hi all my name is gay gordon byrne and
i'm the executive director of the repair
association
i'd like to welcome you to our
discussion series about fixing for
change
we are featuring three new books being
released this month that focus on repair
a quick intro about our authors and then
we'll get started
sandra goldmark is the author of
fixation how to have stuff without
breaking the planet
sandra is a theatrical designer and an
associate professor
in the theater department at barnard
she's also the director of campus
sustainability and climate action
in barnard in her spare time she
also started a repair collaboration
called a fix up
so for seven years she's been working on
fix up events
all over new york city where volunteers
have fixed
all sorts of stuff ranging from lamps
and chairs
to stuffed lobsters and i'm assured
these were toys and not real lobsters
and in the process diverted tens of
thousands of pounds of waste
john wackman and elizabeth knight
co-authored repair revolution
how fixers are transforming our
throwaway culture
john is the driving force behind what is
grown to be more than 30 repair cafes
in the hudson valley if you know the
area you'll know that it's pretty rural
and it's not a big population center so
this is an amazing
absolutely amazing community event
john says he was able to leverage his
experience in television
to bring people of diverse backgrounds
together in pursuit of a common goal he
has certainly
done so his sense of importance of
repair in building community is also
very compelling lee vinsel and andy
russell
co-wrote the innovation delusion how our
obsession with the new has disrupted the
work that matters most
i really get that new is very disruptive
and not always good
lee is an assistant professor of science
and technology
and society at virginia tech andrew is
also a professor he's a history
professor
and dean of the college of arts and
sciences at suny polytechnic
they collaborated on this book to fight
back against the notion
that innovators are heroes of our time
when much of their stuff
doesn't work at all without repair and
maintenance
i agree entirely with them that
repairing things is heroic
not only saving the item but fighting
against entropy
things break and we need to be able to
fix them with that i'm pleased to
introduce nathan proctor he's the right
to repair
director for us perg and a very engaged
advocate
for legislative change he's going to be
speaking with sandra goldmark
john wackman and andy russell
thank you so much gay and uh of course
thank you for all that you do
to advance the cause of righteous repair
around the country
let me start by just introducing myself
a lot of introductions here
so my name is nathan proctor as gay
mentioned i run the right to repair
campaign for u.s
purge u.s perg is a federation of
national federation of state advocacy
organizations
that stand up for the public interest uh
whenever our rights our environment or
our public health
are threatened um you know i've spent my
career
trying to convince people in power to
make decisions that put
you know the public interest ahead of
private special interests
you know especially when it comes to the
long-term prospects of society
you know i wish that every one of those
legislators had read these three books
which i think really challenged the core
parts of what
uh i think of as our paradigm problem
that we make too much stuff the world
can't sustain the production
the pollution and extraction costs are
horrible and destroy lives
we can't process or handle the waste and
most of the stuff
that's really valuable gets sidelines to
chase after shiny new objects that we
largely
don't need and it benefits
certain special interests while making
the whole system worse
and as these three books i think take a
different
approach to the discovery of an
exploration of
the problems and the solutions at the
individual level
what we can do as individuals what we
can do
with our communities and what we need to
do at the systemic level in policy
and so i first i would thought i would
start with with sandra
and and and just how do you talk a
little bit about how you got started
as a repair practitioner and and how
your fixation uh journey started and and
how you got started fixing
sure thank you um hi everyone this is
uh so exciting to see everyone on this
one call it really is a repair party
um so my story starts very simply
in 2013 with a broken toaster um and a
vacuum and a lamp and a backpack
so i was home on maternity leave uh and
a bunch of stuff broke around the house
very familiar to many people i'm sure
and i was kind of stubborn i didn't
really want a new vacuum or toaster
backpack or lamp or whatever i wanted
the old ones to work
um and so i started calling the
manufacturers can you fix this can you
replace the heating element
no no no i was recommended to drive to
hackensack an hour and away with
with the vacuum and i thought this is
ridiculous i'm not going to drive an
hour with a newborn and a toddler to get
my vacuum fixed like what is happening
why is it so hard to get these things
fixed and
um at the same time i knew that in
theater uh
i'm a theatrical set designer by
