The Restart Project Podcast

This month, Dave takes a look at drones from the perspective of three different people. For Faraz, one of our Restart volunteers, drones are an interesting piece of equipment that pose more challenges than you might expect. Faraz shows us his mini-quadcopter and explains the appeal for someone who likes to tinker with their gadgets. But we are not all as technically clued-up as Faraz. With the con...

We all know that it's possible to ease the guilt of throwing something away by telling ourselves it will be recycled. But who is in charge of the recycling system, who pays, and does it work? This episode, Janet is joined by James Kirkham from the East London Waste Authority. We venture beyond the skip to see what happens to our gadgets after we throw them away. As it stands, London’s boroughs eac...

When was the last time you backed up your data? If that question gives you a sinking feeling – don’t worry, you’re not the only one! This week we talk about how, why and where to backup. Drawing on stories from our Restart Parties, as well as your contributions to our Twitter poll , we explore what it is about storage that people find so daunting, and how to avoid losing data for...

Ugo is joined by Restarter Ben Skidmore to discuss Apple’s controversial ‘Airpods’: do they live up to all the hype? Ugo and Ben take a look at some of the advantages and drawbacks of these new wireless ear-buds, and wireless listening more generally. The wireless explosion could be the end of broken cables; but the cost and difficulty of fixing these new devices could also be a repairperson’s wor...

It’s our last radio show of the year, and the weather is getting colder. This week we take a look at Norwegian repair culture, before turning back to the UK, where the growing fuel poverty problem needs some serious attention. After writing her masters thesis on the Restart Project, Kaja Ahnfelt started running “Fiksefest” - Restart Party in Norwegian - in Oslo. This new branch of the movement is...

The UK toy market is the largest in Europe. As we approach Christmas, last year's toys find themselves shoved to the back of a cupboard or into a tip to make way for the new ones. Increasingly, the top-selling toys are electronic. We explore a brief history of electronic toys, from the ever popular ‘Operation’ and ‘Walkie Talkie’ to creatures that seem to be always watching like The Hasbro Furby....

In part 2 of our special 2-part podcast, we join Steve the Spindoctor again for a day in the life of an appliance repairer. Back in the van, Dave talks to Steve Neil about sausage rolls, social media, what clogs washing machines, and the challenges that small businesses face today. Steve fixes a botched dishwasher installation to the amusement of a very young Restarter. This week, we also hear fro...

In a special 2-part series, Dave talks to Steve Neil in his van about his work ethic, the trials of being self-employed, and why some machines seem to break so often. We even follow Steve on his repair trips to see how this doctor goes about diagnosing his patients. Join us for a fascinating insight into an exciting and dynamic job, for tips on home appliance maintenance, and for a few laughs alon...

We’re all familiar with the videos of people pushing each other out of the way to get to the products on the shelf. Huge savings on electrical equipment make this one of the areas of biggest spending. Do consumers really need to buy more, or is it just the next step in the ‘halloweenization of everything’? Polls and surveys of consumer confidence reveal a huge range of results. We take a look at r...

This week Ugo returns from Brussels where he’s been investigating the policy conversations that are happening around products and their durability. Eva van Velzen from the Netwerk Bewust Verbruiken (or Network for Sustainable Consumption) joins us on the show to talk about the repair cafés popping up all over Flanders. People can bring in anything to be fixed, from electronics to clothes and furni...

After running together from our Parliamentary Restart Party, we had the pleasure of chatting with Marie Lefebvre and Divya Pujara of the Leicester Fixers. Together they have been hosting Restart Parties in Leicester for a year now. Marie is a researcher at Loughborough University, and she focuses on how and why owners of gadgets repair them - or do not. After studying marketing and then design for...

After our recent "Remote Kill Switch" episode, we have been collecting connected device horror stories. Only a couple of weeks ago, a bunch of CC TV cameras, routers, and video recorders nearly took down the internet. We talked about this "botnet" - and how some really crap, mundane devices were taken over remotely and used in a cyberattack. Other stories, care of the "Internet of Shit" tweet, amu...

