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One Year Anniversary Episode

Published on Tue, 23 Jul 2019 10:00:13 +0000

An audio walk down memory lane.

Synopsis

This episode marks the one-year anniversary of Hodinkee Radio, celebrating 50 episodes, millions of downloads, and listeners in almost 200 countries. Host Stephen Pulvirent reflects on the show's growth and its unique ability to provide an unfiltered look at the people behind the watch world. The episode features highlights and memorable moments from the first year, focusing on conversations with collectors, industry legends, athletes, musicians, and other fascinating individuals who share their perspectives on watches, collecting philosophies, and personal stories.

The compilation includes diverse insights: collector Om Malik discussing the importance of listening to yourself rather than marketing when building a collection, Jean-Claude Biver sharing entertaining stories from his startup days at Blancpain including creative marketing tactics and meeting Tiffany executives, and various guests discussing their rules and philosophies around watch collecting. The episode also features segments with filmmaker Rian Johnson on tracking down watches from movies, technology pioneer Tony Fadell on the future of watchmaking innovation, independent watchmaker Philippe Dufour on the value of handmade watches, and many others sharing advice and perspectives that have resonated throughout the show's first year.

Transcript

Speaker
Unknown 50 episodes, millions of downloads, and listeners in almost 200 countries and territories, all in our first 365 days. This episode marks the one-year anniversary of Hodinki Radio. And I have to say, this has been an extremely personal project for me. It's one of the bigger projects I've taken on during my time here at Hodinky, and watching the enthusiasm build, not just in the audience, but also here internally over the last year has been really amazing. One thing that podcasting lets us do that we can't do no matter how hard we try in a magazine or on a website, is talk to you. You get an unfiltered look at who we are and where we're coming from and the stories we're trying to tell you. When our producer Gray and I first started talking about this show about a year and a half ago, we kept coming back to one idea. People. The watch world is so interesting, not just because of the objects, but because of the people who wear them, collect them, and love them. And from world-class athletes to famous musicians to watch Industry Legends, and a whole lot more, we've had some pretty interesting conversations over these first 12 months. As the two of us sat down to put this anniversary episode together, I'll be honest, things got kind of emotional. It was really humbling to listen back to the dozens of hours of conversations we've had and hear all of those special moments again. Now, this isn't everything great, but it's what we could pack in, and we decided to focus on the earlier episodes since it's been a little while since you've heard those things. If you want to go back and listen to full episodes, we're gonna have links to everything down in the show notes, and I highly recommend you do. I just want to say thank you again for all of the support you gave us in year one. We say this every episode, but we really couldn't make this show without you. And I couldn't be more excited for what's coming in year two. I'm your host, Stephen Pulveran, and this is Hodinki Radio. So first up we've got a clip that when we decided to do this show was a complete no-brainer to include here, and that's O'Malik talking about his philosophy on collecting. And that extends well beyond watches to things like experiences and the people he keeps close to him. Um and you
Unknown know I I do get I do get it that people want to be more knowledgeable and all those kind of things. I think you go on men's fashion forums and you see the same thing. It's like you you don't really know what you're talking about. You just have to know what you wear, and your body will tell you whether that is great or not. Your own eyes will tell you whether this watch is, you know, working for you or not, how you feel about it. I think a lot of it is uh learning to listen to yourself and not to the marketing and the brands and what everybody else says is it's pretty hard for most people but that's where you need to end up, you know, and that's where you need to become uh uh when you become a collector, that's how you should be thinking about not what you're gonna sell in the future, but what you're gonna wear every day. I think that's how I think about, you know, collecting watches. It's like can I wear this every day for rest of my life? And if the watch qualifies yeah, I know you're pointing at your beautiful Patek and you know, I probably can't do it. Like I would not be able to wear it for the rest of my life. I I was kidding. Yeah. You know, it's that's I I think of the same thing. And
Unknown like the watches that that I plan to keep for the rest of my life are typically new. Uh they're usually below you know five to six thousand dollars. And those are the watches that like I engrave on the back and will keep for the rest of my life, maybe give to a child if if I were to have some someday. But you know, things like this is just like it's it's kinda like it's it's fun. And it's it's a pursuit and it's it's something that like I enjoy at this point in my life where my life revolves around watches. Uh will it always revolve around ro watches? Probably not. And so it's it's like it's it's me exp like whenever I do anything I I go pretty hard for some period of time. Yeah. I didn't know you. Indeed. Indeed I do. Uh and so this is me just like exploring watches to the end. Yeah. And then when I hit the end, I'll stop
Unknown . I agree with on on that point. Like, you know, for me, the most expensive watch I've ever owned is thanks to you is a Moser. Right. Okay. And uh and um for my fiftieth birthday I wanted to buy a watch which I wanted to be if like you know, Indians don't like Hindus don't get buried, but it was the proverbial watch I wanna wear to my grave and that's how I wanted to buy like I love this watch and basically I started planning to buy this two and a half years ago by using a really basic, you know, simple formula. I'm gonna save twenty dollars a day for this watch. That's it. Okay. And like and I and that was like my goal was to get to a point where I can buy this watch. Not just because I could I can afford it, like it's m you know, that's not a problem for me. But I just wanted like this adventure in like saving and and getting there and like and it was kind of fun. There's a nice feeling. There's a nice feeling to it. It's like and and you know, do I wear it every day? Probably not. I probably wore it once to a friend's wedding, that's it. Um but and I'll probably wear it to another wedding. And it's not it's not an everyday watch but it reminds me of my fifty years on the planet and I think it's it's got an emotional appeal. That's the first time I had a watch we just said, Wow, that is you. Like that is you in a watch and I think I've always thought about that. And I think that is so important when it comes to anything, just watches, pens, you know, people like people who make you happy every day are the people you collect. Not people who are going to cause you misery. And and that's how you should be thinking about all the objects too. Can they make you happy? Do they bring joy to your face every time you see them
Unknown . Next up we've got Gary Steingart talking about how the latest crop of faux vintage watches have him feeling like we've hit peak nostalgia. And then honestly a lot of the current watches kind of leave me a little underwhelmed. This whole Fotina thing has been weighing on me philosophically. Oh do tell. Do tell. Well there's a term that Ladiman Nabokov, author of Lolita and many books not about statutory rape, um uh there's a Russian term he used um Porshlist, which is a kind of vulgar imitation. Um very hard it it doesn't really exist. No real the direct fascinating for it. It's what's uh P-O-S-H-L-O-S-T, I think it's uh you would spell it in in English. Something unearned also, you know. And so when I see that kind of Fotina, I I and there's some of these watches are gorgeous. You know, the long jeans um is it the military some some new watch that came out that has the dots on it. Oh yeah. It has these you know computer aid design dots or whatever the heck. They're like aging each dial, each dial, you know. I could just hear someone in Switzerland go, let's put the nest let's turn the nostalgia to eleven, you know. Um and and but I think it's a gorgeous watch, you know, and if that watch was was real, I mean it was was an actual watch, then I I I'd be all over it. Um I mean we're in this funny situation now where there's there may the the uh supply for uh the demand for nostalgia has outstripped the supply of actual sources of nostalgia. Exactly. Exactly. But when it comes to vintage body