training i knew that we fix a lot of
things that it is
possible to fix things you know if you
need that vacuum on stage it gets fixed
and it goes out
so i thought why why do we have this
disconnect in the offstage world
in the kind of real world where we can't
get anything fixed
so logically remember i was really sleep
deprived
i sat down and i wrote a letter to
walmart and i was like dear walmart you
need to install a repair shop in the
corner of
every walmart here's the reasons why you
should transform your business model
and reconsider the entire global supply
chain and i like laid it all out
and my husband you know i showed him the
letter and i was ready to send it he was
like you know you might need just like a
little more data
a little more context of why they should
listen to this you know
theatrical set designer so i was like
fine
we'll do it the slow way and uh and long
story short we started opening repair
shops in new york city
we would hire theater artists to fix a
whole range of stuff
from digital and electronic appliance
items and appliances to small furniture
to jewelry to yes toys like stuffed
lobsters
and we started fixing and fixing and
fixing and we spent seven years doing
these shops
and most importantly talking to the
customers
and i realized at a certain point that
this whole adventure was about
a lot more than repair i realized that
it was about
this really complex relationship that we
have at the individual
level with our stuff and then it was
about this really complex
as nathan said international global
system
economic system manufacturing system
logistical system that we have built
around our stuff and those two
components um eventually turned into
this book called fixation
how to have stuff without breaking the
planet and the idea is
repairs a way in and the book tries to
acknowledge and honor the complexity
of the problem and the complexity of our
relationship with stuff which i
don't think is actually a problem or
doesn't have to be and also at the same
time
find a way forward um a clear path
forward
for individuals for businesses and for
policy makers
and for today's conversation i know
we're talking about activism so i i
feel like there's some some stuff in the
book about policy and there's also this
kind
of core belief that um starting in your
home in your community
at whatever level you're at uh can be a
sort of platform for
activism in a way and i think we'll get
there when we hear from the other
authors
so yeah i think that you know your your
your point that uh repair is a way in
um now i think that really brings us to
uh john your book repair revolution
because i feel like you know you're as
somebody who's
run and championed free repair free
community repair events
you've seen really how the experience of
repair is
is a way in for people to to get to a
new
place and so i thought maybe you could
talk a little bit about yeah
what it was that got you into those free
community repair events and how
you see community involvement as being
you know a part of the solution thanks
nathan
uh i was uh reading the new york times
in 2012 and there was an
article uh about this phenomenon that at
that point was
only in europe and it was called repair
cafe
and you know it's one of those ideas
that just struck me at the time so i you
know kind of figuratively put it in my
back pocket and thought
hmm let me let me see if there might be
a time and place and at that point i was
within a year moving up to the hudson
valley from the city
and uh you know and when i when i got up
here i realized
i need a great way to meet people so
carrying the idea of repair cafe and
describing what it might mean and
describing
you know how it would work and and you
know the kinds of skills we would need
it
kind of became my passport to
my new community now as it turns out
other people around the country read
that same new york times article
and it was you know an interview with
martina postma who founded the repair
cafes
in amsterdam and by that time they had
spread throughout europe
but within six months of that article
there were four repair cafes
in the u.s there were two on the west
coast and two in the northeast
and so this was there was something that
was very appealing about this idea
and so the question is well what is so
appealing about this idea
and one answer is that it it
brings together people who would not
otherwise have met
but who have these skills that they that
they see
each other um practice and they
appreciate in each other
so this this repair
movement this community repair movement
is
yes it's about fixing stuff undeniably
so
but it is about so much more and you
know in the biggest
sense it is about creating community
and building community resilience
so repair cafe what is it the repair
cafe is a free community meeting place
to bring a beloved but broken item to be
repaired with an expert who is also your
neighbor
and that is the key dynamic the expert
who is also
your neighbor so within any community
you're looking in essentially looking
within
who has skills that they are willing to
bring
forward and share with their neighbors
and when they do
it's a remarkable experience so now
