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Tony Fadell (Entrepreneur, "Father Of The iPod")

Published on Mon, 10 Sep 2018 10:00:00 +0000

This week, we sit down with entrepreneur, "father of the iPod", and Talking Watches alum Tony Fadell. As a watch collector, Tony is interested in both classic vintage and boundary pushing modern watches. And speaking of pushing boundaries, he's a collaborator with watchmaker Ressance on their e-Crown project. In this episode we talk about the development of the e-Crown, his own history in watch collecting, and what he thinks the watch industry needs to do to survive in the 21st century. Enjoy.

Synopsis

In this episode of Hodinkee Radio, host Stephen Pulvirent and Editor-in-Chief Jack Forster sit down with Tony Fadell, the inventor of the iPod and a key figure in the creation of the iPhone. Despite his legendary status in technology, Fadell is also a passionate watch collector whose unique perspective bridges design, engineering, and business. The conversation explores Fadell's involvement with the Ressence E-Crown concept watch, which adds electronic time-setting functionality to a fully mechanical watch. Fadell defends this innovation as an evolution of watchmaking rather than a betrayal of tradition, comparing it to how automatic movements once faced resistance from hand-winding purists. He emphasizes that the watch industry must continue to evolve to remain healthy, citing the Audemars Piguet RD2 as an example of brilliant innovation within traditional boundaries.

Fadell shares his journey into watch collecting, starting with a TAG Heuer in the 1990s, receiving his grandfather's watches, and being captivated by his first Panerai Luminor. His time at Apple deepened his appreciation for mechanical watchmaking as the company studied precision manufacturing techniques used in Swiss watches. He discusses how Apple's product development philosophy—where marketing should simply tell the truth about design—applies equally to watchmaking. The conversation touches on smartwatches, device addiction, and the importance of geographic and cultural change in fostering creativity. Fadell's move from Silicon Valley to Paris reflects his belief that stepping outside one's comfort zone is essential for innovation. The episode concludes with cultural recommendations, including books on Japanese aesthetics and architecture that have influenced Fadell's design thinking.

Transcript

Speaker
Unknown I've known Tony Fidel for a few years now, but I'll admit it, the first time I met him, I was pretty intimidated. I mean, the guy invented the freaking iPod and was part of the team that created the iPhone. In no uncertain terms, Tony's a giant. But I quickly learned that I had nothing to worry about. He's as humble and as approachable as he is brilliant and successful. He's also a diehard watch collector whose background in design, engineering, and business give him this really unique and thoughtful perspective on watches. And that goes from the tiniest individual details all the way up to the macro ebbs and flows of the industry at large. Talking for an hour with Tony and our editor-in-chief Jack Forrester is about the best horological masterclass I could ask for I'm your host Stephen Pulverant and this is Hodinky Radio. This week's episode is brought to you by Tutor Stay tuned later in the show for a look at the Black Bay Bronze, a dive watch inspired by true naval engineering. You can also learn more at Tutorwatch.com. Cool, thanks so much for joining us Tony. It's good to have you here. Guys, Jack, Steven, it's always good to see you. Yeah, it was good to see you too. I thought we'd kick things off actually by telling a story of the first time you and I met, which was at a Nest press conference, uh back guess it would have been like 2015 maybe. You'd already done your episode of Talking Watches. I knew you were a watch guy, but I was actually not at Hodinky at the time. I was at Bloomberg. I remember. And I was reporting on Ness. I was doing personal tech coverage at the time. And I noticed when you were on stage that you were wearing a 5980 on your wrist and I I kinda made a little note and went and covered the press conference, did some video stuff with our team uh and ended up coming in late to the interview that the other Bloomberg reporter had and I kinda like snuck in and was like, oh shit, I'm late. Uh and at the end, this guy Brian, who I didn't know very well, threw the perfect question at you, which was, all right, Tony, I I just gotta ask, why aren't you wearing an Apple Watch? And I just couldn't help but laugh out loud. And I know I said something about the watch, and then you and I got talking, and I think your publicist had to kind of like shoo me out of the room because there were people waiting for more interviews. But is that a question you get a lot? I would imagine that's something people ask you. You know what? Actually almost no one asked me that question. Really? No one asked me that question
Unknown . About the Apple Watch in particular? About smart watches in general? Wearable tech in general
Unknown ? Uh where we'll check I, get those questions, but about people will ask, well, have you looked at sparrow watches and what do you think? Or comparing them, or what do you think about this one versus that? But no one's asked me what my personal preference is. They did it the the when Apple Watch was first thing and I was like, Well, I don't know, I don't have one, I haven't tried one yet. They were still not available. So I s so no, no one's really no one's really asked that question. Interesting. Have you given any of them a try since then? Have you read that? Well I ha I have an Apple Watch. Um absolutely. Uh and so I have given that a try. I have you know, I have the Matrix body heat watch. I have I probably have a collection of 20 to 30 different smart watches in different realms just because I want to put my hands on it, I want to feel, I want to see where the progression of the technology is going, understand how they're marketing it, what's the experience of unboxing and wearing and all that stuff. So it's more just to stay on top of things and to see where things are progressing
Unknown . Sort of. Sort of. Yeah, sort
Unknown of. Sort of. We'll get into that, I'm sure. Um so what are my thoughts? My thoughts are frankly, I want a watch that's stylish and functional and has the things that I really need on it. But I want a watch first and foremost. I'm not looking for another comp
Unknown uter. Okay. Okay. So we hear this a lot. You know, people who, you know, uh vocally object whenever we do smart watch coverage. And you know what you hear all the time. And you know what we hear all the time is well it's not a watch. It's not a smartwatch. Can you kind of parse that for us
Unknown ? Um you know the iPhone is called the iPhone. But most people don't use it as a phone. Now you might say communications like a some kind of iChat or something like that might be, you know, a phone. But most people don't use it as a phone um if you look at the amount of time. So I think what we're doing is there we are putting older terms on newer technologies to make it more relatable at the beginning, but that's not really how people use it. So we call it the Apple Watch, but people use it for much more than a timekeeping function. Sure. Right? And so we have to look at where it what the marketing is versus where the product is and what it provides and be able to properly segment that and look at it as its own merits, not necessarily competitive with m mechanical watches, but it's in its different category. And yes, they tell the time, but it's one very small piece of the puzzle compared to all the other things it does. And some people want all those things. Other people want just simply the time or some complications. And that's all. And so each each is own, right? No
Unknown issues with that. And you're kind of, I mean, you mentioned it a minute ago. You're you're doing some work right now kind of at the intersection of technology and mechanical watchmaking. And I think some uh regular readers will remember the resin's e-crown uh that came out at SIHH, the concept watch. Do you want to talk about that a little bit and kind of maybe explain for people who don't know what we're talking about with that Sure. Um so it's the
Unknown Recens uh E t uh E Crown e combined in the type II concept watch. Okay. Right? And so what's it all about? So first and foremost, it's not about trying to create a smart watch, you know, in the category that we know of today, which is more a computer than it is watch. This is really truly a watch with some functions in it to help tell the time better. Right? That's really what it's about. It's not about adding other functions in it. It's just how do you make the time be told better or more accurately or simpler, you know, for the user, so they don't have to set it all the time
Unknown . So just just to jump in and for clarification for people who aren't familiar with the project, the the e crown watch is theoretically at least completely autonomous. It it it can and and and it's it's possible for it to function entirely as a mechanical watch independent of any connectivity
Unknown . First and foremost, it's a 100% automatic mechanical watch. If you took the ecrown out and you can, it will work just like an automatic type one watch from wrestles. So without a doubt, that's what it is. All it is is the e-crown is like a little robot we inserted inside to do the function that you normally do, which is to set the time. Right? That's all that's all the eCrown really does. Is just to set the time when the automatic watch loses its, you know, loses its abil
Unknown ity to regulate time. Yeah, one of the things you said when we first started talking about this back in back in January, I guess, was you likened it to the idea of a watch winder, which I thought was really interesting. And it's the idea of taking the winder and putting it inside the watch instead of having the watch sit inside the winder. Good memory. Good memory. Exactly. That's that's it
Unknown . We have mechanical robots today. They're called watch winders to keep automatic watches f functioning even when you're not wearing them. So what we decided was, and this was the idea of Benoit, not my idea, but his idea was well, let's try to get rid of that need for a watch winder. Why isn't it always in the watch? But still keep it purely a mechanical watch. And so now from the external robot we have the internal robot not winding it but setting the time.