limited resource. Nostalgia all's the we reach peak nostalgia. Um but nostalgia also brings this kind of what to my mind is like the blade runner effect, which is remember that scene where uh Rachel, who is a uh a replicant, talks to Deckard, the Harrison Ford character who's the Blade Runner, and she says something like, uh, I'm real, you know, and he says, she says, I have memories. And Deckard says, those aren't memories, those are implants. That's Tyrell's niece's memory those are Tyrell's niece's memories. Tyrell is the the maker of the replicants, you know. And so often when I buy a watch like this one, which is gorgeous, and you know, I I think, am I sort of being a replicant? Am I getting someone else's memories? Right. And I mean that to a certain extent the answer is yes. To a large extent the answer is yes. I mean I still prefer being a replicant to Porsche list Naboko's vulgarity, but it's a question of There's got to be a middle ground in the state. I mean that that's a memory I I think back on often because it's like that was a moment. There are a lot of wild stories from the early days of Hodinky, and one of the craziest is this one that Ben told in our very first episode of Hodinky Radio. Jay-Z launched this website in 2010 called Life and Times. Yeah. Which was his like lifestyle take, you know, fashion cars, whatever. Um and my friend Rich, who was the CEO of Complex, who I'm still friends with, was like, oh, like, you know, you gotta talk to this young guy, Ben. Um, he'd be great to do your watch stuff. And so I started writing for Life and Times and I got to got to meet you know Jay-Z a few times. And one time I helped him buy a few watches, and one time he wanted to buy this is when he wanted to buy the watch for his Carnegie Hall show, which he was like, I want something that's like the least rapper watch ever. He like, you know, he was wearing a tuxedo. I I was there in his apartment on Hudson Street when he when uh Tom Ford was there with all of his tuxes. Which is fucking crazy. Yeah. Um and also like back then, I mean even still now, like I was wearing like sperry, you know, dock siders. I'm not today, but I usually am. Uh and like they I came into his apartment and they're like, hey, take your shoes off. And so I take off my like literally like forty-nine dollar dock sliders and uh and Beyonce has these like you know Loubouton wedges and then he's got remember those spiky men's shoes that and so I put my like dock sliders next to those two things I'm like what the fuck is going on? And so then I go in there and his assistant's like, yo, chill while while he does the suit fitting. I was like, of course. And uh and it takes a while, like you know, he whatever. Uh and I'm looking at my watch and I'm just like, oh fuck, I've got I've got a consumer journalism class right now. Like, like I'm gonna be late to class. And I was like, which is more absurd, like telling Jay-Z I gotta go because I gotta get to class? Or telling my professor that I was late 'cause I was at Jay Z's house. Uh so I ended up I ended up staying of course. Uh and I helped him buy uh that rose gold reverso which he wears all the time now. That's super cool. Um but th those were some surreal times because I had no money to my to my name at all. I was really hustling, it was just me at at Hodinky back then. Um, and we were publishing every day while I was in full-time journalism school and and trying to trying to pay my rent, you know. Going there with a brand Hudinki's not the only company with some crazy stories in its past. Here's Jean-Claude Beaver at H ten talking about some of the things he did in the early days of Blanc Pan
Unknown . We were a startup because uh we bought the brand for 22,000 US dollars. Uh but the brand was not existing, it was just the name. The brand had gone out of business 20 years before. And we didn't have money. That's it. And when you have no money, we went to Basel Fair with a camping bus. And we are sleeping in the camping bus, it was a Volkswagen Westphalia. I bought one 10 years ago, and I said to my wife, now we're going with camping bus to Greece. She said, What? So you see, I've never forgotten this incredible period of the camping bus. And so we were sleeping in the camping bus uh behind the Basel Fair near the railway station. And uh in the morning we had to shave and to clean. So we went to the railway station putting uh uh one Swiss franc and a shower for three minutes. Uh so and then we went with a nice tie, uh went to Basel Fair and we said where do you stay? We said well we stay in the Hilton uh but but we had to catch attention and in order to catch attention, because we had no collection, Blancin was one watch. It was a moon phase watch, one watch. And it existed in two uh versions: uh 33 millimeter and 33.3 millimeter diameter, and we had one version in steel and one steel and gold. And that's it, only two. If you have two watches and you have a boost, and in those days, in the bush, everybody was showing watches. So uh brands had 30, 40 watches in their different showcases. As we had only two watches to show, and you know, if you show two, it makes very poor. We decided we show none. So we had the boost with a wall. No showcase. And everybody came and looked. What's that? And it was written instead of Hodik, it was written blow. And people said, but blow pa blow. We never heard about it. Or some people said, I remember 30 years ago. But what are they doing? So we had to catch attention. Because we showed no watches, everybody spoke about us. And everybody said, have you seen the watch? So that was our strategy. We had another, you know, when you are startup you must think startup. This is why big groups they can never develop a startup in theory. Because big groups they don't think startup. They think consolidated technocra. So there was another element in the beginning, we had customers, and customers were a little bit reluctant. And we had a strategy, and it worked very well in Zermad. Zermad is a ski resort, because we were sending people to buy our watches in the shop. And in Zermatt, there's a shop called Schindler. And Schindler, he was reluctant. I was making uh running a marathon with him, but even I was running marathon, he said, I don't want your watch. Okay, okay. So finally he bought two, one and one. I mean, it's two, it was two thousand dollars to buy. But in the mountains, people are very careful, and two thousand dollars is a lot of money in the mountains. They you know they think really uh that's why they are so rich at the end. Uh you find more rich people up in the mountains than in the cities so Sindler bought two. I have sent friends. I said, okay, you go to Zermatt and you buy me a watch. So I gave the money, and uh my friend went up and bought the watch. He spent a nice day in Zermatt, it was nice, he skied, and he bought a watch. And then the sister of my wife, I said to her, the same, you buy a watch. So they went for the weekend, they bought a watch. On Monday morning, Shindo calls me. God damn, I sold the two watches. I gotta buy five. And so that's how we started, you know, and we did this. We did this with uh many other people. So uh
Unknown one more one more on this phase, and it'll be the last for me in this round and we'll throw it open. So think about your questions. But you also managed somehow to open the great Tiffany and Company here in New York City. How'd you do
Unknown that? Yes, uh I played the same game more or less. I may I made an appointment with uh Mr. Tiffany uh Kowalski. He was the boss of uh buying, he was purchasing the partner. And I got a tell I got in touch with him by phone. And um yeah, I said, listen, uh I am in Switzerland. I'm interested to see you, to sell you my brand. He said, blah, blah, blah. I'm not so much interested. Don't lose time with me. I said, no, no, we will not lose time. Probably you have a little uh sandwich at uh for lunch and uh we can eat the sandwich together and while eating we can speak and if after twenty minutes I have told you uh nothing interesting at least you haven't sp lost time because uh you have to eat your sandwich anyhow and he agreed So uh he said yes and I said I come uh tomorrow. He said I'll come. I say I take the concord. But I was already in New York
Unknown . Everybody remembers the Concord, right? No way. Three and a half hours hours to New
Unknown York. And in reality I flew with uh with a very cheap ticket uh which was called standby. You had to wait till till they call you and say, hey, we have three tickets and you were running buying one for 180 Swiss francs. So uh yeah, that this was the type of tricks we did. So there was nothing dangerous, it is romantic what we did, it was you know harmless but these little tricks uh people that go to howard business school they don't don't learn them. This is why I go every that is why I go every year to Howard and I tell the boys and girls that are there what we did. Because technocracy I cannot teach, but startup development I can teach
