This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is our American stories, and our next story is about a gem.

It turns out diamonds haven't always been rare stones.

Since 1870, when huge diamond mines were discovered in South Africa,

soon after that discovery, the British financiers behind the South African mining effort realized the diamond market would be saturated if they didn't do something about it.

So in 1888, they set two audacious goals.

One, monopolized diamond prices by creating Debeer's mines.

De Beers would then be able to stabilize the market

by creating both the supply and the demand for diamonds worldwide. Tom Zolnar is a journalist

and professor who lives in Los Angeles. He wrote the book, The Heartless Stone, A Journey Through

the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire. Here's Tom through the world of diamonds, deceit, and desire.

Here's Tom with the story of that journey.

My name is Tom Zolnar, and when I was 32 years old, I entered into what is a fairly common

rite of passage for a man in America.

I asked somebody to marry me. And I gave her a diamond engagement ring

because that's just what you were supposed to do. And I knew very little about diamonds.

I studied up on it as best I could, which wasn't very deep. And I learned that there's this tradition out there

that you're supposed to spend two months of your salary as a benchmark, sort of a sliding scale

for what's expected. And I wanted to do what was expected. So I figured out what I could afford,

and I bought a, her name is Anne, was Anne, I bought

her a diamond ring.

I say was because the engagement broke up and I was made the owner of a used diamond ring.

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