Unknown It's really funny though. I mean that's a to a to a to some people, I I don't know how many, but to some people that actually feels like a transgression. You know, it's once like uh we don't we don't see a watch, an electronic watch winder as invalidating the fundamental sort of emotive integrity of a mechanical watch. But you put the little robot inside and all of a sudden it's uh you know it's it's a little like uh for
Unknown some. It's disconcerting to some, but you know, when I think about it, almost all of the things that I have been involved in in my career have caused people's some people's hair on the back of their necks to stand up and go, oh I hate it. And so if you get a reaction of I hate it or I love it, you already know you're on the right track. If you get some like people that just go, hmm, yeah, well, okay. And some of those things have have turned out to be like pretty big deals, right? I I think so. That's out for you to that's for you to right. So so so look, look, at the end of the day, if you got a conversation and you got people who love it and people who hate it, I think you're on the right track and we'll figure out over time, you know, people never want like I had to have a Blackberry keyboard. If I don't have a Blackberry key door, I can't use a phone. Period
Unknown . Well, that was what they were used to. Right. So just you said, you know, uh some people they're they become they're immediately enthusiastic about it, the early adopters, and some people it makes the hair stand up on the back of their heads. Is it is it the risk tolerant versus the risk averse? Is that how it breaks
Unknown down? No, I I think it's it's I don't think it's risk it don't think it's a risk thing. It's just a comfort thing and uh it's something that is different from uh it's free it's change, you know, and some people just don't like change. They want to keep it, they they have their idea of what the the world looks like and when that happens they're go oh what's going on. But typically when people put it on, 'cause you know, a lot of people react it and they didn't wear it, right? It's all about the experience. And until you experience it, it's very different than what you read about or you see, right? You should put it on and then judge it for its merits when you have it and you've experienced it. Not before and pre-judging it. Just like we say don't judge a book by its cover. But what fun is that? Actually learning about it before you pass judgment. Oh, geez, come on guys. Why wh
Unknown y not? Just pass judgment. What were some of the best reactions you got? Like either either positive or negative? I mean it must have been interesting being at SIHH, not as a collector, which we'll talk about in a bit, but being there sort of like in a booth, like representing a brand to an extent and getting feedback on a product that you were involved with. Yeah,
Unknown I you know, it was well, one is it's an honor to be at SIH H, right, with Benoit and the team, 'cause that's really his show. It's not my show. Yeah, SIH isn't my show. But to go there it's kind of like the you know, uh bac it's like the C E S, right? Much more highly refined. But um It's a lot more city. In a much better city. Having been to both, it is much better than CES. Exactly. And so when you think about it, you know, to be there and then to be a fly in the wall in all of these presentation meetings with you know, with people such as yourselves who are kind of judging it. They got to wear it and try it and everything else. It's great to hear the feedback and the questions and everything. Tony, was that your first SIH A THEYond. Second. That was my second. And um and so that was wonderful to see and to just to see from a connoisseur's eye or a real you know watch lover's eye what they're gonna say. Um and I'll tell you, the reactions I got in email or on the floor is like, how fast can I get one? When can you get can you get me on the list? I know these are limited, how fast can I get it? And then there were other people like most people didn't try it. They didn't, they didn't wrist. I didn't see any disdain for the people who looked at it, put it on. They were like, wow, this is light, this is and it does this, and they tried it. So, you know, I'm gonna reserve judgment on all those other people who didn't try it yet, but at the end of the day, um it will be it will live or die based on its own merits. And I think there was enough positive response to say yes, there is some sub segment of the watch collector market who would like this. And maybe it can go beyond that when you know when it becomes more easily accessible at other price points.
