I’ve been listening to Acquired for years—on runs, on planes, and while doing dishes—so the voices of hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal are as familiar as old acquaintances. I know their cadences and laughter so well that chatting with them a few weeks ago after releasing their most recent episode, a five-hour deep dive on Rolex, felt weird.
I first asked them how they decided to conduct an episode about Rolex. “There’s a spreadsheet that, at this point, has about 300 company names,” Gilbert tells me. Potential episodes can come from anywhere. Over the years, listeners have asked for Rolex “at least a hundred” times. The timing was consistent with their inadvertent tradition: “We completed LVMH two years ago, in February. Last year in February, we did Hermès. And thus, by inadvertently, February has become a luxury month at Acquired,” adds Gilbert.
Both hosts confess that their technical expertise initially provided them with blind spots. “I don’t think either of us knew anything about the business of luxury or luxury strategy,” Rosenthal says with humor. Their key perspective on luxury products is on evolution. “Initially, when created, there is a true functional purpose, and 100% of the value comes from the function,” according to Gilbert. “Over time, something can remain valuable, even when it outlives its function, by transcending its function.”
Gilbert and Rosenthal devote roughly 100 hours to research for most episodes, and their commitment to the process is admirable. The Rolex episode required considerably more, with work starting three months earlier than their usual one-month window. For Rolex, they blended five books, multiple Hodinkee articles, consulting from Ben Clymer and Joe Thompson, and interactions with watch lovers in their larger networks.
Despite extensive inquiry, they discovered major information gaps due to Rolex notoriously private character. “There’s not much that is authoritatively known about Rolex that they have confirmed because they’re just so tight-lipped,” Gilbert tells me. They discovered no definitive evidence regarding how the company handled crucial commercial inflection points such as the quartz crisis. “Zero people had a definitive answer for me on, ‘What were the meetings like at Rolex headquarters, where they were making decisions about their strategy?'” Gilbert says. Another shocker was Rolex’s market share. Rosenthal says: “Rolex just dominates the industry… They’re just playing a different game than everybody else.”
Their initial recording lasted 8-10 hours. Their audio engineer completed a first cut lasting around 5 hours and 44 minutes. Gilbert and Rosenthal then spent almost 12 hours listening at regular speed, making 600 cuts to shorten the time to 5 hours and 9 minutes. “We force ourselves to listen at 1x and walk around while we’re listening, to basically become bored, and then figure out which parts bother us the most on the second or third listen,” Gilbert tells me.
The hosts are aware of their audience and try to bridge the divide between professionals and the general public. “We are making the episode for people who don’t know what a movement is, but we want the watch nerds to respect our work,” Gilbert tells me. “We want the watch nerds to listen and be like, ‘Yep, they got it right,’ but we want it at the level understandable by the smart general public.”
I was interested in how they accomplished this equilibrium; their answer was brilliant. They question each expert they consult: “If you listen to this episode and think, ‘These guys suck, they missed it,’ what would cause that reaction?” They then ensure that the key pieces are included. This intelligent approach is certainly effective.
For Gilbert and Rosenthal, each episode represents a company’s history and an opportunity to find lessons that transcend industries, such as Standard Oil’s monopoly or the timeless charm of a Hermès saddle. Those 100+ hours of study and 12+ hours of editing result in something that the listener finds effortless. I concluded the longest podcast I’d ever done and felt empty. Was that it? I don’t want this to be over. Maybe I’ll ask David and Ben for the unabridged version to help fill the gap.
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