The Restart Project Podcast

We invited our friend Max, from Demand Energy Equality, to talk about their inspiring solar workshops. In these day-long events, beginners with very little technical background learn about how photovoltaic cells work. They get a refresher in circuits and electricity, then they make a functional personal solar charger out of PV off-cuts. It's a way of bringing renewable energy closer to people, raising important questions and promoting energy literacy. How can we be more involved in meeting energy needs locally? How do we use electricity, can we use it more wisely? And to close, we discussed reports of a material in development called "Mesoglue" that could replace hot soldering, both in repair and manufacture.

We discussed our incipient collaboration with Amnesty, Global Witness and Wikirate, which are working to rate companies on their sourcing of minerals, and Amnesty's report on abuses in electronics supply chains in the DRC. And we couldn't help but talk about the IKEA executive who caught headlines when he said that in the West, we may have reached "peak stuff" in households.

We talked with long-time Restarter Dave Lukes about a couple of appliance repairs attempted in Brixton, at our first Restart Party of 2016. The success of both hinged on the ability to find spare parts. In the case of a vacuum, this was not possible. In the case of a dehumidifier, we were actually able to find a replacement circuit board. Then we did a sort-of debrief from the Consumer Electronics Show, a yearly monster of an event in Vegas, where manufacturers demo and introduce their shiny shiny products. To close things out, we talked about a rumour that the iPhone 7 will have a new headphone jack, ditching the long-standing 3.5mm jack we all know and love.

We talked with Restart Party participants - and experts from WRAP, Fairphone and Lovefone - about different models for ownership and finance of gadgets, such as rental and leasing. From a user perspective, the answers are not super easy. And the business models still need to emerge too.

This was our last show for 2015. We had Restarter Ten and our podcaster Dave in the studio, sharing some of their thoughts on the most exciting repairs they witnessed during the year: a team effort to repair a TV capacitor topped the bill for Ten, while Dave shared his memory of the proud and passionate owner of an old radio. Then we discussed the implications of the end of Firefox OS for phones; whether we should buy extended warranties for gadgets, and an inspiring story from Bolivia.

Our Top 5 Good News Stories for the year, about design, economics, business, policy, and... the children, our future! From New York to Brussels to Ghana and even Russia... Anywhere there's a yay! (And sometimes a yay-boo). We talked Apple, Fairphone, the role of European policy, and how to "hack" formal education.

Our favourite waste campaign slogan is quite simple: There is no "away". So where is this "away"? And this is what podcaster Dave Pickering finds out on a roadtrip to Kent, to a recycling plant in Sittingbourne. At Sweeep, the largest plant of its kind in southern England, Dave sees what happens to our small gadgets and appliances when they are taken to be recycled. The process of recouping raw materials out of electronics is quite high tech at Sweeep - and some of what is recouped is quite valuable. To the backdrop of much crunching, and other industrial sounds, Sweep Commercial Director Justin Greenaway explains the ins and outs of the business. We were not surprised to learn, Sweeep's greatest challenge is actually simply getting more people to recycle, especially smaller electronics and electricals

In this show we talked about Adele's flip phone, and why it caused such an uproar. "Retro" electronics seem to be all the rage, but why? Music and sound seem to be one area where we continue to have an emotional bond to the electronics we listen with, but also the physical media itself, even in a digital age. We talked about the enduring appeal of not just vinyl, but CDs and radios - many of which continue to be designed by UK brands - and how Bluetooth can breathe new life into stereo components older than we are. We ended our show talking about the enduring appeal of electronic music

In this show, we discussed with Restarter Dave Lukes the "Big Fix", Hackney's festival of repair taking place this Saturday, featuring a Restart Party, as well as bike, furniture, fabric repair workshops and much more. We then spoke to Restarter Orsetta Hosquet about a US laptop refurbisher turned artist, inspired by the glitches produced by faulty video cards he was substituting. This made us think about perfection and appreciating faults, when possible. We then talked about the wave of consumerist events leading us to the end of the year, the infamous Black Friday and more.

In this show, we discussed the true meaning of "digital inclusion" - what does it mean to have an online device, when we can perceive helplessly that it "rots" before our eyes? With Restarter Dave Lukes, we asked if statistics about device ownership, numbers of people online, really mean anything if we are becoming mere passive receivers of information and playing catch-up to access key online-only services. Then we talked about how mobile users in Europe and North America have few choices in terms of form-factor, and even fewer in what relates to the underlying software powering smartphones.

On our show this week, we had a special guest, Alison from The Goodlife Centre, a workshop and learning centre not far from Resonance FM's London studios in Borough. Through her thriving business, Alison has helped thousands of Londoners learn about DIY, electricals, plumbing and making/repairing furniture. She tells the story of some "dollhouse DIY" as a child and how her love of materials and production took her in fascinating professional directions. We also talked about why people no longer have DIY skills - why nobody can change a plug - and what motivates them to go to The Goodlife Centre to learn.

On our show this week, we talked about connections between Restarters and repairing bikes. We spoke to longtime Restarter Ten, who shared the story of his legendary repair of a vintage coffee grinder in Herne Hill market. Ten was joined in the studio by another of our committed volunteers, Dave. They share a passion for fixing and for bicycles, so we discussed the difference between repairing bikes, which use standard, interchangeable spare parts and laptops and mobiles, which rarely do.

For a special Ada Lovelace Day discussion, we talked to Orsetta, a long time Restarter talked to us about how she got started tinkering and fixing. She was one of only two girls in her secondary school carpentry course, helping to break barriers. But first, we discussed two techie tidbits: first, the news that Apple finally relented and announced it would help frustrated owners of delaminated Macbook Pro screens. Second, prompted by a call from help from our community, we discussed the pros and cons of wireless charging as a work-around for a common failure in mobiles.

In this episode, we discuss commercial repair of gadgets, electronics and home appliances. Most of us can testify, it feels less and less of a possibility these days. Podcaster Dave Pickering interviews designer and writer John Thackara about how this may be a "temporary blip". He paints a picture of what local, (re)emergent economies of repair might look like. Thackara's new book How To Thrive in the Next Economy (Thames & Hudson, 2015) shaped our questions and provides clues for readers. With input from professional repairers and participants at Restart Parties, we discussed transparency, trust, cost, access to information, informal solutions, as well as the need for repair to be embedded locally in retail.

We discussed the allegations that Samsung has been cheating on energy efficiency testing. We talked about transparency, trust for manufacturers, and exactly when energy efficiency concerns are still worth obsessing over. We also discussed "brand Germany", discussing a BBC profile of Miele, a manufacturer of long-lasting appliances, and other quality German brands that sold their image to other less quality manufacturers.