Unknown Yeah, I mean that's that's an interesting way to look at it, right, is could this not only give m watch enthusiasts a different way to look at what watchmaking is, but also give people who aren't interested in watchmaking a way to maybe get into watchmaking? That that's
Unknown exactly the right way to think about it. It's about expanding the market. Not just convincing those who are in the market, but expanding it. You know, if we look at the younger generations and older generation for that matter, they want more convenience. And I know if you know, how many watchwinders do you have? You know, and if you're a collector, you gotta have a lot of watchwinders. It takes up a lot of room. Yeah. You want all this stuff to work, but it's like it's it's unbearable. And at some point you're like, oh this might make it easy for collectors. But then it could also bring in a whole side side of tech savvy people who say, wait a second, I'm gonna experience a mechanical watch for the first time
Unknown I mean a traditionalist would say if you uh m miss out on the experience of winding and setting your watch, you kind of miss out on you know, ninety percent of the fun. You miss out on the relationship with the machine as a machine
Unknown . Well I and you could probably say that with people when we went from uh basically physical playing of music to recorded music right yeah you know we obviously the recorded music in the early days wasn't high quality but today it's like the difference between mp3 and vinyl or what have you it's sure it's sure you can go and talk about it that way, and yeah, there is going to be a certain aspect that might be different, but there might be benefits that come with it. And so we tried to make sure that you had the best of both worlds, a fully mechanical watch. You remove it in a hundred years, you remove it, and it's still that a
Unknown mazing mechanical watch. Do you think this is something that has implications outside of resonance that that this is kind of a new approach or a new strategy that other watchmakers might adopt, maybe you know, eventually bigger players, and that this could this could affect the market more broadly? Or do you think it's a relatively niche thing long term
Unknown ? Long term, well I hope it's successful, right? And I hope it is adopted more readily by people and the industry. But I also see that this kind of same mentality is going on today in cars. We're adding robots inside of cars. They're called self-driving cars, right? Or we added them with, you know, warning, crash warnings and you know helping to, you know, um you know stop crashes, AB automatic ABS, these kinds of things. We added those things and people adopted them and when they came down low enough price point over time, it's now mandated that it's our not that it's not gonna happen in mechanical watches, of course. But it shows that there are new segments, there are new ways to bring people in to make things better, and I think that will happen in the watch area as well
Unknown . You know that reminds me uh a couple of years ago I happened to have a car on a track and uh the company um that was hosting the event turned off they put us on a skid pad and turned off all the uh you know all the electronic nannies and it was absolutely terrifying and in a million years I would not want to ever go back to a situation where that stuff wasn't available. Exactly. And
Unknown and so if you can experience the pr before and after, you start go, wait a second, I appreciate it, I understand it now, and it's there for a really good reason. It's not just trying to break with tradition and be different for different sake. It's trying to make it better.
Unknown Well if I could was there a particular experience uh with a mechanical watch um that you want to talk about y you know, in the concrete or even in a more, you know, sort of general abstract way that kind of drove you to come up with this? I mean it's a pretty uh you know, radical notion.
Unknown Well, I th I think that if you look at um being a watch collector, at the end of the day, like I said, I'm more and we're I think we'll get into this later, I'm much more about advanced technology watches. Okay, I want the latest and greatest. And I don't like to n necessarily buy a watch that is just mechanically wound. I want something that's automatic. Ben and I have always had these arguments back and forth. And so I l and I I appreciate the the mechanically wound watches, hand wound. I and I bought I have some. It's great. But I also appreciate the other side. And I'm not gonna be a purist one way or other. I think it's the same argument of should you have an e-crown or should you have just a pure automatic? It's the same argument between mechanical, wound, and automatic all over again, right? And so if I look at it, I say, okay, I want to have an automatic watch. I want the automatic to always be the right time. So I can just put it on because my life is not about setting watches all day. You have everything to worry about? I want to have other things to worry about. And so some people find the delight in that that piece of the puzzle. Great. But that's not what I want. I want it to be on my wrist and I want to go like this and I want to look down on the works. Right? And it and it's you know it's kinetic energy is charging it. I love that, right? But the downside at the end of the day is I leave it on my desk side and you have multiple watches. You know, I'm sure the watch industry, everybody wants you to have multiple watches, not just one, right? So let's make it convenient for people to own more. And let's fix a fundamental problem with automatic watches. We could even probably do it mechanically on watches too, but I don't think that's I m maybe that's the right thing to do. But at the end of the day, I think that we should do it with automatic watches to take away the w two things that are there. One is making mechanical like quartz without going to courts, which is making sure it's always accurate. And two, making sure the time is always set correct
Unknown ly. I mean it's it's interesting to hear you say that because we I have found this project technically interesting from the get-go. And uh I never actually saw it in the way you phrase it, which is as a natural extension of the greater convenience of a self-winding watch. That's how you look at it. Yes
Unknown . Remove the obstacles that are there. Make it make a more perfect watch. Not add lots of functions that are not watch-oriented at all. Which is a typical smartwatch. Right
Unknown . Right. So you mentioned that you like kind of like high-tech, if I can put that in in scare quotes. In traditionalist sense of watch collecting. Of course. Did you get a chance to walk around much at SIHH? And if so, what were some other things you saw that that interest you? Well, look, for me kind of the you know
Unknown I I love what what Benoit and the team was able to create with what we were doing. But I have to hand it to like AP. With the RD2. Oh man. I salivated. I went crazy over the RD2 when I learned about how it was done and the technology they used to make that slim uh that slim um calendar watch and to look at how it was done by the gearing that they've done and the teeth. It was basically a programmable mechanical machine. They created something like a a automata from back in the day. That's what they created in there. And I can't believe when you you see it go like duh but no one in the industry did that and it was blow away. So I was like yes baby I'm in. And it doesn't have an e crown or anything else but I'm like I appreciate that a hundred percent
Unknown . I think my favorite I think my favorite thing about that watch is that they said they could have made it thinner, that there's actually extra airspace in the case, but they didn't because they thought it would destroy the proportion of the bezel to the case and it would mess up the actual design integrity of the royal oak. So instead of getting a record that they could use as marketing material, they actually focused on making the product the right product, which I feel so often gets lost, but they they put making a good thing ahead of being able to sell some marketing collateral. I had never heard that until you just told me, and
Unknown I I love it even more. Because a watch is not just about a watch or any design. It's not just about the internals and about going for specs. It's about the whole package, what it looks like, what it feels like, what the technology is inside it. The full representation that there was love and care thought about it every single point of the process. And to me, when you say it was bigger and there's a little bit more air, damn, okay, cool with me, great, because it's gonna wear differently. It's gonna look different. Proportions are for for for me,
Unknown everything. So what do you think of this? You know, in what in modern watchmaking, over the last I would say since about 2000 when silicon first started being used in mechanical watchmaking. You know, there's this increasing tension between uh watchmaking as a materials science activity and watch making as a traditional craft activity. So there's this there's the sort of, you know, novelty versus tradition uh you know breakdown, but there's also uh a perceived dichotomy in some people's minds between pursuing watchmaking goals in the context of traditional crafts and pursuing watchmaking goals in the context of new materials and new technologies. You know, for close to five hundred years, you had three basic you had you f a few basic materials in watchmaking. You had brass, you had steel, and then whatever you were making the hands and dials out of. Jeweling was added in the seventeen hundreds, and that was about it. True. You know, for for close to five hundred years. And the departure from that is a relatively recent thing and to some people it represents a kind of abandonment of uh the cra the craft aspect of watchmak
Unknown ing Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, again, I think it's the same argument we talked about before of, you know, is a is a a winder someone got used to, or an automatic watch they got used to. it It had to get over the hand-wound one, right? So when I think about it, we have titanium, we have carbon fiber, we have all kinds of other case materials. We have other types of materials inside the watch. We went from bearings to rubies to this to the right
Unknown . I mean people you know in the twentieth century had to get over uh uh wrist watches not being pocket watches I mean there was a huge segment of the watch buying public in the nineteen thirty forget about that yeah there was a huge segment of the watch buying public in the nineteen thirties
Unknown Or how about what do you mean this watch or what do you mean this clock is actually gonna help me uh navigate the w the world? That never gonna work. You know, this is again this, you know, old world versus new world. You have to embrace, be curious, and have and understand that if you trust the people who are presenting it to you to a certain extent, can have a little bit more of an open mind and learn and embrace. Because, you know, everything has to evolve. The watch industry has to evolve. And there are lots of incredible technologies that need to be adopted. Now I'm not saying all of them. Right. There's all kinds of issues with silicon, but they're starting to resolve those. Right? I have a couple based on that. So I think again that if we don't continue to move this forward, we're only going to have traditionalists buying them and the market will die. Right. And then we're all gonna be sitting crying in our drinks going, Why can't I get new watches? Because we're not feeding it the things that
Unknown they need to be able to be economically healthy. Trevor Burrus But don't you think there's something comforting I mean I'm not defending it, but there's something comforting from an enthusiast perspective about being inflexibly doctrinaire about this
Unknown . That's their choice. So be it. I have no judgment. That's fine. They should go off and do that. That's great. But industries must evolve to remain healthy, and we're not all gonna just buy antique watches, you know, and and and stuff. We need to keep this place. We need to keep this industry healthy. We need new technologies to come in to keep people excited, the ones that are there excited, as well as new ones to come in. If we don't do that, it's going to it's gonna be a dead end on the on the chain of evolution
Unknown of watches. And the RD2 is a perfect example of that. There's nothing overtly kind of like cutting edge about any of the material science, anything crazy like that. It's it's true.
