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January 25, 2025 42 mins

In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore various historical interpretations of the diamond, from divine tears to both a potent medicine and a deadly poison. (part 2 of 4) (originally published 1/18/2024)

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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. So we
venture down down into the vault for an older episode
of the podcast. This one originally aired January eighteenth, twenty
twenty four, and it's part two of our series on
the diamond.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
All right, here we go.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind?
My name is.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back
with part two in our series on Diamonds. Now. In
the previous episode, we focused specifically on one strange question
about diamonds, which was our diamonds in one form or
another poisonous. This was the question that originally got me

(00:59):
interested in the subject of diamonds and a brief recap.
I came across it because of a passage in the
absolutely bonkers autobiography of the sixteenth century Italian sculptor named
Binvenudo Cellini, who told a story, among many other wild
and probably heavily embellished tales, about his enemies trying to

(01:21):
poison him with the powder of a pounded diamond while
he was in prison. And then from there we examined
some other sources from history, documenting the documenting and examining
the belief that diamonds or diamond powder could be used
as a lethal poison, and in the end it seemed
that the actual evidence of diamonds being reliably poisonous when

(01:45):
swallowed was sort of weak, but not weak enough that
I'd just like down a pixie stick full of it. Basically,
it seems there's sort of a dearth of high quality
modern evidence one way or the other. Seems kind of
doubtful that diamonds are poisonous, but not doubt full enough
that I would advise eating them. I'd avoid it. But
we are back today with part two to talk some

(02:07):
more about diamonds.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
That's right, And as we mentioned in the last episode,
we figured it would be essential to talk a little
bit about like what diamonds are and roll through some
material you may be familiar with, you may may not,
you may have forgotten about it, but you know where
diamonds come from and what some of their major properties are. Right,

(02:29):
We'll start with the obvious, and this is highly subjective,
of course, but it's a popular view on diamonds, and
that is they're beautiful. A diamond receives white light, breaks
that white light like a prism, and then these resulting
colors hit the various facets of the diamond. What's more,
light that enters a faceted diamond, which you can do
from all sides, may bounce around in there several times

(02:52):
before shining back out again.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
You know, it actually was making me wonder why sparkling
is sort of a general stand in for something that
is beautiful or something that catches the attention.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
You know, Yeah, I think a part part of it
is just that we've all really drunk the kool aid
on how beautiful diamonds are, not only in our lifetimes
but but over the over centuries and centuries of pro
diamond propaganda. Because it is interesting to we'll get into
this in a bit like trying to figure out when
in history diamonds start becoming gems, Like there's a there's

(03:29):
there's definitely definitely seems to be a point in ancient
cultures where like a diamond's not a gem. It's useful
for cutting gems, but it's not a gem, and then
that shifts over time, so we'll get into that more
in a bit, But in terms of light entering the
diamond and what it does in there, here's another interesting fact.
This is one that I was reading about in an

(03:50):
excellent Nova article titled The Science Behind the Sparkle by
Robert Hazen. A diamond actually slows down light inside of
itself and does so like no other known colorless substance,
so compared to things like ice and water, for example,
the author here writes that a diamond slows light down

(04:11):
to less than eighty thousand miles per second, and that's
more than one hundred thousand miles per second slower than
in air. The slow down, Hazan rites, is complex and
has to do with electron interactions and the substance it's
traveling through, and it occurs with any matter, including air
and glass. And to put it all in context, the
speed of light in a vacuum is of course one

(04:32):
hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second. So anyway,
you can crunch the numbers, and I think crunching numbers
makes it actually feel a little more special when you
observed the sparkle here. But yeah, they do sparkle with
an almost otherworldly brilliance. There's a surreal dance of colors.
And even if you don't desire diamonds for yourself, again,
the desire for them is just so entrenched in our

(04:54):
culture that it's a part of our language. You know,
you're just referencing, like talking about something sparkle, even if
it's not a diamond. You're talking about something else, but
you're talking about it as if it were a diamond.
We talk about things like diamonds in the rough and
so forth. Now here's another thing you definitely already know
about diamonds. They're not only beautiful, they're very hard. Diamonds
are the hardest naturally occurring substance that we know of,

(05:16):
so hard in fact, that they have numerous industrial applications.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, that's right. And so one thing that has confused
me in the past is like the different terminology we
use for the strength or resilience of materials. Because if
we of course used terms like hard and tough and
all that in an informal way where they all kind
of mean the same thing, but they also have some
more specific kind of scientific definitions or definitions in industrial uses.

