A Righteous Gemstone
A group of original Victorian engagement rings in rose gold circa 1900s. Credit: Suzanne Sachs on Unsplash.
One of our listeners is in a pickle. He’s looking to buy an engagement ring but wants to make sure the diamond comes from an ethical and sustainable source. So he sent us an email asking for help.
This is our latest addition of “This, That, or the Other Thing.” It's a series about the choices we make in our lives to try and build a more sustainable world, whether they have any effect, and what we can do instead if they don't.
Today… Host Nate Hegyi looks into the most sustainable ways to source that big, sparkly rock. Should it be a diamond from the ground? A diamond grown in a lab? Or maybe a different gemstone altogether?
Featuring Saleem Ali, Rachelle Bergstein and Anna Provost.
Producer Justine Paradis’ sapphire engagement ring. Credit: Justine Paradis.
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS
You can find a copy of Rachelle Bergstein’s book here. She was also featured on this episode about diamonds, from 99% Invisible.
The Kimberley Process helped reduce the number of conflict diamonds in the world – here’s a list of countries that are participants.
Anna Provost features a lot of her really cool Montana-mined sapphires on Instagram.
A recent study in the journal Nature found that mining diamonds produces millions times more greenhouse gas emissions than growing them in a lab.
SUPPORT
To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly.
Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.
Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.
CREDITS
Host: Nate Hegyi
Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi
Mixed by Nate Hegyi
Editing by Taylor Quimby
Our staff includes Felix Poon, Marina Henke, and Justine Paradis.
Executive producer: Taylor Quimby
Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio.
Music by Rikard Frumm, Ben Elson, Daniel Friddel, Out to the World, Signs of Wonder, Sahara Skylight, LoFive, Teeklef and El Flaco Collective.
Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
Audio Transcript
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Nate Hegyi: This is Outside/In a show where curiosity and the natural world collide.
I’m your host Nate Hegyi here with producers Justine Paradis and Taylor Quimby.
Taylor Quimby: Hey
Justine Paradis: Hello!
Nate Hegyi: Hello hello!
So I gathered y’all here because we are the only members of the team that are… married.
Although Justine, you are the only one of us with an engagement ring, right?
Can we see it?
Justine Paradis: Oh I would be happy to show it. Can you see it through this zoom-y screen?
Nate Hegyi: It’s so beautiful!
Justine Paradis: Thank you!
Nate Hegyi: We’re going to have a picture of it in the show notes, if you’re comfortable with that.
Justine Paradis: Oh I am happy to share. I’m very pro my ring.
MUX You know it too - Da Sein
Nate Hegyi: Regardless of whether you were the ones proposing, or being proposed to… how much time did both of you spend thinking about rings?
Taylor Quimby: Oof. A lot.
Justine Paradis: Months.
Taylor Quimby: Especially because it’s the kind of thing you’re thinking about in the shower, lying in bed at night, you’re weighing all these decisions and… yeah, it’s a significant thing.
Nate Hegyi: Absolutely, So This is something that one of our listeners, a guy named Ben Heney, has been thinking about a lot lately .
Ben Heney: Hi Outside/In… I just started shopping for an engagement ring, and while it’s a very exciting time, the options can be overwhelming.
Nate Hegyi: Especially, because as soon as he started looking online he got lost in a sea of ads.
Ad montage:
A natural diamond is worth the wait.
We now offer lab-grown, dream diamonds you can actually afford.
Ben Heney: Every company selling diamonds seems to be making some claim as to ethics and sustainability.
Ad: Natural diamonds are real, rare, responsible.
Ben Heney: So I was wondering what was actually going on.
Nate Hegyi: So Ben reached out to us because he wants us to answer three specific questions .
One:
Ben Heney: Is there any way that real diamonds can be ethical?
Nate Hegyi: Two:
Ben Heney: Are man-made diamonds actually more sustainable?’
Nate Hegyi: And three:
Ben Heney: Is there another material that is diamond-like without all the baggage? I know that’s a lot of questions but it’s a big decision and I hope you can help and I love the show.
Taylor Quimby: Wow nate, I hope you’re ready for the pressure of maybe making or breaking this man’s marriage.
Nate Hegyi: This is a terrifying episode for me, I’m going to try my best.