Unknown And any traditionalist, if they see that watch, they have to they have to embrace it. If they can't embrace the RD2, it's like, what? Come on. What? It's just different. And it's a lot better. Right. It did they didn't you know your the tenets of traditionalism in any way, shape, or form. They just did it incredibly smartly. And amazingly that no one else had had had had taken that leap before. Because it was in all kinds of industries, even in the eighteen hundreds. Right. Right.
Unknown Are are there other watches you saw this year at SIHH or elsewhere that that you think kind of represent that that way of thinking about watchmaking? Aaron R
Unknown oss Powell Different one. Well, I saw a lot of interesting materials, you know, new materials like the f the frosted gold or the whatever was the the the Bulgari. Yeah. The gold version. Because I have the other one, the titanium one, which I love, right? But then the gold, I was like, wow, what's that? It has such a soft look to it. Such really cool. Incredible. But then I also look at the year before that, which was the um the frosted gold from um who is that from you know the AP AP. I went out and instantly bought that for my you know my mother because I was like that's perfect because I'm not for all this Pave stuff. Right. I'm not for Pave. I'm sorry, that's just my personal. So but but I was like but this is like oh my god it's the best of both worlds without having you know something that's probably is gonna pop off and all the other stuff. It's just so I love innovation at any level. Not just it has to be, oh my god, okay, here's a hairspring that's blah blah blah. I love ones with, you know, the the um the the uh the the power reserve at a week or two weeks. Why can't we have a one-year power reserve or a one month or two month power reser They're working on it. And they are. And one day we'll get that. Jack specifically is working on it. And then people will go, Well, I can't mechanically wind my watch every three days. That's a problem. I can't have that. It's like, come on guys. Like you know, watch guys love nothing if not starting fights. Yeah. And maybe with the E Crown, because of what we have, it creates power reserves that are 20 times better. And then maybe the E Crown dies from it or the e-crown evolves into something else because it's always wound, right? Like great, so be it. Wonderful. But I I still think you still gotta set your watch and you gotta change your time zone. So e crown's still gonna be around to set your time zone, right? Which a longer power reserve won'
Unknown t do. Right. Trevor Burrus I mean I think that it's easy for people to forget that one thing doesn't necessarily preclude another, one approach doesn't preclude another. But it's come close a couple of times. You know, quartz did was a huge the advent of quartz watches was a huge crisis for mechanical watchmaking.
Unknown But it also opened up the market to so many more people buying it. It hurt old some people who didn't innovate, who said we're gonna fight it, and other people who embraced it, swatch, you know. I you have to you have to admire what they've done with they didn't just take courts, but they took courts in a whole different direction. Right. They didn't just say, oh I'm just gonna replace it and put it inside a traditionalist, you know, uh you know watch, watch body. They dec
Unknown ide to go incredible fast. Trevor Burrus But you know, with hindsight, it's possible for us to look back at the court's crisis and say, okay, that wasn't really an existential crisis. It created opportunities Absolutely. And whenever
Unknown and that's what happened with just three or four years ago with smartwatches. You know, as soon as that everything's like, oh my God, the you know, I remember going to um well SIH the first time. SIHH the first time and you guys go, Oh, this feels so much better than last year because everybody was in panic over what was gonna happen to the industry
Unknown with smartwatches coming in. It was legitimately the the sort of thing where like if you said the words Apple Watch in front of an executive from Switzerland, I mean the room the room went dead quiet. You could hear a pin drop. Not just out of fear, but also kind of resentment. Like how could you possibly, you know, speak about this thing in the same breath as what we're doing? And it was it took a while, but I think I think the industry has started to adapt a little bit and maybe get over it a little bit. But But the way I think about it is that
Unknown people or companies or industries or countries don't change unless there's a near-death experience. Right? Think about it. You you sit there and you eat, drink, whatever it is, you don't exercise all of a sudden, and you're like, the doctor says, hey, you need to get healthy. Yeah, it's never going to happen to me. Then you get that heart attack. And you're like, oh shit. I'm gonna have to clean up my life, right? And some people they make lifelong changes, some people six or six six weeks or six months, they try to change. But any kind of organism usually will not make major changes unless there's a near-death experience. Quartz, smartwatches, and it breathes new life and new direction and makes the makes a stagnant market or person or whatever e
Unknown volve. So you think we m we were primed to maybe enter like a new golden age or a new period of of increased creativity because of of the kind like threat again in in quotes from smartwatches
Unknown . Exactly. Them when you have more constraints and more competition, it helps to focus and to go, what are we really doing here? And you get the real innovation coming out, right? And saying, okay, we're gonna embrace it and we're gonna show them we can we can innovate too. Watch us, right? That's what the human spirit's all about. And so this is only healthy, right? And if they don't want to embrace it or anybody in the industry doesn't want to embrace it, fine, but you're gonna become the dodo bird. Like y you know, sooner or later. So you have to embrace it. You know, I remember uh my friend, Jean-Claude Beaver, right? What was he saying pre-smartwatch? Never, never, never. What did it do? He got incredibly focused on smartwatches. And what is he? The best luxury smartwatch in the market from tag, right? Yeah. He was saying, no, no, no, no, no. And then one day he listened and he looked and looked real hard, got challenged, and then he said, okay, I'm gonna go full force into it. And they're successful because of it. Right? And that space. Is it long-term successful? I don't know. But for this moment in time, he changed his opinion, had his near death, you know, his near death experience, changed his opinion, and then capitalized on it. That's what I hope more brands and more designers in this business do to take that and use it as a sense of optimism and hope that they can make something that's even better than
Unknown what they have been for the last decade or more. Purely from a practical standpoint. He actually talked to us very candidly at Basel World about some of the challenges that you know you produce twenty thousand smartwatches per year, that is not an interesting order to a chip manufacturer. Sure
Unknown . Sure. I you know, okay, fine, so be it. Maybe he's gonna find a way to bring that technology to more people to do two hundred thousand watches or what have you. So look, at the end of the day, um it's making people think differently. It's making on both the mechanical or non-mechanical side of the watch side. And who knows what the industry is gonna look like in ten years. But I think it's a it's a good sign of evolution to that it's a healthy organism that is continuing to evolve