(05:44):
And it's I think illuminating to look at the difference.
So what is toughness versus hardness? As usually understood, toughness
is the ability of a material to absorb energy without
breaking or fracturing, whereas hardness is the ability of a
material to resist what's called plastic deformation, in other words,

(06:07):
to resist local changes to its shape from friction. So
to imagine concrete examples, these changes could be things like cutting, denting,
or scratching. So the harder a material is, the more
difficult it is to make a scratch or a dent
in its surface. Hard materials don't scratch easily. In fact,

(06:28):
they scratch other things, and you can usually tell which
material is harder by rubbing them together and seeing which
one scratches the other. Meanwhile, to come back to toughness,
brittleness is the opposite of toughness. The tougher material is,
the more energy it can absorb before it cracks. So
rubber is not hard, but it is tough. You might

(06:50):
be able to scratch it easily with a knife, but
you can also hit it really hard and it won't fracture. Meanwhile,
like you said, rob a diamond is the harder and
naturally occurring substance on Earth, so you can't scratch its
surface with a knife or any other normal material apart
from another diamond. It is going to be really, really
difficult to make a scratch or a cut in a diamond.

(07:13):
We need special apparatus for doing so. But while it's
the hardest natural material on Earth, it is not the toughest.
In fact, believe it or not, you can break a
diamond with a regular steel hammer and anvil. In fact,
before we I just wanted to gut check myself on
this and be like, okay, well, assuming you can do that,
I want to see it. I bet there are videos

(07:35):
of people doing it, like on YouTube, and yep, you
can look them up. People put a diamond on an
anvil and smash it with a hammer. It breaks to pieces.
It's not necessarily easy to do, but with the regular
steel tools and enough force you can do it.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
That's right. And we'll get into some specific examples of
diamonds being shattered as we proceed here. So yeah, they
are not indestructible, even though at times our linguistic treatment
of diamond and related terms ends up bleeding into that area.
And in fact I have a pretty I think amusing

(08:10):
comic book example of that here in a.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Bit oh nice, But just to reinforce the shorthand on
toughness versus hardness, a hard material it's going to be
difficult to cut, dent or scratch. A tough material, it's
going to be difficult to break.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
Now, here's another thing about diamonds that I think everyone
either you know this or you've heard it before, or
you're going to say, oh, yeah, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Now.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
I remember, okay, we're all carbon based organisms. Here a
billion year old carbon, if you will. And another interesting
thing to remember about diamonds is that a diamond is
actually pure carbon. What we know of as a diamond
is actually a crystalline form of carbon, a fact that
was discovered for the first time in seventeen seventy two
by French chemist Anthony Labossie, an individual who made numerous

(08:58):
contributions to the advance ansmen of chemical and biological sciences
before he was executed at the age of fifty on
charges of tax fraud and tobacco adulteration. That's adding water
to tobacco before sale. By the way, I had to
look that up. I was like, what was this guy
allegedly doing to his to tobacco. These were charges that
he was exonerated of a year and a half later,

(09:20):
but by that point he was of course already dead.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Adding water to tobacco, I would think of normally watering
down a liquid to adulterate it. I could maybe tobacco
gets soggy, so you can like bulk up the weight
by getting water in it.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
I don't know, I guess, so holding the thumb on
the scales one way or another.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, but you're saying they found that he didn't do
it after they killed him.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
Yeah, yeah, after and pretty soon after they were like,
actually are bad on that one. A lot has was
written and has been written about how this was maybe
not a great move, because even in his short life
that was obviously cut short by execution, he did a
number of contributions to the advancement of science. Now, speaking

(10:03):
of liquids, though, I have to throw in in one
of our primary sources for this series, diamonds in Early
History of the King of Gems by Jack Ogden. Ogden
points out that during the Renaissance, various philosophers believe that
diamonds must be some form of congealed juice or quote,
most pure juice juice of what I was a little