MUX Bistro Barfing - El Flaco Collective
Nate Hegyi: So this obviously calls for another installment of… This, that or the other thing.
It's a series about the choices we make to try and build a more sustainable world, whether they have any effect, and what we can do instead if they don't.
Today on the show… what’s the most sustainable way to source that big sparkly rock?
Should it be a diamond from the ground, a diamond grown in the lab… or maybe a whole ‘nother gemstone?
stay tuned.
Taylor Quimby: Disclaimer: we are not responsible for your marriage.
Nate Hegyi: This is Outside/In, I’m Nate Hegyi here with producers Justine Paradis and Taylor Quimby.
Alright, so these days people are bucking a lot of wedding traditions. They’re getting married in courthouses, having their friends officiate.
But one tradition that seems to continue to endure in this age of unconventional weddings is a diamond engagement ring. More than 80 percent of couples buy one before the big proposal.
And nowadays, we think of them as a super romantic gesture… but its origins are anything but.
Rachelle Bergstein: the diamond industry would like you to believe that this is a tradition that goes back to the the Middle Ages where knights are getting down on their knees and giving women, um, diamond rings or any kind of rings to seal the deal of their proposals. But that's not really the case.
Taylor Quimby: Knight of the roundtable propaganda.
Nate Hegyi: So this is Rachelle Bergstein. She’s the author of the book Brilliance and Fire: A Biography of Diamonds.
And she will tell you… the diamond thing is relatively new – but people have been exchanging something, often rings, for a long time.
Rachelle Bergstein: the proposal of marriage is actually, in a lot of ways, and especially before the 20th century, a business transaction. Right.
So a man who's asking a woman to marry him, um, he's showing her by producing a ring with a precious or semi-precious stone that he actually has the financial foundation to back up this pledge.
Taylor Quimby: It’s like a dowry.
Justine Paradis: This is why I think marriage is essentially conservative at root because it is a business transaction and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s like - business of your household.
MUX - Feelin’ Em - Teeklef
Nate Hegyi: Okay. So, uh, before I tell you how diamonds got so trendy, I want to pause here and talk a little bit about what, geologically speaking, a diamond really is.
Rachelle Bergstein: A diamond is carbon. That's it. Carbon and pressure and time.
Justine Paradis: I remember learning in geology class that diamonds and the graphite in a number two pencil are made of the exact same element. They are both 100 percent carbon.
Nate Hegyi: Yes. But diamonds, are one of the hardest minerals on earth for a reason. The bonds between the carbon atoms are incredibly tight.
And that comes from the 2,000 degree heat and the immense pressure beneath the earth’s crust… in the mantle. That’s where diamonds are formed naturally.
And get this – we think diamonds are rare – but scientists estimate that up to 2 percent of the earth’s mantle is made of diamonds.
Taylor Quimby: 2%?!
Justine Paradis: That’s huge, that surprises me.
Nate Hegyi: We just need some magic device to get down there, and we can all strike it rich.
Taylor Quimby: Except, except they’ll be so worthless, they’ll be like quartz. Like I could make my kitchen room island out of diamond.
Nate Hegyi: You would never need to worry about cutting boards at that point.
Justine Paradis: You would have to worry about your knives, though. Your knives would just be dull as heck.
Nate Hegyi: That’s true
Nate Hegyi: But for much of human history, diamonds were really hard to find on the Earth’s surface. And that made them, to us, extremely rare and extremely expensive.
Rachelle Bergstein: and they were traded, um, as really precious objects, and they became, um, revered and, um, desired by the richest people on the planet
Nate Hegyi: But that all changed in 1870 when these diamond-encrusted igneous rocks were found underground in South Africa.
Rachelle Bergstein: All of a sudden, people from all over the globe are flooding down to South Africa to join the diamond fields and start digging for stones. And what they find is an incredible store of diamonds like has never been seen before.
Nate Hegyi: A whole mining town sprouted up. It was named after the British secretary of state official… Lord Kimberley.
Justine Paradis: I will never, ever, ever get over that name. Lord Kimberley. I understand that it meant something else at the time but now it means, to me, like, a very American girl name, you know?
Taylor Quimby: It’s like… Lord Tiffany!