We started this show with a discussion about one of the most iconic mini consumer devices - the iPod, which turned 15 years old this month. Older iPods can be improved and maintained, and we talk about their staying power. Then we talk about the downside to miniaturised and thin devices, discussing how Samsung locked itself into a disastrous design with the now infamous Note 7. Not only was it ver...

Remember the three Rs? Reduce, reuse, recycle? Why is there so much focus on recycling and so little on the other Rs? Why do perfectly useable products end up in the shredder, when so many people go without in the world? This episode features an interview with Cat Fletcher, one of the UK's most articulate and passionate reuse activists. She played a key role in the founding of Freegle, a UK versio...

Every day we see repair shops and hardware stores closing. For years in London, we've watched the vibrant repair economy along Tottenham Court Road decline. So many Restart Party goers come to us because they simply do not know where else to go for help with broken electronics. But we know all is not lost, just that some kinds of repair businesses are getting harder to find. We talked to Hackney F...

So last week we aired our podcast about updates. While we did definitely address “bad updates” and how they cause anxiety and annoyance, the general gist of the podcast was why updates should be good and why they are so often necessary. We got a comment from a volunteer taking us to task. Toshi wrote “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” Security update applies to broke, you should do it. We are not a...

We all live with them, even sometimes in fear of them. It seems like they pop-up when we least expect them - sometimes when we least want them. We're talking about software and system updates. Some people are super update-phobic. Some are hugely indifferent, and some are even hugely excited by updates. The bottom-line is, updates are a necessary part of our software-powered world. We talk to Fairp...

We hosted our friend Paul Sohi, 3D printing and digital fabrication expert, to talk us through the promise of new kinds of making. Paul explains what 3D printing actually is, how he got into it and tells us about some very exciting projects he has undertaken with his company Autodesk. Most recently, Paul helped paralympian cyclist Denise Schindler make a special prosthetic limb. (Yesterday she won...

Together with Restarter Dave Lukes, we interviewed environmental journalist Maxine Perella about changes announced by the European Commission to "eco-labelling" of laptops and portable computers. Eco-labelling has traditionally focused on energy consumption during the use phase, leaving out the impact of manufacture. The EU's eco-labelling schemes are voluntary, and before this change, very few la...

While commercial repairers of small electricals are increasingly hard to find on the high street, there's one category of repair businesses on the rise: smartphone repair shops. Even though a lot of people are still giving up on their partly broken devices, often waiting for an upgrade, an increasing number of options exists for people interested in repairing mobile phones and tablets, at least fr...

There is a quite widespread perception that things do not last as long as they used to. How does this impact what we say and, more importantly, what we do? Researcher Alex Gnanapragasam focuses on sustainable consumption and product lifetimes in his work with the Centre for Industrial Energy, Materials and Products (based at Nottingham Trent University). We talked about how people have different e...

We started this episode with a discussion of recent gaming sensation Pokémon GO, which is an "augmented reality" game where users track and interact with virtual Pokémon creatures through their mobiles. (Apologies to those who tired of the topic!) If you'd like to understand why everybody is glued to their mobile screens more than normal, Restarter Ben Skidmore explains it for us. The game raises...

Recently we got an invitation to meet from an Instagram account that had caught our attention - the Club de Reparadores in Buenos Aires. We immediately bonded with Marina, one of the founders visiting London, and invited her to chat on the radio about waste, reuse, and repair in Argentina. We face similar constraints and problems, but the speed at which the Club de Reparadores grew says something...

We've all heard that our gadgets contain valuable minerals, and that they have toxic components. But what do we really know about what is inside our gadgets, how they are made, and their afterlives? We talked to Goldsmiths researcher Jennifer Gabrys, whose book Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics, changed our perceptions. Exploring the environmental legacy of chip making in Silicon V...

We talked this week about how online information has truly revolutionised electronics repair. Ever since the early days of the internet, people have been helping each other repair products online, by sharing tips, diagrams, images and how-to guides. Dave Lukes, veteran Restarter, joined us to talk about the power of the online repair ecosystem. We mostly focused on the material available on Youtub...