Welcome to Karen Hunter's awesome. I'm Karen Hunter and do you love diamonds? Do you think they're rare and precious?

We've been exploring the idea of perceptions not really being reality. Well today I'm going to share with you an interview I did with Aja Raiden. She wrote a book called The Truth About Lies and in it she gives the real story about why we value diamonds and it's not

because they're actually more valuable. Take a listen. The book is called The Truth About

Lies. The author is here. I got the proper pronunciation. Seen is still here as well. Let me welcome

to the show, Asia Raiden. Welcome. Hi. Hey. I still messed it up. All right.

Rayden. Okay. Pretty much. Yeah. Okay. Pretty much. You did a book before this book, which is the entry point for me, where you were talking about precious stones and jewelry and diamonds. And, you know, I read that the diamond is not the most precious

of the stones. It's not the most rare, but yet people have died, you know, lost hands and limbs

and whole towns have been upended for the pursuit of this thing that we all want because

diamonds are a girl's best friend. Tell us the truth about that before we get to the truth

about lies. Well, yeah, the truth about diamonds is that it was an exercise in colonialism.

And then the very beginning of modern advertising, a creepy guy named Cecil Rhodes, went down to South Africa, ended up with a country named after him,

Rhodesia, which I can't believe is still, we're still calling it that, because he was a terrible

man. And he basically bullied, manipulated, stole, blackmailed, all of the other miners at the

beginning of the South African Diamond Rush until he had consolidated a significant majority of the diamond mines in South Africa.

And the last couple huge ones, he couldn't get away from a man named Oppenheimer.

So they merged and they called their company De Beers.

And they were doing all right for a little while.

But the diamond rush never stopped.

You know how the gold rush stopped and the silver rush?

The diamond rush wasn't really a rush.

It turns out they're just everywhere.

And we get better at mining them every year.

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