was
17:19
Speaker 1: going crazy. I'm like, I don't understand you. You're in
17:21
Speaker 1: my yard. Go home? Is that your excuse for why
17:24
Speaker 1: I struck out a kickball growing up? I struck out
17:27
Speaker 1: at t ball even Yeah, and like they give you
17:30
Speaker 1: like six strikes and they still would be like ghost,
17:34
Speaker 1: sit down, Josh. That makes me feel bad. Um Ortho
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Speaker 1: Clays Josh is number six, um quartz is number seven.
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Speaker 1: Then you got topaz, correndum, courrond, dumber is like sapphires
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Speaker 1: and rubies, and then the diamond and that is the
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Speaker 1: most hardness scale and um so as you can see,
17:52
Speaker 1: since diamonds the last because the most scale hasn't been updated.
17:55
Speaker 1: Uh the you have to use a diamond to cut
17:59
Speaker 1: a dime, which some of those the industrial uses of
18:03
Speaker 1: diamonds is diamond cutting tools. Yeah. I have a diamond
18:06
Speaker 1: sal blade, nuts be rolling in it. I'm loaded, dude.
18:13
Speaker 1: It also has diamonds just bedazzled all over the saw itself.
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Speaker 1: Uh So, we talked about brooding and then cutting. You
18:24
Speaker 1: would use a lathe, which is something that spins it
18:27
Speaker 1: around very fast. That's one of my favorite words. Lathe.
18:30
Speaker 1: I used to work with the wood lathe back in
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Speaker 1: the day, a lot of fun and then you want
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Speaker 1: to polish it if you want to. By the way,
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Speaker 1: there's only five major cutting centers in the world. Yeah, Like,
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Speaker 1: if you're gonna get your diamonds cut, they get shipped
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Speaker 1: to New York, Bombay, Israel, Antwerp, or Johannesburg generally Johannesburg
18:49
Speaker 1: either way. So, like I said, you want to polish
18:51
Speaker 1: it because you want it all shiny and pretty, and uh,
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Speaker 1: it's a polishing wheel coated with once again diamond powder.
19:00
Speaker 1: Are you starting to see a pattern here? Diamonds cut diamonds. Um. So,
19:04
Speaker 1: once you once your diamonds cut and you say, hey,
19:07
Speaker 1: this is pretty good diamond, I'm going to try to
19:09
Speaker 1: sell it to somebody for you know, too much money,
19:13
Speaker 1: right exactly. Um. One of the things that you're going
19:16
Speaker 1: to use to describe this diamond and increase its value
19:21
Speaker 1: are the four seas. Right, You've got cut, clarity, carrot,
19:26
Speaker 1: and color. And we'll start with cut. So basically cut
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Speaker 1: is how well the diamonds cut and what shape it's
19:33
Speaker 1: cut in. There's all sorts of different cuts, including the
19:37
Speaker 1: most confusing of all, the emerald cut diamond UM, and
19:41
Speaker 1: the one we're referring to initially was I think just
19:45
Speaker 1: the round cut. That's like the standard diamond shape. So
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Speaker 1: you got cut right, you have clarity and that measures UM.
19:55
Speaker 1: The diamonds natural flaws, so um you have the flaws
20:02
Speaker 1: are also called inclusions, and you have a flawless down
20:06
Speaker 1: to slightly included in between you have very very slight,
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Speaker 1: very slight and then slightly and then there's different degrees
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Speaker 1: of that like vs one VVS two s I two,
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Speaker 1: and it just keeps going until you're like you need
20:20
Speaker 1: to we'll use this as as a sol blade. I
20:22
Speaker 1: like a little flaw in my diamond. Well, that's nice, Chuck.
20:25
Speaker 1: That just shows what kind of guy I am. That's
20:27
Speaker 1: also a way that diamonds are catalog like a specific
20:30
Speaker 1: diamond is cataloged and tract is by its inclusions because
20:33
Speaker 1: they're frequently for for diamonds, they're solding as gem stones there.