there's nothing proprietary about
getting a group of people together in a
town to fix stuff
you can call it whatever you want there
are repair cafes there's a tremendous
movement of fix-it clinics
started by peter mewy and then there are
repair labs repair hubs there are fix-it
fridays there are
fix mended sheds they're they're i was
just introduced recently
in chicago to the community glue
workshop
how about that but we're all doing the
same thing we are
we are inviting people from the
community to come in and sit down with
their stuff
and then troubleshoot oh my gosh there's
something about trouble
shooting which to many people is
irresistible
but there is this basic insight that we
can trace back to aristotle
that that enacting what we know one of
the greatest
sources of human enjoyment is enacting
our knowledge and sharing our knowledge
so repair cafe is about these things
it's about extending
the useful life of things that you care
about things that you rely on
it's about satisfying your curiosity
about the way things work
it's about using your hands and using
tools
it is about all of these things and it
is
you know reducing waste
sharing knowledge and making friends so
it's
uh you know i have to say that
the experience of it is quite
extraordinary and that is
why you know we say it's a socially
vibrant
very creative uh platform
for you know for learning about
your own community and then also
building awareness about the challenges
that
that face our planet i'll leave it at
that
that's fantastic john thank you so much
yeah and andy you come from a pretty
different uh stream as somebody who was
you know came at this from a research
site so can you share a little bit about
how you came to the same question um and
you begin to realize that innovation was
something with
a toxic side to it yeah yeah it's true
that we come
from uh the world of academia more than
actual hands-on doing which is something
i really admire about
sandra and john's background john's
mention of friendship is really the
starting point for
uh for the story of the innovation
delusion um
it started with a joke uh lee and i had
been writing about
innovation and technology since we're
historians of technology
and in 2014 walter isaacson's book
called the innovators came out and it
had this subtitle
splashy subtitle how a group of hackers
geniuses and geeks created the digital
revolution
and for me this was the tipping point in
hearing uh all this preaching about
innovation
and so i dashed off an email to lee and
one of our friends
and i said i've got it guys we've got to
write a counter volume called the
maintainers
how a group of standards engineers
introverts and bureaucrats created
technologies that kind of work most of
the time
and lee took it and ran with it he was
blogging at the time so he wrote a blog
post
and some of our friends in in the
history of technology
and science and technology studies
community really responded to it
there's a bunch of people who write
about um infrastructure
and standards and and all the sort of
nitty-gritty sides of technology
in that world and so uh we held a
conference which is what
academics do when when their friends
respond we thought a
couple dozen of our friends would show
up um at the place where we worked
steven's institute of technology um it's
right across from manhattan so it's a
good
good place to draw people in for a
conference and over 100 people
registered
and at the same time the same day as the
conference we
published an essay called hell the
maintainers in aeon which is really a
call for action um to to hell the
maintainers you know why
why maintenance matters more than
innovation
and the combination of those two events
uh triggered some interest
that unbeknownst to us after joking
around
you know got got some coverage from
around the world for the ideas in the
conference
so we held another conference as one
does um
that grew and uh in the process we
realized we should we should write a
book
um so one one train of our action is to
continue
organizing people in this group that we
call the maintainers
we've held yet another conference and
and try and support communities
who are interested in maintenance and
repair and upkeep
and the second train was the book which
is the innovation delusion and the
objective of that book is to do two
things
one is to really point out some of the
some of the uh hilarious parts
and almost tragic parts of our obsession
with innovation
our cultural obsession with innovation
and the detrimental effects that it has
on individuals on organizations and
businesses
and on society at large where we tend to
invest more in
in the shiny new object than in taking
care of say water infrastructure
and the second part is really you know
we weren't content with just a takedown
of
of innovation or silicon valley that's
been done
it's pretty well understood amongst the
people who want to get it
what we wanted to do is put forward a
more positive vision
about what a what a better maintained
world
and what a world that features care at
its core instead of
innovation or destruction what that can
do for people
so so the second part of the book really
maps