Nate Hegyi: That’s amazing, amazing. I love it. And in honor of Lord Kimberly they named this diamond-rich igneous rock “kimberlite.” This is where the modern diamond business really got its start.
Rachelle Bergstein: A man named Cecil Rhodes, an English sickly boy, follows his brother down to South Africa and realizes very quickly that there is so much money to be made in diamonds, and he creates the company that we now know as DeBeers.
Justine Paradis: Cecil Rhodes. He was a pretty problematic dude.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah he was super racist. And he had a problem. The allure of diamonds is that they are rare. Hard to find. But now, because of these mines, they weren’t so rare. Some sites had tens of thousands of diamonds.
And this glut of supply means yeah… lower prices… but also… kinda kills the story of why folks bought diamonds in the first place.
So Cecil did what any self respecting Gilded Age baron would do… and he created a monopoly. Bought up most of the most of the mines in South Africa and artificially constricted the supply.
For awhile this worked – especially because a new generation of Americans were getting really, really rich.
Rachelle Bergstein: America has always had a little bit of status anxiety. Um, when it comes to the fact that you can be really wealthy here, but you can't be royalty. And so, um, in the Gilded Age, you see railroad barons and their wives wanting to imitate European royalty. And one of those one of the ways that they do that is by wearing diamonds.
Justine Paradis: This is pre-diamond rings on every finger right? This is still, like, diamonds as tiaras?
Nate Hegyi: Yeah exactly, for instance, it was a big deal when FDR bought Eleanor Roosevelt a diamond ring. Like that made headlines.
Justine Paradis: This is an era when diamonds had names… like the hope diamond.
Nate Hegyi: Exactly. But then the Great Depression hits… followed by WWII
Rachelle Bergstein: and DeBeers starts to see its best clients. Um, which are the rich Americans? They're not buying diamonds anymore, you know, and they're losing their wealth. And middle class Americans don't have kind of upward mobility to buy diamonds.
Nate Hegyi: DeBeers needed new clients… and wanted middle class Americans to covet diamonds.
But how do you convince regular folks to save two months worth of their salary to buy a gemstone?
You launch an absolutely massive publicity campaign.
SONG: Diamonds are a girl’s best friend
DeBeers started paying to get diamonds into Hollywood movies…
They paid stars to wear them and talk about their diamond engagement rings in interviews. They bought ad campaigns in upscale magazines like the New Yorker encouraging young men to show their love with a diamond engagement ring… and they created the tagline to end all taglines…
Justine Paradis: Ooh, is it diamonds are forever?
MUX - Posing - Lofive
Nate Hegyi: All of this worked. Diamonds seeped into the American consciousness.
By 1959, 80 percent of brides-to-be in the U.S. reported they had been given a diamond engagement ring.
Justine Paradis: Is this when the two months salary thing was created?
Nate Hegyi: Yes.
Taylor Quimby: This is the this is the thing I dislike the most about all of this is that there's a direct that there's a direct financial implication that says, like, how much you spend is a measurement of your love and commitment. And I get that like, yeah, this probably hails from that business transaction idea - but as a cheapskate and somewhat sentimental guy, that ticks me off.
Nate Hegyi: And this is the magic trick that DeBeers played on the world. Because again… diamonds aren’t rare. Over 44,000 pounds worth of diamonds are mined every year.
Rachelle Bergstein: the stone that your average middle class 25 year old is going to buy for his girlfriend and propose marriage? No, it's not going to be worth what he pays for it.
Mux - Sight of Wonders - African Safari
Nate Hegyi: So we know now why diamonds are so popular… but we should note that their reputation has been tarnished in recent years… and that brings us to Ben’s first question:
BH: Is there any way that real diamonds can be ethical?
Nate Hegyi: So I think what Ben is alluding to here is something called conflict diamonds.
Rachelle Bergstein: A conflict diamond is a diamond that has been smuggled out of a war zone and is being used to pay for atrocities committed against people.
Mux - Sight of Wonders - African Safari BUMP and fade
Nate Hegyi: Best example of this is Sierra Leone. You ever see the movie Blood Diamond?
Taylor Quimby: Oh, a long time ago. All I really remember is that Leonardo DiCaprio's South African accent is not his strongest.
CLIP: You think that if I found a stone like that I’d still be on this continent?
