Factually! with Adam Conover - The Right to Repair with Aaron Perzanowski

Episode Date: May 11, 2022

Do we really own the devices we buy? ‘The Right to Repair’ author Aaron Perzanowki joins Adam to explain how companies are using their power to control the products we buy from them, even after they’ve left the store, and prevent us from repairing them ourselves. They discuss how this affects the environment, the livelihood of farmers, and the longevity of AirPods, and Aaron shares resources on how we can take power back and do our own repairs. You can purchase Aaron’s book at http://factuallypod.com/books Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know, I got to confess, I have always been a sucker for Japanese treats. I love going down a little Tokyo, heading to a convenience store, and grabbing all those brightly colored, fun-packaged boxes off of the shelf. But you know what? I don't get the chance to go down there as often as I would like to. And that is why I am so thrilled that Bokksu, a Japanese snack subscription box, chose to sponsor this episode. What's gotten me so excited about Bokksu is that these aren't just your run-of-the-mill grocery store finds. Each box comes packed with 20 unique snacks that you can only find in Japan itself.

Plus, they throw in a handy guide filled with info about each snack and about Japanese culture. And let me tell you something, you are going to need that guide because this box comes with a lot of snacks. I just got this one today, direct from Bokksu, and look at all of these things. We got some sort of seaweed snack here. We've got a buttercream cookie. We've got a dolce. I don't, I'm going to have to read the guide to figure out what this one is. It looks like some sort of sponge cake. Oh my gosh. This one is, I think it's some kind of maybe fried banana chip. Let's try it out and see. Is that what it is? Nope, it's not banana. Maybe it's a cassava potato chip. I should have read the guide. Ah, here they are. Iburigako smoky chips. Potato

chips made with rice flour, providing a lighter texture and satisfying crunch. Oh my gosh, this is so much fun. You got to get one of these for themselves and get this for the month of March. Bokksu has a limited edition cherry blossom box and 12 month subscribers get a free kimono style robe and get this while you're wearing your new duds, learning fascinating things about your tasty snacks. You can also rest assured that you have helped to support small family run businesses in Japan because Bokksu works with 200 plus small makers to get their snacks delivered straight to your door.

So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you for joining me once again on the show. I want to start by addressing the elephant in the room. I am distressed, worried, upset, quite frightened by the leaked draft opinion that came out of the Supreme Court just this past week. This is a decision that, if enacted, is going to have really drastic effects on the country that I live in. People are going to die as a result.

People are going to be harmed, drastically harmed. And the struggle for civil rights in this country is going to take a massive step backwards. There's no way to see it in any other way. And this decision is wrong. It's wrong on the face of it. And I know some of you might say, hey, Adam, I thought you were supposed to be the objective guy.

I thought the show was called Factually. Isn't that an opinion, not a fact? But there are times when the facts are so stark and clear when you look at what we know about the procedure of abortion medically, when you look at what we know about the history of the Constitution, when you look at what we know about the history of the Constitution, when you look at what we know

about what human rights and freedom mean, that it's impossible not to come to a judgment. And for me, this is one of those times when, I mean, the fact is that this decision is wrong. But here's what I want to say about this, because I think it's really easy to lose hope at this moment to say, hey, this decision is permanent. It's going to be very hard to reverse and there's nothing we can do about it. And to that I say, there's never been a time when this has not been a struggle going all the way back to the decision, the original Roe versus Wade decision or the decades of advocacy and activism that led to them. There was never a time when this was not a struggle. It was a struggle the day before this draft opinion leaked,

and it'll be a struggle the day after this decision is finally handed down. There are Americans who fought for this cause under conditions that were far worse than the ones that we fight them under today. And it's incumbent upon us to keep that fight going regardless of how things change day to day, that we always have the opportunity,