20:39
Speaker 1: The flaws are so infrequent that they're almost like um birthmarks, right,
20:44
Speaker 1: They're they're birth marks for diamonds. Uh. Carrot Josh is
20:48
Speaker 1: the third scene, and that is the weight a carrot
20:50
Speaker 1: is about two d milligrams, right, and that actually came
20:52
Speaker 1: out of India. Um. The carib seed was used as
20:56
Speaker 1: a weight for um for diamonds, and that be and
21:00
Speaker 1: carrot instead of ca. And then you've got color, and
21:05
Speaker 1: we're talking about transparent diamonds. So basically what you've got
21:08
Speaker 1: is totally colorless, which means it's a carbon. There's no
21:12
Speaker 1: other mineral or element in this diamond um all the
21:19
Speaker 1: way to h a light yellow and that's ranked but
21:22
Speaker 1: from d diz so weird. I've never understood that. I
21:26
Speaker 1: don't know. There's a lot I don't understand about diamonds.
21:28
Speaker 1: And then you also have transparency, luster, and dispersion of light. Fire, yeah, fire,
21:35
Speaker 1: that's right, fire. I think brilliance and then the other
21:37
Speaker 1: word for it, probably and that's all dispersion of light. Yeah,
21:40
Speaker 1: I think virus, which is means you can see different
21:43
Speaker 1: you know, when you hold it up to light, you
21:44
Speaker 1: see different colors, and it's like the discobalt quality of
21:47
Speaker 1: the diamond exactly. Um. So we we also mentioned that
21:53
Speaker 1: the truly rare diamonds are colored ones and they come
21:57
Speaker 1: in like a rainbow of expense tons. Yeah, there's black diamonds,
22:03
Speaker 1: there's yellow diamonds. Even though transparent diamonds go down to
22:06
Speaker 1: light yellow. Those aren't yellow diamonds. Yellow diamonds, yellow diamond
22:10
Speaker 1: They're awesome. Um, you've got pale green, pink pinker popular
22:16
Speaker 1: with rich people. What I've seen they go with. I
22:20
Speaker 1: think j Lo had a big pink diamond from one
22:23
Speaker 1: of her husbands. Is that right? I think so? I don't.
22:28
Speaker 1: I don't know why I knew that. You benefit. You
22:30
Speaker 1: know how things get caught up in your brain that
22:33
Speaker 1: should not be there, and then you can't forget it
22:35
Speaker 1: no matter what. Now you'll always remember that. M hold on,
22:39
Speaker 1: I'm getting rid of it right now. Shoot, donkey eating
22:42
Speaker 1: grass and done. Okay. Um, so let's talk about the
22:46
Speaker 1: history and why diamonds are. I haven't always been so
22:49
Speaker 1: popular with the Americans. Um, they were not always a
22:55
Speaker 1: an engagement ring. No. Before that, it was like colored
22:59
Speaker 1: Joe stone, like a nice looking ruby. Yeah, well, why
23:03
Speaker 1: wouldn't you give that to somebody? You like to look
23:05
Speaker 1: at it? It's gorgeous. And then the Beers came about.
23:08
Speaker 1: That's right. De Beers is a cartel. If you don't
23:10
Speaker 1: know what, a cartel is founded by a Mr Rhodes,
23:13
Speaker 1: who um Rhodesia is named after, and the Rhodes scholarship,
23:17
Speaker 1: and the Beers is the family name of the people
23:19
Speaker 1: whose farm he bought initially in South Africa. If you
23:23
Speaker 1: don't know what a cartel is, it is a syndicate
23:26
Speaker 1: of competing firms that all gets together and says, hey,
23:30
Speaker 1: let's fix prices on all our stuff, create a monopoly
23:35
Speaker 1: and let's run the show. Yes, and that's what De
23:38
Speaker 1: Beers is. It is a consult De Beers Consolidated Minds
23:42
Speaker 1: Ltd pretty much says it all. It's the all the
23:46
Speaker 1: different uh well, not all. Up until like two thousand
23:49
Speaker 1: it was mostly all Yeah. I think that's something like
23:55
Speaker 1: of all the diamonds are controlled by them. They produced
23:59
Speaker 1: he used to be, but they also go around and
24:03
Speaker 1: buy up diamonds from the market and sit on them
24:07
Speaker 1: and then every year through these things called um sites.
