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Speaker 4: Hey, Okay, just a quick note up top that this
Speaker 4: episode gets like a little like what do you like
Speaker 4: a little mystical. We don't not talk about the power
Speaker 4: of crystals in this I wanted to know as a
Speaker 4: genmologist what this ologist's belief was in the mystical nature
Speaker 4: of rocks, if she believed in it, so I hear
Speaker 4: her out. I also discuss the neuroscience of the placebo
Speaker 4: effect and how our thoughts can change our behaviors. It's
Speaker 4: based in neuroscience. Try not to at me about it,
Speaker 4: because like, I get it. Okay, cool Episode four, Ologies,
Speaker 4: Common and Hot.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: First off, thanks to everyone who's been listening and leaving
Speaker 4: reviews on iTunes and rating you're subscribing. The more you
Speaker 4: do that, the higher this thing gets in the charts,
Speaker 4: and then the people see it, and the more people
Speaker 4: share dumb science jokes. I guess, the better I don't know.
Speaker 4: And also thank you to everyone who's supporting on Patreon.
Speaker 4: I see you and I love you. And for anyone
Speaker 4: who had a hankering for merch and who's been to
Speaker 4: ologiesmerch dot com, cool shirt or mug or tote. Okay, gems,
Speaker 4: this episode about gems. It's truly outrageous. Well, it's pretty good.
Speaker 4: We don't talk about crotches very much, but it is
Speaker 4: a pretty good episode. So let's start with the etymology
Speaker 4: of gemology. Comes from ology, the study of in gems,
Speaker 4: meaning gems, but gems comes from an old, dusty Latin
Speaker 4: word for gems, which comes from the word for bud,
Speaker 4: like a cute little rose, only it's dug from the
Speaker 4: ground and it's worth more than your house. Now I
Speaker 4: knew I wanted to cover this topic for months, and
Speaker 4: so I started hunting down on Facebook for a gemologist,
Speaker 4: and I got in touch with today's guest, whose number
Speaker 4: I saved in my phone with the crystal ball emoji,
Speaker 4: the diamond emoji, and the ring emoji. Now, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: tell you secret. If you have an emoji next to
Speaker 4: your name in my phone, I like you. I like
Speaker 4: you extra more a lot. And this person is just
Speaker 4: as wonderfully warm and passionate as they come. She's worthy
Speaker 4: of the emojis. We talked about the difference between gems
Speaker 4: and minerals, what it's like to be at a blast site,
Speaker 4: what's the actual deal with mystical healing, from a few
Speaker 4: different angles, hidden crystal caves, some super weird tragic history
Speaker 4: of the figures in gemology, And because the beauty of
Speaker 4: gems lies as much in their shimmer as it does
Speaker 4: the weird dark mystique of valuable, coveted things. I think
Speaker 4: part of what's so great about gemology is that there's
Speaker 4: creepy stuff about it. So this guest is a gemologist
Speaker 4: and a jewelry cataloger at Bottoms and Butterfields, which is
Speaker 4: an auction house, and she's just lovely. She's just goddamn lovely.
Speaker 4: Please enjoy Kelly stek Okay, Kelly Gemologist. Yes, this is
Speaker 4: so exciting. I've never met a gemalogist before.
Speaker 5: I think it's a very small niche of a field,
Speaker 5: so I haven't met many either, except now that I'm
Speaker 5: actually in the world.
Speaker 6: But beforehand, before.
Speaker 5: I actually met a diamond dealer, I didn't really know
Speaker 5: what gemology was or what the industry was like as
Speaker 5: far as jewelry and minerals and crystals go. So it
Speaker 5: was I mean, once you meet one, then a whole
Speaker 5: world opens.
Speaker 4: Does a bookshelf spin open? And then there's a world
Speaker 4: of diamond dealers.
Speaker 6: Mind it, diamond dealers, gem dealers.
Speaker 5: It connects to mining in like Africa and Asia and
Speaker 5: all these different places. And you learned that, you know,
Speaker 5: so many people are involved in the process of getting
Speaker 5: a stone from the earth, taking it from the earth
Speaker 5: to a piece of jewelry or to a crystal in
Speaker 5: a shop for sale. So it's really kind of amazing.
Speaker 5: All the work and all the people that go into
Speaker 5: the whole industry.
Speaker 6: It's incredible.
Speaker 4: How long have you been a gemologist?
Speaker 5: I am actually a very new gemologist. I graduated just
Speaker 5: a little over a year ago from the Gemological Institute
Speaker 5: of America. It's down in Carlsbad. It used to be
Speaker 5: based out of here. It's also all over the world.
Speaker 4: Now, all right, I knew nothing about the Gemological Institute
Speaker 4: of America, so I did a little digging. Oh that's
Speaker 4: pun I'm sorry, Honestly, I didn't mean it. So the
Speaker 4: Gemological Institute of America is legit. If you're going to
Speaker 4: become a gemologist, this is the way to do it.
Speaker 4: It was founded by a guy named Robert Shipley. The
Speaker 4: website for the Gemological Institute of America starts off with
Speaker 4: his bio, and the sentence sounds like it's straight out
Speaker 4: of a nineteen forties movie trailer. It sounds like this,
Speaker 4: during the depth of the depression, a middle aged man
Speaker 4: was a little more than ambition and charisma revolutionized the
Speaker 4: gem and jewelry industry. That's his bio. He sounds dope.
Speaker 4: So Shipley was kind of a down on his luck
Speaker 4: jeweler who screwed up a few times because he didn't
Speaker 4: know which gems were witch and so his business failed.
Speaker 4: And then he went through a divorce, which I think
Speaker 4: was a big deal back then. So he split. He
Speaker 4: went to Paris. He said, forget this, I'm going to
Speaker 4: be an artist. He got another wife, her name was Beatrice.
Speaker 4: And in general, Shipley was bummed that jewelers often had
Speaker 4: no idea what stones they were working with. It had
Speaker 4: boned him in the past. He was upset about it.
Speaker 4: So b as she was known, encouraged him to take
Speaker 4: some goddamn gemology classes. And I'm picturing their conversations and
Speaker 4: I imagine them talking about this smoking in the living room. Anyway,
Speaker 4: so Shipley did. He went to England and he was
Speaker 4: so impressed with the gemology courses he came back to America.
Speaker 4: He started up this institute in the US. He sold
Speaker 4: microscope and loops and gem info booklets out of their apartment.
Speaker 4: He and b Man what a team nowadays. To become
Speaker 4: a certified gemologist, you can do it for about twenty
Speaker 4: grand on campus in Carlsbad, or a little bit less
Speaker 4: if you study it at home. Either way, you definitely
Speaker 4: get one of those cool squinty loop situations.
Speaker 5: So they send you all the school work and all
Speaker 5: the stones to identify, and then you go down there
Speaker 5: to take the scariest test of all time to get
Speaker 5: your degree. It's very intense. It's called the twenty stone.
Speaker 5: It's very like menacing, but you have to you have
Speaker 5: to take twenty stones. Whatever they give you, okay, and
Speaker 5: it's really whatever they had given you and your test.
Speaker 5: They'll give you one of those. But it could be synthetic,
Speaker 5: it could be an imitation of something, it could be
Speaker 5: the natural form of the stone, but you have to
Speaker 5: identify it. Do tests with the gemological equipment like a
Speaker 5: refractometer and a polaroscope and things like that, and then
Speaker 5: you have to identify what it is. But you can't
Speaker 5: get anything wrong. So if you get one little tiny
Speaker 5: thing wrong, then you fail. And I actually failed my
Speaker 5: first one from one answer. It was a synthetic emerald
Speaker 5: versus a natural emerald. And I had to take it
Speaker 5: again and it was fine, But oh do.
Speaker 4: You hate emeralds? Now? Are you so pissed at them.