the positive things that can happen and
the success stories
in individuals and businesses and uh and
at the societal level
that a focus on maintenance can do so
that's the work that that we're doing
you know repair is obviously a big part
of it
and uh and we're really fortunate to
have met you know you and the other
folks on the call
looking forward to the rest of the
conversation thanks so so much andy yeah
i i think you know when i think about
social change right when i think about
making social change as somebody who's
more or less a professional citizen um
you know i think about
people's behaviors and their attitudes
and values
i think about um you know the policies
and then i also think about you know the
markets
and so i thought maybe we could just
start with this question of
um and maybe we'll start uh with you
john
like you know at the community level how
do
our behaviors and attitudes need to
change
and uh you know what signs of hope have
you seen
that that's possible well you know it's
a mindset
uh and and when you talk about
the kinds of individual changes that
involve a
you know change of world view and um or
on the societal level you know
a sort of cultural change
you know this is this is very hard this
is a steep mountain to climb
uh i think that when you are in a
community repair
setting you are
you're able to have just really
you know exploratory conversations
you know it just is very it's very
tactile
it's right in front of you you know one
thing that's
important to say is that community
repair there's a catch it is not a
drop-off service
you don't leave your stuff and come back
and collect it later you sit down
across the table from the guy or the gal
who's going to give their attention
to the item you have brought and i
should say that
the the range of repairs the categories
of repair
are just about as broad as we can make
them so yes it's mechanical electrical
electronic and digital repairs
at the same time clothing and textile
repairs
are huge they're just they're so
important
we love to repair toys
and mend stuffed animals and fix
dolls because that brings kids in and
you know if you you talk with a lot of
kids
my girlfriend is a teacher i talk to a
lot of kids
and they
they what they know of the world
is that when something breaks you get a
new one
they do not quite understand that things
can be repaired and that is
a little bit you know jaw-dropping you
know to
to sort of accept that that might be the
case
and yet to a degree much larger than
we might realize it is the case and how
have we gotten to this point well
that's a long road but i will say that
you know community repair is
tremendously intergenerational and that
is one of the big
benefits you know one of the things
that's so important
to us as organizers of this movement is
that
community repair uh allows you
to honor the people who have this
know-how
and give them a place to share it
and pass it on because those are skills
that is savvy that is know-how
that just has to be preserved and
shared yeah and that's something you
know personally
having gone to some of these events that
you can see
is really rewarding for the coaches
right that that they are this these
skills that they can give to their
neighbors
um and and they get a little recognition
out of it
martina postman likes to say that so
many of those and we call them repair
coaches and that's very intentional
because that indicates the back and
forth
you know it's it's i'm not showing you
you're showing
you bring an item and you've got to tell
me the story of that item
you know and so
you might think that people who come to
a community repair event
you know would say hey i got it fixed or
hey it was free
but i will tell you that hands down the
word that people most use to describe
their experiences
it was fun sandra i mean i think
to your book focuses a lot on
the individual relationship even the
the spiritual relationship we have to
our stuff
how do you think our individual
attitudes and behaviors
need to change and and where do you see
signs of hope
so i think that
um in terms of our individual behaviors
one of the things that i think is
interesting and i think this is what
john was sort of getting at as well
was the actual the the real appetite the
hunger and even joy that people would
have when they would get something fixed
like it's
like we would have our tents in the
farmer's market and people would come by
and do this double take
and come up to us and say wait you fix
things
what kinds of things and they were so
curious and so excited and they wanted
to tell us about their
grandmother who used to have a button
box and how their
their uncle used to fix take apart the
dishwasher and put it back together you
know there was a whole kind of
um story a little pent-up energy
surrounding this activity that was
really fascinating
and what seems like is so distressing to
so many people is that our society
actually
doesn't support that impulse anymore
this goes to andy and lee's book which
is that every kind of market
force and every economic force and even
some of our really subtle or not so
subtle like value
systems reinforce our also natural urge
to like shiny and new things right
