This week we welcome Katie Treggiden, a speaker, podcaster, and author known for her expertise in craft, design, and sustainability. Katie's journey into the world of environmentalism took a unique path. Before she delved into issues like sustainability and circularity, she was a craft and design journalist.

What sets Katie apart in her approach to environmentalism is her ability to see the world through the lens of craft. For her, repair is not just about fixing what's broken; it's about storytelling and connection. She believes in the beauty of mending, where ordinary people can breathe new life into items using readily available materials and simple skills.

Katie's perspective on repair extends beyond the individual level. She envisions a world where repair becomes a cultural norm, where we value objects for their history and the stories they carry. The intersection of environmentalism and repair, as seen through Katie's eyes, isn't about sacrifice; it's about creating a future filled with joy and connection. Nor is repair isn't just a means to do less harm, instead seeing it as a tool for a path towards doing more good.

Katie’s most recent book is all about repair, and we talk through how it relates to everything from human connection to solving our oversized waste problem.

Travis Goodspeed has a unique relationship with “stuff.” A renowned “hillbilly hacker” from Tennessee, Travis is a reverse engineer and device hacker without peer. He’s best known as an outspoken advocate of “junk hacking” - the practice of probing low end, low stakes devices like children’s toys and consumer as a way to understand more complex, higher stakes technology - from enterprise systems to critical infrastructure.

But taking stuff apart is just one of Travis’s passions. He’s equally famous for the stuff he’s created. His Github projects have spawned hundreds of forks and include the GoodWatch, a modification of a Casio calculator watch that Travis re-engineered to transmit and receive radio signals; Goodfet, an embedded bus adapter for microcontrollers and radios; as well as the Tytera MD-380: a low cost DMR radio that he reverse engineered to run custom firmware.

Not surprisingly: Travis is a passionate believer in the right to repair, which he describes as a kind of “natural right” that individuals should exercise, regardless of legal and commercial impediments. But his deep experience exploring the innards of connected devices and years spent navigating around the shoals of copyright and computer hacking laws have given Travis a nuanced take on our ability to exercise that natural right to repair.

In this conversation, Travis talks to Paul about growing up in east Tennessee, in and around Dollywood, where his mother worked as a stained glass master craftswoman for two decades. We also talk about his unique take on the right to repair, and the growing legions of stuff that populates our world - one informed by a deep understanding of the common hardware and software hiding beneath the sleek exteriors of connected devices.

For access to the full interview, become a premium subscriber at https://fighttorepair.substack.com.

This week we bring Ollee Means to the podcast, creator of the guilder, the platform that facilitates repair with its users spending zero money. The overarching goal of the platform is to socialize repair without any monetary exchanges. Instead, what users do is offer their services in exchange for something else.

Let’s say you know how to repair an iPhone, but don’t know how to sew and your jeans rip. You could repair someone’s iPhone in exchange for them patching up your clothes.

In the grand scheme of human history, monetary exchanges (using currency to buy and sell things) is relatively new. Moving back to a community oriented and socially connective practice seems natural. Part of what makes the guilder so compelling is that it moves against our current trends of fast-consumption, quick-disposal, and treating people as consumers first rather than humans. By instead focusing on the human element of repair, and how it can reinforce bonds within a community, there is a beauty that comes from these simple acts of mutual aid.

Automobiles are the only category of product where a formal right to repair exists in the U.S., thanks to a law passed in 2012 by voters in Massachusetts. But that right is under threat. After voters in Massachusetts expanded a 2012 law in November 2020 to include access to telematics data, automakers challenged the law in federal court. That has prevented its implementation for more than two years. A decision in that case is expected soon. 

In the meantime, manufacturers like Tesla are increasingly using access to software and administrative features to stymie owner and independent repair and servicing of their vehicles and establishing de-facto monopolies on parts and maintenance. Where do things go from here? We invited three people who are on the front lines of the fight to repair your car. They are: 

• Catherine Boland, VP, Legislative Affairs for the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association
• Justin Rzepka, Executive Director, CAR Coalition
• Michael “Mike” O’Neal, President, Diamond Standard Parts

Dr. Lily Baum Pollans, the author of Resisting Garbage: The Politics of Waste Management in American Cities discusses her research on how we ended up in a world that is so disposable?

Resisting Garbage dives into the world of how cities treat garbage – specifically comparing two cities: Boston and Seattle. While Boston is compliant to our current system that recycles and disposes first, Seattle defies these dominant conventions which ultimately reduces its cycles of consumption.

We speak with Matthew Lubari, Director of Community Creativity 4 Development, a repair-focused group operating out of the Rhino Camp Refugee Settlement, Arua, Uganda.