Nate Hegyi: I thought it was kind of strong. I thought it was pretty okay.
Taylor Quimby: It took me out of it. Let's put it that way.
Nate Hegyi: That is fair. So you are alluding to… a Big blockbuster movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, inspired by a nonfiction book by the same name. It was about a rebel faction that came into Sierra Leone in the 1990s, took control of the diamond fields, and:
Rachelle Bergstein: used the money from the diamonds they were mining to fund their actions, which were horrific. they were enslaving children and brainwashing them and turning them into child soldiers. They were kidnaping people and cutting off their hands as part of their signature. I mean, really sick stuff and stuff that, you know, your average bride in Florida didn't necessarily want to associate with her engagement.
Justine Paradis: I mean, when you think about all of the words that are associated with diamonds, like clarity and purity and love, it's just the reality of a diamond sourced from that region is so far from those ideas.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, and back in the 1990’s, about one in every ten diamonds were sourced this way, they were conflict diamonds.
Justine Paradis: Dang.
Nate Hegyi: Once stories about this broke… there was a lot of backlash and international scrutiny.
So the United Nations, NGOs, and the diamond industry came together to create the Kimberley process.
Rachelle Bergstein: the idea is that diamonds, when they were moved around the world, they would be put in sealed packages with, um, papers, actually, that would give information about their identity, their provenance, um, what country they came from.
Taylor Quimby: Almost like a like a piece of artwork, like, provenance is like a really important thing in the art world.
Nate Hegyi: Exactly. So if a country is certified by the Kimberley process, then they are designated as a source of conflict-free diamonds. Sounds great, right? But like many plans – this one has fallen a little short. Rachelle told me there are two big problems with the Kimberley Process.
One - it’s voluntary. So governments can opt in to the process but they are also the ones who are responsible for keeping tabs on the mines and enforcing the rules. There’s no outsider doing that.
Two - the definition of a conflict diamond under the Kimberley Process is very, very narrow. It’s a rough stone used by rebel movements to undermine an existing government.
But what if it’s the government that’s causing problems?
Rachelle Bergstein: So this was the issue with Zimbabwe.
MUX - Theories - Out to the World
Rachelle Bergstein: We're seeing a government that's actively oppressing their people that's committing atrocities, but they're actually in power. So Zimbabwe is saying, yes, we would like to be a part of the Kimberley Process, and no one's saying, hey, but you're actually using your diamond money for evil.
Nate Hegyi: Another country that’s certified by the Kimberely process?
Russia. Not exactly the bastion of human rights.
Taylor Quimby: This sounds like a conflict of interest.
Nate Hegyi: All this means that say that, yes, Ben can get ethically-sourced diamonds… but he might need to to dig a little deeper into where the diamond came from. Countries like Botswana, Canada, Namibia… Australia. Those are safe bets for conflict-free diamonds.
But there’s another way to approach this question of ethically sourced diamonds: and that has to do with… the environment.
Rachelle Bergstein: can you mined diamonds without enslaving children? Definitely.. Can you mined diamonds without disrupting the earth in a way that all sorts of mining does? Um, not necessarily so. It's about your priorities, right?
Nate Hegyi: That’s after the break.
But first… We are collecting a new round of questions for our next Outside/Inbox episode… and this time, the theme is going to be “wings.”
So what are your questions about wings? Wanna know if flying birds can get cramps? How airplane wings work? What happens to the rest of the chicken when you just get a massive plate of hot wings?
Taylor Quimby: I don’t actually want to answer that one because I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be not a pretty sight.
Nate Hegyi: Send your questions via voice memo to outside in at nhpr dot org, or by calling our hotline: 1 844 GO OTTER.
We’ll be right back.
###
Nate Hegyi: Hey this is Outside/In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I’m Nate Hegyi here with TQ and JP… all of us married… helping our dear listener Ben Heney navigate through the rough and tumble and tough world of buying a sustainable and ethical engagement ring.
Which brings us to Ben’s second question.
Ben: Are man-made diamonds actually more sustainable?
Nate Hegyi: By the way, I didn’t even know this was a thing until Ben asked about it.
Justine Paradis: You didn't know man made diamonds existed?
Nate Hegyi: I had absolutely no idea when we first started floating this episode and I found out about this, I was like, we can do alchemy. That's wild.