Unknown . And we got here, but uh it's good to get you both in the studio. Absolutely busy weekend, it's good weekend. So directly after Jean-Claude's talk at H ten, Jack, Aldous Hodge, and I hopped in a cab, went to the studio and decided to Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that that's uh he's he's an intense individual. He is an intense and wonderful individual. I brought some folks, some friends, uh not to see my own panels, but to see Jean-Claude Beaver. I said, you know, you not being watch people are in the industry, you'll never get another chance to hear this guy. And you you just have to see this human being for the shit. Don't don't lie, you brought 'em to see you. Yeah, all right. Okay, so I brought them to see me. I'm I'm the the appetizer for uh guys Jean Claude goes on at four. Um be there at nine o'clock in the morning. Don't ask don't ask questions why just be just be there. No, no, I mean interviews online, but I'd never seen him uh in person. Uh never really uh speak with with such passion and and ferocity. Um but I I can kinda tell I'm like, oh his pictures make sense now 'cause he always seems like a sort of a jovial kind of happy person in his pictures, but you he's kinda got a spark about life. Yeah. Um and you know, giving us some of his past and and his some of his experience and what how he had to think in order to get to where he's at, it makes sense. Yeah. He had to be as sly and and beguiling and innovative and and just you know uh uh uh uh humorous as well I think one of my one of my favorite things about uh his uh you know early days um when he was trying to find distribution in the U.S. Uh you know, he was he's very proud of having been a one man dirty tricks department. Yeah. Spe speaking here, I think you're talking about the fact that he called Tiffany and said, We'd love I'd love to take a meeting, I'll hop on the Concord, I'll be there tomorrow and they were like, Oh, okay, you're you're really dedicated. He was already in New York. He was calling from a payphone, yeah, down the street. Uh but that's they would think he was this big operation. But that's business, but it works. It works. So many people we see floating at the top, right? Actually, I mean honestly I think we'd be uh it would be a much more interesting watch industry if there were a few more people floating at the top who'd done stuff like that. I mean a lot of the time nowadays it's guys who came up through finance There's a different passion that's applied to the future of a company when your beginnings have to be creative. Yeah. Yeah. And also, I mean, he's a watch guy. Like I mean we've obviously we've featured him on Talking Watches and other things, but he's he's a watch guy. He loves watches, whereas a lot of these executives we interview all the time, they don't like you said, they don't care. They could be selling drugs or chocolate or you know, whate You gotta love it, man. It's I mean if you're in the business of watches, watch selling, watch making, whatever, if you want to see a real future out of it, I think you have to love it. It's an essential element because otherwise, you're not going to be a part of the growth. You're not going to push the growth. You're just going to sit there and sell whatever, you know, get shoveled out. But man, you got to love it enough to know this is how I want to see it evolve, and this is how I want to it s make better. I agree with you and I think over the long term that's the only way to go. But it's also possible to kind of sell um mass produced mass luxury goods a little bit cynically and um you know still make success. Um but I think in the in the in the market of uh watch making there's two different there's there is the financial success which kind of envelops the commercial success of a brand, but then there's also more logical success. Right. You know me, I'm a I'm a watch designer, very, very novice horologist uh you know and when I study I'm looking towards what can be contribute what can I do that can contribute something to the world of horology. So if I make one great watch and only sell one watch, I've still succeeded. I just have to say for context by the way, uh I think you're um short selling yourself a little bit. Yeah, I would I would agree with Jack on that one. This is this is this is literally the only person who came into the office and asked me uh if I'd uh read Sonier. I so either. Um still still dipping through that. Of course, George Daniels book the uh you know watchmaking. Um uh that's the basically the Bible. Um George Daniels has uh uh book sort of a thesis really on on escapements and and then he has another one on Bregay. Um interesting things about the verge escapement in that book. But uh yeah man it's it's how I taught myself 'cause I I can't afford the time to spend two, three years at woe step. I would love to, but you know, as also an entertainer, you know, I'm doing a TV show and they're like, look, bro, you got six, seven months you, gotta knock this down. You can't go nowhere. It's a little hard to shoot from uh these swish jura uh yeah it's not too much TV production happening. I got I got catching up to do and I got a lot to prove, man. Like people now take this seriously uh sit down and have a have a nice chat and who can forget that time that we recorded with Matt Horanic and he showed up to the studio with a bottle of pre-mixed Negroni. Three there's four people in studio. Yeah. And they're four Negronis, which I'm very proud to to have supplied to global ambassador to the entire drink. Yes. Yeah, it's a it's a position of stewardship I think mostly. Right now I'm just happy to, you know, be consuming them. These are special negrators too, right? Yeah. So um I thought you know, since it's a f uh uh it's a Friday afternoon. Do people know this is a Friday afternoon? Yeah, I mean they do now. They do now. So I thought what a perfect opportunity to kind of pre bottle some Negroni so I didn't have to like travel all from Brooklyn to here with like all the fixing. So I this morning, this morning, before the coffee, I pre-bottled some Negroni to one one one proportions, as every good Negroni lover knows. And I used a very special vermouth, which is this Punta Mess uh vermouth that is was bottled in the nineteen sixties. I bought a case of this vintage vermouth. And the thing about vermouths and bitters and high spirit um percentage alcohols, uh they are they survive all conditions. So normally if you find them, even open, they're usually still good. So I bought a case of this stuff and uh it's spectacular. It's like other level because it was made in a time when people's palates were different, the tastes were different. So it's much more herbaceous and bitter, there's less sugar in it. And as it ages, it just becomes a richer version of itself. So I love Negronis. Like if I if I can get my hands and I have a few bottles and actually have a shipment of coming from Italy this week of vintage Kimpari, which again, the same flavor profiles, right? More bitter, less sweet, different recipe. Pre-1990 was a different recipe. I make these Nagroni Vecchio, which is the old Negroni. So this is mezza vet mezza vecchio, because it's only the vermouth that was old. Vintage, we'll call it vintage. But it be it's a much richer flavored thing, if you've noticed it. It's a pretty damn good way to spend a Friday afternoon. It's less sweet. Which I appreciate quite a bit. And uh there's some Monkey Forty Seven Gin in there. I like I like classic London dries. I love the flavor flavor profiles of this gin. And um, but I would say in general, uh you get the proportions right, you could pretty much you know, you could use what use what's available, but that's what was available to me. Another time zone. Matt Jacobson's a collector I've known for a long time and his one in one out policy has become something of watch community legend. Yeah, no, I I I'm I listen, and this is like I I'm picking up a watch from you, we'll talk about it later. I'm picking up a watch from that I bought from you guys today completely unplanned, which kind of puts me in a pickle because now I have to get rid of something. So because I have a very strict rule about one in, one out on pretty much everything. So whether it's a t-shirt or a pair of shoes or a car or bicycle or a watch, surfboard. Like that I have a very limited thing. And so I store you guys have these beautiful cases. I store my watches in these little pelican cases with foam inserts for watches and they have um six slots in each. I have two of those. So I have room for twelve watches. And that's it. And the thing that's great about that is, you know, listen, 12 watches for um a civilian, you know, is like is is is too many watches. But for a collector, like it's I'm like not even in the game. But for me it's about having really good examples or either watches that really matter to me that I care about or watches that are like the best examples of what they are. And by limiting the number of watches I buy, I stay I'm able to kind of get the best versions of those. So instead of just having a lot, I try to go