24:11
Speaker 1: I think the sales because there's only two people, are
24:15
Speaker 1: groups that are licensed to buy from the Beers and
24:18
Speaker 1: they have like I think ten sales a year where
24:22
Speaker 1: they say you're you. Two hundred people are are allowed
24:26
Speaker 1: to come buy diamonds from us. And they so tightly
24:29
Speaker 1: control the market that they control the price of diamonds,
24:32
Speaker 1: and that's why diamonds are so expensive ten weeks out
24:35
Speaker 1: of the year. That's it, is it, right? And they
24:38
Speaker 1: could buy in packages from I think like one to
24:40
Speaker 1: two million or something like that of uncut diamonds and
24:45
Speaker 1: then the site holders take them to go get created
24:48
Speaker 1: by people who cleave. That's right. Uh. And in two
24:50
Speaker 1: thousand um I said that their monopoly sort of ended.
24:53
Speaker 1: Um Russia, Canada, Australia basically said enough of this and
24:57
Speaker 1: they went outside to beers, and that in really ended
25:00
Speaker 1: their big monopoly, although they still what is it, half
25:03
Speaker 1: the world diamond supply and they control about two thirds
25:06
Speaker 1: of the whole world market, right, but it used to
25:08
Speaker 1: be close to how did they do this, Chuck? How
25:12
Speaker 1: does the company do this? I mean obviously by buying diamonds,
25:15
Speaker 1: but how did they take the diamond and make it
25:19
Speaker 1: the this precious sowed after Gemstone. Well, when you control supply,
25:24
Speaker 1: obviously you can say it's rare. But then they did
25:27
Speaker 1: it through clever marketing. Basically, as about all there was
25:30
Speaker 1: to it. Diamond diamond is Forever in the nineteen forties
25:34
Speaker 1: was voted in two thousand as the ad campaign slogan
25:37
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. That's pretty big. That's huge. And
25:40
Speaker 1: that that basically sold the American public and Japan. Japan
25:44
Speaker 1: in the sixties America in the late forties sold them
25:47
Speaker 1: on the fact that a diamond was, uh what you
25:51
Speaker 1: needed to save up two months salary for and uh
25:55
Speaker 1: and spend on your wife for her engagement right or
25:58
Speaker 1: on your fiance right. Um. And then following that the
26:03
Speaker 1: beers said, hey, we should get rid of the aftermarket.
26:05
Speaker 1: And they said, by the way, that diamond you bought
26:08
Speaker 1: is an engagement, that's a family heirloom. You want to
26:11
Speaker 1: hang on to that, which keeps diamonds off of the market.
26:15
Speaker 1: And it's what's so, this is why I said I
26:17
Speaker 1: don't like diamonds. It's just none of it was true. Yeah.
26:20
Speaker 1: It was just a cartel that got together and said
26:22
Speaker 1: we're gonna snow the American and Japanese public on the
26:27
Speaker 1: fact that these are really rare, precious gems, when they
26:30
Speaker 1: should have just said, you know what, we've got lots
26:32
Speaker 1: of diamonds actually and appreciate the craftsmanship and pay a
26:36
Speaker 1: decent price for it and everyone's happy. It doesn't sound
26:38
Speaker 1: like something the beers would say. Um. So, in addition
26:42
Speaker 1: to the fact that the industry is virtually controlled by
26:46
Speaker 1: a cartel. Um diamonds also have. They routinely get bad
26:52
Speaker 1: pressed for um conflict diamonds blood diamonds, which are essentially
26:58
Speaker 1: diamonds that are mined illegally to fund as far as UM.
