Making Diamonds

There are countless bizarre guns that have been created since humans began gunning, but few are as bad, or as famous and widely produced, as one in WWII produced with the hope of equipping insurgents against their German overlords. This is the story of the worst gun of WWII The S ...  Show more

The laugh track: a bizarre, reviled, yet oddly influential piece of television history. How did it rise, why did it fall, and—most importantly—did it ever actually work? Let’s find out! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices 

The deal seemed too good to be true. There's a website that's been selling top quality diamonds at bizarrely low prices. Prices we couldn't find at any retail outlet. Prices so low, we could buy a diamond on a public radio budget. So we did. What we got in the mail was a tiny zip ...  Show more

In the past few months, the price of gold has gone way up – even hitting a new high last month at just over $2,400 per troy ounce. Gold has long had a shiny quality to it, literally and in the marketplace. And we wondered, why is that? Today on the show, we revisit a Planet Money ...  Show more

The natural diamond industry is facing an existential threat: lab-grown diamonds. They’re chemically and physically identical to natural stones, and they're just a fraction of the price. Eleanor Olcott, the FT’s China technology correspondent, travelled to the epicentre of lab-gr ...  Show more

Exploring the art world with Tad Smith, former CEO of Sotheby’s, as we uncover the intersection of art, Bitcoin, and investment strategies. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: 00:00 - Intro 02:28 - The significance behind the $6.2M sale of a banana duct-taped to a wall. 08:07 - How sto ...  Show more