The Restart Project Podcast

What’s the most frustrating advert you’ve seen recently? Or have you noticed a peaceful ad-free bliss after spending a year mostly indoors? This month we talked to Robbie Gillet from the climate charity Possible about their Badvertising campaign, which seeks to correct misinformation and stop harmful adverts that add to the climate crisis.  This month, there has been a lot of talk about SUVs in th...

Following the election results in Greenland last week, we are revisiting an episode of Restart Radio from back in 2018. Three years ago, we interviewed Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway about their documentary, ‘Kuannersuit / Kvanefjeld’ which explores the feelings of local residents in Narsaq about a proposed mine near their town. A mine that’s existence is in great question following the el...

3D printing technology is increasingly being used to aid repair, especially in the creation of spare parts. We invited Bas Flipsen and Julieta Bolaños Arriola to talk about their work in the field and how 3D printing can help solve the e-waste crisis.  Flipsen is a senior researcher for the Faculty of Engineering at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) who teaches “circular” and s...

As schools start to open again across the country, we revisit the incredible work that repairers are doing to get laptops in the hands of students. Two organisations that have been supporting the laptop reuse effort are Mer-IT and Hackney Fixers. We talk to Mercedes Oli and James Diamond from both of these groups, to find out how it’s going and what we can do to help.  Déjà vu for consumers...

We discuss opportunities and limits of the new French Repairability together with experts involved in its development

On February’s episode, we discuss game consoles, printers, and the virtually useless voluntary agreements for their manufacturers.

Labour rights abuses did not start with Covid. Omana George from Electronics Watch tells us how she has been working to protect occupational health.

It may be a new year but we are still pressing for change in all the same places. On January’s episode, we revisit the topic of “digital inclusion” as schools are once again forced to close. Janet and Ugo are joined by Ben Skidmore, as they discuss why digital inclusion is more than just getting laptops into the hands of those in need. Later in the show, we also examine some potentiall...

For our last episode of the year, we so happy to bring you this interview with laser interactive artist, presenter and Repair Café volunteer Seb Lee-Delisle. Restart first met him at Hackaday’s Unconference in London a couple of years back. (In recent years, we’d noticed he became a regular at his local Repair café.) But during the past decade, Lee-Delisle’s probably most known f...

It’s our final radio show of a year full of bad news, and we have some good news to share. To kick us off, Janet and Ugo speak to Jonathan Samuels, a lighting designer who has worked in live entertainment for decades. After theatres and live performances were shut down this year, Samuels adapted and launched a new business in lighting refurbishment and repurposing objects into lamps.  Refurb...

This month, Dave talks to John Wackman and Elizabeth Knight who are prolific in the New York repair community. After years of involvement in repair cafes, they decided to share what they learned by writing a book. Repair Revolution: How Fixers Are Transforming Our Throwaway Culture , is a lesson in how to start a repair cafe and how to fix. Knight and Wackman also note that integral to the book is...

Talking about the issue of smartphone repairability is one that has been unavoidable over the years. This month we decided to finally look at this problem in depth. Ugo and Janet are joined by Rico Cerva, one of the most skilled and well-known iPhone repairers we know. He tells us about how iPhone repair keeps getting more complicated and how the barriers against fixing them have changed for the w...

In October, the European Right to Repair campaign launched “Heroes of Repair”, as part of their celebration of International Repair Day. The video series aims to highlight the human face of repair by profiling individuals working to strengthen the repair movement. Restart’s very own Chloé Mikolajczak talked to us about why this campaign is necessary and how Right to Repair has developed over the l...

To celebrate Ada Lovelace Day, we’re republishing this 2018 interview with Suw Charman-Anderson, founder of the Ada Lovelace Day (ALD), which annually supports and increases the visibility of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) careers. First, we discuss how ALD started and how it came to be such a huge initiative, with international events happening each year. We then...

To kick off the autumn season of the podcast, we talked to French entrepreneur and founder of e Foundation, Gaël Duval. Duval has spent years developing alternative operating systems in an effort to improve user experience and efficiency. Now, with his non-profit organisation e Foundation, he is prioritising user data privacy with /e/, an operating system for smartphones. We find out why a change...

On our first radio show back for the new season, Ugo is joined by James Diamond from Hackney Fixers. They talk about the laptop repair and reuse project that Hackney Fixers are undertaking to benefit the community. Over the last few months, it has become even clearer that we need to support those without the necessary access to electronics and the internet. Many community repair projects have take...

As a very unusual school year came to a close, we talked to Jude Daniel Smith, a youth activist and Campaign Coordinator for Teach the Future. Despite only joining the organisation in February, Jude has already been part of big progress made since. We talk about how he started in the climate movement and why the need for climate education is so urgent.  In recent years, the climate movement has se...

On July’s episode, we hear from several members of the Restart Team with their reviews of books for our summer reading list. First, though, we discuss the current inquiry on electronic waste by the UK Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee. In late June, Ugo was invited to give oral evidence at a hearing of the EAC. He shared how right to repair regulation can help prevent e-waste,...

We talk to author and journalist, Tansy Hoskins, whose latest book Foot Work: What Your Shoes are Doing to the World leads us to explore issues of labour rights, clothing sustainability, and the failings of global shareholder capitalism at large. We met Hoskins at Fixfest in Berlin last year. Her call for legislated reform has only become more timely, as our global system is reeling from the pande...

News of Henrik Huseby’s verdict hit us, at the Restart Project, hard at the beginning of June. As such, we discuss the ways that intellectual property law restricts repair and hurts repairers like Huseby. Our main topic is a more positive story as we share a speech from Josh Babarinde of Cracked It, who is making repair more accessible as a career for ex-offenders and at-risk youth. He also highli...

On May’s episode of the podcast, we talk to journalist Kris De Decker about how low-tech of the past can serve as inspiration to improve our future. We discuss historical ways of producing power and how they can help us better understand our energy usage. As well as this, how our current idea of sustainability and our economic model may be inherently incompatible. How much is too much? Learning fr...

On May’s show, we discuss limits placed on refurbishment and reuse by a notorious manufacturer through its T2 chip. We consider their responsibility if millions of devices go to waste prematurely. Janet and Ugo are joined by friend of the show John Bumstead, a Minneapolis-based laptop refurbisher and owner of RDKL, Inc. who has experienced many – if not all – of these limitations first...

For our April episode, we talk to Shamil Joomun, the co-owner of London-based vintage audio restoration company and café, Armstrong Audio. Now located in Walthamstow, east London, Armstrong Audio has a long history and a unique approach to repair. We talk to Shamil about his father, Twaleb, and his start in the industry and his eventual ownership of the store, and the multiple ways that Shamil has...

April’s show focuses on a topic that has become literally inescapable as of late, a constant fixture in our lives, the pandemic. We turned to Dr. Tarek Loubani and his colleague Reidun Garapick for a discussion on what can be done now to make a difference. Dr. Loubani’s expertise comes from his work as an emergency care doctor. But he’s also Medical Director for the Glia Project, a charity t...

For our March episode, we dare to dive into the increasingly complex world of intellectual property law – a topic suddenly becoming ever more pertinent in the face of a global pandemic. Dave is joined by Aaron Perzanowski, a professor of law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. We talk about how developments in the electronics consumer market are posing new complications in...