27:03
Speaker 1: The people who oversee such things rebel groups there are
27:07
Speaker 1: that seek to destabilize legitimate governments. Right, yeah, we have
27:10
Speaker 1: a whole article on that. I think, Yeah, I think
27:13
Speaker 1: our blood diamond's making a comeback, comeback or something. Yeah. Um,
27:18
Speaker 1: So they've come up with this thing called the the
27:21
Speaker 1: what is it, the Kimberly the Kimberly process certification scheme
27:26
Speaker 1: and scheme. And I hate it when they use scheme
27:28
Speaker 1: like that, even though it's correct, it always sounds bad
27:30
Speaker 1: and the use words scheme, but it's really just a plan.
27:33
Speaker 1: And they call it the Kimberly Process. The u N
27:36
Speaker 1: and the Conflict Free Diamond Council got together to basically
27:40
Speaker 1: monitor the diamond at every point of its production process,
27:44
Speaker 1: so they know basically the birth certificate of the diamond
27:48
Speaker 1: all the way through to the until it's on the
27:50
Speaker 1: little ladies finger. So supposedly that's what's supposed to happen,
27:53
Speaker 1: but really, what the Kimberly Um. The Kimberley process entails
27:57
Speaker 1: now is getting governments to control their imports and exports
28:02
Speaker 1: of diamonds and certify them. So like if you are
28:05
Speaker 1: shipping a certification or a bunch of diamonds that each
28:10
Speaker 1: in each diamond doesn't have a certification, you can't get
28:12
Speaker 1: the shipment. Um. You're supposed to package them in tamper
28:15
Speaker 1: free UM or tamper proof uh containers, So people can't
28:20
Speaker 1: slip blood diamonds into these shipments mid shipment. Yeah, that
28:24
Speaker 1: makes sense, um, But the problem is what you were saying,
28:27
Speaker 1: like they control every aspect. That's not true, cutting, polishing, um,
28:32
Speaker 1: all of these things aren't overseen. Yeah, which leads to
28:37
Speaker 1: a lot of possibility. You can introduce blood diamonds at
28:40
Speaker 1: the beginning of this stream and they just become bona
28:43
Speaker 1: fide through a shipment. So when the u N says
28:45
Speaker 1: that they're ninety nine point eight percent of diamonds now
28:48
Speaker 1: and market are conflict free, is that not Also the
28:52
Speaker 1: other criticism of the Kimberly processes, it depends on your
28:55
Speaker 1: your definition of conflicts. The u N and the Kimberly
28:59
Speaker 1: scheme people well are basically saying it's a rebel group
29:02
Speaker 1: that can produce a blood diamond and this is a
29:05
Speaker 1: this is a human rights organization above all else. But
29:09
Speaker 1: they're turning a blind eye to human rights abuses by
29:12
Speaker 1: these legitimate governments like Robert Mugabe's um government of Zimbabwe.
29:17
Speaker 1: Hugo Chavez apparently his government in Venezuela has some human
29:22
Speaker 1: right abuses regarding diamonds, but these are still considered legitimate diamonds,
29:26
Speaker 1: not blood diamonds, even though they are still conflict diamonds. Well,
29:32
Speaker 1: in uh two thousand one, UM Bill Clinton signed Executive
29:36
Speaker 1: Order one which basically said America is not no longer
29:40
Speaker 1: gonna get any roughs from Sierra Leone. And then uh
29:44
Speaker 1: W came along later that year and signed another executive
29:49
Speaker 1: order saying no more RUSS from Liberia. And then in
29:53
Speaker 1: two thousand three, we passed in the United States the
29:55
Speaker 1: Clean Diamond Trade Act, which supposedly has legis slation that
30:00
Speaker 1: helps implement in the Kimberly process. Yeah, and it sounds
30:03
Speaker 1: like a big scam. Now, if you buy it's not
30:05
Speaker 1: a scam, it's just flawed. It has inclusions to say
30:09
Speaker 1: that um and if you buy a diamond you can UM,
30:13
Speaker 1: you can request to see it's UM kimberly processed certificate. UM.
30:19
Speaker 1: Another way to get around this all together, to make
30:22
Speaker 1: sure that there's no way that your blood, that your
30:25
Speaker 1: diamonds of blood diamond is to buy synthetic. Yeah, and
30:29
Speaker 1: there's plenty of them, plenty of different varieties out there, yep.