I believe so deeply, to do things that will create a better tomorrow. That's something I intend to keep doing and it's something I hope you intend to keep doing as well. Finally, this episode is not about this issue. We had a different episode planned for this week, despite the news. But if you're interested in learning more about what a future without Roe versus Wade could look like in America, or about the history of the Supreme Court

and why the myth of how it operates is so far from the reality, you might check out our past episodes with Mary Ziegler, the historian of abortion rights in America, or my interview with Eric Siegel, the constitutional law professor who told me all about how the Supreme Court really works. Those are two fantastic episodes that are really relevant this week. Go check them out, my interviews with Mary Ziegler and Eric Siegel. Now, let's move on to other things. Just some other quick housekeeping. I want to

remind you that, by the way, speaking of the government, my new Netflix show about the federal government drops on May 19th worldwide. No matter where you are in the world, you'll be able to watch this show on May 19th. I hope you'll check it out. And if you support this show by listening to it, I hope you also consider supporting it on Patreon. If you want to join our live book club, if you want to hear bonus podcast episodes, if you want to see exclusive standup, I don't post anywhere else. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Now let's get to today's episode. You know, it used to be that when you bought something, you owned it. Pretty straightforward concept. You know, the object was in your house, and since no one else could hopefully get into your house,

well, no one else could do anything to that object. It was yours. You owned it both by law and, you know, just by virtue of it physically being in your possession. And that gave you a lot of rights over it. You could fix it when it was broken, or you could sell it to another person. Hell, you could lend it to a

friend and then get it back a couple weeks later, just like we used to do with Nintendo games growing up. It was a golden time. But then a bunch of companies decided that you fixing the thing you bought, you selling the thing you bought, you lending out the thing you bought wasn't good for their profit margins. And over the many decades since, those companies have sought to build ever greater control over the products they make even after you purchase them. Take those Nintendo games, for instance. When you think about it, the original Nintendo console, the Nintendo Entertainment System, well, it was just a computer that played a certain sort of software, right? It played games. And on most computers, anybody who wants to can write software sort of software, right? It played games. And on most computers,

anybody who wants to can write software for that computer, right? You didn't need permission from Apple to write software for the Apple IIe. But that wasn't the case with Nintendo. Oh no, Nintendo closed their system down. They wanted control over what software was published. So they required every Nintendo game to have a seal of Nintendo approval on it, and they even put in a hardware feature that prevented non-approved games from being played. It was called the 10 NES lockout chip, and it was a special chip that expected a certain input from the cartridge, and if it didn't see it, the game would not play. So unlike a regular computer from that era where you could write your own software or even debug software someone else wrote,

on a Nintendo computer, you could only run the software that Nintendo wanted you to, and you had no ability to create your own software at all. Now, that was just an early canary in the coal mine, because like with so much in the last 40 years, things have only gotten worse since. Today, our hardware is controlled by their manufacturers in ever more elaborate ways. Up until last year, your iPhone was only repairable by an official or semi-official Apple person with official Apple parts. Going it alone was nearly impossible. And if you try and repair, say, your broken iPhone screen with a third-party supplier, it could literally destroy

your ability to use essential features of the phone because the phone checks to see whether or not the screen is an official Apple product, and if it's not, it shuts that shit down. Apple and other companies have even lobbied against rules that would make their products more repairable by the consumer. And it's not just Apple.

John Deere, the tractor company, has made it harder for farmers to repair their equipment without going through official channels. They do this by installing software on the tractors that monitors what the tractor is doing and who tries to access it. And this leads us to an even bigger problem because today, so many of the devices that used to be just, you know, plain old hardware, just simple circuitry, are now run by software that connects to the internet and can be controlled from somewhere outside of your home. So think about it. Any connected device you own, a Sonos speaker, a router, a thermostat, a Nest fire alarm, a doorbell, has the potential to be controlled

by its manufacturer from elsewhere. And that is, not to put too fine a point on it, kind of fucked up, isn't it? But why? What actually makes this practice so terrible? I mean, it sucks to not have control over the things you paid for, but are there even larger ramifications? Well, to discuss what they are, our guest today is Aaron Perzanowski, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University and the author of The Right to Repair, Reclaiming the Things We Own. Okay, we're here with Aaron Perzanowski. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Aaron. Yeah, I'm really excited to be here. So you have a new book out called Right to Repair. Let's jump into it. How do

