Max Pearson

speaker

1,342 appearances 10 recordings 1 series first heard Dec 2025 last heard 11 Apr

Max Pearson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 3.

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The History Hour · Blood diamonds and the meeting between Florence Nightingale and Aga Khan III · 28 Feb 2026 podcast

And in a way, it's a form of self-regulation.

So countries that produce natural diamonds, they ensure that their producers aren't selling anything untoward.

And it's backed by what's called the system of warranties.

And that's created by an organisation called the World Diamond Council.

And basically what happens is through the diamond value chain, every time diamonds change hands, they're accompanied by a declaration that these diamonds are legitimate diamonds.

They're not being used to fund conflict and they're in compliance with the UN.

Has it worked?

Has it been successful?

I think it's fair to say that we haven't seen anything like what happened in Sierra Leone again.

But this is a system of self-regulation.

Some governments take it very seriously, perhaps notably the United States, others less so.

But I think the challenge in the market has also changed.

So in Sierra Leone, the conflict diamonds were funding a rebel group.

And that isn't always the case.

The other side of this is the manufacturing of synthetic diamonds.

Now, what's the history of that?

Because in nature, it takes thousands of years with carbon compressed at enormous pressure deep underground to create a diamond.

How do we do it artificially?

For the first 100 years or so, experiments were focusing on those huge pressures and temperatures.

and every attempt made at growing diamonds would increase the pressure and this was a really dangerous endeavour.

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