Speaker 5: It it honestly made me just want to see so
Speaker 5: many more, because you know, the best thing you can
Speaker 5: do for yourself in dromology is just get your hands
Speaker 5: on as many stones as possible, because people are getting
Speaker 5: really good at imitating stones and recreating stones to make
Speaker 5: them look natural, but they're not. So that's where it
Speaker 5: gets scary with like actually buying gemstones or jewelry. You
Speaker 5: just like don't know because there's so many good fakes
Speaker 5: now and you want to actually know what you're purchasing
Speaker 5: or you have so no, I'm like, damn it, emeralds.
Speaker 4: How did you get so in? How did you get
Speaker 4: so involved in this? Like you've been doing it for
Speaker 4: a year. But were you always super into crystals.
Speaker 6: From a young age?
Speaker 5: Yes, my dad tells me stories of hanging out in
Speaker 5: the driveway. You would like, put me outside, and then
Speaker 5: he'd come back and there would be these piles of
Speaker 5: sticks and stones. He was like, I don't know what
Speaker 5: you were doing. If it was like some ceremony or something,
Speaker 5: or baby witch doing some sort of spells with the earth,
Speaker 5: I'm not sure. But I've always had a fascination with
Speaker 5: bugs and rocks and the earth and dirt and things
Speaker 5: like that. So I actually went to get a BA
Speaker 5: in the arts. First I have an art history minor,
Speaker 5: and then it's a fine art degree that's in printmaking.
Speaker 6: And I kind of didn't really know what to.
Speaker 5: Do from there what I wanted to do, but I
Speaker 5: always loved antiques and things like that. So then I
Speaker 5: went into the antique world, the antique business, and worked
Speaker 5: in some antique shops, and that is where I met
Speaker 5: the diamond dealer and understood, like, I love antique jewelry
Speaker 5: and the idea of the preservation of history and it's
Speaker 5: very sentimental.
Speaker 4: When you met the diamond dealer, was he wearing a
Speaker 4: cloak and did you have a mustache and monocle? Like?
Speaker 4: Who is this guy?
Speaker 5: No, he's actually like very suave. He's like very much
Speaker 5: a diamond dealer, Like they're very they're very like charming.
Speaker 5: They know how to like talk a deal and things
Speaker 5: like that, which was good. He was very very supportive
Speaker 5: and helpful and just like, you know, you love jewelry
Speaker 5: so much, have you thought of this, you should really
Speaker 5: look into the program at the GIA. And then I did,
Speaker 5: and then from there it's actually really interesting. My love
Speaker 5: is actually with minerals and how they come straight from
Speaker 5: the earth, the raw specimens.
Speaker 4: So this ended up kind of combining nature and art
Speaker 4: and history all in one.
Speaker 5: All in one, all my favorite things. Yeah, and so
Speaker 5: that's where I am.
Speaker 4: Now, how did you celebrate when you passed your second test?
Speaker 6: I cried and called my mom.
Speaker 4: You did? I did.
Speaker 7: I literally was like, I'm so proud of my solo
Speaker 7: because there was with the online program, there's so many
Speaker 7: different people from so many different walks of life taking it.
Speaker 5: So there's like older people that have been in the
Speaker 5: business forever but they want their actual degree now. It
Speaker 5: was mostly some older ladies as well, but a lot
Speaker 5: of them had a hard time passing it. So I
Speaker 5: was really like psyching myself out. I was like, oh
Speaker 5: my gosh, Like they did the online program, and I
Speaker 5: did the online program. How am I going to do this?
Speaker 5: But I think it's just so mental. It's just going
Speaker 5: in there just saying I understand the stones, I've seen them,
Speaker 5: I know what to look for, and you get to
Speaker 5: like use a microscope to look inside there and just
Speaker 5: like see the entire world of the stone.
Speaker 6: No cheat sheet, no cheat sheet, can.
Speaker 4: You wear any rings or anything with you?
Speaker 5: You're like, all right, I know that, I wish there
Speaker 5: is like this giant book you get to use. So
Speaker 5: what you first do is you kind of identify a
Speaker 5: body color and if it's translucent or opaque, things like that,
Speaker 5: like characteristics just looking at it with your eye, and
Speaker 5: then you go into using a refractometer, which is where
Speaker 5: you put the stone with our liquid and you figure
Speaker 5: out what it's refractive indexes. That's kind of like how
Speaker 5: it splits light, and that's a very big sign of
Speaker 5: what the stone's going to be. So if it's one
Speaker 5: point seven to seven, you know it's going to be
Speaker 5: like a sapphire generally. So each stone kind of has
Speaker 5: their own number which helps you identify. Some are very similar,
Speaker 5: so you need a bit more information, like use the
Speaker 5: polaroscope to see its polarity of things, and then you
Speaker 5: go from there, but you do a couple tests to
Speaker 5: figure out and then you have to go into looking
Speaker 5: at through the microscope to see does it have signs of.
Speaker 6: Being you know, man made? Is it a bull? Is
Speaker 6: that you know?
Speaker 4: From what do you tell if it's man made?
Speaker 5: Is it two parars? Sometimes like it's very eye clean.
Speaker 5: So if you don't see anything, you're like, well, this
Speaker 5: looks a little suspicious. Okay, so you're like it's either
Speaker 5: a natural stone that's been heated or diffuse to make
Speaker 5: the color better, or it's now a synthetic stone that
Speaker 5: is created through one of four processes with like heat
Speaker 5: and chemicals and things like that.
Speaker 6: So it's really interesting.
Speaker 5: It looks like this long cylinder shape the the synthetic
Speaker 5: ones called a bool, and then they cut it from there.
Speaker 5: So when you're looking in the microscope and you turn
Speaker 5: it on a certain access, you can see these beautiful
Speaker 5: curve strye, which is like rings, and that's how you
Speaker 5: tell it was in this cylinder shape.
Speaker 4: Cool, and how do they make them? Do they just
Speaker 4: put some carbon like under insane pressure in a factory.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like in this platinum crucible, and then like
Speaker 5: minerals and like there's a few different processes where they
Speaker 5: either like slowly drip minerals in there or they just
Speaker 5: have it all in this kind of mixture and then
Speaker 5: they heat it up and it's very complicate.
Speaker 6: I don't even know. I'd love to see how it's done.
Speaker 4: Are there any people that go synthetic because they think
Speaker 4: it's like more like cruelty free or like better like
Speaker 4: from an environmental or yeah, like there's no whole blood
Speaker 4: diamond sitch like, right, do people gravitate towards synthetic kind
Speaker 4: of like get tofurky on Thanksgiving? You know what?
Speaker 6: I think synthetic is more for cost.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of people want the look of
Speaker 5: a beautiful sapphire, but maybe they can't afford it, so
Speaker 5: then they go synthet and you still get that great
Speaker 5: look and it is the actual chemical makeup of the sapphire,
Speaker 5: but it's just synthetic and it's been man made. I
Speaker 5: think mining is hard to really wrap your mind around
Speaker 5: because there are certain governmental protection for the miners and
Speaker 5: the companies that are put in place, so there isn't,
Speaker 5: you know, constant power struggle for these or violence things
Speaker 5: like that. You can't control everything, so unfortunately you just
Speaker 5: don't know where all these pieces are coming from. But
Speaker 5: I think that's why for me, I really like a
Speaker 5: lot of the antique jewelry because it's been around, it's
Speaker 5: not new, it's not being mined.
Speaker 4: Now these days, people of course, are much more aware
Speaker 4: of blood diamonds so thanks Leonardo DiCaprio for bringing it
Speaker 4: into awareness with your film Blood diamond They're also called
Speaker 4: conflict diamonds, which I feel like there was someone in
Speaker 4: PR that's like, can we not call them blood diamonds?