like there's nothing wrong with liking
you know occasional shiny new thing
yay that that's also very human and
natural but we also have
a very deep urge a deep attachment
to the things in our lives a deep need
for stuff like at the individual level
and at the species level
like as human beings we need stuff and
tools and it it's silly
but it bears saying because sometimes we
don't realize how how deep this part of
our
our humanity is but yet the urge to kind
of very simply keep something
that you like is is thwarted is sort of
systematically thwarted
by our economic systems and by our
society
which is kind of a cuckoo place to get
to so
in fixation one of the things i'm trying
to do is to show people that that urge
is normal
that they actually have that urge and
show them some individual steps they can
take in terms of changing the way they
shop
changing the way they think about the
stuff in their lives and also
some of the steps that need to be taken
in other arenas you can't do it all on
your own but as an individual you can
start
and you can begin to basically change
the way you shop you can incorporate
care into your
mentality of stuff um and
in some ways the very first step for me
is acknowledging
hey stuff is like part of my life just
like food
i'm never gonna not have stuff so let's
kind of accept it
let's not try to struggle with like
feelings of clutter shame or
guilt or purging or minimalism or you
know
like let's let's accept the reality that
we need stuff
and then let's begin to find ways to do
it better and this this really gets to
the innovation delusion
when we think of the only real ownership
in society as
the ownership that tim cook and apple
have
or the ownership that the you know
engineers and software developers have
and not the
other people who participated in the
process
and and you know and i would say legally
none of the those people that you just
mentioned
were part of that process you know the
planet doesn't have much of a right
the actual technicians who assembled the
product don't have you know the retail
people who sold it
the technicians who repaired it the
people who keep it in their home
um you know
because you know that relationship is is
is being pushed
to be one where you know we're we all
kind of the operation of the thing is
mostly controlled by
the intentions of the manufacturer and
um
and and i see some really dangerous
side effects to that and i see this all
the time one
really common way that i experience this
and i'm sorry if i'm
kind of getting into a wormhole myself
here is
people who say people they they get
their phones on a plan where they get to
upgrade on a schedule
and they've completely lost the
relationship between
the damage to the planet done to produce
the phone
it's it's a slight convenience
improvement for them to upgrade
and they don't think about the cost and
to me that's
that's part of the downside to obscuring
ownership and and that relationship so i
i don't know if this will make this
the story here but i i i i immediately
responded to that
quest that that question that you put
forward or that description you put
forward
about our relationship to stuff and how
when it goes wrong
and we don't feel a sense of
responsibility
we start to lose we start to do crazy
things but
let me actually get a question to andy
here
now this is an interesting conversation
i gotta try not to be too interested
um so andy uh
the other piece that i think is really
important is
recognizing that this
kind of fascination with
you know new things and
this loss of relationship to repair
really impacts the the broader like
basically
paradigm the systemic way that you know
even our cities are planned
so i thought maybe you could talk a
little bit about you know how
uh what attitudes for our policy makers
need to change and then also
where you see signs of hope for
you know for that getting better yeah
good question um you know
one of the common themes as we move
across these different
levels uh even in this conversation from
from the individual to this you know
longer planetary
scale has to do with short-term thinking
and that's really the something that
that we hone in on the book because it's
present
in individual consumer decisions about
buying stuff
present in business decisions to go for
short term profit so they can maximize
their shareholder value
each quarter instead of thinking about
the long-term
um benefits to their own business about
about you know investing in people
investing in r d
um investing in their communities and
it's the same for elected officials
you know lee and i talk about the
ribbon-cutting paradox where
um elected officials don't get credit
for
making sure that something works the way
it's supposed to work whether it's a
transportation system or a sewer or
water system but
those pictures getting in front of a new
building with a golden shovel or the
the oversized scissors in a new building
those make the newspaper
and so you know it connects with what
sandra was saying there's definitely
incentives
around to push people towards short-term
thinking
and there's probably something to it
that there there's something innate