for the best versions of the ones I can get. Yeah I had read you quoted saying something similar about Japanese denim. Like you could have one really great pair of jeans or a bunch that are just kind of okay and you'd rather focus on having the one that you genuinely appreciate. And that's a very Japanese way of kind of buying and collecting. It's like, you know, you don't really you don't need a lot of stuff, right? And I've been I've been really good about purging a lot of stuff out of my out of my life that you know are unnecessary. I don't want watches I don't wear. I don't want cars I can't drive. I don't want st I I don't I don't want a museum. Right. Right? I've so when I sell stuff, I like I don't look back. You know, I think I I I told you you when guys were in LA, I had a uh you know uh eighteen carat Paul Newman, you know, beautiful black dial, just insane watch. I owned it for a long time. I paid, you know, very little money for it at the time 'cause they weren't worth a lot of money. And, you know, I was so like, you know what, I've not I don't think about it, I don't miss it. Because it was getting to to be that kind of a watch that you couldn't wear. You know, I'll tell you a funny story with that watch. I when I owned I was wearing it one day and I looked down and one of the pushers was missing. That's like a nightmare. Yeah. And so I went like bananas. I think James just started sweating. Yeah, I'm very uncomfortable. I went I went bananas. I tore up like I was at a restaurant. I was in the parking lot. I was on on my hands and knees in the restaurant. I was looking in the parking lot. I like took the seats out of my car. I looked everywhere for that pusher. Couldn't find it. Then I was gonna find then I had I had um a stainless steel version. I was gonna take the pusher off. I was gonna have it uh 3D printed, you know, in gold and like machined, you know, I went through this whole thing. Then I said, you know what? Fuck it. I'm gonna put the watch away. I'm not even gonna think about it. You know, I've owned this watch probably for ten years already. Right. I've probably worn it five times. Right. So like this is just bringing me nothing but like I'm thinking I'm wasting too much time and too many calories on figuring out this pusher. So six months later, uh the plumber was at my house. And he was like doing something and like we know we're like pretty meticulous. It wasn't like there's like a lot of stuff laying around. And he found the goddamn pusher. You know, like on under the sink, you know just there he goes do you want this and I was couldn't believe it so it was fantastic so then I the push over so then it reunited with the watch and I said okay now like because I realized like that was like the th my 3D printing scheme wasn't really So I'm like, okay, now it's like this is like a good like this is a good message. Like this is time for this piece to to move on. And it kind of highlights the whole idea that there are scenarios if you're not in control of w you know, whether you pick a number like twelve watches or whatever, but there's scenarios where what you buy and the things you own end up owning you and not making you happy. It was too much stress for sure. I remember I was wearing that watch one day, and a guy said, He goes, like, good for you for wearing that watch. And I thought to myself, well, that's weird. He's like, Yeah, why wouldn't wear it? And I realized, oh my God, there's people who don't wear this stuff. Yeah. If you're stressed out about a watch, that's probably a bad sign. That's probably a sign that you should be doing it like a little bit a little bit differently. These things, I mean, this a whole I was thinking about coming to talk to you today and it's all about it being fun. If it isn't fun and you don't enjoy it, we don't need any of this stuff. No. Right? But it's fun. And somebody will come to you with a microphone. Building off the theme of one in, one out, we thought it'd be good to include this clip of Alton Brown talking about how to best manage your kitchen equipment. You are famous as a as a gear nut for disliking things that only do one job. Correct. What do you think are the most useful and the most useless things that somebody can have in their kitchen. Well, first I want to say unitaskers versus multitaskers. I waged a war on unitaskers, but then I relented a little bit because I realized that perhaps that was only my lack of imagination with that particular tool. Because other people have come and say, well, I use this for this. And I'm like, oh, alright, I was wrong. I don't like tools that only do one job. But I have found that if people use their imaginations, actually tools do all kinds of jobs. It just depends on on the mind. You know for me I am constantly um surprised by how often I reach for a panini press. Okay. Totally. I have never made a panini in a panini press. I will do that between two hot cast iron pans. But I will do a lot of other things in a panini press. I make the best uh cornichins in the world in a panini press. I cook things in there all the time. But I don't define. You spatcock it and put it in a panini press? You said spatchcock. I did say spatchcock, yeah. I told you, I watched the show. Yes, I spatchcock it and throw it in there, and then I put a bunch of weights on it and squeeze the ever-living crap out of it. But I cook all kinds of things in there. So I I think that any any tool any tool that puts your imagination into play and you start thinking, ah, I could use this to do this is a good thing. It could be a steamer basket, it could be, it could be any anything, any, any tool that you can buy. So what's a what's a unitasker really? I think a unitasker is defined by the person. If you buy a tool that only does one thing, you better be using it all the frickin' time. It's like, cause somebody's like, okay, I bought a robotic, and this actually exists, a robotic donut fryer. Oh wow. Now that doesn't do a whole lot of things, but it does one thing really well. And and I knew per a person in uh Seattle who would bought this old vintage they used to set them up in storefronts and it was a thing that would take the dough and it would squirt it and it would actually was like an assembly line robot for donuts. Yep. It was like it's a unitasker, so I'm gonna have to get rid of it. And I said, uh let's cook some calamari in that bad boy. And then we made we made robotic donut line uh calamari that we had to throw out the oil because it tasted kind of greedy. But but the point is that in the end, the best thing that kitchen tools can do for us is to get us to play. You know, the kitchen's a laboratory and a playroom at the same time. So the things that are in it are toys, aren't they? Right? So we're making food, but we're also expanding our minds, we're expanding our imagination. So whatever you can pull off, do it. Uh I'm I'm really curious. Did you have an experience like that where you just Next up, Stephanie Bidnark talks about some early memories of watch shopping
Unknown . Um to be honest, um when I got engaged and I got a really nice diamond ring from my fiance. I thought it was not really fair that I got diamonds and he got nothing. And so yeah. And so I really wanted to get him a watch and that's what started this whole um research um spiral But as I got to learn about movements and the history of watches and some really iconic watches, I instantly wanted a speedmaster, right? I work in the space industry. That works. The speedmaster is the watch to have. That was great. And so I I went and tried one on and it was giant on me and it just it just doesn't fit. I tried it with a strap, I tried it on a bracelet. And my thought at the time was I'm gonna buy one watch. This is the watch I'm gonna wear every day. Right, right. Um and it it was it's it's too big on me. And I was so disappointed. And I was trying to look at are there other are there other space watches that might be of interest? And they're just there really weren't. They were trying to get me into some of the ladies' models of Speedmasters. Right, right, right. They're all sparkly. Um no, I really want the classic
Unknown . Uh from an engineering purism standpoint, like if you are in the air, you're working in the aerospace industry, you're a rocketry geek, you're a space exploration geek, you don't want like anything other than the watch that you know was and st