Unknown . And now we'll look at this week's sponsor. Bronze watches have become something of a trend lately, but with the black Bay Bronze, Tudor is looking to its rich history of building watches for some of the world's largest navies, not simply following a fad. The robust bronze case nods to naval engineering and shipbuilding and is made of a special alloy that will take on a beautiful patina over time, making each watch unique and intimately connected to the person wearing it. Inside, of course, you've got an in-house tutor movement, the caliber MT5601. It has a silicon balance spring, a 70-hour power reserve, and a cost chronometer certification too. Visit your local authorized retailer to see this watch in the metal or TutorWatch.com to learn more. Let's get back to the show. It's abundantly clear that you're in the deep end here. You're like, you are seriously thinking about these things, but I wonder where did this all start for you? Like how did how did you get into watches in the first place?
Unknown So it's a great question. So the first thing that happened for me was I got my first watch in the nineties. Okay. I was a tag. I didn't know what to do, but I was like, oh, I should buy one. You know, this is now today they have, you know, I there was no s mobile phones that be like I don't need that but I was like hey I'm growing up I'm getting older I should buy one yeah and then right after that my grandfather gave me his watches because his time was almost coming. And he was and they were nothing special, but he had worn those watches for years, right? And I was like, oh, there's something here. And so that tipped me off. And then the next thing happened was I was in at CS or Comdex one. Okay. And I went by, I was in the Bellagio, I think it was. It was a ninety eight or ninety-nine. I think Bellagio was just open. And I passed by some watch retailer and I looked in. It was the first time I saw a Panera Luminar. And I was like, what is that? I went, I gotta have that. And now what what year was this again approximately? It was ninety-eight or ninety-nine. Yeah, so that was very early days for modern panorama. Very early days. You know, because you couldn't. There was no advertising. It was just like there was a couple of shops that had them. I was like, what is that? I gotta have never seen it. I gotta have that. And it just and then from that, those kind of those three events, I started that flywheel start spinning and my curiosity started going. And then after that, when I was at Apple with the iPod and subsequently, I Uh a lot of the manufacturing techniques to make modern day watches were being researched by Apple to understand how you make really s tight mechanical systems small, very highly toleranced things. And going through and understanding what equipment they use, what materials they use, all that stuff. And that again opened my eyes. I'm like, oh my God, there is incredible craftsmanship here. Stuff that the it's the it's like the pinnacle of mechanical engineering and manufacturing. You know, before before nanofabrication happened, right? And that stuff when it was lithography
Unknown based and more silicon like. Aaron Ross Powell So in those days at Apple, were you kind of the the odd man out being interested in these things or was there like a little community of you who were who were watching? Oh no, there were there was a there'
Unknown s a there was a little community of us who had it, and it was uh uh uh it was Johnny, myself, a few of people on Johnny's team, a few people on the mechanical engineering team for the iPod and the iPhone, where we were all just like, you know, ogling over these things, going, how do they do that? How do they do that? And then there were trips to go and l to go to some of the manufacturing sites to learn, like what you know, just to understand what it is. Not that it was trying to make a watch at the time. Right. But just to appreciate and see if we could translate and move some of those manufacturing techniques and design techniques to what we did to make a more highly precisioned uh mechanical electronic device. And was this even pre-iPhone days? Yeah, this was pre-iPhone days. Okay. Right? Because it was all about, you know, we had to Apple before iPod was about bigger computers, laptops and stuff like that. When iPod came, it was all about every single millimeter and sub-millimeter and packing it down, length, width, height, volume, you know, weight, weight balance, feel in the pocket, feel in the hand, all that stuff. So it there was a lot of similarities. And what we were trying to do is, okay, what's the best uh techniques to make the board smaller, the packaging smaller, but what can we get a better finish outside case? You know, to like I said, with different materials and different finishes and making sure it's scratch proof in certain places and and you could drop it and it's okay. And so all of that stuff was were like, well, what what are high- thendings that are treated as such that you wear every da
Unknown y? That's a fascinating. That's a fascinating intersection between watchmaking and what you guys were doing at Apple, you know, because in both domains you have this intersection of aesthetics and engineering, and the one kind of supports the other. You know, what you can do in terms of aesthetics is very, very dependent on what you can do from an engineering standpoint. No, i absolutely. And and
Unknown and you have to combine the two to make sure they look good, just like we talked about in the R D two about you know, what is the right proportions? Do you really want to make it that slim? Because if you make it too slim, it'll fall out of your pocket or it won't feel good in the hand or whatever. So you have to maybe you make it a little thicker, but then you reduce the width or the reduce the length in some different way. So all of those things, you know, were part of our psyche and thinking about it at the time to make a holistic design experience
Unknown . So when you cut you you know when, you look at uh traditional watchmaking, like you know, tr traditional watch making is very, very bound by traditional practices and traditional perspectives. Like, you know, the one th one of the things that I don't think anyone has ever done in the watch industry is kind of systematically look at um, you know, w what's the ideal shape for a watch, what's the ideal size, what you know, what size should things be. Um do you think that the watch industry would benefit in some sense from a more um like taking a step back from traditional practices and looking at some of these basic issues more systematically? Uh yeah, absolut
Unknown ely not just because of the smartwatch revolution, but they should be doing that all the time. And that's why when you saw something like the Apple Watch come out and you say, wow, look at these quick change straps. And you're like, oh my God, why hasn't this ever come out in the traditional watch business? And you're like, now I can accessorize this thing. This is amazing. And it's easy to use and it's so intuitive and it and like it's fun. And they're like, I'm gonna buy lots of bands to make it easy. Like to use a freaking you know, pry bar on strings. It's like come on and then I'm gonna scratch something and then it's like, or I gotta tw you know, a little screw that I'm gonna hurt the you know the threads or it's like no guys. We still have strap changing technology. It's basically stayed the same since about 1935. Right, why not innovate on something that seems like so logical and simple to do? So again, you have to go and challenge all of your tradition and go back and see if there's something better. And there's a lot of traditional things in the Apple Apple watch that were rethought that can be brought back into traditional, you know, mechanical watches in a way. And and and likewise, they're gonna learn more. You know, it was one way, which was the watch thing influenced the Apple products, which then influenced the Apple Watch, which is now influencing the watches again. And it's this synergy that is gonna continue if both sides stay healthy and then push each other in new ways that and new experiences we've never seen before. And that's what's fascinating fun
Unknown . So going back to your watch collection for just a bit, um, you did an episode of Talking Wchesat, and so our readers will link that up in the show notes, so anybody who hasn't seen that can uh take a look. But since then, how has your watch collecting changed and evolved? And have there been any kind of new areas of collecting you've gotten interested in, anything you loved that you've kind of like gotten off of? I stopped. I stopped collecting. No.