Speaker 4: Can call them conflict diamonds. Conflict sounds less awful than
Speaker 4: blood diamonds. But these stones. The money was used to
Speaker 4: fund ongoing conflict, insurgency and wars. Now it's said that
Speaker 4: one in four diamonds roughly is a conflict diamond. But
Speaker 4: there were regulations, There's one called the Kimberly process, and
Speaker 4: some things passed through, that's for sure. I asked Kelly
Speaker 4: how she felt about it, and she said this, I'm
Speaker 4: very into ethically sourced diamonds, although I think even with
Speaker 4: all the laws and systems in place, it can be
Speaker 4: hard to truly know how diamonds come to find themselves
Speaker 4: in jewelry. And that is why I'm also a huge
Speaker 4: fan of older diamonds or reusing family diamonds. So there
Speaker 4: you go. Old is cool. Now, what's up with birthstones?
Speaker 4: And does Kelly even like hers? God? I hope it's
Speaker 4: not an emeralds.
Speaker 5: It's not the Lord. Can you imagine I'm an aquamarine.
Speaker 5: Just be spiteful towards my birthstone for the rest of
Speaker 5: my life.
Speaker 4: Though, it's how do they choose that? How do they
Speaker 4: decide that that's what month is?
Speaker 6: That? It's March? March?
Speaker 5: Okay, honestly I have no idea what the history is
Speaker 5: of birthstones.
Speaker 4: But all right, history of birthstones, this goes back to
Speaker 4: the Bible. Was not what I was expecting to learn.
Speaker 4: Israelites were a ceremonial breastplate. It was adorned with four
Speaker 4: rows of three precious stones, said to represent the twelve
Speaker 4: tribes of Israel. There's also something in the Book of Revelation,
Speaker 4: chapter twenty one about twelve different stones. So this goes
Speaker 4: way way way back. But in nineteen sixteen, a bunch
Speaker 4: of jewelers got together in Kansas and put out an
Speaker 4: official list. This is your month you were born, this
Speaker 4: is your stone. Suddenly everyone cared about their stone. It
Speaker 4: was genius, everyone except people who got topaz.
Speaker 6: What's yours? Do you know?
Speaker 4: Mine sucks?
Speaker 6: What is it?
Speaker 5: It's a topaz. I was gonna say pearl, but oh,
Speaker 5: my gosh, topaz. There's some beautiful topaz like imperial topaz.
Speaker 6: Is my favorites.
Speaker 5: It's like beautiful, like glowing kind of orange red paths
Speaker 5: and it's just spectacular.
Speaker 4: Well that actually okay, because every time you'd go to
Speaker 4: like the mall and they'd be like, what's your what's
Speaker 4: your mund and everyone would be like emeralds and dumonds
Speaker 4: and rubies and then topaths. You'd get to November and
Speaker 4: it was literally the color of like sewer water, and
Speaker 4: you're like, what happened? Why did they run out of
Speaker 4: gemstones in November?
Speaker 5: They just decided to make the probably the worst color topaz.
Speaker 4: But why are there some wired topaz is? Like, Okay,
Speaker 4: we know diamonds can be different colors.
Speaker 6: Topazes can be many different colors.
Speaker 4: The same with emeralds and rubies. What makes a gem
Speaker 4: different colors? It was such a dumb question.
Speaker 5: The chemical makeup of the gems. So whatever minerals were
Speaker 5: in the area, the heat and the pressure in the
Speaker 5: minerals in the ground, that combined create the chemical makeup
Speaker 5: of a stone, and that creates the color. So like
Speaker 5: vanadium and things like that can create a different color
Speaker 5: in different gemstones. It's all about what is combined and
Speaker 5: what was kind of like in the stew of this
Speaker 5: mineral that made it that color. So with like, tourmaline
Speaker 5: is one of my favorite stones because it comes in
Speaker 5: I think the largest array of colors, you know, like
Speaker 5: hot pink and gorgeous teals and green and blue and
Speaker 5: reds every color really, and so I think a lot
Speaker 5: of gemstones people don't realize do that as well. Like
Speaker 5: it's interesting because a ruby and a sapphire are actually
Speaker 5: the same stone. They're both in the family of corundum, really,
Speaker 5: but then their color gives them a specific name. So
Speaker 5: a ruby is the red form of corundums, stop it,
Speaker 5: and then sapphire is the blue form. And then you
Speaker 5: can also get into like the definition of a pink
Speaker 5: sapphire versus a ruby is just the color. So pink
Speaker 5: sapphire and ruby are the same thing, except when you
Speaker 5: have a red body color, it's then a.
Speaker 6: Ruby instead of a pink summer.
Speaker 4: Well, I think what makes a topaz different from an
Speaker 4: emerald or from a ruby, Like what is it? The
Speaker 4: structure of the crystals, the.
Speaker 5: Structure of the crystal and just literally the chemical compound.
Speaker 5: So there's seven different growth characteristic types for gemstone, so
Speaker 5: there's only seven ways that they'll really grow monolithic trilithic.
Speaker 5: There's seven of these in these structures, so you'll see
Speaker 5: a spinel or like pi rite and they grow into.
Speaker 6: Like a perfect cube.
Speaker 5: It's so cool, right, naturally just a cube, and some
Speaker 5: grow like with a like hexagonal shape. A barrel grows
Speaker 5: with a hexagon, so that also contributes to what makes
Speaker 5: them different, is their natural growth structure. But topaz is beautiful.
Speaker 5: In summer, I've seen like a kind of bluey green
Speaker 5: one of so.
Speaker 4: So nice beautiful water. That's a that's like a very
Speaker 4: like you know when you see like an ugly baby
Speaker 4: and you're like, it's gonna grow up and be fine, like,
Speaker 4: but topaz is like, al right, it's like but it's beautiful.
Speaker 4: They're all beautiful.
Speaker 6: They're all beautif.
Speaker 5: You just have to find the ones that really speak
Speaker 5: to you. That's what it's about.
Speaker 4: Are you pissed about pearl because a pearls not a
Speaker 4: goddamn gemstone that's just a dingleberry from a clam from
Speaker 4: an oystery. But do you know what I mean?
Speaker 6: No, Yeah, it's an organic product.
Speaker 5: So it's I mean for me, I like, I'm not
Speaker 5: super into pearls just because that they're actually cut from
Speaker 5: an animal. I'm vegan, but oh so it makes me sad,
Speaker 5: But it's also just beautiful that like an animal can
Speaker 5: create such an incredible product.
Speaker 6: It's just this natural.
Speaker 4: But it's not a gem or is it a gem?
Speaker 4: What's a gem exactly like versus a mineral?
Speaker 6: Oh gosh, I wish I could have remembered the exact
Speaker 6: definition of that right now.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's good. It means it doesn't come up
Speaker 4: in your work very much.
Speaker 6: It does not.
Speaker 5: The definition of a gemstone does not come up in
Speaker 5: my work very often.
Speaker 4: That's okay, I looked it up. So a gemstone is
Speaker 4: a precious or a semi precious stone, or a mineral
Speaker 4: chosen for its beauty, chosen for its durability. It's cut
Speaker 4: and then polished. Now this out, there's a difference between
Speaker 4: a rock and a mineral. I never ever thought about this.
Speaker 4: A mineral has a very unique chemical structure and properties,
Speaker 4: but a rock is just a combination of different minerals.
Speaker 4: This fact is so precise, and I would never have
Speaker 4: learned it if I hadn't just had to look it up.
Speaker 4: And it makes me want to sound an airhorn like
Speaker 4: the ones that party DJs use. Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 4: but just super tiny in the background.
Speaker 6: But I think.
Speaker 5: Pearls are technically an organic matter or material because they
Speaker 5: come from just like coral, so those are in the
Speaker 5: organic field, and then rocks and gemstones are inorganic.
Speaker 4: It is weird that there is one gemstone that's just like,
Speaker 4: we pluck this thing out of a bivalve, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean? Is that weird that it came from
Speaker 4: like a that's weird about that.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure who discovered that and was like, this
Speaker 5: is going to be beautiful, and this is going to be jewelry,
Speaker 5: and it's going to be a precious thing that's desired.
Speaker 6: Who creates the.
Speaker 5: Demand for certain things, I'm not sure, but it is fascinating.