30:32
Speaker 1: Growing up in the seventies, we all heard about the
30:35
Speaker 1: Cubic Zirconia the c Z and uh it's a lab
30:39
Speaker 1: gym that was made in a lab and it's been
30:41
Speaker 1: on the market since seventy six. Yeah, the Russians created it, right, Yeah,
30:45
Speaker 1: and it's hard. It's an eight point five on the
30:47
Speaker 1: most scale. Um. And the problem with the c Z
30:52
Speaker 1: is it's too perfect, Yeah, so perfect. It looks fake.
30:56
Speaker 1: It's like the diamond that hit the Uncanny Valley, right,
31:00
Speaker 1: Like there's something wrong with it because it's just too good. So,
31:04
Speaker 1: I mean it looks artificial when you look at it,
31:06
Speaker 1: because it is. They have manufactured it too perfectly. So
31:10
Speaker 1: nowadays sometimes they will put slight inclusions in there, which
31:15
Speaker 1: is just so funny. That's like the like the new
31:18
Speaker 1: stuff that like the hat you get at Abercombie, that's
31:21
Speaker 1: fraid I'm the bill. Um. There's also moistonite, which is
31:26
Speaker 1: named after Dr Henri Moisson, who discovered diamonds in a
31:31
Speaker 1: meteorite in Arizona in and somehow managed to replicate it. Yeah,
31:37
Speaker 1: and if if it was just moisonite, like the natural moistonite,
31:41
Speaker 1: it would be one of the rarest things on the planet,
31:44
Speaker 1: the asteroid version of the meteorite version. Yeah, the non
31:47
Speaker 1: man made moistonite um, because it's essentially just silicon carbide.
31:51
Speaker 1: But it's really really rare to get the real thing.
31:55
Speaker 1: It's like a crystallized version of diamonds. Yeah. And so
31:58
Speaker 1: in the eighties, come an called cre Incorporated developed a
32:01
Speaker 1: way of producing silicon carbide crystals, and moistonite was now
32:07
Speaker 1: available as of the late nineties too, you know, to
32:10
Speaker 1: take the place of your natural diamond are they I
32:15
Speaker 1: couldn't get a price on those. I don't think moizonite
32:17
Speaker 1: is cheap. Uh, I don't know. I know that man
32:21
Speaker 1: made diamonds that's a different class. It's a different category
32:24
Speaker 1: from even moistonite. Yeah, Moissonite and cubics arconia are synthetic
32:30
Speaker 1: man made. No manmade is synthetic. Cubans cubic zarconia moistenite
32:36
Speaker 1: are simulants. They're not actually made from carbon. Manmade diamonds
32:41
Speaker 1: are made from carbon, but they're made in a few
32:43
Speaker 1: days rather than you know, eons um and they are
32:48
Speaker 1: structurally diamonds, so much of that the Deemological Institute of
32:53
Speaker 1: America recognizes them as diamonds. But they sell for about
32:57
Speaker 1: thirty of a natural diamond um and those are I guess,
33:01
Speaker 1: second most expensive. So I would think moisture night is
33:03
Speaker 1: cheaper than that, probably, And uh uh. The man made
33:07
Speaker 1: are sometimes so hard to tell apart from the real
33:11
Speaker 1: thing that gemalogists can't even tell, and jewelers can't tell.
33:15
Speaker 1: And so they are now selling machines that helped jewelers
33:20
Speaker 1: determine whether or not it's a real diamond or it's
33:23
Speaker 1: man made. And who makes that machine? Josh, I couldn't
33:26
Speaker 1: begin to guess. The beers the beers in November last year,
33:32
Speaker 1: um late last year, the Anglo American company which the
33:35
Speaker 1: Global Mining Company acquired. Oh, it was the Oppenheimer family
33:39
Speaker 1: who was one of the original the Oppenheimer fun people.