Fixit Clinic founder Peter Mui talks about environment and social benefits of sharing knowledge on repair and working in community with others.

Thirteen years ago Peter Mui held the first ever “Fixit Clinic” – driven by his motivation to change our disposable culture and to empower people to fix the things they own. The Fixit Clinic model, built on the idea that if people have access to tools and guidance then they can fix their things, has spawned a global following which seeks to make repair more accessible to everyone. Paul and Jack chat with Peter about the economic privelege associated with repair, how school districts that purchased Chromebooks during the pandemic are likely in trouble, and envision a future where the things we own are produced in our local communities

Dr. Emily West gets us inside the mind of Amazon to better understand how corporations are working to turn us into passive consumers.

At its core, the right to repair is a struggle with corporations over how we interact with products they sell. This week, Dr. Emily West offers Amazon as a case study to help us understand how companies are able to constrain our choices as consumers under the guise of convenience. We see many of the same tactics used to restrict repair like market consolidation and locked software ecosystems play out across industries from consumer electronics to agriculture. Emily and Jack discuss how Amazon’s business practices and branding are helping it eat up market share across every corner of the global economy, which is making it harder for us to escape the company’s influence.

Emily is a media theorist from the University of Massachusetts Amherst who writes about promotional culture, platforms, and digital media. She recently published a book titled Buy Now: How Amazon Branded Convenience and Normalized Monopoly. You can read the book here or buy it (we recommend Bookshop). If you want to skip to the interview – it starts at 23:22.

To stay up to date on what Emily is working on, check out her website.

• SecuRepairs is at DEF CON!
• Right to Repair: Where Is It Now?
• Maine’s right-to-repair initiative would likely face legal challenge
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair? Current and Future Right-To-Repair Rules in The European Union and United Kingdom 
• [PDF] Report: Toward and Effective Right to Repair
• [Book] The Politics of Common Sense: How Social Movements Use Public Discourse to Change Politics and Win Acceptance

• Send us a question or comment at [email protected] (premium subscribers go to the top of the pile)
• We’d appreciate a 5-star review on your podcasting platform of choice

Cory Doctorow explains how corporations are taking advantage of our increasingly computerized world through “digital rights management” to extract profits and restrict repair.

Our world is becoming digitized at breakneck speed, with manufacturers putting internet-connected computers into everyday objects from the lights in our homes to even cars and medical devices. This phenomenon, known as the “Internet-of-Things”, is making our lives more convenient in many ways – but in many cases companies are able to make sure strings are attached long after we make a purchase. Whether its your Epson printer being bricked remotely so you buy a new one or keeping your tractor from receiving third-party repairs, companies are using “digital rights management” (DRM) as powerful tool to control machines long after they are purchased – and with profit in mind. This week, Cory explains how we got to this DRM dystopia and what can be done to avoid a future where every object in our home is ruled by corporations.

• Dutch Are Reducing Waste By Fixing Broken Objects With Online Local Barter Network-And You Can Too
• Citing Danger of “Ink Spills” Epson Programs End of Life for Some Printers
• Why none of my books are available on Audible 
• Samsung officially launches self-repair partnership with iFixIt

If you want to send us a question, send an email to [email protected] with a screenshot of 5-star review on your podcasting platform of choice (or ask the question in your review) – we will do our best to answer it in a future episode!

Music: Acid Jazz - Kevin MacLeod

In our latest What the Fix podcast, Stacey Tenenbaum, director of the new documentary SCRAP, talks about why we need to think (hard) about what happens to our stuff when it dies.

Stacey Tenenbaum is a filmmaker who recently released her film SCRAP which “tells the story of people who each have a deep connection to objects that have reached their 'end of life.” Jack and Stacey chat about how we’ve come to our current culture of disposability and how having a deeper relationship with the things we own can keep waste out of landfills. As an artist herself, Stacey’s film spends time exploring the role that art plays in upcycling and restoring objects that would otherwise be seen as scrap.

To learn more about the Stacey’s work, you can:

• Check out the website for the movie
• Watch the SCRAP trailer
• Follow Stacey’s updates on social media (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook)

News Roundup Links:

• Broken appliances: are they repaired or dumped?
• Podcast: Where Faulty Goods Go to Die
• Deal on common charger: reducing hassle for consumers and curbing e-waste
• Tech is bracing itself as Lina Khan’s FTC agenda takes off
• Proposed ‘repair’ bill goes too far
• 
  

If you want to send us a question, send an email to [email protected] with a 5-star review from your podcasting platform of choice – or ask the question in your review – and we will do our best to answer it in a future episode!

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Music: Acid Jazz - Kevin MacLeod