(10:25):
unclear on that juice of carbon. Juice of carbon. That
gets us to where did diamonds come from. Naturally occurring
diamonds are formed under intense pressure and temperature deep within
the Earth and then brought to the surface via volcanic action.
And diamonds are found in three types of deposits. First
of all, you have kimber like pipes. These are formed

(10:48):
by intrusions of magma into the Earth's crust, bringing in diamonds,
among other things, from the Earth's mantle. The pipes themselves
tend to be only one hundred million years old, while
the diamonds they bring up may be anywhere between like
one and three point three billion years old. And then
you also have alluvial gravels and glacial tills. So in

(11:09):
these diamonds are released by either fluvial or river based
or glacial erosion of the kimberlight matrix, and then they're
redeposited in rivers or in a glacial till. This is
the sediment moved by a glacier as it moves over
the course of time.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Right, So we need these mechanisms to explain diamonds being
brought near to the surface of the Earth because they
have to be formed way deep down in the Earth's mantle.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
Or they used to be before Superman, of course, But
more truthfully, since around the nineteen fifties, we have been
able to make synthetic diamonds that are chemically and physically
identical to naturally occurring diamonds. But for the longest yeah,
diamonds had to be mined from the Earth. And while
diamonds occur naturally on every continent and have been mined

(11:59):
around the world historically, and we'll come back to this,
there was one place to gather your diamonds and it
was India.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
Mm.

Speaker 4 (12:06):
Yeah, Now I mentioned that I would get into comic
books a little bit, because the connection here is that
we should also mention that the word diamond is actually
linked directly to x Man Wolverine's claws and skeleton, because

(12:30):
I don't have to tell most of you that Logan's
retractable claws and bones are said to be coated with
the fictional indestructible sci fi metal known as Adamantium.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
Now, the authors and artists of Marvel Comics did not
invent the idea of adamantium. It apparently pops up in
earlier fictional works, a natural extrapolation of the adjective adamantine,
which means unyielding or unbreakable, related to the word adamant
as well, which this was all widely used in pre

(13:02):
marvel fiction. And of course all of this extends back
to the ancient world as well, with writings in Greek
and Latin that utilize atomas, either once again figuratively or
in reference to some sort of legendary unbreakable stone or gym,
such as in some tellings, the substance used to construct
the chains that bound Cerberus, the great three headed hound

(13:23):
of Hades.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah, so this is worth flagging because it leads to
a confusion that could arise from some ancient sources, because
in some ancient sources people talk about something that seems
like it could be a diamond, but we're not necessarily
positive that's what they're referring to. And in some of
these cases, these Latin or Greek writers are using this

(13:47):
term adamas, the Latin word adamas derived from the Greek. Now,
I was also reading about this in Ogden in Diamonds
in Early History of the King of gems, and Ogden
talks about how the English word diamond is derived from
this Latin word adamas, which in turn came from the Greek.
And there's an interesting etymology here. So in Greek the

(14:10):
word dama itself, dama meant something like conquer or tame.
Elsewhere I've read that it had the sense of break,
as in the way you would break a horse like
you would tame it. So with the negative prefix ah
in front of it, that means kind of like un
ah dema adamas meant unconquerable, untameable, unbreakable, unalterable. But Ogden says,

(14:38):
in medieval European sources, the prefix ah starts to disappear
from this Latin term ademas, and then we're just left
with terms like damon or Damon's, which in English eventually
became diamond. But by losing the ah prefix ahead of it,
this would mean that, according to Greek word logic, it's

(14:59):
sort of losing the un and unbreakable, so it's kind
of meaning tameable or breakable again. But of course that
meaning was lost at this point. Just came to me
in the gym, but in its usage in ancient Greek
and Roman sources. The term odomas may sometimes refer to diamonds,
but it also clearly refers to other materials that were

(15:19):
considered especially hard or strong, and Ogden calls out things
like maybe maybe some sort of early proto steel or
special naturally occurring alloys and grains found alongside gold and
ore or other gems.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
That's right, that's right. Now. To come back to Marvel,
I was wondering, because again, you know, Marvel's been around
long enough that there's so many characters and creatures that
everything's been done at least once. Surely. I was like, well,
there's got to be a character that has either diamond
claws or a diamond skeleton, And in fact, there does
seem to be such a creature. There is apparently an