33:42
Speaker 1: Now it was from the They were one of the
33:44
Speaker 1: original families for the de Beers Cartel, I think. Um,
33:47
Speaker 1: but they bought out the Oppenheimer families of their Steak
33:50
Speaker 1: into Beers for five point one billion dollars in cash
33:54
Speaker 1: and cash, yeah, not like stock certificates or future promises.
33:59
Speaker 1: And now they raised their steak to because they already
34:04
Speaker 1: had forty five So the Oppenheimer's are a longer part
34:07
Speaker 1: of that, but they are rolling in the cash. They
34:10
Speaker 1: went straight. Um. I think we would be remissed. There's
34:14
Speaker 1: plenty of famous diamonds, but I think we'd be remiss
34:16
Speaker 1: if we didn't talk about probably the most famous diamond,
34:19
Speaker 1: the Hope Diamond. The Pink Panther. Is that real? I
34:23
Speaker 1: don't know. It was a real movie. Yeah, A really
34:26
Speaker 1: good movie about a diamond in a great cartoon. Yeah. Um,
34:30
Speaker 1: but the Hope Diamond. Have you seen it at the
34:32
Speaker 1: Smithsonian which is big, um? And it was there. It
34:40
Speaker 1: has a curse associated with it, you know that. Um.
34:44
Speaker 1: There was a newspaper in nineteen eleven. Um. Well, I
34:49
Speaker 1: guess several of them wrote about the curse of the
34:52
Speaker 1: Hope Diamond. That's when it started to come about. Um.
34:55
Speaker 1: And in a book in the Mystery of the Hope Diamond.
34:58
Speaker 1: Really like kind of established its um lower in popular culture.
35:02
Speaker 1: But UM starting with a guy named Jean Baptiste Tavernier.
35:07
Speaker 1: He stole the Hope Diamond and was um torn apart
35:11
Speaker 1: by wild dogs. That was the first bad thing that
35:14
Speaker 1: happened associated with the Hope Diamond. Uh. Louis lost his
35:19
Speaker 1: head during the revolution. Louis his head, Yeah, Louis the
35:24
Speaker 1: fourteenth had it. He died of gang green Um. George
35:27
Speaker 1: the fourth died deep in debt UM. All the way
35:31
Speaker 1: to UH, one of my favorites uh Mademoiselle laurens Ldu
35:37
Speaker 1: borrowed the diamond from her lover Ivan, who had been
35:39
Speaker 1: murdered by Russian revolutionaries, and she was murdered before he
35:43
Speaker 1: could be murdered by Russian revolutionaries. UM. And then all
35:47
Speaker 1: the way down to the Abdul Hamid, the second Sultan
35:51
Speaker 1: of Turkey. He paid four grand for it, and it
35:55
Speaker 1: just brought horrible luck to everybody, from his um, his
35:59
Speaker 1: favorite member of his harem, to his royal guards UM.
36:02
Speaker 1: And then finally Harry Winston got his hands on it
36:05
Speaker 1: from Pierre Cartier, and Harry Winston decided to just end
36:09
Speaker 1: it all and send this thing to the Smithsonian and
36:13
Speaker 1: he sent the Hope Diamond just regular postal. Regular post
36:19
Speaker 1: didn't tell him it was coming. I mean they knew
36:21
Speaker 1: that they were negotiating. He's like, okay, I'll send it,
36:23
Speaker 1: and it just arrived very unceremoniously. And a guy named
36:27
Speaker 1: James Todd is the mailman who brought it Hope Diamond
36:30
Speaker 1: to the Smithsonian. And um, he later crushed his leg
36:34
Speaker 1: in a truck accident, his head was injured in an
36:37
Speaker 1: automobile accident, and he lost his home in a fire.
36:40
Speaker 1: I'm not laughing at him. Boy, the Madden Curse has
36:42
Speaker 1: nothing on that. No, that's crazy, no way. So that's
36:46
Speaker 1: it for diamonds. Do you got anything else? What are
36:50
Speaker 1: we at? Like an hour and a half now, okay,
36:52
Speaker 1: let's end it. Then. Um, if you want to learn
36:55
Speaker 1: more about diamonds, type diamond into the search bar. How
36:58
Speaker 1: stuff works, like to common opening up a lot cool stuff?