Unknown ill is you know currently certified for manned space flight. You want you you want want the the moon mo watonch. I watch. No, I I absolutely wanted the moon watch. Yeah. I couldn't get the moon watch. Um and uh you know that was a big huge purchase for me to to want to be able to do that and I just I I couldn't do it. So I was really disappointed. Um then I went on the other side of the spectrum and decided to research women's watches, what's the most classic women's watch that you could get within a reasonable budget. And I settled on the Cartier tank, thinking that you know if Jackie O can wear it, maybe I can wear it too. That would I would be fine. Yeah, and it's um and I love it. I still wear it all the time. It's it's a great watch. But one time when I was trying on a Speedmaster in a Torneau store in the in the DC area. Um I ran into an astronaut who I work with on a regular basis. We spent some time on the International Space Station and we just got to talking about watches and um I was like, you know, what are you looking at? What's what's your next watch? Right? You can always bond with somebody over talking about that. He's like, oh no, I'm just I'm just picking up my watch. I'm like, what watch are you picking up? Oh my speed master. It's like you mean a speedmaster or your speed master you flew with? And he's like, the speed master I fle And I was like, these guys have no idea that this watch has been on space station and he let me look at it and try it on. Or most of the Azure. It's actually a really good question. I think they mostly I don't know if they're issued or if it's what they fly with, but I think they um fly with X thirty three. Okay. Now I think that's the one that I've seen some of the astronauts that I I occasionally get to interact with thats seem to be what they're wearing. Okay. Um I would love to know what women astronauts have worn. That would be really interesting. Is it not the same watch? I it probably is. Um but like what did Sally Ride wear? Or what did like the the first Russian in space, Valentina Tereshkova, what did what watch was she wearing? That would be fascinating
Unknown . Oh man. This is years later. I'm pretty lucky that I get to listen to Joe Thompson tells stories on a regular basis. But one of my favorites is this one he tells of a trip to Tokyo. Probably the earl early to mid-2000s. By now I've gone to Japan. I mean I stay on the the Japan story. I go out there and Sutomo Mitome, uh who wants to be called Tom, he wanted to be called Tom because uh there's a Tom in his first name, says to me, Listen, and they knew I I love sushi. Now sushi in Japan, I mean, you know, is uh is kind of a quick lunch food, I mean, in many ways. I mean it's also a very, very elegant thing. And he says to so he says to me, Listen, uh and and and he was a gourmet himself, uh uh uh and
Unknown and love Japanese cuisine and would always give me give m give me tests and this is this is uh for another time. I mean you just um I mean I've eaten some amazing things as a result of of of meals with matomi So he says to me, we have
Unknown meetings in the morning, Ms. Tom Matomi and I. He's the CEO. And he says, listen, for lunch, we're gonna go uh to a little sushi restaurant. He says, um, and um it it's it's it's very good. I mean this is so so Japanese. I mean he would not say to me this is the greatest sushi restaurant in the world. He doesn't tell me that. And he's and he says, but uh don't be put off by the venue it's in this subway station uh at the Ginza and uh Sego offices were close to the Ginza so we walk over to the Ginza um and then we go down and then there's a tiny little sushi restaurant, you know, and we go in and um we're talking shop. I mean, uh, I mean, I love Matomi. It was great to talk to Matomi. We're just talking, we're talking a line. We sit down, the two of us are there, and there's chefs behind the counter, and there's an older gentleman there. And I'm not paying any attention to that. Um, because I'm with Matomi. And um all of a sudden, I can see that the chef is kind of a stern guy anyway. I'm not, but I'm not paying a lot of attention to him, and then all of a sudden I hear this kind of a grumbling. They're they're d he's he's talking to Matomi. You know, it's kind of a little bit and it seems to me to be Japanese is immaculate. Seems yeah, thank you. Seems to me to be quite I don't know, like maybe something's wrong. So uh Matonia, hi. Hi. And then um, okay. Now, as you know, in a su in a in a fine sushi restaurant, there are there are pauses in between, and you you know, then the the the the meals prepared, the the pieces prepared, and you put one or two on the on the on the palm. And so we're talking, and just
Unknown as the next one come comes, Matomi says to me, Listen, Joe, he says, Listen, by the way, let me let me let me give you a tip about eating sushi. He says, here's how we do it over here. It's very he says, when you you take it and you we just tip it with our chopstick, we just tip it on its side, so the fish is on the side to your left, and then you take it with your chopstick and you just take the fish and you dip it just ever so slightly into the soy sauce. Not too much. So you know, so try that. See see if you see if you like that. And I oh okay. Yeah, thanks. Than
Unknown ks Tom. I'll do that. Thanks Tom. Thanks Tom. Thank you. No big deal. So I do that. So we leave. I'm not a complete idiot. We're w we f we leave, we walk out. I say to him, Tom, um, what what happened with the sushi chef in there? And and I said, so I said, he was upset with me, wasn't he? And he looks at me and and I said, Come on, come on. You didn't tell me. I said, Come on, y you know, come on, tell me. What what did he say? And then he smiled and he said he he looked at me uh he's and he said to
Unknown me, If that gaijin dips his rice into the soy sauce one more
Unknown time, I'm tossing the two of you out of here. So and then the end of the story is that yeah, whenever it comes out, I mean maybe ten years ago, whatever it is, a documentary comes out. It's called Jiro Dreams of Sushi. And it's about this sushi restaurant in the subway at the Ginza and how this is the greatest sushi chef that ever lived. And you know, I s I I I see it, I mean, holy crap. That's Jiro. I know Jiro. You know, Jiro. I'm the barbarian that that infuriated Jiro and because I came in there and absolutely just trashed his joint butched face. Oh man. So it's just yeah, you know, this was uh sort of the the Joe Thompson's like forrest gump moment where he just like touches history ever so slightly. Exactly. I kinda hope that there's like a picture of you, Joe, behind the counter at the restaurant that's just like no gaijine behind the counter. But but it just I mean I mean c can you believe it? I mean that's unbelievable. Unreal. You know, just damn near thrown out of gyros. Oh my God. Can I just stay home and watch Netflix? I've never had a hangover, let's just put it that way. Yeah. Like i it's always Ted Gashu lives that bucket list lifestyle on Instagram. But here's one story that didn't make it to his feet. I'm very I'm very, very lucky. So let's get specific here. Tell me about the Emililaia M Milia. The Em Mililaia Melia uh in its current form is a uh basic it's more of a rally than a um than a race but the the original race uh was one of the ballsiest craziest uh most insane things you could ever possibly do. So you had guys like Sterling Moss, uh legendary racing drivers, uh driving at top speed on dirt roads through Italy, um, doing a thousand miles in under twenty-four hours. And uh which today is not that much of an accomplishment. Like you can kind of do it. But like these guys were going like a buck thirty on bicycle tires uh with uh boat engines strapped. You know, like the the the cars that they were driving were just totally tot,ally mental. And um I was very lucky to do it for the first time uh I've been a few times now, uh in a nineteen thirty-eight BMW um three twenty-eight bodied by Touring Super Ligera.. 1938 I mean, think about how old that is. That is it is. It's a $25 million car from the BMW Museum. And they let you behind the wheel. Yes. And unfortunately we had a slight mishap. Slight mishap? Well i we came around the roundabout um uh after some rain and the car fish tailed I corrected but not not perfectly and uh we we clipped a guardrail. How'd that feel? Uh expensive for them. Deeply, deeply expensive. I have not been invited back by them. But I I that's which is not to say I don't have a great relationship with BMW. Ben Voss runs their um their vintage department over there and he's just an incredibly lovely guy. Uh so he we still we still hang out. But uh yeah that was uh that was a tough one. Ac actually I was crying uh j genuinely 'cause I was so passionately in love with this car and uh w once it happened I uh I I I I stopped the car and my my co-driver was uh Dr. Marcus Schramm, who is the director of strategy for all B and W. So he's like the number two or three guy there. Uh and he he was like, you fucked up. When that guy looks at you and says you fucked up. Six six foot seven chainsmoker who's run who runs ult ultra marathons, incredible guy. Um but then the the mechanics uh walked up and they're like, that's just kein probleme uh schnellos but this is a race like you have to go like and i uh i was just like uh okay uh yeah i had a really uh crazy experience of that me feel terrible. Um I gotta I gotta ask. Rules are a popular thing with watch collectors. But here Matt Scannel tells us about his rules and how he's always breaking them anyway. Okay, so uh no dress watches because why? These are this is gonna this is this is gonna offend people who are are much more knowledgeable than I am and I'm okay with it. Like no no dress watches, no gold. No rose gold. I don't care, James. I don't care. I don't care. No date windows. No stick hands. So no rainbow Daytona at all. Never a rainbow. No, rain actuallybow Daytona gets a pass on every level. Yeah. If I had a rainbow daytona, I'd probably I'd want two and I'd want to do it Morgan King style. Um no stick hands, no chronographs, uh no dates if possible, definitely no days. And I unfortunately I break these rules all the time. So I was wearing yesterday, I was wearing a Seiko, I'm gonna get the reference wrong, but a Seiko sixty one uh nine the blue five y six six one oh five is a yellow six one oh five this is this doesn't matter but I I w
