About Roman

Roman, known online as @TimesRomanAU, is a podcast host at Fifth Wrist Radio, especially through its Independent Thinking format. He is an important voice within the broader Fifth Wrist community, a platform known for its independent, community-run approach to watch discussion and its explicit rejection of brand sponsorship, outside watch-company funding, and commercial influence.

Roman represents a form of horological authority that does not come from auction houses, brands, museums, or traditional institutions. Instead, his authority comes from knowledge, curiosity, conversation, and long-term engagement with watch culture. As a horological history enthusiast, collector of horological books, art, and independent watches, he has consistently used his platform to support independent watchmakers, artisans, researchers, writers, and smaller sellers.

Through Independent Thinking, Roman has helped create space for deeper conversations about watches — not simply what is new, expensive, or fashionable, but what is historically meaningful. His episodes often focus on books, scholarship, museums, forums, collecting culture, research, and the preservation of horological knowledge. In doing so, he highlights one of the most important questions in watch culture: how do certain stories survive while others disappear?

In this conversation for Watches & Politics, we explore knowledge itself as a form of power. We discuss the role of books in shaping horological memory, the tension between scholarship and social media, the value of independent media, and the ways collectors, authors, podcasters, and researchers influence what later becomes accepted as watch history.

At its core, this episode asks whether the future of horological authority will be defined by institutions, markets, and brands — or by independent communities committed to preserving knowledge for its own sake.

Topics Discussed

1. When you hear the phrase “Watches & Politics,” what is the first image, concept, or story that comes to your mind?

2. You have described yourself as a horological history nerd and a collector of horological books. At what point did you realize that collecting knowledge can be just as important as collecting watches?

3. What role do books still play in horology today? Are they still foundational, or are they slowly being replaced by podcasts, Instagram, YouTube, and online discourse?

4. Do books also serve as tokens of provenance associated with great makers, collectors, and collections?

5. How do books, scholarship, and long-form research shape what later becomes accepted as watch history?

6. As watchmaking schools and formal teaching programs become more limited, how important are books for transferring horological knowledge to collectors, researchers, and makers?

7. Fifth Wrist has positioned itself as an independent, community-driven space. Can independent media still protect substance from hype, or has the ecosystem become too fast and too market-driven?

8. In a field where comparison is constant — brands, movements, finishing, heritage, value — what makes a comparison meaningful rather than superficial?

9. Do books serve as tools of memory, as in the work of collectors and writers like Mitch Katz and Cecil Clutton, or can they also become instruments of self-aggrandizement, such as collection books tied to figures like J.P. Morgan or David Salomons?

10. What about books that function as brand propaganda? How should collectors read them critically?

11. Are there important histories, brands, or makers that remain undervalued simply because the right books were never written or the right advocates never emerged?

12. Are we currently producing better horological knowledge, or simply more horological content?

13. If a future historian wrote a chapter titled “Roman and the Independent Preservation of Horological Knowledge,” what would you hope it captures?

14. What defines a collector, and can someone collect knowledge, books, and stories as meaningfully as they collect watches?

Key quotes from the conversation

“Collecting knowledge can be just as important as collecting watches.”

“Books are a timestamp of the moment they were written.”

“Independent media matters because once money gets involved, things get murky.”

“You have to be an educated reader and buyer.”

“Historical importance does not automatically become historical memory.”

“A collector is a pathological accumulator of objects or knowledge.”

Further Reading & References

Fifth Wrist Radio — Roman’s independent, community-driven podcast platform dedicated to honest horological discussion, independent watchmaking, scholarship, and collector voices.

George Daniels — The Art of Breguet - One of the books that helped lead Roman from Breguet into the world of George Daniels and independent watchmaking.

George Daniels — Watchmaking - A foundational technical text for watchmakers and collectors, still widely referenced by independent makers today.

David S. Landes — Revolution in Time - A major historical work placing timekeeping within the broader development of technology, society, trade, and global history.

Ryan Schmidt — The Wristwatch Handbook - A brand-agnostic and accessible reference work that Roman highlights as especially useful for learning about watches broadly.

David Salomons — Breguet Collection Publications - Important early collector scholarship preserving one of the most significant Breguet collections and showing how books can carry a collector’s legacy through time.

Mitch Katz — Time on My Hands - A collector memoir Roman recommends strongly, especially for the way it captures the feelings, stories, and personal journey behind collecting.

John Reardon / Collectability - A modern example of Patek Philippe scholarship, podcasting, and collecting education built through long-form expertise and public knowledge sharing.

Derek Pratt, Jean-Pierre Hagmann, Donzé Cadrans, Thomas Prescher, Andreas Strehler, Vincent Calabrese, Svend Andersen, Paul Gerber, and Ludwig Oechslin - Examples of makers and craftspeople whose legacies deserve deeper scholarship, fuller documentation, and stronger public preservation.