(15:58):
alternate timeline where you have a fusion of two characters.
This apparently occurs throughout I think DC and Marvel both
get into this, where not only do you have variants
of different characters in different to alternate realities, but you
also have fusions of different individuals. So there's one alternate timeline,
one alternate Earth or whatever, where you have a single

(16:22):
entity that is merged out of Emma Frost aka the
White Queen who has I think this ability to like
shape shift into a diamond form that grants her immunity
and in vulnerability, especially from like psychic attacks. And then Wolverine,
who are just talking about this single entity who ends
up looking like a really posh wolverine with blonde hair

(16:45):
and an eyepatch. His name is diamond Patch apparently, or
that is his code name, and he has clause and
presumably a skeleton made out of diamond, and if he
stabs you with his diamond clause, he can read your mind.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
Why is he called diamond Patch? He does have an
eye patches. Is the eye patch made of diamond?

Speaker 1 (17:10):
Ah? Maybe I don't know. I mean, if you if
your claws or diamond, maybe you don't want to ac
accessorize with diamonds too much. I'm not sure. I'm not
an expert on diamond patch here. We'll have to hear
from our more devoted comic readers out there. But it
does raise all sorts of questions about what it would
be like to have a skeleton made out of diamond.

(17:32):
It doesn't sound particularly great if you're going to potentially
get into a you know, some sort of a throw
down with the Hulk or something.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
I wonder if there's a plot line where he pounds
his claws into a powder and then feeds it as
poisoned to somebody.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
I don't know, I would hope so, I mean, but
then I guess he has the healing factor too, So
what does that mean? Does like his powderized bones then
reheal into a solid diamond once more.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
I'm not sure they really do do everything in comic books,
don't they. What you were just saying a minute ago
is right, Like anytime you imagine, I wonder if somebody's
done this, there's like a comic book where somebody did that.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yeah, yeah, it's been done, and it was maybe done
decades ago, and it's been done a second time. They've
revisited it. But that's one of the things I love
about diving into the world of comics.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
There's so much variety, a world where all possible elevator
pitches have been realized. That's right, he's made of diamond,
all right.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Well, at this point, let's turn our attention back to
the real world and back specifically to India and ancient India. Again.
India is extremely important in the history of diamonds, as
Ogden points out in the book, until the sixteen hundreds,
it was the most important, if not the only, source
of diamonds in the Mediterranean, in European worlds, and Ogden

(18:51):
mentions has a lot to share about diamonds in this book.
This is a terrific book. Highly recommend it. At one
point he mentions some of the detective aspects of the
diamond that you see appearing in Indian lore at different points,
that they may have provided protection against quote serpents, tigers,
and thieves. That one gave me a lot of pause there,

(19:14):
because I'm trying to imagine, first of all, our diamond's
going to protect you from thieves. That doesn't seem like
a very logical idea tigers, though it made me think about, well, okay,
a tiger is a you know, an ambush predator that
wants to make sure it has the most advantageous attack conditions.

(19:35):
And you and I have seen, you know, some compelling
evidence about, say, weighing ways to deter a tiger attack
by having like fake eyes on the back of your
head and so forth, wearing like a mask on the
back of your head, and to whatever extent that is
useful or not. You can think, well, okay, a diamond glitters.
Maybe a diamond does something optical that in some way

(19:56):
might make a tiger think twice about attacking you.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
I'm not sure that's interesting. Yeah, I wonder the sparkling
could function kind of like eye spots, or just in
some other way could disrupt a tiger an ambush predator
since that attack is now appropriate.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
Yeah. Yeah, so I don't know. I didn't look too
hard into that, but it came to mind. Ogden also
mentions that that for the most part, these diamonds were
for men only, and they were thought to make women
quote sterile and unhappy, and he points out that while
this notion runs against the general modern marketing trend with diamonds,

(20:34):
which has European roots, you know, for the longest, the
durable diamond was considered the perfect gem to symbolize the
masculine might of kings.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Ah, okay, so it's like, oh, because the diamond is invincible,
it makes people think that I'm invincible, I'm so strong,
I'm so tough.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
Yes, just ignore the part about how you can smash
it with a hammer, and it just becomes a million almost,
it almost becomes almost invisible when you break it. Right now,
a quick note on jim stones in general, because we
get into this whole like gems and then diamonds. I
decided to look this up in Brian M. Fagan's seventy