in what we do to pay attention uh to
short-term
incentives more than more than long-term
but but i do see signs of hope um
and it and it comes from the glimmers of
recognition at all of these levels
that short-termism just isn't good
enough so just think about individuals
and think about uh we know that
we need to eat right and exercise
and clean up after ourselves and take
care of our surroundings because it's
good for us
even though i like to eat donuts for
breakfast or
and lunch and dinner for that matter
it's it's just not sustainable
businesses successful businesses
understand this as well you know it's
not just a matter of
of a big launch and a big ipo it's how
do you build products that last how do
you build that
relationship with a customer how do you
build that relationship with investors
in the community
and i think elected officials understand
it as well
at least those who talk about
sustainability those who talk about
things like intergenerational justice
and those who are thinking not just
about getting elected in in two years or
four years or six years like
like they do in this country but what
they can give back to the community
so so part of what we want to do in our
book is to point to those positive
examples
highlight them as exemplars of a
maintenance mindset and encourage
people that there's a better way out
there than just the the
consumerist drivel that's that's pushed
at us constantly
every day one thing i think is really
interesting is i
i do think the kind of growing awareness
and acceptance of climate change is a
little bit
helping uh you know uh
work at that short-termism in an
interesting way
and yet at the same time when we talk
about climate change there still is
a real rush to the what's the innovative
shiny new
silver bullet solution like where's the
golden scissor that i'm going to fix
climate change with
so it's interesting to see like to watch
as the climate change conversation
changes like is it possible for this
concept of maintenance um
to become part of the broader
conversation about big big scale
solutions to climate change it's
i hope it is it's a spirit of
stewardship um and
care uh that that we see in in all the
people that you have met
um and the things that you've met it's
the same idea and i think that's what
bears repeating it's the same idea yeah
we talk about that certainly in in our
world which is you know when we
take up repair we initiate a
conversation
about care and and that is caring for
our stuff
but caring also for each other for our
communities and for our planet
so it just you know it expands
the rings uh out and out and
uh to really to include all of us
absolutely um
so one question i have is
you know how do lawmakers need to change
like what are the things what are the
policies
and the approaches that they need to
shift as we
try to take on a throwaway system
and and all the problems that it causes
well it almost seems at this point that
you know we
we would be justified in injecting a
note of
of anger and you know when i
the first way that i became aware of
ifixit
and the work that kyle is doing was
through the repair manifesto and
you know so this is really an expression
of
you know i used to be able to fix these
things
and i can no longer and i want it back
damn it you know it's this this loss of
agency this loss of
ability um to fix the things that we own
and i think there is a a strong feeling
that we want to we want to take it back
i have a few
i have like my laundry list of like four
legislative things i want to see happen
they're super specific
so i'm going to put them out there into
the world in case like anybody's taking
notes anywhere
one pay as you throw trash pickup that
is a
clear simple policy that we could enact
in municipalities across the country
some of them have it already it works
pay as you throw
two um sales tax or tax incentives to
make it easier to
to actually make a living at reuse and
repair right if we hadn't had to pay
sales tax in new york state
and our repair shops we would have
doubled our very slim profits
they have this in sweden it's a very
simple policy way to support repair
um national and international labor
standards
right we're never going to be repair
it's going to be very hard for it to
compete
when wages for manufacturing are so low
internationally
same thing for standards for
repairability durability
and materials and then the last thing is
a little like
less specific but it's sort of a page
from andy and lee's book is let's fund
maintenance
right let's like re let's think about
that and maybe andy has a specific
policy of how to do that
no i don't i mean we we um
we are skeptical of a trillion dollar
plus
stimulus bill that will just um end up
in building new stuff
with no funding and no even thought
given to maintenance
and so um you know that's the if there's
going to be
a stimulus or infrastructure bill that
actually passes of that magnitude it
really needs to take maintenance into
account
chuck marone at strong towns has done
great advocacy around this
i i would also say that you know we
shouldn't wait for the federal
government to bail us out
i think a lot of people from my part of