Nate Hegyi: So the market for lab-grown diamonds didn’t actually come from the jewelry industry… It happened because General Electric wanted cheaper drill bits.
Saleem Ali: Most diamonds by volume are used for drilling equipment.
Nate Hegyi: This is Saleem Ali. He’s chair of the department of geography and spatial sciences at the University of Delaware, and the reason we use diamonds for drillbits and saws is because they are super duper hard, and great for cutting into things like stone or cement.
And as we know from earlier, DeBeers had a monopoly over most of the mines in the world.
So back in the 1950s, General Electric wanted to have their own supply diamonds… and they launched a top-secret program called Project Superpressure.
Taylor Quimby: I wonder if they tried to get Freddie Mercury to help them develop it. Like, super pressure making diamonds for us.
Justine Paradis: Yeah, it's so secret, but we do need a theme song.
Nate Hegyi: I love that. So project superpressure… they developed a technique where you put a carbon seed – could be a small diamond or a piece of graphite – into a high-pressure press along with some carbon gas and you subject it to extreme pressure and temperatures of nearly 3,000 degrees fahrenheit.
Let it work for a half hour… and you’ve got a rough diamond.
Nate Hegyi: But that is not something you’d put on an engagement ring… for that , scientists had to come up with several different processes.
Saleem Ali: one of them that is used a lot is called chemical vapor deposition.
Justine Paradis: It sounds like a cool process too. Like vaporizing, condensing a diamond.
Nate Hegyi: Oh it is.
MUX Daniel Fridell - Left and Right and up and down
Nate Hegyi: So… what they do is, they take a microscopic sliver of a diamond into a chamber that’s heated to about 1500 degrees fahrenheit. Then they flood it with a carbon rich gas which attaches itself to the diamond seed… layer after layer.
Saleem Ali: like you're making a dessert, for example, you start off with some, you know, little piece of chocolate, and then you deposit, uh, different other layers on it to make it more attractive. Uh, that's essentially what you're doing so. You're depositing different layers of carbon, but you want to do it in a way so that it comes out looking nice, like a crystal.
Nate Hegyi: Just don’t eat the dessert.
Justine Paradis: Could it really hurt?
Taylor Quimby: As long as you don’t care about your teeth.
Justine Paradis: swallow it like a pill.
Nate Hegyi: And what you get is a man-made diamond that is chemically identical to a natural one.
So Nowadays, lab grown diamonds make up about 14 percent of the market.
They sell themselves as cheaper and more sustainable than mined diamonds.
Ad: Grown brilliance diamonds. Real. Smart.
Nate Hegyi: Which brings us to Ben’s second question – is that really true?
Here’s Saleem.
Saleem Ali: I think there's little doubt that in terms of energy and environmental impact, the lab grown diamonds are likely to be better.
Nate Hegyi: That’s because mining natural diamonds is inherently intrusive. there are two ways to do it. The first is alluvial mining, where you dredge a river bed in search of rough gemstones.
Saleem Ali: And so that's going to, you know, cause some siltation and can impact, uh, wildlife in those areas. and then the indirect impact is from human activity because if you get a diamond rush, all these people suddenly coming to remote river areas, you know, they're going to need, uh, sanitation, food. They may build roads and DeForest land to get access to those areas, which could be fairly remote. So there's that indirect impact from the human activity to actually get there.
Nate Hegyi: Only about ten percent of diamonds in the world come from this kind of mining. The rest come from mining that underground kimberlite rock.
Saleem Ali: So it's like any mining activity, you have to take the rock burden off of the ore body to expose it. Some of it can be done through what we call open pit mining. So it looks like, you know, any kind of large open pit mine.
Taylor Quimby: You don't really hear too many claims about sustainable open pits. You know, you just don't.
Justine Paradis: Just an image of an open pit mine. It's like, oh, that's not.
Nate Hegyi: Doesn't look good. The optics are very bad.
Taylor Quimby: Yeah
Nate Hegyi: We should also say though, lab-grown diamonds are perfect either. Creating all that heat and pressure in a lab takes a TON of energy. And in some areas, that energy comes from fossil fuels.
Still, a recent study in the journal Nature found that mining diamonds produces infinitely more greenhouse gas emissions than growing them in a lab.