(21:13):
Great Inventions of the Ancient World. Guess who has co
author is in the section on gemstones. It's Jack Ogden.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Oh okay, So.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Once more the at least partially citing Ogden here. Gyms
have factored into human jewelry since the earliest times, though
the setting of colored stones which were the preference for
the longest, with the move toward transparent gemstones not occurring
un till the first millennium BC with the rise of
the Persian Empire. The setting of colored stones was only

(21:44):
possible once a fairly sophisticated metal working industry was established.
So they point out that for the longest colored stones
were used as quote blocks of pigment, and this would
be inlaid in a metal form. The stones were usually
cut to fit a particular setting, and it wasn't until
later that the reverse would become the fad.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Oh okay, So if I'm understanding this right, it would
mean like that originally gyms were more like just sort
of a tool. They were one piece of artistic filler
to fill out whatever it is you're designing. But later
on they would come to be more of the focus
and whatever you're designing would be based around the gym
in it. Correct.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yeah, that's the point I was taking from all of this.
And in addition to the rise of the Persian Empire,
you also had other factors influencing the shift towards transparent gemstones.
I mean, not that you completely abandoned color gyms, but
like sort of the opening of the mind to the
idea that hey, these are beautiful. As well, you have
things like the conquest of Oxander the Great, which we'll
come back to, and a number of other factors that

(22:48):
Ogden gets into more depth about in the book, you know,
with various trade routes opening up and so forth. Now,
according to Ogden, the earliest known use of diamonds in
jewelry and you know, a enormous.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Caveat with all this.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
You know, this is based on surviving written records, This
is based on surviving artifacts and so forth. The earliest
known use of diamonds and jewelry dates back to after
three twenty five BCE in northern India and Afghanistan following
Alexander the Great's military conquest in this area, and the
earliest diamond rings come from this region as well. Again,

(23:23):
going we have to go back to the caveat about
metallurgy and metal working having to reach a certain point
before you could really make much in the way of
diamond rings and so forth. But the earliest diamond rings
come from this region as well, and this all leads
to an influx of diamonds and diamond lore into the
Mediterranean world, though their initial use in the Mediterranean region

(23:45):
was for drilling and engraving other gems. So this touches
on a topic that Ogden considers at length. You know,
when do diamonds start becoming more than stones to be
used in cutting gems, When do they become gems themselves.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Well, yeah, that's an interesting question, and I would wonder
if it has anything like what is the economic intersection
between the value of a gym as a decorative item
or something that's prized just for its own sake versus
the value of a gym that it has specific utility
as a tool. Because as we know about the diamond

(24:21):
being the hardest of all these gems. It has a
real utility, It has a real direct use value.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah yeah, And again, like not all forms of carbon
have the same value. Other forms of carbon. You can't
bring them into a diamond dealer and be like, hey,
how much for this lump of carbon? How much for me?
I'm carbon? What's the going rate? Now? And then, likewise,
not all forms of crystal are going to, you know,
command vast sums of money either. So Ogden points out

(24:53):
that early written evidence for diamonds as gems, again considered gems,
is a you can be found in a northern in text,
often dated with some disagreement to three hundred BCE. Other
dating of the text may push the reference to the
second millennium BCE, or possibly to the fourth century CE.
The text is called the Atha Sastra, or the Lesson

(25:14):
of Profit, and it points out a few interesting ideas
of the time period. Again depending on exactly when this
would have been, but a few of the ideas that
were put forth regarding the value of a diamond, Ogden writes,
quote the list of diamond colors given in the Atha
Sostra include cat's eye, sirisa flower, cow's urine, cows fat,

(25:40):
clear crystal, Mulatti flower, and then adds any other gem
color which is a little help to us cow's urine. Yeah. Yeah,
it's a humorous book as well. It's again again very
fun read. But also other aspects of the diamond mentioned
this text stress that large, heavy, and hard diamonds are best.

(26:03):
The best diamonds have symmetrical points. The best diamonds can
scratch a vessel, and not only do they sparkle, but
they spin like a top. These are the various not
on their own obviously, but you know, with wind spun
by the human looking at them. These are all aspects
of a suitable diamond, ones that are true gems and

(26:24):
not something that you need to just break down and
use for your gym working and so forth.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
That is interesting, And I wonder where criteria like this
are originally derived from. I guess some of it is
just like intuitive preferences about anything that, like, you know,
bigger is better, heavier is better. I guess a harder
diamond or a harder thing called a diamond is going
to be more durable, it will last longer. But I wonder,

(26:49):
like it spins like a top, why is that preferred?

Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it just comes down to
just the the you know, the structural completeness of the thing,
the in the symmetry of the thing, right, But but
in general, yeah, it also you can't help but think
about the idea of like just branding. Like someone's like, hey,
we got to move some diamonds here, we got to
move something. Why don't we start selling these diamonds? So

(27:14):
let's just start start talking about just how pretty these
things are and how how you know, and then figure
out like what is the what are the best candidates
to push forward? Is the new King of gems? M

(27:34):
Now at this point I thought we'd talk about one
of the most wonderful uh collection of falsehoods concerning uh
the origin of diamonds uh and uh and the and
the gathering of diamonds, and that is of course the
Valley of the Gems.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
I think this is where we come back to Alexander
the Great.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
That's right, Alexander the Great does factor into all of this.
This myth is heavily associated with him, but also to
be clear, it seems to predate him and also would
be retold many more times in various formats involving Marco Polo.
It also pops up as a story about about the

(28:18):
hero Sinbad the Sailor. So it isn't just an Alexander
the Great thing, but he becomes associated.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
With the story. Okay, what's the story? Okay?

Speaker 1 (28:27):
So, and it mainly becomes associated with Alexander the Great
through the writings of the Greek philosopher Theophrastus, who lived
three seventy two more or less to around two eighty
seven BCE, who wrote of the valley in his work
De Lapidibus or on Gems. And this is the one

(28:49):
that throws Alexander the Great into the story, makes him
the hero of the tale, and also seemingly canonizes the
involvement of snakes within the story, a story that, according
to Ogden, seems to have pre existed this riding by
many centuries as a folk narrative about this mystical valley
of the Gems. However, Ogden also knows it wouldn't really

(29:13):
become like cemented as like part of the quote romance
of Alexander till the nineteenth century. Right, so, Ogden tees
is a part the different versions of the myth, but
it basically goes down like this Okay, there's a valley
out there in the wilds of India, and guess what,
it's full of diamonds. Now, Joe, wouldn't you like to
get into that that valley and get those diamonds.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
I want to get in that valley like a ballpit,
just swim around in it, Scrooge mcducket.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
Okay, well, that that's understandable. They are diamonds, after all.
But here's the thing. Uh, these diamonds are inaccessible by
normal means, due either to the terrifying cliffs, but also
because there's there's there are even worse things down there.
There are a whole bunch of snakes, venomous snakes in
some in cases, giant venomous snakes, and you don't want

(30:03):
to mess with those. Do you still want the diamonds?

Speaker 2 (30:06):
Let's assume that I am absolutely mad with greed, so yes, okay.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
In order to get these diamonds out, here's what you
need to do. First. You need to get yourself some meat,
a bunch of big strips of meat, giant strips of meat,
as much meat as you can get together, okay, all right,
and then you're gonna throw that meat down into the
pit down into the valley.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Do you stand on top of the cliffs and throw
it down?

Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, you'd want to throw it down from above.
You don't want to get down there because that's where
the snakes are. So throw that meat into the into
the valley, into the pit. Because guess what, those diamonds
are just laying about down there on the surface, on
the floor of the pit, on the floor of the valley.
And if you throw the meat down, you know what's
gonna happen. The diamonds are gonna stick to the meat.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Perfect.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
This is raw meat, by the way, is it's not cooked?
Don't you don't want to throw like well done meat
into the valley of gems.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
No, it'll be stickier if it's raw.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Yeah. Now at this point you're wondering, Okay, I want
the diamonds, but now I just spend all this money
on meat. I just literally threw it away. Well, this
is where the birds come in. The birds are going
to swoop down and they're going to collect that meat,
that free meal, from the bottom of the valley and
bring it back up to the top of the cliffs
to eat. That meat. I will remind you still has

