203. Diamonds Are a Marriage Counselor’s Best...

Anne Pasternak (Brooklyn Museum) and Michael Roth (Wesleyan University) tell Stephen Dubner how they keep the peace in the middle of a culture war. If you'd like to see the video version of Better in Person, you can watch it on YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an ...  Show more

Museums are purging their collections of looted treasures. Can they also get something in return? And what does it mean to be a museum in the 21st century? (Part 3 of an updated series originally published in 2023.) SOURCES: Patricia Allan, museum consultant, former curator of wo ...  Show more

Diamonds are considered one of the world’s most valuable gemstones. But what if their prices are high due to brilliant marketing and supply monopoly tactics, not because of their rarity? And if that’s the case, are diamonds just a run-of-the-mill gemstone? Learn more about your a ...  Show more

They’re shiny rocks that we’ve somehow agreed embody romance and eternity. But diamonds, it turns out, are not as rare as we think. And these days, they can be made in a lab. So why do we continue to spend so much money on them? This week, the story of a century-long, internation ...  Show more

Diamonds and gems scattered about the dry earth just waiting to be gathered and sold. Little to no work involved. Easy money. Sounds to good to be true, right? Not for the titans of industry, experts, and investors who fell for this ridiculous con.See omnystudio.com/listener for ...  Show more

Diamonds represent value, in all its multiple meanings: values, as in ethics, and value as in actual price. But what are these rocks actually worth? The ethics and costs of diamond rings have shifted with society, from their artificial scarcity perpetuated by DeBeers to their ...