Speaker 4: Okay, So there's evidence of prehistoric pearl hunting. People love
Speaker 4: these for millennia, but for the thousands of years it
Speaker 4: was pretty much a crapshoot and a few tons of oysters.
Speaker 4: Only a few would have like a naturally occurring pearl.
Speaker 4: So pearls were incredibly expensive because you just hope that
Speaker 4: this little critter got a chunk of something stuck in
Speaker 4: its craw. But then in the early nineteen hundreds that
Speaker 4: all changed. There was a guy named William saval Kent.
Speaker 4: He was a British biologist who was really, really into
Speaker 4: sustainable fisheries. Someone's got to be into that now. In
Speaker 4: the eighteen nineties he was in Australia. He was experimenting
Speaker 4: with pearl cultivation and it involved a little round bead
Speaker 4: made of mollusk shell plus a little piece of donor
Speaker 4: mollusk material being surgically implanted into the gonads of a
Speaker 4: mollusc and then they returned the ocean in a net
Speaker 4: for a few years. They're like, work on that pearl
Speaker 4: and they're like, ugh, I hate you. So he was
Speaker 4: working on this in a place called the Thursday Islands,
Speaker 4: and some guys named Mise and Nishikawa also happened to
Speaker 4: be in the Thursday Islands and they patented this in
Speaker 4: nineteen oh seven. It took a while to get all
Speaker 4: the patents all that stuff. Anyway, in nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 4: round cultured pearls hit the market. So it said that
Speaker 4: this guy, William saval Kent maybe adopted it, and maybe
Speaker 4: these guys came to the Thursday Islands and were like, hey,
Speaker 4: that's pretty good. And then to go back to Japan
Speaker 4: and patented it. Whatever. William saval Kent was like, take
Speaker 4: the pearls. My life sucks, I've got bigger problems. For example,
Speaker 4: his mom died early. His half brother was killed by
Speaker 4: his sister, perhaps who was convicted of it, although he
Speaker 4: maybe was an accomplice, but he was never charged anyway,
Speaker 4: It's all sad, it's all super dark. Makes me want
Speaker 4: to hug everyone in the world and then go hide
Speaker 4: in a cave. Speaking of caves, and then have you
Speaker 4: been on a dig at all?
Speaker 5: I went on one dig and it's pretty much the
Speaker 5: coolest thing on the entire planet. I want to go
Speaker 5: mining so much more in my life. I was taken
Speaker 5: by a friend on this kind of like private mining
Speaker 5: tour down in like Ocean View or Ocean Side, Ocean
Speaker 5: Side in California, which is where a lot of turmaline
Speaker 5: mines are and they get like smoky quarts and things
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 6: So there's a lot of great.
Speaker 5: Mining here in California, and you can actually pay to
Speaker 5: go on mine for the day, which is really fun too.
Speaker 4: In southern California. If you check out the site called
Speaker 4: dig for Gems for seventy five bucks. You can go
Speaker 4: haulsome rocks for the day, but warning bring water. And
Speaker 4: apparently the owner is a lot like your seventy Sam
Speaker 4: and that he is a cantankerous pioneer type.
Speaker 6: Do you get to keep what you get?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you get to like keep certain things, which is
Speaker 5: really cool.
Speaker 6: I haven't done that yet, but I need to.
Speaker 5: We went on this one tour where we went and
Speaker 5: saw like deep in the mines. So you actually go
Speaker 5: in the mountainside and there are a whole bunch of
Speaker 5: guys that were drilling the wall to blast that day.
Speaker 5: So I'm literally like watching them drill these holes and
Speaker 5: it's really loud, and they're like, you know, pumping it
Speaker 5: full of water so it doesn't you know, create a
Speaker 5: lot of heat and whatever.
Speaker 6: So there's a bunch of holes in the wall.
Speaker 5: And then they bring in the dynamite sticks, which is
Speaker 5: terrifying to be around. Dynamite is so scary.
Speaker 4: So they make like holes like burrows, and then they
Speaker 4: share the dynamite in the burrows.
Speaker 5: So what they do is like when they're looking in
Speaker 5: a wall, you want to look for little signs of
Speaker 5: crystals or like a pocket that will have stones, in it,
Speaker 5: and then from there you're going to try to blast
Speaker 5: to open up a pocket and hopefully behind there there
Speaker 5: is some some sorm of like rocks or crystals or
Speaker 5: things like that. And sometimes you hit it really big
Speaker 5: and you hit this great pocket and it's like full
Speaker 5: of gems, or you end up like I think a
Speaker 5: lot of times people maybe end up destroying stones because
Speaker 5: they're trying to blast the wall or you.
Speaker 6: Know, things like that.
Speaker 5: I know that's such a hard fale, but you got to,
Speaker 5: you know, I think you just have to try.
Speaker 6: You know, you don't know.
Speaker 5: You can either go in there with your hands or
Speaker 5: you're gonna blast the wall open if there's a pocket, So.
Speaker 4: Like what else are you gonna do? Just pick at
Speaker 4: it with your fingernails. So you to the mountain, Yeah,
Speaker 4: you can't do that.
Speaker 5: No, it's we would take forever, right, So yeah, because
Speaker 5: we were very far in the mountain.
Speaker 4: Are you claustrophobic?
Speaker 6: No, it's it's like huge.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 5: The caverns they make are like just diinormous for it,
Speaker 5: and there's all these like different kind of walkways to
Speaker 5: go through in different levels that you can go up.
Speaker 6: It's wild.
Speaker 5: You feel literally like kind of like a mole or
Speaker 5: something like wandering around. I was like, oh wow, animal life.
Speaker 5: So we packed everything full of dynamite and then they
Speaker 5: light everything and I'm like, are we not supposed to
Speaker 5: be running right now out of the mountain and they're
Speaker 5: just taking their time. They're like, oh, we have four minutes.
Speaker 5: I was like, I'm gonna run out the mountain.
Speaker 4: You're in the mountain.
Speaker 6: We're in the mountain. And they light it and so yeah,
Speaker 6: so so scary.
Speaker 5: So then we like get outside and then it's the deepest, biggest.
Speaker 6: Boom you've ever felt.
Speaker 5: Whoa And it was just like boom and I was like,
Speaker 5: oh my god, this so scary. And then you see
Speaker 5: all of the dust come out, and then you have
Speaker 5: to wait an hour to let it settle. Okay, And
Speaker 5: then they go in there and they kind of like
Speaker 5: hit the top of the ceiling to make sure nothing
Speaker 5: comes down because there are still.
Speaker 6: Rock that's loose.
Speaker 4: Who has that job?
Speaker 6: A man with a hard hat that job seck I know.
Speaker 5: I was like, oh my gosh, it's so scary. And
Speaker 5: then you go in there and we got to kind
Speaker 5: of dig around to see if there was anything that
Speaker 5: was in the pocket, and unfortunately that day there wasn't,
Speaker 5: but they showed us another kind of area that did
Speaker 5: have a little bit of a pocket, so we got
Speaker 5: to take some quartz home and things like that, which
Speaker 5: was really cool.
Speaker 4: Did you keep it?
Speaker 6: Yeah? I have a couple.
Speaker 5: Like there's a rock that has like this beautiful, like
Speaker 5: perfect quartz point coming out of it, and they've gotten
Speaker 5: a lot of spody mean out of there, which is
Speaker 5: a type of crystal, and it's so cool because on
Speaker 5: different axises like shows either like a pink or like
Speaker 5: this beautiful violet color, which is so cool. So you
Speaker 5: turn it and you see different colors. And there was
Speaker 5: this one in there called big Kahuna that they took
Speaker 5: out of there and.
Speaker 6: They named it and it's huge.
Speaker 5: I mean, this thing is the biggest that I think
Speaker 5: they've ever seen.
Speaker 4: So is it typical to name crystals?
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's also one that's really cool.
Speaker 5: It's like this beautiful turmaline like I think party colored
Speaker 5: turmaline on a quartz and it looks like a steamboat,
Speaker 5: so I think it's called like a steamboat something.
Speaker 6: I'm not sure what it is, but I think no idea.