(31:19):
diamonds stuck to it all over brilliant. Now, at this point,
many of the tellings indicate that what you need to
do is scare the birds away from that meat long
enough to peel off all the diamonds, and then you're
going to leave the meat. The birds will leave you
alone at that point. They don't actually want the diamonds,
they want the meat. And then once you have the diamonds,
you can run off and do what you will with them.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
I love this scheme. It's a diamond heist to beat
them all.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
There are also versions of the story in which you
have to kill the birds to get the diamonds out
of their stomach, but really, I mean, who wants to
go through with that? It seems much easier to just
scare them away long enough to get the diamonds off
the meat and then cash in mm hmm. Interestingly, in
cases in retellings of the story where snakes are involved,
this is also sometimes used to explain why you should

(32:08):
never put diamonds in your mouth because they there may
be lingering snake venom and in some way like that
snake venom never completely leaves the diamonds, and therefore to
eat them would be to invite death.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
Oh okay, so this would be a different explanation of
the supposedly lethal mechanism of the diamonds, because if you
didn't listen to the last episode, the main explanation given
by at least by Benvenudo Chillini was that the diamond
it's not actually chemically poisonous. It's that pounded up diamonds

(32:41):
have all these little sharp edges in them, and because
they're so hard, nothing can like dull their edges. They
will just go down into your guts and end up
cutting you up from the inside. But this would be
a totally different folk logic for why they are allegedly poisonous.
They have snake venom on them.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
That's right. Then, the second voyage of Sindbad, he actually
escapes from the pit by strapping one of the pieces
of meat to his own back. This telling involves the
giant mythic rock bird, and the snakes are also giants
that swallow elephants. Diamonds are also present.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Is Sinbad trying to get the diamonds or are they
just incidental?

Speaker 1 (33:20):
He is mainly just trying to escape at this point,
so it's just kind of a clever escape scheme, I believe,
But you know, the voyages of Sindbad and so forth,
I feel like those are stories I need to properly revisit.
Maybe we can find a way to explore them in
a future episode. But again, this story is widely told
and retold plenty of The Elder, of course, also repeats

(33:42):
the myth at some point. But at the end of it,
I was wondering, like, well, what does it mean? Like
where does this story come from? You know, will get
into another story later on, another seemingly fantastical bit of
folklore and myth that involves sticky things and diamonds, So
I was wondering if that would have anything to do
with it. But I ended up turning to an article

(34:04):
by S. Tolanski from nineteen sixty one titled some Folklore
in History of diamond and the author here speculates that
the story may have been originally circulated in some of
its earliest forms by none other than Indian diamond miners
to cover up the true source of their lucrative trade,
because again, diamonds are not coming from a valley, They're

(34:25):
not just littering on the ground in a place haunted
by venomous snakes, you know, their mind from specific locations.
You know, we alluded to the sources earlier. So perhaps
this is a bit of misinformation that was popularized in
order to throw thieves and would be minors off the scent.
But it also raises the question like, even in ancient times,

(34:50):
it feels like someone's you know, BS sensor would go
off at some point and they might realize, you know,
I don't think that's actually where diamonds come from, and
I know they don't want me to know where they
come from, but it's something else, and I'm going to
get to the bottom of it. So anyway, that seems

(35:11):
like one potentially valid hypothesis. But the author here also
mentions another possibility, something that may or may not tie
into it. He mentions something that has been observed in
modern South Africa. He wrote quote four. In South Africa,
where the deep dug mines have heaped around them great

(35:33):
masses of waste worked out ores. It is known locally
that the crops of fowls which wander and peck over
this land frequently contain small diamonds. The chickens seem to
have an eye for the shining pebbles, and a single
fowl has been known to have as much as a
total of five carrot weight of small diamond within its crop.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
Oh okay, So the crop, of course is it's part
of the chicken's digestive system, which, if I recall correctly,
is not the stomach. It's sort of like a little
side pouch. It's got like you know, on the way
to the rest of the digestive system. The chicken can
store stuff in its crop for a while.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
And so the idea here would seem that like, okay,
this would not one hundred percent explain the idea. But
if something like this had been observed in ancient times,
perhaps it might have influenced the various myth cycles that
spun out of it. And therefore that's why you have
birds and giant birds and so forth involved in it.