But Saleem also told me that when he thinks about sustainability, it isn't just the environment that's on his mind. There are also people and jobs. And in that sense.
Saleem Ali: actually mined diamonds have much more potential for providing sustainable outcomes for countries or communities where they are being, uh, they're being mined.
Nate Hegyi: So this is kind of the opposite of the Blood Diamond story. Right?
The country of Botswana is a good example. He says its economy was transformed – for the better – by the diamond industry.
Saleem Ali: And it came at a really important time because the country was going through the aids pandemic And, uh, the, the money from the diamonds allowed Botswana to provide essentially free, uh, HIV retroviral medication for its population. They provided free education up to university level for the country. So it was able to really use the diamond wealth very wisely.
Justine Paradis: I also think good labor practices and caring about the people, uh, tends to translate to caring about toxicity and environmental practices.
Nate Hegyi: It’s all about tradeoffs and priorities.
For Saleem… he bought a mined diamond from Botswana for his wife for their twentieth wedding anniversary because of what diamonds have done for that country.
Saleem Ali: I would rather that than the synthetic one because I could see the story of what happened with it. And I know that diamonds have had a very positive impact on the whole for Botswana
MUX - Ben Elson - Chrome Dreams pop and fade
Nate Hegyi: Again, this goes back to the idea that really…
Most diamonds themselves are actually pretty worthless. They have very little resale value. But the story of how you bought it – where it came from – gives it a real value. By itself, it’s just a colorless, clear rock. How do you feel about buying a diamond for Taylor?
Taylor Quimby: Uh, well, I didn't I didn't buy a diamond. Yeah. I mean, I fretted about it because I wanted to propose, but then actually, um, my now mother in law, her mom offered us her diamond engagement ring from a previous marriage and which was, like, such a generous gift. in a way, I mean, it's great because I didn't have to worry about the expense, and we can put that money into the wedding and doing other stuff. On the other hand, I will say I did fret about it, too, because of this idea that the that the monetary value is part of what you are bringing to the table, getting it for free from, you know, my bride to be's mom almost was like, am I doing enough? Like should I have spent money on this But all that seems to be about what other people think versus like what it means to us. But I could feel that pressure. And I think so much of this story is this weird combination of the internal pressure you feel getting married and End this cultural expectation that comes from advertising and from all these big questions that we're talking about here.
Nate Hegyi: Just like a diamond feels pressure. Lots and lots of pressure
Taylor Quimby: pushing down on me…Justine, you're about to say something more important, I think.
Justine Paradis: I mean, it's interesting that this idea of sacrifice that came from an advertising campaign essentially 80 years ago was not only informing this choice around the object, but also about, like, the moment and what love means. You know.
Nate Hegyi: And when it comes to Ben, our listener… hate to say it… but it’s just gonna come down to your own personal choice. Do your homework, figure out what your priorities are… and listen you don’t have to buy a new diamond you could get a vintage one that’s a great way to do something more sustainably. Or you could just say screw it, I’m going to get something completely different, and that actually brings us to your last question.
Ben: Is there another material that is diamond-like without all the baggage?
So there is one other option for an engagement ring gemstone I want to mention… and I believe that it is on your finger Justine…
Justine Paradis: Yes, so I picked a sapphire, a ceylon sapphire, Ceylon is the british empire name for Sri Lanka. So Sri Lanka is a place that has really strict rules about its mines and foreign ownership of its mines, so that’s a good thing. It was also a process that my husband and I did together. Like we agreed we’d get married, we chose the designer together. We picked the ring together and I really just want to say that that was such a wonderful option and it doesn’t have to come, you know, from the man or as a surprise. You don’t have to figure it out on your own. It was wonderful to do this together. And sapphires are… have so many cool qualities to them that the more I live with my ring the more I love it.
Taylor Quimby: That’s awesome.
Nate Hegyi: yeah. So sapphires are kind of having a moment. And that’s because there are small sapphire mines that tend to be a little cheaper… to have a lower environmental footprint… And not only can you get them from Sri Lanka, but you can get them from a place near and dear to my heart: Montana.
Justine Paradis: I was deciding between a Montana sapphire and one of these, and they are… Montana sapphires are so beautiful.