Speaker 4: They got nicknames.
Speaker 6: There's not gonna be another one of these in the world,
Speaker 6: and then they name them because they're just so amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Now let's get back to your crystals. You have a
Speaker 4: collection of crystals clearly, right. Do you name those who No?
Speaker 5: I don't name them, but they definitely I think like
Speaker 5: if you go anywhere you they definitely have a certain energy,
Speaker 5: like some really speak to you or not. You know,
Speaker 5: it's almost like any object, it either calls to you
Speaker 5: or it doesn't. And with crystals, for me, their beauty
Speaker 5: and their individuality really toxic. You know, if you're in
Speaker 5: a store of crystals, there's going to be one that's
Speaker 5: like take me home, like I need to come with you.
Speaker 4: I did that recently. I did Arizona, Yes, and I
Speaker 4: was and I went into a little gym shop and
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, this is lovely and I was
Speaker 4: looking at things and I was like, what do you
Speaker 4: have that's like a good calming Yeah, situation, because I'm
Speaker 4: like a chihuahua. I'm just like, yeah, I'm like, what's
Speaker 4: like something calming? And he's like this blue thing. Oh,
Speaker 4: I haven't my wallet? Yes, can you tell me what
Speaker 4: it is?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 4: Okay, this is not meant to be a pop quiz.
Speaker 6: But let's do it.
Speaker 5: Okay, Like I'm going to suggest blue lace ag it
Speaker 5: first in my mind of what he would suggest.
Speaker 4: But let's see what it is. Okay, let's really excited diagnosis.
Speaker 4: There's in my wallet. There's also earplugs and bobby pins.
Speaker 4: That's the essentials. Yeah. So okay, so I got this
Speaker 4: blue thing because he said it was calming, and also
Speaker 4: because he seems so nice. I didn't want to just
Speaker 4: walk of a shop without buying anything.
Speaker 6: No, this is this is actually a quartz.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 5: It's called aqua aora quartz and it's actually treated. So
Speaker 5: what they do is they put this in some sort
Speaker 5: of container or crucible or something and they heat it
Speaker 5: with titanium what like particles, and that actually puts this
Speaker 5: blue kind of rainbow essence on the surface. So it's
Speaker 5: a court point, a quartz point. So that has a
Speaker 5: lot of incredible healing powers.
Speaker 4: Okay, this is where science and the woo woo kind
Speaker 4: of collide. Just stick with me. Let's look into this.
Speaker 4: So in the last five years, apparently there's been a
Speaker 4: forty percent increase in Google searches for the term crystal healing. Now,
Speaker 4: do crystals work. It really really depends on your definition
Speaker 4: of work. One study in two thousand and one by
Speaker 4: doctor Christopher French asked participants to meditate for five minutes
Speaker 4: holding a crystal. Some were given a real awesome crystal,
Speaker 4: some were given a fake crystal, But people who reported
Speaker 4: warmth in their hands and increased feelings of well being
Speaker 4: were about equal. So wellness is kind of in the
Speaker 4: hand of the beholder here. Well, I have a question
Speaker 4: about this. Is it not kosher to touch someone's crystal?
Speaker 4: Because I always feel like you're not supposed touch their crysis.
Speaker 5: That's a great question because I think some have like,
Speaker 5: oh my gosh, right, But there are a lot of
Speaker 5: people that work really intensely with crystals, and they work
Speaker 5: with programming them with their intentions, with what they want
Speaker 5: to manifest, So it can be good to ask. But
Speaker 5: for me, like, if it's generally jewelry, I'm just like
Speaker 5: I wear it for the good energy and the good vibes,
Speaker 5: and if people want to it's like that's whatever. You know,
Speaker 5: you're going to share the energy and the good jujuw
Speaker 5: Did you.
Speaker 4: Take a specific crystal down with you to take the test?
Speaker 6: I think I had a few that day.
Speaker 5: I definitely had some quartz and some black turmaline because
Speaker 5: black termaline is really grounding and it's really good for
Speaker 5: your home especially, but it helps take away negative energy
Speaker 5: and negative thoughts and things like that.
Speaker 6: So I was like, I need to be calm and grounded, and.
Speaker 5: I did have some labagorites systone of magic, and I
Speaker 5: was like, I need some extra help.
Speaker 6: Today to pass the test.
Speaker 4: So that's it worked.
Speaker 6: It worked.
Speaker 5: I had like the little cluster on my desk.
Speaker 4: This psychology of crystals is super interesting scientifically. Number one
Speaker 4: crystals are here, some people swear by them, Adele, Katie Perry,
Speaker 4: all of the Kardashians, a Madonna. So as long as
Speaker 4: you're gonna hear about crystals, let's consider the psychology and
Speaker 4: the physiology behind them. We'll get to the physics in
Speaker 4: a minute. Okay, First, your brain is a jiggly mess.
Speaker 4: It's gotten nerves and wires and fatty stuff and memories
Speaker 4: and shit we don't understand. But one of those things
Speaker 4: we kind of understand is the placebo effect. Now, according
Speaker 4: to my doctor www dot WebMD dot com, one of
Speaker 4: the most common theories is that the placebo effect is
Speaker 4: due to a person's expectations. So if a person expects
Speaker 4: a pill to do something, then it's possible that the
Speaker 4: body's own chemistry can cause effects similar to what a
Speaker 4: medication might have caused. There's a word for this, it's
Speaker 4: called neural top down control of physiology. That is, the
Speaker 4: direct regulation by the brain of physiological features, features like
Speaker 4: the immune system and metabolism and stress. I didn't totally
Speaker 4: get this, so I looked up the scientific paper called
Speaker 4: top down and bottom up Mechanics in Mind Body Medicine,
Speaker 4: Development of an Integrative Framework for Psychophysiological Research. Sure, okay,
Speaker 4: this is what I said, and this was a published
Speaker 4: scientific paper. So mind body therapies, including things like hypnosis, biofeedback, yoga, meditation,
Speaker 4: taichi have been found effective for reducing depression, insomnia, anxiety,
Speaker 4: post traumatic stress, irritable bowel syndrome, nausea, acute and chronic pain,
Speaker 4: and for managing impaired circulation, diabetes, stuff like that. And
Speaker 4: there's a number of mechanisms of top down control of
Speaker 4: physiology that you can use to achieve that. One might
Speaker 4: be meditation, one might be holding a rock. What's a
Speaker 4: good starter kit for people with who are like, I'm
Speaker 4: going to do it. This is the year. This is
Speaker 4: why You're to dabble in crystals. I'm gonna become one
Speaker 4: of those witchy people and I'm just gonna dabble in
Speaker 4: awesome minerals and stuff.
Speaker 6: Just like a little few crystals.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, it's like there's like can they walk into
Speaker 4: a gem store, like what's their starter kit? Like they
Speaker 4: want to be like, ha, this is a great, great question.
Speaker 4: They want to have a good job, like a start
Speaker 4: a kit.
Speaker 6: This is great. Okay.
Speaker 5: Number one definitely clear chorts because it is a master healer. Okay,
Speaker 5: and please note if you get crystals, you need to
Speaker 5: cleanse them as well. You want to put them in
Speaker 5: the moonlight if you can just let that cleanse them,
Speaker 5: or you can put them in the sunshine, or put
Speaker 5: them in salt water or rice.
Speaker 6: I think does it rice? So you can just put
Speaker 6: them in right.
Speaker 4: Here in the toilet. I need to put in a
Speaker 4: bag of right. Is it like charging something that's low
Speaker 4: in the dark, like holding up to a light kind like.
Speaker 5: You need to like especially with quarts, because it takes
Speaker 5: in so much energy you want to release it.
Speaker 4: There is something called pizzo electricity, and it's the principle
Speaker 4: that crystalline forms like quartz can generate electricity when under stress.
Speaker 4: I mean, you see this if you have a quartz watch.