Unknown anna say that the sixty one oh five is is a a dive watch 'cause I just bought a
Unknown six I think a six one oh five-eight thousand which is the transition model before the sort of apocalypse now watch that everybody it's everyone knows with that slightly this is a visual motion that I'm making to everyone in podcast land. But uh it's sort of an asymmetrical case. This one is a very symmetrical case. Regardless, the it the watch I was wearing yesterday is the blue version of the pogue essentially. Um and it's got stick hands, it's a chronograph, and it's got a day of the week and the date. Yeah. So if it if it only were gold and was on a leather strap. That's another rule. No leather straps. Sorry, guys. I mean I I don't I I I'm in I'm on the wrong podcast. Sick burn. I no, I like NATOs, I like I like cloth, but I don't own a leather strap and I don't own anything that's brown. And I really don't have I really honestly don't have much rationale for any of this. But you asked me what my rules were. That's fair. And I'm gonna answer them. Great. I get it. Do you? I don't like wearing leather straps that much either. And I don't like brown and I make rules and then I break them. A lot of these people who you see is like brand new. And here James Marzon shares with us why he's the kind of guy who when he gets interested in something can't help but go deep. But you're like you're real watch guy. I'm a nerd. Yeah. I I love him. I I love it. But I'm I'm that way with a lot of things in my life. You know, I'm a I I I love I'm a technician. I like um the details that go into um special things that why why this car is special, this guitar, this this piece of art, you know, uh this espresso maker, like what you know, like w whatever it is. Nerd nerds tend to be nerds about lots of things. Like I I don't know many people who are like really into watches but like don't care at all about cars or cameras or something, you know? Right, right. Well there's you know, there's I there's there's a lot of people out there that you see um that wearing a you know three hundred thousand dollar watch and they bought it because it's a three hundred thousand dollar watch. They don't know much about it or why it's special. They just're like, oh, this is, you know, this is that name on there. And I'm and I'm wearing it and it's expensive. And that kind of drives me crazy because like I, you know, I have a nice little m relatively modest collection, and some of them are like, you know, $50 Seiko fives. You know, like I'm cool thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a this is a fifty dollar automatic movement, you know, watch that will continue to run as long as it's moving. And um so I am fascinated with the details about why something is special and the sort of uh the craftsmanship that goes into all of it. Um so yes, I I um and I I think the expectations, I don't know, it when when I started talking shop with uh you know uh the all the all the all my friends and family over there at IWC, they were like, Whoa, how do you you you actually know that? I'm like, How do we make a you know f yeah forty millimeter you know perpetual calendar split second perpetual calendar movement and they're like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa slow down yeah. This is not what we're paying you for. How do you know this, first of all? Uh um so I tend to when I get into something, I immerse myself in the science of it all uh because that's I just can't get enough information about it. Yeah. Um and uh and it and it watches became one of those things for me. So when when did you first get into watches? Was it before you started working with IWC? Um yeah. Yeah. Uh and I wasn't d diehard before that, but uh they definitely sort of shepherded me into the you know um the the world of fine watch making, you know. Before that was uh you know, I had a whatever high school was like one of those Casio, was it F ninety ones or whatever, the I forget. They're just like basic the Casio, you know. Um and uh and I had a Seiko because uh because my uncle had a uh he said, oh you want to wear a Seiko because it's Oki's spelled backwards. Oh that's and then if you're from from Oklahoma, then uh you're that's cool. Uh you're an Okie. So like ah that's cool. I'll wear a Seiko because it's Oki's spelled backwards. That's cool. Um but uh my first you know my first very nice watch was given to me in two thousand one um by uh David E. Kelly as a rap gift for the season of Allie McBeal. Cool. And it was an IWC and it was a Portofino. Um, and I was like, I've never been given that nice of a a gift as a rap gift, and it was like, Whoa, that's this cool. Well, I'm gonna learn about this thing. What is it? Why is this like special? And um so it was just sort of happenstance that that was like the first real nice watch I got. Um and then my father gave me a uh Rolex submariner and I don't even remember what you know what year it was. May I think it was from the eighties. And it kills me because we were shooting X Men two in Alberta, Canada in some crappy little hot we were staying out in the middle of nowhere in this like little, you know, motel and I left it on the nightstand and the uh housekeeper um made some money. That's rough or the you know, the the housekeeping. Yeah, that came back and it was gone. I was like, you idiot. What are you doing? But I was still in the mo I was still in the time where it was like I didn't like I mean, I liked watches, but it wasn't like uh you know uh I was like, Oh cool, that's you know, I know that's a nice watch. Yeah. I I wasn't like obsessive about it yet. Sure. Yet. That came later. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But uh but yeah, that was I had telling that and he's like, oh come on. So I didn't want to think about like God, what was that? Was like a 70s, 1680 or something. I don't I think it was just a fifty-five thirteen. I don't I c I don't know. If you have press coming out for a movie, TV show, the the the studio will will, you know, they'll give a certain budget to have a stylist dress you for, you know, Jimmy Fallon or doing press junkets and all this. And part of that dressing is you know, she's you know, she's awesome. She like puts me in these really great suits that, you know, I don't really get to keep, but I get to wear them for you know. Um and I remember her going, Yeah, you any wa what do you have any watches? You need a nice watch to wear with this suit. And uh and IWC was one of the um the companies that she worked with and was like, here, you know, this will look really nice with that. And I was like, funny, this is like the only other nice watch I have is is an IWC. It was given as a gift, and um um and then then that's when I started going, oh wow, because this is like this has got to go back. This is like N now you know how we feel all the time, right? We we get to see these amazing things, but they they always have to go back. Yeah. Right. Yeah, you do don't you? You get to hold them and wear them. Great stuff that gets sent back. Um but I she dressed me for the Met Ball a couple of years ago and uh uh um this was when uh uh four or five years ago. So that was probably when I started with IWC. And I was wearing a really nice I think it was a perpetual calendar. And I was like, What is this thing? And what do you mean it it it will keep time until two thousand four hundred and ninety-nine? And Kurt Klaus who developed this, you know, uh I just then I started wondering why is this special and learning about it. And um and uh I was I did a couple of um you know press things where I they would she would out the IWC were kind enough to like give me a watch to wear for the thing. And then they invited me to SAHH one year. And uh and I I flew out and got to see all the the new goodies. And um that's when I was speaking to at the time it was George and uh but um you know, everybody there on on board in the creative team and and I'd done my homework and they were like, Yeah, well, you know your stuff That's that feels good. We we want people that you know to be aligned with this brand that care about it, understand why this is special. all through my twenties that Joe had on. Every real watchner knows that they're looking at risks when they watch movies and TV. Director Ryan Johnson is no different. What's really funny is