companies try to take away our right to repair and why is that a problem? So companies have developed a whole range of strategies to make repair more difficult, more expensive, and to really exert control over when and how and whether consumers can repair their devices. So that starts with the design of the hardware itself, choosing to use screws and fasteners that make it difficult to disassemble a product, using software restrictions that make it difficult for you to access the components that you need to replace or disabling components when they have been replaced. And so they use this range of tools in a way that really makes it challenging for consumers to exert the kind of control that

we've become used to over the years when we're repairing the devices we own. So that's true for our vehicles, our smartphones. It's true for the agricultural equipment that farmers rely on. It's true for medical equipment. And so we're seeing these kinds of barriers being thrown up really all across the economy in a way that has really dramatic effects. So you said that this sort of violates what we've grown used to as consumers. But I would actually posit that we've grown used to as consumers, but I would actually posit that we've grown not used to repairing our old devices. I mean, when I see an image of a guy with, you know, a guy or a gal in their front driveway

with the hood of their car open and, you know, their elbow deep in motor oil, you know, fixing their car, I'm like, that's an old timey image. That's like from, you know, America in the 1950s or whatever. That's not from today. If you pop the hood of, you know, even the 2010 Prius that me and my girlfriend had for many years, there's not a lot you can get into in there. Right. So, I mean, this seems like it's been a trend over many decades that we've been moving away from. People have become unused to repairing their devices in a lot of ways. So I think you're absolutely right that this is a trend and a trend that has really developed a lot of momentum over the past two or three decades in particular.

It really depends on the kind of historical scale at which you want to have the conversation. Repair has really been essential to human technology as long as there has been human technology. So we can go all the way back, you know, millions of years to, you know, hand axes that, you know, that that, you know, protoans were repairing. And we see every stage in human technological development, repair gets more sophisticated along with the technology. And that trend really continues up until the early part of the 20th century when we start to see companies realize that it's in their economic best interest to make repair more difficult. So this is really a phenomenon of the last century or so. And as I said, it's really sped up with the introduction of software and kind of network connectivity into our devices. That's really

the key suite of tools that have enabled these repair restrictions to emerge in more recent years. Well, so let's talk about briefly, I have so many questions about this and I find this topic fascinating, but before we get anywhere, I just want to talk about what we're losing by losing the ability to repair our devices. Like what is bad about that? I mean, because let's be honest, a lot of people who are consumers would not want to repair their own devices. They you know, they're not technically inclined and we want technology to be usable by those people as well. And so they maybe don't have a problem just going to the genius bar or whatever. But so what are the what are the knock on effects of these devices becoming less repairable?

knock-on effects of these devices becoming less repairable? So the first thing I would say is even if you're not like mechanically inclined yourself, you're not the kind of person that wants to like, you know, pop open the hood of your car and figure out what's wrong with it in your own garage, or you don't want to swap out the broken screen on your iPhone yourself, the right to repair still matters to you because it's going to influence the degree to which you have choices in the marketplace about which repair services to rely on. Do you only have to go or do you only have the ability to go to the Apple store to repair your phone or to the dealer to repair your car? Or can you shop around for an independent repair provider who might be able to do just as good of a job, but at a lower price or more quickly?

So I think the most direct way this impacts consumers day to day is just in terms of price. It's really expensive to have devices repaired in a market where repair services have essentially been monopolized rather than a market where we've got a lot of competition. You know, the guy at the kiosk at the mall is going to charge you a lot less than Apple is for the same repair. And I just think people ought to have that choice. And so we're talking about, you know, repair markets for consumer goods that, you know, total tens of billions of dollars a year, and that's money coming directly out of the pockets of consumers. It also means that, you know, your devices will last longer if repair

is available. So instead of, you know, replacing your phone every two years, maybe you can make that phone last for three or four or five years. Over time, that saves people a lot of money. So I think the economics here are really important. We see that in some markets, I think more starkly than others. So when you look at farmers, you spend $800,000, $900,000 on a tractor for your livelihood, right, to do the work that, you know, that puts food on your family's table. And farmers in a lot of ways are kind of held hostage by the manufacturers of these devices, because when it becomes necessary to have them repaired, they don't have the freedom to just go out and have the local mom and pop shop do it themselves or to do it on their own as farmers have done for centuries. They've got to pay these really high prices.