Speaker 4: Some folks argue that the crystalline structure and minerals aligns
Speaker 4: with the energy field of our bodies. Others say, well, shit, dog,
Speaker 4: that's pretty rock and it makes me happy. My stance tomato, tomato,
Speaker 4: Does the thing make you happy? Do the thing quartz?
Speaker 6: For sure.
Speaker 5: If you want to bring abundance, money, more monetary like
Speaker 5: stuff into your life, you want to get citrin is
Speaker 5: this beautiful kind of golden color.
Speaker 6: It is also quartz that is like the.
Speaker 5: Abundance stone, and it's just it's good for everything. And
Speaker 5: then if you want something to heal your heart, to
Speaker 5: promote self love and self care, you want to get
Speaker 5: rose quartz, which is a beautiful pink color. It's one
Speaker 5: of my favorite stones. It's very soothing to gorgeous, like soft,
Speaker 5: dusty pink, and that is number one heartstone. And then
Speaker 5: also black termalie. You definitely want to have just for
Speaker 5: your home, for yourself as protection because as we go
Speaker 5: into the world, you know, there's so much going on
Speaker 5: and I think that termalian is a really good protector
Speaker 5: against you know, whatever might arise that you're not really
Speaker 5: comfortable with, like.
Speaker 8: World wars and so yeah, like the apocalypse kind you
Speaker 8: want to be prepared with your crystals if anything, you
Speaker 8: can throw them people like.
Speaker 6: I gotta spike you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, come at me, bitches.
Speaker 6: This one's really heavy.
Speaker 5: And then I think, probably finally from me, I love
Speaker 5: Labatry is one of my favorite stones. I have so
Speaker 5: much of it just because it's incredibly beautiful and like
Speaker 5: every single one is different and it is the stone
Speaker 5: of magic. And I totally believe that.
Speaker 4: What are the camps of other gemologists or diamond dealers,
Speaker 4: how do they feel about like anything spiritual with gems?
Speaker 4: Like where do you where? Does where do gemologists fall?
Speaker 5: This is it's such a mixed bag, I think because crystals,
Speaker 5: for me, they're they're just like this beautiful creation of
Speaker 5: the earth. So they really ground me to the earth
Speaker 5: and they remind me to kind of calm down and center.
Speaker 5: And some people are just not in that mind frame.
Speaker 6: They're not on that.
Speaker 5: Spiritual side of things, so they're just they come from
Speaker 5: the earth and that is it, and they want to
Speaker 5: sell it for money, and they look at is it
Speaker 5: at it as like a business. So it really depends
Speaker 5: on your views on life and if you're a spiritual
Speaker 5: or not. And some people dabble a little bit because
Speaker 5: they just think they're so beautiful and there are actual
Speaker 5: just crystal collectors. It's not so much for the spiritual side,
Speaker 5: but just the beauty and the rarity of the items.
Speaker 5: So it's really a mixed bag all over the spectrum.
Speaker 5: It's not so much about the figure or whatever you're holding.
Speaker 5: It's just that you get to put your energy into
Speaker 5: something physical. You're not just always having to think or
Speaker 5: believe in something. You can actually hold something.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 4: It seems like once you kind of know what a
Speaker 4: stone stands for, then like any time you look at
Speaker 4: a glimmering gold stone or like a rose, courts are
Speaker 4: gonna be like, oh, yeah, that's right. My heart has
Speaker 4: to heal others, you know what I mean. It'll be
Speaker 4: on your mind at least. I have a bunch of
Speaker 4: questions from people who, yeah, wanted to just pepper you
Speaker 4: with questions, so we'll do a rapid fire around. Okay,
Speaker 4: you don't have to answer them in depth, but just
Speaker 4: tell me, yeah, we'll rapid fire these but before we
Speaker 4: take questions from you, our beloved listeners, we're going to
Speaker 4: take a quick break for sponsors of the show. Sponsors.
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Speaker 4: Okay, your questions, these are some good questions that I
Speaker 4: never would have thought of. Okay, Jen wants to know.
Speaker 4: I want to know what stone other than diamonds is
Speaker 4: overrated and what stone is underappreciated.
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, it's a good question. That was great.
Speaker 5: Good job, jum overrated. I'm just going to quickly go
Speaker 5: not to be spiteful with emeralds because those are on
Speaker 5: your shoeless, because it is actually a fact that eighty
Speaker 5: five percent of them are actually treated with an oil
Speaker 5: or a resin to make their clarity better. And not
Speaker 5: to take away from the amazing energy of an emerald,
Speaker 5: but I think it is deceptive sometimes if people don't
Speaker 5: truly know that. So if you're listening, know that eighty
Speaker 5: five percent of emeralds are generally treated. They're not synthetic,
Speaker 5: but they are treated with oil or something within them
Speaker 5: to make them more clear. So overrated, underrated, hmm, that's
Speaker 5: really hard.
Speaker 4: Labridite, spectralite, spectru light.
Speaker 5: For sure, I think underrated and should be more out
Speaker 5: There is just one of my favorite stones of all
Speaker 5: time called load lighte quartz or garden quartz because it
Speaker 5: literally looks like a foamy, purple green garden inside of quartz.
Speaker 5: It's like one of the most amazing stones I've ever seen,
Speaker 5: and they come in just like all these different shapes.
Speaker 5: I wish I would have brought one. Actually, my bracelet
Speaker 5: has it in it. It looks like kind of like moss.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, that's so cool. It's like a cool
Speaker 4: natural marble.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's crazy, and it's just like this whole world
Speaker 5: of stripes and you can see the growth patterns and
Speaker 5: the texture looks like that green foam you stick flowers
Speaker 5: into and you just want to touch it, but it
Speaker 5: is hard and it is encased in stone, garden quartz.
Speaker 6: Garden quartz, or it's load of light quartz.
Speaker 4: People remember garden courts, Yeah, load of light. I don't know,
Speaker 4: I have no idea where to start with that. Maybe
Speaker 4: L O D O L I T. Garden quarts easier
Speaker 4: to remember, Okay, Jessica wants to know if you have
Speaker 4: thoughts on haunted and cursed gems.
Speaker 6: You know, it's really interesting.
Speaker 5: I met this woman that I used to work for it,
Speaker 5: and she was the first person that ever said bad
Speaker 5: juju to me.
Speaker 6: That phrase bad.
Speaker 5: Juju And it's from her two stone antique diamond engagement
Speaker 5: ring that she had with her ex husband. She's like,
Speaker 5: this ring has bad juju and I have now fully
Speaker 5: come to realize that exists and it is true.
Speaker 6: So I think, how can I just what?
Speaker 4: Don't you put them in the moonlight?
Speaker 6: Maybe?
Speaker 5: But I think it's more like you just need to
Speaker 5: get rid of them from Like I think someone can
Speaker 5: restore the good energy of a stone, but I think
Speaker 5: a lot of times for a person, it can have
Speaker 5: such a negative connotation that you just need to like
Speaker 5: get rid of it from your life.
Speaker 6: And I think that's why a lot of people sell
Speaker 6: their stones.
Speaker 5: Or their jewels because they want to get rid of
Speaker 5: that situation that it was in, and hopefully the person
Speaker 5: that gets it then can bring some new life to it.
Speaker 4: If you have a haunted gem, should you first try
Speaker 4: to put it in rice or saltwater or the moonlight
Speaker 4: and see if your life gets better?
Speaker 5: I you know I would, but I think it's such
Speaker 5: a mental state, like if you have a nasty ex
Speaker 5: husband or partner or whoever that you keep looking. You
Speaker 5: look at the ring and you're like, oh right, and
Speaker 5: then you're like, oh, well, maybe I could make it
Speaker 5: into ear rings or something else, but then you'd still
Speaker 5: be thinking about it.
Speaker 6: You might as well just get rid of it and
Speaker 6: get something fresh.
Speaker 4: So haunted gems, Yes, they're a real thing, real badjjo.
Speaker 4: How do you feel about making cremains into a gemstone?