37:01
Speaker 1: And I said search bar. So it's not for a
37:03
Speaker 1: listener mail. Yeah. In addition to diamonds, it was blood diamonds,
37:08
Speaker 1: and there was an also an article about diamond thieves.
37:11
Speaker 1: I'm wanna look into that, have you? Yeah, I was
37:13
Speaker 1: kind of a history of diamond thoughts it wasn't um
37:17
Speaker 1: okay this from Liz, and I'm gonna call this pickpocketing.
37:22
Speaker 1: For spring break, during my junior year of high school,
37:24
Speaker 1: I went to Europe as a part of a group
37:25
Speaker 1: trip organized by my school's art club. There were maybe
37:29
Speaker 1: thirty of us in total, spending three days each in London, Paris,
37:31
Speaker 1: and Madrid. Before we left, our art teacher, who had
37:35
Speaker 1: put together the entire trip, warned us repeatedly about pickpockets.
37:38
Speaker 1: We even had an in club project where we made
37:41
Speaker 1: little bags for our passports to hang around our necks
37:44
Speaker 1: and under our shirts. During this trip, we did have
37:48
Speaker 1: occasional brushes with suspicious people, including one lady who stepped
37:51
Speaker 1: onto a crowded subway train, pushed against my mother, and
37:55
Speaker 1: immediately started unzipping her purse, which was hanging in front
37:57
Speaker 1: of her. When she saw my mom looking to eckly
38:00
Speaker 1: at her, she turned and walked off the train right
38:02
Speaker 1: before the doors closed, about five or six seconds in
38:05
Speaker 1: that entire exchange. The big story, though, was one night
38:08
Speaker 1: in Madrid where a group of the adult chaperones and
38:11
Speaker 1: anyone old enough to drink went out to a pub.
38:14
Speaker 1: By sheer chance. The Swedish rugby team was also there
38:17
Speaker 1: that night. The smallest among them was about six ft
38:21
Speaker 1: six and they were all built like mac trucks. And
38:24
Speaker 1: they were already very drunk and very rowdy, but also
38:28
Speaker 1: very friendly. So you got big, burly, drunk friendly rugby.
38:32
Speaker 1: Uh they were Swedish, yes, but that was a handsome
38:38
Speaker 1: group of guys. Now I had went back to our hotel,
38:41
Speaker 1: but this was the story related to me. Our our
38:42
Speaker 1: teacher was chatting with the coach of the rugby team.
38:45
Speaker 1: She felt a hand reached inside of her purse. She
38:47
Speaker 1: grabbed at it as it was pulling out, and realized
38:50
Speaker 1: that the pickpocket had her wallet, passport, and two passports
38:53
Speaker 1: of my classmates. The entire team rushed the guy and
38:56
Speaker 1: took him outside, where they recovered at least two other
38:59
Speaker 1: wallets that have been stolen at the same bar. I
39:02
Speaker 1: can't say what else they did, but I'm fairly certain
39:04
Speaker 1: he wasn't picking any pockets for a while. That is
39:07
Speaker 1: from Liz in Philadelphia, a k a. New York LIGHTE. Nice.
39:14
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Liza. It was a pretty cool
39:17
Speaker 1: It's a good pickpocketing story, and go Swedish rugby team
39:20
Speaker 1: for beating up people. Who's steal. Yeah, any anybody who
39:24
Speaker 1: beats up people who's steal It's pretty great. Unless it's
39:27
Speaker 1: one of those kind of like morally gray things from Lameyserab.
39:31
Speaker 1: You know it's tough yet. Well, if you have a
39:34
Speaker 1: cool uh story about um, I don't know, Western justice
39:40
Speaker 1: doled out by Swedes or other nationalities, we want to
39:43
Speaker 1: hear about it. Sure, you can tweet to us at
39:46
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast. You can join us on
39:49
Speaker 1: Facebook at facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know,
39:52
Speaker 1: and you can uh send us an email at Stuff
39:57
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