Unknown Tony's trying to give us a heart attack here. And that's a good bot. No, absolutely. No. It's expanded and it's grown 'cause I've you know I've appreciated other brands, I've appreciated other technology, other watches and stuff like that. But I think the fundamentals still apply. Um except that I have grown more through you, through you the the the publication, you Steven, you Jack, you Ben, uh uh uh and Uri, all you guys, about looking at some of the older watches and collecting those. I have been collecting more of those. Yeah. Right? So I went back to go collect some of the very first automatic watches from Patek and others because you guys taught me about those. I was like, okay, yes, those are ones I would definitely buy because they are actually really fascinating. People tried out some weird stuff in those early days. Absolutely. And they're like, that's cool. You know, and and and I want to celebrate that in my collection, which is here's people who push the edges. And they try to do it in an intelligent fashion, even though it may not have caught on. I think it's worthy of the collection in my collection saying, here's people who tried, and I thought it was worthwhile. I thought it was a worthwhile innovation. Not everyone picked it up
Unknown . But hey, I thought it was cool. I mean I know one watch we both love and I think Jack is probably a fan as well is the twenty five twenty-six. I mean I that that to me is a watch that does everything you were talking about and succeeds from a design perspective. Exactly. And so and so when you look at it
Unknown , you have to just marvel and say, you gotta hand it to them and you gotta put yourself back in time then. Now it looks, oh yeah, of course. But back then people were arguing over it, right? Just like we're arguing it now. Right. And you like they made a bold step. And you say, okay, with that bold step, I appreciate it. And I and we we just have to remember the context of when these in the when these technologies come to light and the environment that's you have to remember like the iPod, Apple wasn't a successful company then. It had to take incredible risk to do something well outside of its um well outside of its normal product line to do something that everyone like are you crazy you're gonna go up against Sony you're gonna do all this stuff but it took guts and I like find those things back in history that took guts, right? Yeah.
Unknown Along the way and put those as part of the collections. And serendipity, luck to a certain degree? I mean the technology has to mature at the right time. The world, the environment around the technology has to be receptive, the people around the technology, you know, the people out in the people out in the market
Unknown . Absolutely. Not everybody, but at least uh enough of the right people to adopt it. Not just early adopters from a novelty perspective, but the next set of people after that, the pragmatists who go you get technology prices go, yeah, that seems interesting. You can't just go, you know, I I there's a company called General Magic that I work
Unknown for in the early nineties. Which there's an amazing documentary about, which Tony was kind enough to invite me to the uh premiere of. So we'll we'll link that up in the show notes also. It's an incredible, incredible film.
Unknown Right? But it was the iPhone fifteen it's the story of the iPhone fifteen years too soon. It's it had all the same a a lot of the similar things with older technology, but society wasn't ready for it. Right? It was just the right thing at the wrong time. So to your point, Jack, you're absolutely right. You gotta make sure the stars align. And that's not just the industry analysts saying it's the right thing that the companies do, right? It's also society that says it's the right thing, right? And you you can't hold back society, right?
Unknown They're gonna have their own views and everything. No, if you're if you're running a multi-billion dollar company, that's actually kind of unsettling. I mean the degree to which it's something that you you know you you can yeah you can create markets to a certain degree. But on another level what goes on, you know, socially and in terms of what people are ready for functionally and aesthetically, that's completely out of your hands
Unknown . Everybody's thinking of. You have to be just ahead, not too far ahead, and not too current, just enough to get those people who are curious, intelligent, knowledgeable about the past, and always looking for some kind of new thing to get them engaged. And those are your those are your customers, those are your influencers, those are your passionate people who will then be your best marketers, who will tell everybody about it to go off and buy it. But look at this. Just like we're doing right now. Like about the RD2 or whatever. Right. You gotta go look at this. This is the thing. Right? And and it goes for for any really smart company, they have to they have to get all that stuff aligned and then communicate it in the pro
Unknown per way. Yeah, I mean this is something you've you've been particularly savvy at, I would say, is is that combination between I had a lot of failure. I've learned along the way. I'm not young like you. Okay. That's fair. You've had a lot of scars. You should see my back. Yeah. You know, the the products that I think a lot of people know you for are incredibly well designed and they're they're marketed in a way that makes sense with their design and their design makes sense with the way they're marketed. They're those two things are kind of cohesive and and built together. How do you use that perspective to then kind of look at other things, whether it's it's watches or other kind of industries you're watching and and kind of use that as a as a lens? It
Unknown 's a great question. First, you know, all of these things that I have worked on has been with a team. So I want to be very clear. Lots of people, lots of smart people, and I got to to to to to be uh you know at the forefront of that with these people um and these incredible smart teams uh for many years. Secondly, um s Steve Jobs had a mantra, said the best marketing just tells the truth. The best marketing tells the truth. You can have lifestyle marketing, you can have all this other stuff. But if you really talk to st and envision someone's life or your own life, hopefully, and you paint the picture of what was before and what it would be like after this innovation of whatever it is, and you speak the truth, and then when they get it in their hands and you've under-promised and over-delivered, you've won that customer for, you know, the next product that you have and the next product. And that's why Apple is the way it is. And other companies are like that. You know, we all sit there with bated breath going, what is the next thing? That's why you you guys have rumors and you guys do what you do, right? You keep everybody stoked with this is coming. That's coming. Oh my God. Because you understand the brands, they've built up some kind of trust over time with a certain set of customers, and you expect it from them. And if they deliver it every time, sooner or later you just go, I want whatever they've got. I don't have to learn too much about it. I just know they're gonna deliver. So give me that next thing. Right? And it is about not perfuming a pig. It's not about some highfalutin marketing or some brand ambassador, right? It's about speaking the truth about what it is and how it affects your life. And that is if you can come up with that marketing um you know uh marketing statements right the marketing statements when you're designing the product, because then you know it's easy to make those marketing statements. You're not doing it at the end and going, why is this matter? You're doing it just like you do with the mechanicals of the watch and the design of the watch and making it a little bit better to make it look, you know, look pro appropriate to your design aesthetic, you're also doing the marketing at the exact same time. Because it's not marketing applied, it comes out of the design. The marketing comes right out of the design. Because you already know what key factors and critical things that you are trying to accomplish with the design. So it's an incredible design brief. It's not marketing. It's the design brief of what you're trying to achieve. Once you think you've achieved, you go back to your design brief and say, oh my God, the two are in concert with each other. Ship it. And you don't have this whole marketing thing. Now, now there's all kinds of marketing implementation, like what's the imagery and all the other stuff. Right. But the key messages of why this thing should exist is intrins