So that's a big piece of the puzzle. people don't take into account to the extent they should. It's just the massive amount of environmental damage that comes from the lack of repair. So we're replacing products more frequently. That leads to just mountains of electronic waste, you know, tens of millions of tons of electronic waste being produced every year. And a big part of that is because we are replacing things rather than repairing them. And that's in the economic interest of these companies, right? Apple is profitable because it sells a couple hundred million iPhones a year. And that only works if people are getting rid of the old ones to buy new ones. And so repair kind of helps disrupt that. Yeah. If it's difficult to repair that phone or let's say, you know, your iPhone starts to have problems. If there's a local repair shop where just a guy with a screwdriver can swap something

in or out on your phone to fix it very easily, you're a lot less likely to go buy a new phone. You're more likely to go pay that guy 50 bucks rather than go wait in the line at the Apple store, at the mall, or buying a brand new expensive phone. Let's talk about tractors because it's an example that's often used here. And it's one that I'm really curious about. So, and it's very easy to imagine, hey, you're a farmer, your tractor breaks down,

you, the tractor guy comes and fix it. That's like, seems like a very obvious thing that would have existed for like a century in American life. So what are tractor companies, John Deere and et cetera, doing to prevent those farmers from repairing? I mean, is it really that nefarious where they are specifically blocking the process of repair itself? Or is there some other reason that they're doing it? So there are a couple of things that are going on. And I think a lot of people probably assume, you know, that farm equipment is, while complicated, fairly low tech. But the

reality is like a modern John Deere tractor, just like a modern, you know, car or truck, has dozens of computers built into it. It's got all these electronic control units and sensors that capture diagnostic information about how the tractor is performing. And so one problem that farmers run into is there will be some malfunction and they don't have access to the diagnostic codes to understand what that malfunction actually means unless they use John Deere's proprietary software, which John Deere is very eager to keep in its own hands exclusively. So you have a difficulty just in diagnosing what the problem really is and how to fix it. Assuming you know how to fix it or you find someone who knows how to fix it, you go out and you buy the appropriate parts and you install them.

And in many cases, John Deere's software will actually prevent a correctly installed component from functioning until they initialize it with their own computer software code. So they have to send, they send a John Deere technician out from the dealer and you're paying for their travel time at, you know, $150 an hour or whatever it costs. They come to your farm, they connect their laptop to your device, they generate this payload file, which then has to be transferred to your tractor, and only then does the original manufacturer part that you installed actually work. And so even if you want to rely on self-repair or independent repair, you can't get around paying John Deere. It's essentially a tax that they're imposing on farmers who want to repair things themselves. And let me guess, let me guess, this special software that the hardware needs to work is proprietary to John Deere and no one else

can get a copy of it. And if you were to reverse engineer it or somehow get a copy of the software and try to use it independently, they would sue you or perhaps criminally investigate you. So, yeah, there's real risk here if you go out and try to find this software through other means, and farmers have been doing it. You know, there's some great reporting a couple of years ago about farmers who were, you know, desperate to get their machinery working because, you know, oftentimes these are time sensitive repairs, right? Your crops need to come out of the ground. They need to be harvested. And if they're telling you it's going to be a week or two until the John Deere guy can come out, you need to fix it quickly. So they were going on

