Narrator: In the 1780s, France was a powder keg of social unrest and economic despair. The public, struggling with poverty, directed its fury at the monarchy, and particularly at Queen Marie Antoinette, a symbol of detached, lavish excess. It was in this volatile climate that a scandal erupted, centered on a diamond necklace of unparalleled magnificence—a jewel so expensive the Queen herself had refused it. A cunning con artist, a desperate Cardinal, and a series of forged letters would implicate the innocent Queen in a fraudulent scheme to acquire it. Though she never touched the necklace, the affair destroyed her reputation, cementing her image as a wasteful spendthrift. This scandal became a critical spark, fanning the flames of resentment that would soon engulf France in revolution. How could a single piece of jewelry, an object of desire, wield the power to topple a dynasty?

In the book Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World, author Aja Raden argues that this is no anomaly. She reveals that the human obsession with beautiful, rare objects is not a trivial footnote in history but a primary engine of it, shaping economies, sparking wars, and driving innovation in the most unexpected ways.

Narrator: The book's foundational argument is that value is not intrinsic; it is a story we agree to believe, a story almost always rooted in perceived scarcity. An object’s worth has less to do with its utility or beauty and more to do with how hard it is to get. Raden illustrates this with one of history’s most famous transactions: the "purchase" of Manhattan Island in 1626.

The popular myth portrays the Lenape Native Americans as being duped, trading a priceless island for a handful of cheap glass beads. Raden dismantles this narrative, explaining that for the Dutch, the beads were indeed cheap, mass-produced trinkets. But for the Lenape, the specific, high-quality beads offered were rare, technologically advanced, and held significant cultural and political capital. They were not just ornaments but a form of currency and a symbol of status. Conversely, the Lenape concept of land ownership was communal and temporary, making the idea of "selling" the land permanently an alien one. The transaction wasn't a swindle so much as a collision of two completely different value systems. Each side thought they got the better deal because they valued different things.

This principle of manufactured value was later perfected and weaponized in the 20th century. Before the 1930s, diamond engagement rings were a niche tradition for the ultra-wealthy. But facing a market collapse during the Great Depression, the De Beers diamond cartel launched one of the most successful marketing campaigns in history. With the slogan "A Diamond is Forever," they didn't just sell a product; they sold an idea. They brilliantly linked the diamond’s physical endurance to the concept of eternal love, transforming a luxury good into a cultural necessity and a prerequisite for marriage. By masterfully controlling both the supply and the story, De Beers made diamonds seem both incredibly rare and emotionally essential, proving that value is ultimately a product of masterful storytelling.

Narrator: While the desire for beautiful things can build markets, when that desire is thwarted, it can fuel envy, deception, and destruction. Raden dedicates the second part of the book, "Take," to this darker side of obsession, using the Affair of the Diamond Necklace as a prime case study.

The story is a masterclass in human folly. The necklace, an ostentatious cascade of 647 diamonds, was created by jewelers for Louis XV’s mistress, but the king died before it was finished. The jewelers were left with a ruinously expensive piece they couldn't sell. Enter Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, a charismatic grifter with a tenuous connection to royalty. She targeted Cardinal de Rohan, a man desperate to regain favor with Queen Marie Antoinette.

Jeanne convinced the Cardinal that the Queen secretly coveted the necklace but couldn't buy it publicly. Through forged letters and a staged moonlit meeting with a prostitute posing as the Queen, Jeanne manipulated Rohan into acting as a secret intermediary. He purchased the necklace on credit, handed it over to Jeanne’s accomplices, and waited for the Queen’s gratitude. Instead, Jeanne had the necklace broken apart and the diamonds sold on the black market. When the jewelers demanded payment from the Queen, the entire scheme unraveled.

In the ensuing public trial, Marie Antoinette was declared innocent, but the damage was done. The public, already primed to believe the worst of her, saw the scandal as definitive proof of her corruption and greed. The story of the necklace became a powerful piece of anti-monarchist propaganda, demonstrating how the obsession with a single object could catalyze the downfall of an entire social order.

Narrator: Desire doesn't only destroy; it can also be a powerful catalyst for creation and progress. In the book's third part, "Have," Raden explores how the quest to possess beautiful things has inadvertently driven science, industry, and social change. Two stories stand out: the creation of cultured pearls and the invention of the wristwatch.

For centuries, natural pearls were among the most precious jewels on earth, their rarity making them the exclusive domain of royalty. At the turn of the 20th century, a Japanese entrepreneur named Kokichi Mikimoto—who started his career as a noodle maker—became obsessed with a seemingly impossible idea: farming pearls. He believed he could "trick" oysters into creating pearls on demand. After years of painstaking failure, ridicule, and near-bankruptcy, Mikimoto, along with other researchers, finally cracked the code. By inserting a nucleus and a piece of mantle tissue into an oyster, he could reliably induce the creation of a perfectly round pearl.

His invention was revolutionary. It democratized a luxury item once reserved for kings and queens, making pearls accessible to the masses. This innovation didn't just disrupt the jewelry industry; it helped fuel Japan's race to modernity, establishing the nation as a global economic powerhouse.

A similar story of unintended consequences unfolded with the wristwatch. Originally, timepieces were kept in pockets. Small, delicate "wristlets" were considered feminine jewelry, impractical for men. This all changed with the brutal realities of World War I. Coordinated troop movements and artillery strikes required precise, synchronized timing. Fumbling for a pocket watch in the chaos of a trench was a deadly liability. Soldiers began crudely strapping their pocket watches to their wrists. Watchmakers saw the need and began producing durable, reliable "trench watches" for men. The war transformed the wristwatch from a woman's accessory into an essential piece of masculine military equipment, and after the war, it became a ubiquitous consumer product.

Narrator: Ultimately, the book concludes that the value of our most prized possessions is a collective hallucination, a powerful fiction that holds true only as long as we don't question it too closely. No story captures this better than that of Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa’s diamond.

In 1977, the brutal dictator of the Central African Republic declared himself emperor and planned a coronation to rival Napoleon's. He demanded a set of crown jewels, including a state ring with a diamond "no smaller than a golf ball." The jeweler tasked with the job, Albert Jolis, knew a real diamond of that size was unobtainable. So, he improvised. Jolis acquired a large, worthless piece of black industrial-grade diamond—bort—and had it carved into the shape of the African continent. He then set a tiny, perfect white diamond on the spot marking Bokassa's country.

He presented the ring to the emperor, who was mesmerized. Bokassa proudly wore the ring as the ultimate symbol of his power and wealth, believing it to be priceless. Years later, after Bokassa was overthrown, he fled into exile with almost nothing but his beloved ring. As Jolis wryly noted, the ring was indeed "priceless... as long as he doesn't try to sell it." Its value existed only in the story Bokassa told himself.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Stoned is that our fascination with shiny things is not a shallow or frivolous impulse. It is a fundamental human driver that has dictated the course of history. The desire to want, take, and have beautiful objects has created and destroyed immense value, toppled empires, redrawn maps, and spurred world-changing innovations. Aja Raden masterfully shows that to understand the history of jewelry is to understand the history of human desire itself.

The book leaves us with a profound final thought: jewels are mirrors. They don't possess any inherent power, but they are uniquely capable of reflecting our own values, ambitions, and insecurities back at us. It challenges us to look at the things we hold most valuable—whether a diamond ring, a piece of technology, or a family heirloom—and ask a simple, searching question: What does this object say about me?