Unknown ic in the design. So what is the watch industry supposed to do in a situation where, you know, product development cycle for a new watch is five years on average I can't understand that that is crazy and we're in a yearly we're in a we're in a uh a yearly product development cycle now which is not a natural one historically for mechanical watchmaking and every and the pressure has become even greater, you know, ever since quartz. Uh you know, you you have to come out with something that makes it y you must make a big splash every single year on the dot when the trade show comes along. And it's gotta be amazing and it's gotta be revolutionary and it's got to and you know the product does not necessarily support that, but but a lot of companies feel obliged to try and do that anyway
Unknown . Well, and and people see through that. So look, at the end of the day, welcome to the world of technology. It's just saying you need to get faster, better, cheaper, more intuitive. Um that's just what happens in all industries. You know, how long does it take to design a car? We've now shaved that down and gotten faster. We everything gets faster, more intelligent. If the watch industry wants to stay with five-year cycles, fine, but it's gonna die because of it. It needs to get faster. But not faster for faster sake. Get better at doing it. What are the the tools, technologies? You need to you need to do you have to have a separate R and D track from your product track. All technology companies do it. You have a R and D team who's going off and prototyping and doing all this stuff behind the scenes, going, oh, we got this mechanism, oh, we have this material, oh, we have this finish, oh, we have this manufacturing capability, da da da da. And then they say, now we have a new watch for next year. Which of these cool components that we have being built over here can we take and apply to this specific design brief for this specific customer for this truth that we want to speak? Right? And that and that informs the RD roadmap, which then continues to make novel new kinds of innovations, which then feeds back into the process. So if it takes five years to design a watch, it shouldn't take five years to design a watch. It should be one year to eighteen months, no more than two years to bring out something new. But it might take three years to design all the the uh technology and manufacturing and all the stuff behind that thing to bring in. So if anyone starts and said, I'm gonna make a watch and it's gonna take five years to do, that's not the right way to think of it. You gotta break it down. Remember the iPhone, we did two we threw away two designs before we shipped one, right? Because we tried over and over and to get it right. And I hope watch companies are doing the same thing, not just making stuff to get it out the door, but trying and pushing the edge really, really hard. And then maybe they have to throw it away and but they've tried and they learn from it, but continue on to make the next thing, to figure out what was wrong with it, make the right one, and then ship it. So sometimes it's better not to say anything every year and try because you lose your brand cachet, you blue lose that brand trust if you're speaking non-truths. If you're shouting all the time. If you're always shouting without a reason for people to really listen. Yeah. You just become noise and there's not enough signal. You gotta have high signal, low noise. To use a el
Unknown ectronic vernacular. Yeah, that's perfect. Um you know one thing I wanted to talk about that we we didn't touch on is you know you've you've talked a lot in in the past about device addiction uh and about the sense that these electronic devices are taking over our lives. Or watch collecting. And watch collecting, right. Uh which is a conversation we had earlier today in the office Do you see mechanical watches in any way as an antidote to that? As as a thing that you can kind of replace a potential screen with or enjoy in a way that's distinct and different from the way we use and enjoy our screens. H
Unknown mm. Hmm. So for me, you know, over the past decade now, I have grown more and more cognizant of where and when I want screens and why I want screens, right? When it's always strapped to your wrist, you don't have a lot of choice. Yeah. Right. And so not saying that that's bad. Some people need it. Maybe they might need it for work or exercise or whatever else. So some people need that. You know, I've chosen specifically not to put one on because I don't want something bothering me all the time. So now with something like all the new you know, data collecting, data transparency, and control that you have with these new operating systems from Apple with screen time and Google has coming and that kind of stuff. If I can set it so the watch is just a watch and under certain circumstances maybe I get a notification or I get something else when I have a screen as trash. So it's primarily what I want it to be, but only in certain instances do I get it and it's easy to do? Maybe I'll start wearing a display on my wrist. But I don't want one there just yet another buzzer or yet another thing flashing at me if I can't control it and adapt it to the way I want to live my life. Right? And so the technology business has heard a lot of people talking about not just addiction, but overuse or you know, trending to overuse. And they are now you know creating tools and technologies to help with that so you can better fit this into your life the way you want to and not just the way all of these different apps want to just suck up all your attention. Right? Right. And that is a healthy, a healthy thing and a reason for more people to buy more devices. Right. Right? Because I know for my kids, I'm like, I can't buy them all these devices it ''causes too hard to control. I an iPhone, an iPad, an Apple TV, a computer. I can't control all the shoes and I have to sit there and be the policeman. So which I'm sure is super fun having to be the device policeman for Between me and my wife.. Yeah It causes a lot of stress in your life, right? In your family, which it shouldn't be there because the kids want what the kids want. And you're like, you have to say no even more than you have to, right? Already. So when I think about it, when you can have this kind of control, you're like, oh sure I'll buy you more devices and their business grows because of it. Because I know I can control it and I know I can give it to them or myself to fit into the lifestyle I want to lead because
Unknown I can then tune it and adapt it. Yeah, I think, you know, uh some congratulations are in order. Uh we're recording this the day after France won the uh the World Cup and you are a current Parisian. Uh le bleu. So So you know, you you had a lot of success in California in the valley and you then left and moved to Paris and you're a watch guy and you're like you're a little bit swimming uh against the grain there. Do you do you think that In Paris? No, no, no. Sw by leaving Silicon Valley for Paris. Is there something about leaving the valley that's kind of like changed your thinking or you think gives you some different perspective on the world? Uh-huh.
