Beyond The Dial Allen Farmelo

Farewell, and thank you all for listening.  The Aesthetic Revolution Will Be Beautiful!

Allen and Rikki lament and celebrate the current world of watches in equal measure, covering the rise of fashion and red-carpet nonsense to the role of modern materials in high horlogy. 

Allen could no longer resist the forces of gravity at the center of the horological universe, and now he is broadcasting from the within the Rolex Black Hole. He has sold off swaths of his collection and aquired two five-digit Rollies. An unexpected turn in Allen's journey, and perhaps one from which he can never return. Has he sold out or bought in?

Is SWATCH's BIOCERAMIC anything more than a petroleum-based plastic? Find out in this episode as Allen shares his investigation into this divisive material, its history, its current context, its chemical makeup, and even an email about it from a SWATCH representative.

A watch movement made to exacting standards by a robot on Mars working for a third-party alien corporation might turn out beautiful, precise, complicated and fascinating. Barring production on a more distant planet, no movement could be further from "in-house." This hypothetical Martian movement would absolutely trounce, say, a cheap Seiko movement made "in-house" by actual Japanese robots. I'd take the third-party Martian movement any day, and I bet you would too.

Has Rolex evolved into a brand that's For Exhibition Only" And what if Rolex no longer made physical watches? Could this be the future of global luxury brands in the centuries to come?