the world from academia
like to come up with a well thought out
system and then
have the uh the authority from on high
enacted
it's not going to happen and it's
probably unwise so
community action i think is is really
important distributed action
and the third thing that i would say has
to do with
respect for the workers um who
in the last six months or seven months
of the pandemic
have been some of them have been
rebranded as essential workers
and i think we're seeing their
contributions honored and respected
there's also unpaid labor that happens
at home primarily by
female caregivers that needs to be
respected and
and better compensated in some ways and
the essential workers also tend to be
predominantly women predominantly
ethnic or racial minoritized groups
and so there's a there's an element of
justice here as well
that i think is really important to
point out and when you ask those people
what they want they want things like
reliable health care
child care education for their
communities
those are those are very basic issues
that i think
should be thought about more as rights
you know we talk about the right to
repair
i think health care is right
educationist rights
is what the people who maintain our
society
deserve and so those are those are
causes i would advocate for no matter
what
no matter who's advocating for them
uh let let's start with uh
you know the the the problems of
a throwaway culture right and
uh the unit basically who wins and who
loses with our relationship with stuff
um and you know i think andy you were
just talking about
uh you know the people who do the
maintenance
you know not getting you know the
respect
or the resources they need um
you know and and sandra talked earlier
about
you know the damage to the planet but
you know and i know this is something
you explore in your book too which is
you know our stuff costs something and
it
costs people something to make it well i
love what andy said earlier about
bringing about like
you know there's a connection between
the covent moment and essential workers
and what we're seeing about
people getting paid or not getting paid
for child care for home care we're
seeing in the covent moment how much
work child care is and what
what happens when that is not
built in in any reliable way and so
and on the one hand you say well what's
the link to that between like fixing my
blender or my stuffed lobster
right you know that's not important
that's not essential
no it's not essential like you can get
through the pandemic without your
stuffed lobster
but what is essential is that core value
of saying
wait this is an activity and a mindset
that we actually need to elevate and pay
for
right and that doesn't just mean you
always have to pay for repair i'm a big
fan of repair cafes and do it yourself
and paying for it like i think it's all
part of the ecosystem
but the key and the and mir lottoman you
call us this artist that i think both
andy and i mention in our books i don't
know if john you've got her in yours too
but she does an amazing job of drawing a
really
in her artwork drawing a really explicit
connection between things like
child care housework cleaning and the
bigger
you know sanitation work uh
maintaining the new york city subway she
she lays it all out how this is all the
same
body of work and that is what i think is
like so exciting
to to understand those connections and
that is what i think is like
really going to be important in the
covet moment and in the next
level of dealing with climate change um
yeah you know one thing i'd love to hear
you touch on andy is
you know how we get how we got stuck in
a
growth is the solution to every problem
and how we can
you know how what are the what are the
best ways to kind of build a
a support for the assumption that fixing
is
the first solution yeah i mean i think
it starts from
where these other two uh folks were
started the
at the beginning of our conversation
that um just making new stuff is
is an essential kind of impulse
of of businesses and there's historical
routes there's a historical story that
we tell an innovation delusion
really starts after world war ii in the
united states
and the rise of pent-up energy for
materialism or material
you know material things not materialism
like in the marxist sense
and you know refrigerators ovens you
name it tvs it all
kind of burst and that was the measure
of success even not only for families
affluent families but
but in the kitchen debates between nixon
and khrushchev
um where our stuff is better than your
stuff you know it took on this
this veneer of um superiority
and yeah i think somehow along the way
uh the notion of of the mechanic
being um being the figure like rosie the
riveter right from world war ii just
before the era started of the mechanic
being the actual hero
instead of the product designer or the
marketer or the or the advertiser
that was was lost somewhat and i don't
think
it's overly romantic to say that um you
know
let's rehabilitate the image of of rosie
and and
the mechanics that kept the early
industrial revolution going but
i think there's that that spirit in
everyone you know
um and i think to go back to the