Nate Hegyi: I got a chance to see one at a store in Phillipsburg, Montana.
Nate Hegyi: [in tape] Sorry, I'm a little a little bit early.
Anna Provost: You're okay. You're okay.
Nate Hegyi: This is Anna Provost – she owns Montana gems. It’s a tiny little hole in the wall shop… And she pulled out a case of very pretty rocks.
Nate Hegyi [in tape]: So what are we looking at right here?
Anna Provost: We are looking at Montana sapphires and they come in every single color. you get purples and blues and greens and yellows and oranges. And then almost always you will see a shift in color in the stones depending on the lighting.
Nate Hegyi [in tape]: Do you have one that you could like show? Show me the shift in light.
Anna Provost: You can see this is kind of a green. Gray. Yeah. Follow me outside.
<<we walk outside>>
Nate Hegyi [in tape]: Okay. Whoa.. It's like almost like the ocean. The way the ocean changes. That's so cool.
Anna Provost: And almost every single one of them will do that. So it's interesting. <<fade out>>
MUX Rickard - I’ll Tell You Like It Is
Nate Hegyi: It's amazing. Like I kind of fell in love with those sapphires.
Justine Paradis: They're intoxicating. Like the British literally went bananas over them.
Nate Hegyi: Oh absolutely, and like, this is where the story gets personal for me. I never bought Christine an engagement ring. But seeing these sapphires mined near a creek that I have vivid memories of car camping with wife the first year we met…
I was like… It would be so cool if I could get her a sapphire.
Taylor Quimby: yeah.
Nate Hegyi: And in the back of Anna’s store there were bags of dirt from the mine that you can buy. That may or may not contain sapphires.
Justine Paradis: How much was the bag?
Nate Hegyi: 60 bucks. It's not about. It's not about the cost. It's not about the cost.
Justine Paradis: No it’s not, it’s not. That’s great.
Nate Hegyi: So I bought it. And we are going to wrap up this episode with a little backyard sapphire mining. Me and a couple members of the team we sifted through this dirt to see if we couldn’t strike it rich… and maybe find a stone to give my wife.
Nate Hegyi [in tape]: I’ve got this bag of dirt right here [whack whack whack] from Montana. Did you see that?
Marina Henke: THe puff of dust that just came off that
Nate Hegyi [in tape]: I know right? [whack whack]
Felix Poon: This looks like a miner’s bag, we are miners today.
Nate Hegyi: The outside/in team includes these two prospectors. Marina Henke and Felix Poon.
Marina Henke: okay I’m going to get dust on you guys when I do this - Oh!
Nate Hegyi: Our team also includes Justine Paradis and me, Nate Hegyi, your host. I wrote and produced this episode.
Nate Hegyi [in tape]: Alright, now Felix I want you to put it
Felix Poon: into the water?
Nate Hegyi [in tape]: Into the water and swish it back and forth until you no longer see dirt coming off the stones.
Felix Poon: Alright ready? Here we go… swishing.
Nate Hegyi: We have a link to Rachelle Bergstein’s book Brilliance and Fire: A Biography of Diamonds in the show notes
Nate Hegyi [in tape]: I want you to now shake it a little bit and then flip it and go BAM right in there.
Felix Poon: Shake shake shake… BAM
Nate Hegyi: Music in this episode came from Rikard Frumm, Ben Elson, Daniel Friddel, Out to the World, Signs of Wonder, Sahara Skylight, LoFive, Teeklef and El Flaco Collective.
Marina Henke: This guy right there?
Nate Hegyi [in tape]: Oh that’s a sapphire right there
Marina Henke: I’m not working another day in my life
Nate Hegyi [in tape]: That’s a big one
Felix Poon: Oh there’s another one.
Nate Hegyi: Rebecca Lavoie is head of on demand audio. Taylor Quimby is our copper king. Our executive producer. He edited this story.
Nate Hegyi: [in tape] see Taylor was like ‘I don’t think there’s gonna be any sapphires in this.’ He was totally wrong
Marina Henke: Ou contrare, Taylor Quimby
Felix Poon: Why is he so pessimistic?
Marina Henke: You pop that onto a band and that’s an engagement ring right there.
Felix Poon: You can put a ring on it
Nate Hegyi: Outside/In is a production of NHPR.