Fight to Repair Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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.

We spoke with Nirav Patel, Co-Founder of Framework this fall, when the original Framework Laptop launched. He says that making an extremely repair-friendly laptop was not a herculean task. In fact, he said that the laptop “device” is quite well defined. Simply making one that could be easily repaired, modified and upgraded was “surprisingly straightforward.” That’s all the more reason to cast doubt on the claims of Apple and others that their anti-repair design choices are necessary sacrifices to satisfy customer demands for thinner, lighter, sleeker devices. Instead, Nirav makes it clear in our conversation that companies are making a choice when they make their products repairable or not. Put simply, repairability is a choice that companies can choose (or not) to make. This month, Framework revealed its next generation of laptops.

News Roundup Links:

• GPL legal battle: Vizio told by judge it will have to answer breach-of-contract claims
• GameCycle: creating a circular economy within gaming
• Apple Now Lets You Repair Your iPhone 13, iPhone 12 and iPhone SE. But It's Not Easy
• Trilogues: our continued push for strong battery regulations

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In our latest episode of What the Fix!? Jack and Paul sit down with Kyle Wiens of iFixit to talk about his journey founding the company and the early days of the right to repair movement. We also talked about what’s next, including myriad state campaigns to pass right to repair laws (including one in Colorado) and a parallel effort to reign in abuses of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

News Roundup Links:

• Microsoft Funded a Right to Repair Study, and the Results Are Encouraging
• Apple’s Self-Repair Vision Is Here, and It’s Got a Catch
• Ford launches certified glass network focused on use of OEM procedures, parts'

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For our inaugural episode we welcome Aaron Perzanowski, author of the book The Right to Repair: Reclaiming the Things We Own to discuss just how we arrived at a point where institutions and corporations have become hostile to repair – and what tools we have at our disposal to fight back. Aaron lends his legal expertise to help us understand the role that antitrust regulations, intellectual property law, and market power play in reclaiming our right to repair.

News Roundup Links:

• Should Right-to-Repair Laws Extend to Bionic Body Parts?
• Filibuster kills agricultural right to repair in Nebraska
• European Commission Calls for Greenwashing ‘Black List’
• Apple’s shift to subscription hardware looks to short circuit right to repair

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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