discussion about the pandemic
um we've kind of been forced into that
role in some ways
um simply because uh there's not as many
people who can come out and
and fix stuff in our houses so i think
there's a little bit of
a self-reliance that that might have
kicked in here at least among the people
who i talked to
in my own household so
you know whether this is a long-term
what's that john
that's right yeah you know whether this
is a long-term shift whether it can push
back the tide of
of cheap stuff is a different question
but
um i'm optimistic
yeah make do mend um
you know one one uh metaphor that
you use in your book sandra which i
find just really really provocative
is the relationship between us and food
being
similar to the our relationship to stuff
and
um you know and kind of why more we
understand that more calories isn't
better
um but for some reason more stuff
we've kind of gotten stuck in this more
stuff trap
um yeah you want to talk a little bit
more about like how you came to that
yeah i was just thinking about that
during this last little thread about how
like we're because we're all like fixers
and we're so excited about fixing we're
really focusing on that part of the
cycle
but i know that all of our books
understand and look at the way
that point on the cycle relates to
everything else like the next
conversation about design
you know is the design and repair
connected and we have all dealt with
end-of-life questions of like recycling
and breaking it down
so the food is just like stuff analogy
came
i just sort of realized that like it's
consumption right it's things that the
earth produces
resources that we transform with human
labor and then we put them in our bodies
or we bring them into our home
um and then at some point those
resources were sort of done with them
and they moved
back out into the ecosystem in some form
or another
and so i started thinking well if if we
need to have a kind of stuff movement
which i think we do
let's look to the food movement for some
clues here because the basic processes
are the same and the food movement has
been around for a long time and there's
lots of smart people who've been
thinking about consumption um in terms
of food
and i also think that for the kind of
for somebody who's not really already
clued in or already super excited about
thinking about consumption or repair
the analogy to food makes it really easy
to to sort of
be like oh yeah i can do this i'm
already you know many americans are
already aware that your
consumption of food impacts your own
health and happiness it impacts your
waistline
and it impacts the planet and the people
who grow the food
got a little kid climbing under the
table so um
that uh eric can you stop bonking the
table
anyway that connection between food and
stuff is
is i mean it's really the foundation for
the whole book but it's also something
that i think is a way to simplify the
problem and say hey
we we kind of know what to do we need to
look at all the steps on the cycle
and we need to understand how the steps
are related to each other i
was really really well put i loved that
and
one point i want to to just tie together
as we close is
that yeah we talk about repair and the
right to repair our ability to fix stuff
but the reason why we advocate for that
is because we understand that
all these things are connected that
when you fix something it changes your
relationship to that thing
and we need to change our relationship
to that thing
and um you know whether that's
you know if you fix something and then
someone's like hey i made a
two percent better version of that thing
you should upgrade
if you fixed it you know there's
something about you which is no i don't
i just want to maintain one that i have
because i have something invested in it
and if if you think about our stuff like
food you realize that
you know oh maybe it's not a extra
charge in my cell phone plan to get a
new phone but
it is a charge right that there's
there's damage like that this
this is this came from somewhere um
you know and and you know i'm doing
damage to you know the planet and to
myself by just kind of
thoughtlessly consuming it and then also
just
that repair as something that builds
bonds to people
uh in our communities and is a way to
honor people who
have taken the time to learn skills so i
think that that's
to me that's my takeaway which you know
continues to be
that you know this is not an issue
that's isolated to
you know just our smartphones or other
pieces of electronics
um this is really about you know a
holistic view of
how we treat stuff in each other uh
and uh you know if you really think
about it
um if you were in charge you would do it
way differently than is being done
and i you know of course by which i say
like there's so much more in these books
that talks about you know
just uh what we need to do differently
and
why you know examples of why this is a
problem and examples of how people are
solving it
and i encourage everybody to go out and
get a copy of that of these books
uh and read them uh and to share their
insights
uh and to help all of us build a better
planet
where we have less stuff
it does less damage and we have more