Speaker 4: Which are human remains? You know? How you can take
Speaker 4: You can take human remains that it like a the ashes, yes,
Speaker 4: and then turn them into a gemstone. Question.
Speaker 5: I've heard that recently, into like a diamond or something.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: I all about that personally because I'm a huge fan
Speaker 5: of memento mary jewelry and the sentimental like longing and
Speaker 5: loving of people that cared so deeply for their loved
Speaker 5: ones and they want to remember them. So Victorian times
Speaker 5: they used to take hair and weave it into like
Speaker 5: watch fobs or necklaces or brooches, and or they would
Speaker 5: like recently in the auction I work in an auction
Speaker 5: house and we have this adorable moonstone baby face brooch
Speaker 5: with a diamond bonnet, and it was probably for a
Speaker 5: child that had passed. But it's so sentimental and I think,
Speaker 5: you know, whatever way you want to remember your loved
Speaker 5: one is wonderful. I mean, some people do blood in
Speaker 5: a vile I don't know.
Speaker 4: If you were too young to recall Angelina Julie and
Speaker 4: her husband Billy Bob Thornton wearing vials of blood around
Speaker 4: their neck, please google that. If there's no other reason
Speaker 4: than to see the evolution of Angelina's eyebrows.
Speaker 5: I'm really into that. Just like loving memory of someone.
Speaker 4: So provided they're not a dick, and then you're going
Speaker 4: to have a haunted exactly. I mean, s don't want
Speaker 4: to do that one, all right, Clare, that was your question,
Speaker 4: so great, Yeah, just make sure they're not a jerk. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 4: Justin wants to know, is gem truly outrageous?
Speaker 6: Probably? Yes, Maybe Brittany, you.
Speaker 4: Would like to know what the difference is between mineralogy
Speaker 4: and gemology.
Speaker 6: That's a great question.
Speaker 5: I think what it comes down to is gemology is
Speaker 5: more the study of faceted gemstones, Okay, and I think
Speaker 5: mineralogy is the study of their natural form, how they
Speaker 5: come out of the earth. So then once you take
Speaker 5: those natural form and you cut it down to a gemstone,
Speaker 5: then that is when it becomes gemology. And then you're
Speaker 5: really looking inside at the stone and it's characteristics as
Speaker 5: far as if it's synthetic or natural rather than how
Speaker 5: it is you know, from the earth, and you dig
Speaker 5: it up and it's a perfect so.
Speaker 4: Oh got it. So it's kind of like a product
Speaker 4: of that little exactly.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then this was my A couple of people asked this,
Speaker 4: So diamond engagement rings, how did that start? And is
Speaker 4: that over or people? Or is that going to be
Speaker 4: eternal that people are going to be giving diamonds as engagement.
Speaker 5: Diamonds are forever, I think number one with the slogan's aside,
Speaker 5: diamonds are so popular because they are the toughest hardest.
Speaker 6: Stone in existence.
Speaker 5: So you can bang them around whatever, and they will
Speaker 5: last your lifetime.
Speaker 6: Other stones not so much.
Speaker 5: You have to be more careful about what you're putting
Speaker 5: in a setting and how you're setting it. So the
Speaker 5: next hardest stone is than a sapphire or a ruby.
Speaker 5: So a lot of people go with that option as
Speaker 5: well for an engagement ring. But then when you get
Speaker 5: into other areas like opal, which is something I do
Speaker 5: not recommend for an engagement ring whatsoever, because it is
Speaker 5: one of the softest stones and it will craze, It
Speaker 5: will start to crack really if you don't get take
Speaker 5: care of it, and if you wear it every day,
Speaker 5: so it's one that won't last as long. So I
Speaker 5: think diamonds are so wonderful because they are just so
Speaker 5: hard and they'll last you your lifetime if you, you know,
Speaker 5: take care of them properly. Some do chip if you
Speaker 5: hit them just right, but it is pretty rare, so
Speaker 5: I think that's why they're such a popular option. Where
Speaker 5: that exactly started, I'm not sure. It could have just
Speaker 5: been because of wanting to expand the diamond market once
Speaker 5: more diamonds were found, and you know, people use marketing
Speaker 5: to make everything happen.
Speaker 4: Oh, engagement rings, quick history. Diamonds rare expensive, but in
Speaker 4: the eighteen sixties huge diamond mines were discovered in South Africa.
Speaker 4: Hoo boy were their diamonds. The Beers Diamond Cartel was founded.
Speaker 4: Then the depression hit and in the late nineteen thirties
Speaker 4: they needed to sell more diamonds, so a marketing campaign
Speaker 4: was launched to convince people that starlets and rich people
Speaker 4: and the truly in love were diamonds. In the late
Speaker 4: nineteen forties, the slogan and Diamonds Forever was coined. And
Speaker 4: I mean, granted, diamonds are a hard ass stone, but
Speaker 4: they want you to want them, and also the lyrics.
Speaker 4: If you like it, then you should have offered a
Speaker 4: marriage dowry of goats and textiles and household items does
Speaker 4: not have the same.
Speaker 8: Ring.
Speaker 4: Sorry, Okay, diamonds so they're hardy.
Speaker 6: They are hardy. There are the number one hard stone.
Speaker 4: Right And if you get a used one and it's haunted,
Speaker 4: try to cleanse it, cleanse it, okay, GTK. Good to know, okay,
Speaker 4: and then we'll do we'll do good side bad side.
Speaker 4: What is your least favorite thing about gemology? What is
Speaker 4: something that's just bits annoying or pisses you off. Oh,
Speaker 4: or about your job as a gemologist because you work
Speaker 4: at an auction house appraising. Right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think my least favorite part of the
Speaker 5: job is all of the deception that comes with trying
Speaker 5: to mimic stones or imitate them, especially if you go
Speaker 5: to a lot of foreign countries they want to sell
Speaker 5: you rough stones, but they will they will manipulate them
Speaker 5: to look you know, real or authentic, and then you
Speaker 5: get them home and they're totally fake or they're like
Speaker 5: glass with some sort of you know, treatment on them.
Speaker 5: So that makes me really sad that there's a lack
Speaker 5: of respect. People want to make money and things like that,
Speaker 5: but don't go.
Speaker 4: Don't go stain a beer bottle and then be like,
Speaker 4: or he didn't call it this type of ruby, and
Speaker 4: then you find out that it's he treated and it
Speaker 4: loses its value by you know, more than half. So, right,
Speaker 4: But by that point you're like on another continent and
Speaker 4: they're like what.
Speaker 5: What, Yeah, joke's on you. Yeah, don't buy it like that.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you don't know what you're looking for,
Speaker 5: don't do it.
Speaker 4: No your shit. Before you go to another country and
Speaker 4: take home some jewels.
Speaker 5: Right, you want to know just some little tips before
Speaker 5: going through with that. But I think that's probably my
Speaker 5: biggest thing is like the deception that exists in the
Speaker 5: world is just really sad.
Speaker 4: So it's one of your favorite things.
Speaker 5: My favorite thing that makes me so unbelievably happy is
Speaker 5: when you look inside of a stone in a microscope
Speaker 5: and you just you're looking at this like a world
Speaker 5: that is like so incredible, and I can't believe that
Speaker 5: the world or you know, the Earth has actually made this,
Speaker 5: like something deep within the ground has been created that
Speaker 5: is unbelievably spectacular and then some amazing human brought it
Speaker 5: outside of you know, the earth.
Speaker 6: So so incredible.
Speaker 5: And there's a lot of different photographers now that are
Speaker 5: actually taking photos of the insides of gems.
Speaker 6: And there's a few of my favorite Instagram accounts.
Speaker 5: I have to remember all their names, but there's MINERALI
Speaker 5: in and he does a lot of like inner opal
Speaker 5: and it just looks like this underwater sea world that's
Speaker 5: like in the sunlight.
Speaker 6: It's amazing.
Speaker 5: But you can look up, you know, microphotos of gems
Speaker 5: and see all their inclusions and you'll see gas bubbles
Speaker 5: inside this tiny like negative space that is literally tunny diny,
Speaker 5: like you have to look at a microscope to see it.
