Why do we want diamonds? Michael Sorensen's The Diamond Paradox finds its crowd

The essay leans on a reading list from Tim Kasser's work on materialism to Matthew Hart's history of the stone, and it arrived the same day as a second look at colleges.

Channel: Horses Story of October 2, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.

The Diamond Paradox

Horses is the channel where Michael Sorensen writes essays, and his newest asks something most of us never stop to ask: why a small, hard, fairly common stone carries so much meaning. "The Diamond Paradox" draws on an unusually wide shelf of sources, from Tim Kasser's The High Price of Materialism and Matthew Hart's book Diamond to anthropology on the cultural biography of things and on possessions as an extended self. It is less a gem story than a story about why people want what they want.

It also did the heavy lifting. The essay passed about 180,000 views in its first day, while the three other uploads moved far more quietly. "Reality vs Academia" and "The Betrayal of Colleges" sit together as a pair of sharp-elbowed looks at higher education. "The Game of Chmess" has a title that may wink at Daniel Dennett's old essay about a made-up variant of chess and the trivial truths it generates, though the video itself does not say so.

Further back, "How to Destroy a Continent," Sorensen's long essay on colonial borders in Nigeria and the Congo, built on readings that include Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, is still finding viewers more than two months on and is closing in on a million views.

The channel's daily views are right at their usual level, which already places it among the busiest of the explainer and history channels near its size. Only Drew Durnil, running a little above his own pace, is drawing more each day, while Fall of Civilizations is having a quieter stretch than usual.

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The videos drawing views on Horses right now

The Game of Chmess25,011 views · 2026-09-26 Reality vs Academia10,031 views · 2026-09-28 The Betrayal of Colleges9,998 views · 2026-09-30 How to Destroy a Continent908,686 views

The numbers

Here is how the Horses channel's week looks in figures.

subscribers

1,590,000

total views

106,514,882

views per day

243,221

this week's videos (first-day views)

The Diamond Paradox

178,226

The Betrayal of Colleges

8,113

compared with similar channels (subscribers)

Invicta

1,670,000

Philosophy Tube

1,670,000

The People Profiles

1,670,000

Language Simp

1,670,000

Learn Korean with KoreanC…

1,650,000

Horses

1,590,000

Speak English With Class

1,570,000

Drew Durnil

1,560,000

Fall of Civilizations

1,510,000

As of October 2, 2026 · Data source: Trari Social News, Trari Traffic Trends and Ranking Platform, Google YouTube

Subscriber, view, like and comment counts are YouTube's. Rates, usual days, rankings, comparisons and categories are Trari's own calculations.

Where next?

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