since because I've only really gotten in any knowledgeable way into watches like in the past like, you know, I don't know, ten years or so. And so uh the Star Wars you can't really place watch it's a little hard. Yeah. So uh although it's tempting it'd be pretty cool if just on solo was like rocking a Patek or something. But uh but no, they uh uh and then before that Looper, I mean there's a um uh there's a pocket watch that he has during it. And uh yeah, and and that I uh we I thought about like looking at a a specific brand of it, but ended up just going with um uh my prop guy found like a really interesting uh style with um uh with a really particular face. And I was just stylistically that looks good and it's generic enough to where it's not gonna take anyone out of the story. So it's set in this weird future, so you don't want to date it using like it. So I don't know. But but I do sometimes I found myself uh watching movies that I love and just kind of squinting and saying, Oh what's he for sure. Yeah, yeah. Mo yeah, movie watching. Yeah, movies, TV, shows I don't even care about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. James just watches somebody else's watching TV. Have you guys ever tracked down a watch that you found like uh Like like hunted to find out what it actually was? Yeah yeah probably yeah like uh I mean the big one is uh is uh um Cooper in Jaws. What is he wearing? What is he wearing? It's an Alestra. They're actually doing a reissue of it. It just came out. It's so it's like a skin diver, but on like a metal a metal uh band style bracelet that has like big rivet holes in it. That's awesome. Oh dude. Yeah. Have you ever tracked anything? I've done it twice. I have to stop myself from doing it more because it could just be a rabbit hole. But I did um that could be an interesting vein of collecting though. Like you collect watches you've seen movies. I'm very shocked that actually there's not kind of a whole subset of the culture that's in maybe there is and I just don't know it. After hours, you know the Scorsese movie? Yeah. So because they there's so many close ups of um Griffin Dunn's watch during the course of the night as his universe is falling apart. And every time it flashed to it, I was like, what is that watch? And it's actually it's a Hamilton khaki branded like the military style watch. But this was before you guys did like the piece on it and with the reissue that just came out of the one that our our producer Gray has been. Oh, yeah. Over here on the other side of the studio. There you go. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. There it is. So this is so this is before this came out and I was like, oh my God, that's such a cool and so I just went on eBay and it was just uh you know, it was very cheap. I was able to find one. Yeah. Like one of those the symbol like the songbird ones. Exact yeah, exactly. It's like this. It's it's much smaller than this. And it's it's got the khaki brand on it. But yeah. Oh that's really that's really nice. Mm. Sure. Uh and then the other one, um so uh there's this movie uh The Other Side of the Wind. Have you heard about this? Oh, this is the uh thing. Okay. So I've gotten to know uh um sorry, we're gonna be talking for an hour before we even really start with thewes. Okay, good. All right. So I've I've I've been lucky to get to know Frank Marshall, the producer, who's Kathy Kennedy's uh husband. You know, Kathy runs Lucasfilm, so I've worked with her really closely with Star Wars. And Frank is a legend and he's also kind of um he's kind of the forest gump of the film world, not in terms of his intellect, but in terms of he every time you start talking to him, he'll bust out another story of, oh yeah I was hanging out with these guys while they were doing this amazing historic thing. It's just absurd. One of the things that he did was he worked in uh like the seventies with Orson Wells when Wells was making like his last couple movies. And he got into that through working with Bogdanovich. He was like Bogdanovich's guy on uh Paper Moon, Last Picture Show. I mean he goes back like to the day and like, you know. Uh so anyway, he got into working with Orson Wells on this last movie that Wells shot but never finished, called The Other Side of the Wind. And it starred John Houston as this aging film director and Bogdanovich actually co-stars in it as like his protege, sort of. But anyway, the Frank for years was trying to get a hold of the original footage. He finally did it. It was like locked in a vault in Paris with all this complex French bureaucratic bullshit like keeping everyone's hands off and he finally found a way to get everyone to agree and sign whatever they had to do. Got the footage, cut it all together into a movie, and I got to see it recently. They're going to premiere it. It's going to be on Netflix like I think later this year. Yeah. It's incredible. And John Houston in that movie in night I think they shot it like in the mid-70s, I think, early 70s. And he's wearing a pulsar P two. He's wearing such a weird watch. So strange that John Houston is wearing this like what would have been at the time like a cutting edge like you know it looked like the future. Absolutely, it did the two thousand one inspired like and so I I tracked I I tracked one down. I got one of those. That's super cool. Which you it's not actually that uh I don't know. I mean you can find them and they're not astronomical or an I can't. Were you able to find one that works? No. But so that's the next step is I gotta figure out it's it's so dumb I'll still wear it around even though it's yeah, it's awesome. But then I went to a YouTube rabbit hole recently, is watching a bunch of Peter Sellers interviews from the early seventies and I spot The same thing? Yeah. Yeah, cool. Yeah, yeah. Pulsar V2. I was like, wow, all these are. It's like a weird cult watch. I guess so, yeah. They're probably all gifted each other then. I'm sure it's barely the same watch. They're friends or one guy gifted all his buddies one and it's filtered through something like that. So um a few years later, I um um uh here MBNF founder Max Booster shares how he fell in love with watches in the first place. And I sent letters out to um the big brands and in those days those big brands were so small. I think in those days like Bergier was doing 600 watches a year and Vachon 700 watches a year and that meet a little student from a local university gets a letter back from the CEOs of each company. Not bad. That it's it's insane when you think of it today. That's that's the extent of how small that industry w had become. Saying, Well, young man, uh, if you come at this hour, that day, I'll give you one hour. So I met um I met Steve Erkrat at uh AP, uh, Claude Daniel Prolox at VC, uh, Gerald Genta himself, Henri John Belmont at Yego Le Coultre. Henri what was what his name? Mr. Baudet at Bruguet. And so there I am. I'm going to interview them and like explain to me. And how old are you when this is happening? I'm probably about twenty, twenty-one. Okay. Yeah. And um and they all more or less tell me the same thing. We know what we do is pointless, but it's so beautiful. And for me, it was a shock because engineering college in those days, at least in Switzerland, the notion And um and so this s sort of beauty which became something emotional, so I was already amazed. And then they they came up with and you do realize that if we do go down and we don't survive this era, generations of artisans are going to disappear. People who have given from father to son the tricks of how to do a brigade curve on a spiral and how to angle that that angle, etc etc all those all that knowledge is gonna disappear and that's another world from premiere for me was somebody talking about humanity there is no oh at least there was no humanity in my engineering studies. And I actually fell completely in love with it. And um and then I went to do my military service, that's what we do when we're Swiss, and uh had an absolutely horrible accident. I um I shouldn't be here. I mean there is no reason I should be alive after that accident. And uh after six weeks in hospital, uh I don't know, like six weeks uh at home in a cast to complete my whole upper body in a cast. Um luckily for me my left hand, my left arm was free. I actually jumped on a bus and um went up to the center of the Lausanne where I used to live and I had in my mind for a year I'd been seeing that able chronograph with the primero movement uh in steel. Everybody was buying the golden steel in those days, and it was just all in steel. And I go to the store and I say completely in my cast. You can imagine the thing. This youngster comes completely in a cast coming in and says, Um, I want that watch. And she gives me the price. Uh, and I buy it, and she she puts it on my wrist and I go back in the bus and I'm screaming in the bus. I like I got my watch. So that's how realized I was completely hooked. Well, look. The watch industry can sometimes be obsessed with looking backward. But technology legend Tony Fidel is much more excited about looking forward. 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 you that slim um calendar watch and to look at how it was done by the ge