Unknown So you know I got bit by the travel travel bug really when I the first time I left North America when I was twenty-one or twenty-two at General Magic, which you talk about and I went to the first place I went was with General Magic to Tokyo. That was the first trip, right? Yeah. And I was like, oh my God. Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. Right? Like, and then I got bit. And I was like, all of these different things and inspirations you can get from going all around the world to learn from different people at different times about different things, about how their religion or their culture has influenced the decisions they've made or the technology they use or how they've changed. And so when you look at you know um changing where you live, right? If I wouldn't have taken a risk to move from Detroit to Silicon Valley, you know, twenty-six, well now almost thirty years ago, I would have never been able to to to do what I did. And if I didn't embrace traveling, I wouldn't have been in Paris now. The amount of inspiration you get, if you were curious. You're not like everywhere you go, you're like, well, why don't they have a McDonald's? And why don't they have it's like, come on. Like you gotta you gotta put yourself in their shoes and start to learn about that. You can actually grow as an individual. And I found that incredibly rewarding and I wanted to give that to my kids and to my family as an experience to help them understand that the world's a big place. I was in Silicon Valley 26, 26 years at the time we moved. You know, big fish in a big pond, life is wonderful. Why not just stay? Where there's no stress, there you're not gonna grow. Yeah. And so I learned this through when, you know, ten years prior when we did our first trip around the world after Apple with my family. I got to go to different houses, live in different houses, different cities around the world with my family to kind of soak these things up to kind of clear my brain and get uh from the Apple experience which is amazing but to try to get a new perspective and I got so much um so much input and inspiration from all those things, especially in Paris, that it caused me to write the Nest business plan, to see the problem that Nest was trying to fix, and to create the Nest Business Plan in Paris and it was so compelling that I had to go back to Silicon Valley to build it. Right? And if I didn't do that trip, if I didn't have that stress on the system, if I was always just comfortable with my other surroundings, that company wouldn't have ever existed, right? And that idea never would have come to light. And so I don't see this as the move to Paris to be something that was, you know, something that was getting away from anything. I think we made Silicon Valley better in a way, or changed the world in a way, because we went out, found something, went back to build it. Now I'm trying to take that same thing and go around the world to find all these great entrepreneurs, to find all these other things, because Silicon Valley is not the only place. As we know, we can see China developing like crazy. Try to find these inc interesting people who are also curious, who doing great things, getting out of that same environment and seeing if we can inject other interesting ideas into the world with multiple entrepreneurs, not just one startup. So you may think it's going against the tide of everyone running there. But I think that you need to evolve. And the whole world is evolving now with technology. It's not just Silicon Valley's driving it. It's still a driver, but is not the driver by a wide margin any longer. And we're seeing the rise of everyone now. And I want to I want to help that. And I I'm as curious as ever. And so Paris is about that and s and Europe in general is about that
Unknown . Well, to wrap each show, uh we'd like to end with cultural recommendations. So Tony, if I can put you on the spot, is there a book or a movie or something you've seen somewhere you've traveled recently that you want to recommend to everyone listening?
Unknown So I'm I don't remember the author's name right now, but there's a book called In Praise of Shad Okay. The book is only about 70 pages. It was written in the 1930s in Japan. Okay. And it was all about the transition of Japanese traditional housewares and homes and lighting and everything when the westernization of all of that came to Japan. And it's through the eyes of this person about here's what life was like before and after this transition, housewares, lighting, everything. And it is such an eye-opener and has a different way of perceiving the world and designs that I think it was it opened my eyes to so many things and I had got so many ideas about it. So it's called Impraise of Shadows. Get on Amazon. It's a very quick read. But for me it was a it was a bomb went
Unknown off in my bra Aaron Powell I will be ordering it as soon as I take my phone off airplane mode. Jack, how about
Unknown you? I've been reading a lot more novels lately and uh I just ran across I just finished a piece of amazing um fiction by a Hungarian writer who uh coincidentally lived in Japan and Kyoto for many years. Uh the book is called Saibo down below. Saibo is the sh the Shinto uh goddess of the West. And uh the book is basically a series of vignettes of experiences of beauty that people have had in different times and places throughout history. Uh and the goddess is sort of there as the background visitant to all of these experiences. So a sort of a spiritual manifestation of beauty that shows up anywhere from uh the Renaissance uh, you, know, up to the twentieth century. And um one of the chapters in the book is about a shrine in uh Isei Japan called the Isei Grand Shrine. It's the main Shinto shrine in Japan. And uh they have been tearing the entire um shrine complex down and rebuilding it every twenty years for eight hundred years. So it's a really fascinating way of achieving uh continuity. You know, rather than trying to build you, know a, pyramid which will persist for five thousand years because it's a giant pile of stone, um you you ha you create this living organism.
Unknown I I I love it. 'Cause that's what we do in a we which what happens in nature with trees, you know, life and death. I'd love it. Okay, I gotta I can't wait to see this link. Yeah
Unknown . Okay. Just like Japanese for me
Unknown . Um I'm gonna go with the book this week too. Uh the book about 50 pages away from the end. And he's a really conflicted, kind of difficult, sort of unpleasant sounding person, which I was not aware of. But it's really fascinating that he he had all of these troubles. His practice was like perpetually bankrupt and like leveraging themselves constantly uh to get new projects. But they they Sounds like Tesla. Yeah. Right. And they uh they just kept working through it and making these amazing things that have persisted and that have become sort of these iconic structures. Um and he worked all around the world and kind of brought this very American perspective on architecture to other places and always kind of inflected it with what he found there instead of just kind of imposing himself on other places, which I found uh really interesting. So it's it's a pretty easy read um You Sa toy Brick, the biography of Louis Khan. Cool. I gotta check it out. Well cool. Well thanks so much for joining us, Tony. It's always a pleasure to see you and to talk to you. And uh I think people are gonna enjoy this
Unknown . Thanks, guys. I it was wonderful to do this. This is a lot of fun so i'm looking forward to uh hearing uh feedback and seeing the comment
Unknown s Thank you again to Tony and Jack for joining us. This week's episode was produced and edited by Grayson Korhonen and recorded at Mirror Tone Studios in New York City. Please remember to subscribe and rate the show, it really does make a difference. Thank you, and see you next week.