(36:33):
In some cases you have the birds being killed and
then opened up, and in other cases it's just like
we'll get the diamonds off the meat before the birds
eat it. That's how diamonds wind up in birds.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
After all, that's an interesting possibility.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
Now, another interesting idea that I that I ended up
looking at here concerning the diamond and how the diamond
is utilized as a as an idea, as a metaphor,
and so forth, and particularly in parts of India, is
the idea of the vodra. So in Hindu iconography you'll
frequently encounter the symbol and legendary ritual weapon of the vodra.

(37:11):
You'll recognize it as appearing almost like a claud talon,
with each appendage curving out and then touching at the tips.
And the vodra may be three, four or even five pronged,
but it's not a claw. The finished symbol or artifact
may resemble a closed lotus blossom. It is especially common
in the Tibetan Vadriyana school of Buddhism, and it can

(37:35):
be translated as thunder vehicle. For indeed, the vadra is
in many ways a thunderbolt, a divine weapon, and also
the metaphoric striking of enlightenment. It cleaves through ignorance like lightning. Indeed,
in Hindu mythology, the vadra is the weapon of Indra,
king of the Devas, and a god of the sky.
That may be, I think reasonably compared to other deity traditions,

(37:58):
such as that of Zeus or that of odin in
Norse mythology, but vadra also can apparently be translated as diamond,
for the vodra is indestructible, and there is indeed a
sense of a diamond to the shape of the thing
as well. Sometimes the vadra appears like a club or
a scepter with a long handle, other times a ritualistic

(38:21):
item with two vadras, one on either end of like
a handle. And you'll also find vadras on the handles
of a symbolic bell, and indeed you also find it
as a motif on the pommels and or the hilts
of highly decorative swords. So I found this interesting as well,
this idea of this thing going from like indestructible bolt

(38:43):
of enlightenment to a weapon of war, but involving like
aspects of thunder and lightning and also aspects of the diamond.
I should also add that in Mahayana Buddhism there's also
an important sutra that is generally referred to in English
as the diamond Sutra.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Well, yeah, this seems to connect to the things that
have come up in multiple ways, especially like the idea
of a diamond being a sort of a symbol of
the power of kings here. If there is a diamond
association with the mythical weapon of Indra.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
That's right. Yeah, so yeah, And also I love that
in this we get this more spiritual idea of the
diamond as opposed to certainly the sort of the modern,
you know, western popular idea of the diamond. That's very
and I guess it does get aligned with ideas of love.
But I don't know, I don't get a very spiritual
idea of the diamond when I'm watching a diamond commercial

(39:43):
on television, Like, it doesn't seem like it's clearly not
something that's coming from from the realm of the gods.
It's something that's coming from the diamond store across town.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
Think how much more interesting those commercials would be if
they did the Valley of Gems with the snake and
the meat. You had to get the meat in order
to get the diamond. That's part of the process.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
Yes, yes, I can see it.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
Now.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
They can still have the you know, the excellent music,
the high production values. But let's get some some diamond
studded meat in the game. Let's get some giant birds,
Let's get some snakes. It's a lot of fun to
be at.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
I want to direct these commercials. Valentine's Day is coming up.
You see you see like a husband going up to
the cliff side. He's got the meat. It's like, you know,
just dripping all over his back. I guess he's got
to have something to fight the birds with later. It's
all coming together in my mind.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Oh man, steak restaurants, get in on this. This is great,
great advertising for your Valentine's Day meals as well your
Valentine's Day specials. You know, get people into that steak
dinner with the diamonds. Have the diamond stuck to the steak.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
We call this a binvenudo special. I felt it crash
beneath my teeth.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
All right. On that note, we're going to gohead and
close out this episode, but we will be back with
at least a third Diamond episode because all there's more
stuff we didn't even have time for. There's more stuff
involving various bodily fluids. We'll definitely get into some more myths.
We'll get into some other topics, cosmic, spiritual.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
You name it.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
We will return to it in the next episode. In
the meantime, Yah, we'd love to hear from all of you.
We have a couple of episodes on diamonds already. You
might have some thoughts, some feedback on anything we've discussed here.
Maybe you're a diamond fan and maybe you hate diamonds.
Maybe you have some sort of cultural connection with diamonds.
Maybe you yourself work with diamonds. Right in we'd love
to hear from you. Just a reminder that core episodes

(41:43):
of Stuff to Blow Your Mind publish on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed short
form episodes go out on Wednesday, listener mail on Mondays,
and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 3 (42:18):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,

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