Unknown aring that they've done and the teeth. The two it was basically a programmable mechanical machine. They created something like a a automata from back in the day
Unknown . That's what they created in there. And I can't believe when you see it, you 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. 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 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
Unknown , what it feels like, what the technology is inside it, the full representation that there was love
Unknown and care thought about in every single point of the process. And to me, when you say it was bigger than there's little a 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 everything. So what do you think of this? 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 traditional. 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 present
Unknown ing it to you to a certain extent, have a little bit more of an open mind and learn and embrace. Because, you know
Unknown 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 they need to be able to be economically healthy. 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 things. That's their choice. So be
Unknown it. I have no judgment. That's fine. They should go off and do that. That's great. But industries must
Unknown 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 of watches. And the RD2 is a perfect example of that. It's it's as far as a way of thinking. Yeah, you know? And any traditionalist if they see that watch, they have to they have to embrace it. If they can't embrace the RD2,
Unknown it's like what? Come on. What it's just different. And it's a lot better. Right. It th they didn't break all
Unknown of your the tenets of traditionalism in any way, shape, or form. They just did it incredibly smartly. But the way I think about it is that people 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 gonna 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 w 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 evolve. So you think we we m were primed to maybe enter like a new golden age or a new period of of increased creativity because of the kind of like threat again in quotes from smartwatches. Exactly. W
Unknown hen 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 street doesn't want to
Unknown embrace it, fine, but you're gonna become the dodo bird. Work like yourself who would make make the whole watch beginning too. And finally, watchmaking legend fleet to four talks about the real value of a handmade watch. very first watch that you made for yo
Unknown urself, I think we were just looking at the movement. That's the uh the uh you made a grand sonnery? Yeah grand sonnerie uh minus ritual wrist watch. Mm-hmm yeah. And that was uh in ninety two in ninety two. Yeah. And and then nobody had ever seen anything like this before. No, no, no, no, no. Was a big surprise. So uh what made you decide I mean this is uh even today, if I'm a brand, you know, with uh a billion dollar company behind me, uh this to even today this would be and uh you know computers and CNC, this would be a crazy thing to do. And you you did did it it yourself, by yourself without any of this stuff. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean of course the modern technology can can help you. But uh what is important important it's is uh the component coming out of could be a hand operated machine or a sensing machine, this component, if you use it the way it is, uh is not enough. Right. So you have to add something. And this something you add it by by hand. And even the hand gives you, I mean, uh something probably less accurate than a Cinsei machine. Because Sinsei machines are very accurate, but it gives you this this hand finish. It's like a painting. You know, if you you have a painting uh made by a robot, uh okay, but if if if if it's uh hands doing that, you you you can feel it. Right. And the the I mean the I see the people who are wounding my watches, they feel something when they look at the movement. Yes. I give you I give you an example. Something happened to me um two years ago in in Japan. I was uh there uh to the uh to to give a lecture to the school. The third time I go there. It's m it's marvelous to be there because you have twenty students for one week but they kill me, you know. But I mean Oh really? How? Yeah they, they want want to to know beautiful, you know, and polite and respect. Yeah. Nothing to say. And as I was there, the the shop Shellman who sold most of the simplicity in Japan. He told me while you are here, spend two days in the shop. So he invited all his customers. I'm these people I met them ten years ago sometime. They came in the shop, we go recognized the kids, we're like that, now they are big, we make uh photos, uh they're wearing the watch, explaining me how they live with their watch in a very marvelous moment. And one guy arrived and tell me he's the doctor and he He in his shop, uh uh not his shop, his uh how do you call that for a doctor. Yeah, his uh office. Doctor's office. Office. He has all uh pictures of my watches. He has all the magazines because it was a lot of uh beginning of the 2000 with a lot of uh Japanese magazine who make a report uh from the workshop. So he has everything and he explains uh uh to his patient where the watch is coming from. Right, right. And Tommy has some some patient very sick, cancer, end of life. And it led them with the simplicity for a while. And he told me that happy for a moment. And he asked me to sign two pictures of his patient. You know, in the simplicity and you have eyes, brilliant eyes. I came back in my workshop, I was sitting on my bench and I said this is just marvelous because I still have a lot of pleasure to finish a watch. Yeah, but you know uh when you m we you you make a watch
Unknown um and you're just thinking about making the watch when you make the watch, but it it goes out into the world. Yeah and sometimes it really
Unknown makes these uh these moments that are um important in people's lives. Exactly. And I say for me I'm still still a lot of pleasure. Every time I watch is finished and I said if this watch can give pleasure to somebody around the world, it's just manas. Circle is close.
Unknown So the way we usually wrap up hodinky radio is by asking our guest the hodinky questionnaire, a series of five questions. One of those questions is what's the best piece of advice you've ever received and who gave it to you? Our first fifty guests have given us some pretty incredible answers, and here are some highlights. It would have to be what I said earlier, which is, you know, our time here is limited. And I've received that from a few really important people. Fast nickels over slow dimes. Just try. You know, just just give it a shot and try. It has to be Günter Blumline. Mr. Buzer, creativity is not a democratic process. Well, I've taken a lot of advice from people and what I've kind of turned it into this idea of being the best part of another person's day. Just do what you love, baby. Just do what you love. They'll find you. And that's so true. Nothing in the world will last forever, be it good or bad. It's one you hear a lot, it would have been my mother who just encouraged me to listen and not talk. Because if you talk, you're
Unknown not gonna learn anything. Spend a lot of money on either your shoes or
Unknown your bed because if you're not in one you're in the other.
Unknown Richard story when I got this job told me that I will notice that people laugh much more loudly at my jokes now and to remember that I'm really not that funny. My grandmother on my paternal side, she had this like
Unknown she's from New York, she has a thick accent. People are people! That's what she was-that's how she would say it. No. You know, honestly, for me, it was my mother. When I was very young, she just told me the most important thing to do was what I loved. It's so simple. Follow your heart. It's all one life. There's no separation between work and home and fun and pleasure.
Unknown Ask for forgiveness, not for permission. It's never too late to do the right thing. Mine's pretty simple. Never give
Unknown up. Markthorpe, you gave me my mantra. Show up, do dope shit. Perfect. I love that. I'm in. You you're you just aren't owed anything in this life. So what you get, you either ask for and I believe very strongly in asking for what you want and I think the rest of the time you need to process what it is that would like maybe make you happy and try and make it happen. Thank you so much for listening to this episode and all of the episodes we've made over this first year. This show has been a real labor of love, and the feedback we've gotten from all of you has been incredible, truly. We're really excited to see what the next year brings, and along those lines, we'll be back in two weeks with something pretty special. Well,