Speaker 4: So looking through a microscope is just a super trippy world.
Speaker 4: Is like in Superman when he lives in a crystal world.
Speaker 5: Kind of you're just you're in awe of you know
Speaker 5: that it exists. You're just like, how did the Earth
Speaker 5: make something so beautiful? And a lot of people don't
Speaker 5: know that that is something or they just you know,
Speaker 5: it's not something that interests them. But for me, it's
Speaker 5: just like this, I don't know, it's like a nerdy thing.
Speaker 5: I just love to look in a microscope and see
Speaker 5: this whole other world and it makes me really grateful
Speaker 5: for the Earth.
Speaker 6: I'm like, wow, so amazing, Thanks Earth.
Speaker 4: Isn't it weird that there are gems that you haven't
Speaker 4: met yet that are just chilling in a rock in
Speaker 4: a cave right.
Speaker 6: Now somewhere, longing to be brought to.
Speaker 4: Light and gokdat?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And have you seen those like crazy giant selenite
Speaker 5: crystal caves in Mexico that noo that's been circulating everywhere where.
Speaker 5: They're literally giant and you see the men like walking
Speaker 5: on them and it's just like pure magic.
Speaker 6: I don't even know. Damn Superman must live there.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, holy stalagtites people. I look this up
Speaker 4: and it's insane. Before you Google image search Cave of
Speaker 4: the Crystals, which is in Chihuahua, Mexico, please please consider
Speaker 4: holding onto your butts because it's so insanely pretty you're
Speaker 4: gonna lose your minds thirty foot high crystals. They make
Speaker 4: Superman's Fortress of Solitude look like a studio apartment in Burbank.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna give you this skinny on these things. So
Speaker 4: the caves were discovered in two thousand by some miners,
Speaker 4: and they were essentially flooded naturally, but they were drained
Speaker 4: by the mining company to reveal these insane beautiful structures.
Speaker 4: And the caves right above a magma chamber, so they're
Speaker 4: hot as bawls one hundred and thirty six degrees and
Speaker 4: when they're drained, it's up to ninety nine percent humidity.
Speaker 4: So researchers looking into these crystals had to wear vests
Speaker 4: that were stuffed with like otter pops and ventilators just
Speaker 4: to study them for twenty minutes at a time. The
Speaker 4: crystals are made out of gypsum, which is the same
Speaker 4: stuff as in drywall, but it's in crystal form. Now,
Speaker 4: the mining operation recently stopped. The caves got reflooded, so
Speaker 4: you can't go visit them. You can't have your birthday
Speaker 4: party in them. But just think the crystals are just
Speaker 4: in a hot bath. They're chilling. The crystals are like,
Speaker 4: get out of here, dude. We've been here for half
Speaker 4: a million years, getting bigger and bigger. Fill us back up,
Speaker 4: Get your hard hat sat of my butt. That's what
Speaker 4: the cave is saying. Sorry, I talk about butts so much. Geez, Well,
Speaker 4: what are you excited about? What's like your next goal? Like,
Speaker 4: what's the next thing you're excited about doing in your work?
Speaker 5: I personally just want to work more now, like less
Speaker 5: with jewelry and more with the specimens, more mining, getting
Speaker 5: my hands on the natural product, seeing it in its environment.
Speaker 6: It's natural environment.
Speaker 5: So ideally I would love to work in a warehouse
Speaker 5: of crystals and just be with crystals all day every day,
Speaker 5: just like a huge and they exist as wholesalers and
Speaker 5: things like that that sell to smaller stores. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: just I love the idea of for me, the spiritual
Speaker 5: aspect of just putting your energy into something physical to
Speaker 5: help you connect.
Speaker 6: To Earth and to you know, your dreams and whatever
Speaker 6: you're doing.
Speaker 4: So so, now that I have this blue crystal that
Speaker 4: I keep in my purse, should I keep it in
Speaker 4: my purse? Or is that a shady place to keep
Speaker 4: a crystal?
Speaker 6: You can totally keep it in your purse.
Speaker 5: I generally always carry something on me like legitimately, braw crystals,
Speaker 5: I think are a thing for women.
Speaker 6: Just keep crystals. Braw crystals.
Speaker 5: You just stick it right in your broth you don't
Speaker 5: have a pocket, Like if you're wearing a dress, I
Speaker 5: generally have one, just you.
Speaker 6: Know, do you have any in your bra right now?
Speaker 5: I don't, unfortunately, but I'm wearing so many that But
Speaker 5: sometimes you know, like I'm wearing a certain thing and
Speaker 5: I don't really have a necklace on or something, right,
Speaker 5: so I just kind of stick one in there. Nobody knows,
Speaker 5: but it's for me and it's right next to my heart,
Speaker 5: which makes me feel a little more, you know, secure
Speaker 5: and then better going into the world.
Speaker 4: But this is my new favorite thing, is that brock crystal.
Speaker 5: Crystals like really like soft palm stones are really good
Speaker 5: for that. They actually sell their like these round flat stones,
Speaker 5: but they kind of sit in there really nicely.
Speaker 6: So just like to just like knit one tumbers exactly.
Speaker 5: Just be careful, you know, you don't want to like
Speaker 5: pop out somewhere, you know, like what is that You'd
Speaker 5: be like, I don't know where that rock came from,
Speaker 5: you know, don't touch my crystal.
Speaker 6: Yeah, seriously, though.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna shove this in my bron and see what happens.
Speaker 4: Yeah to a calmer week a dendum, someone you know
Speaker 4: who is recording this voiceover right now may have put
Speaker 4: a crystal in her bra and so what. But also
Speaker 4: it was the sharp, pointy kind. And when she took
Speaker 4: off her bra, it fell on her toe and she
Speaker 4: was like, oh, I forgot you're in there, buddy. And
Speaker 4: then she looked down and she had the most ridiculous
Speaker 4: crystal shaped imprint in her chest area. So if you're
Speaker 4: gonna do a rock, crystal, get the flat kind. Also
Speaker 4: side notes. Since researching this topic plus last episodes deep
Speaker 4: dive into how much a Dino dig cost versus an
Speaker 4: American wedding, Google and Instagram and Facebook have absolutely poured
Speaker 4: ads for engagement items into my eyeholes, and I hereby
Speaker 4: asked them to please knock the fuck off robots. Speaking
Speaker 4: of social media, you can find the wonderful Wonderful Kelly
Speaker 4: Sindtech on Instagram as the rock Huntress. She posts pictures
Speaker 4: of beautiful stones, including the ones that we talked about today.
Speaker 4: Ologies is also on there at ologies and on Twitter
Speaker 4: at ologis Pod, and I'm on both as Ali Ward.
Speaker 4: And if there's something about the podcast you want to hear,
Speaker 4: you just want to say hi or give me some feedback,
Speaker 4: you can email me at Helloaliward at gmail dot com.
Speaker 4: If you love the podcast, you can go straight to rating, subscribing, reviewing,
Speaker 4: tell friends, and thank you to everyone supporting on Patreon.
Speaker 4: I decided to put this out without a network. I'm
Speaker 4: just going solo so I could do it without a
Speaker 4: bunch of ads, and you guys are making it possible
Speaker 4: for me to pay a sound engineer, Hey Jason, and
Speaker 4: buy microphones and software and put up money for merch. Also,
Speaker 4: feel free to visit ologismerch dot com for shirts and totes.
Speaker 4: Thank you Shannon and Bonnie for helping me that, and
Speaker 4: thank you to Hannah and Aaron. A few of my
Speaker 4: dear friends for creating the Ologies podcast group on Facebook
Speaker 4: and just being awesome. So until next Tuesday, I remember
Speaker 4: to ask smart people them questions before you wind up
Speaker 4: crushed into a souvenir pendant or haunting an emerald. Next
Speaker 4: week Horology, Pacadermatology, homeology, cryptozoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, paratology, anthology, zeriology, Elinology.
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