the dark web and finding this John Deere software from Ukrainian hackers and downloading it from, you know, these password protected invite only websites as a workaround. And that does create some potential legal liability. That's wild. I mean, it raises the question, like what happens, and this is unlikely, but it can definitely happen in other sectors. I've had this happen to me myself. What happens if John Deere goes out of business, right? Right. And you have a tractor and you know, that John Deere guy who you need to come out and give the payload. Well, that doesn't exist anymore. And you want to keep your tractor running. That becomes impossible, right? Yeah. So this is a situation that we have seen play out in a whole range of

areas. Consumers buy these products, what they think of as products that really depend on embedded software or on networked connectivity to the cloud for functionality. And then the company maybe goes out of business. There was this social robot called Jibo that came out a few years ago, and it would tell you jokes and interact with you. But all of its functionality lived on some server in the cloud. And when the company ran out of money, they shut down those servers and the robot stopped working. Sometimes companies just shut down these kinds of services because they don't think it's profitable anymore.

One example there is Nest made a home automation hub called the Revolve. And they just decided they didn't want to support the product anymore. So they sent out an email to all the people who paid $300 for this device and said, as of May 1st, we're turning them off and they just don't work anymore. And so that's a real risk that consumers have to become aware of.

And, you know, too often this is not the way consumers think about purchasing decisions. They don't anticipate these problems. Well, it's becoming, I think we're starting to anticipate it. We're starting to realize that because it's become so common among tech products that, you know, I mean, I have, when I look at my internet router and I like look at how many attached devices, there's like 20 devices on it. And only three or four of them are my computer or my phone. The rest are my smoke detector, my thermostat, my, you know, all these other things. And I agree to that for some kind of convenience, right? I do, I use the network

smoke detector because when I'm cooking and the smoke detector starts to go off, instead of going like an old fashioned one, it just goes, smoke has been detected in the kitchen. And then I can, and an alert pops up on my phone and I can hit silent on my phone. And that is like truly a game changer when it comes to smoke detectors because it means less panic when I have a hot flame going in my kitchen.

I got to switch to an induction burner, by the way, for exactly this reason. But so that's all well and good, right? Except that, you know, if the company goes out of business, then it's possible my smoke detector shuts down. And I have so many other products like that John Deere could simply design the tractor such that it doesn't need a special payload of proprietary software. The tractor could work just as well, but it could be a little bit more open so that they empower, you know, local repair people. You don't need, you know, they could make the software open source and say, you know,

allow people to upgrade it themselves. That even if John Deere goes out of business, someone could continue maintaining the software if they wanted to. That's a choice that John Deere has made. Do I have that right? Yeah, that's right. Okay. So that's a very nefarious example. But I want to ask how much of this is due to, you know, just the increasing complexity of all of our devices, you know, like to take Apple is a perfect example of so many of these ills and Apple certainly guilty of doing this. But if you went to Apple and said, hey, why can't I repair my iPhone or my MacBook? Let's let's take the example of a MacBook because MacBooks have really laptops have really changed over the last 30 years. I would say, why can't I replace, you know, my hard drive failed? Why can't I just

replace my hard drive? They would say, well, we have integrated all of the hardware onto one big chip. It's all part of the motherboard now. And the reason for that is you wanted a thin laptop and you wanted a fast laptop. And the last top can be much faster and thinner and cheaper if we do it all like that, rather than the old fashion way where it's all modular and you can unplug everything and plug it back in. And when I hear that argument, I'm always like, it does, it kind of holds water for me. Like it is a, you know, it is a technological feat what they have done, right? The engineering on a, on a modern MacBook is like truly out of this world, like efficient and powerful and a miracle of modern technology. So, so how much is it, how much of it is just, hey, this is unfortunately

a consequence of our technology getting faster and more complex, and how much of it is nefariousness on the part of these companies? So that's a really great question, because I am the first to admit that designing these sort of like marvels of modern technology requires a lot of trade-offs. They're complicated machines. You're trying to balance form factor and price and performance and aesthetics and all of these sorts of considerations. And I think sometimes companies will say, look, we have to sacrifice certain aspects of repairability because the market is demanding that we do something else. It wants the device to be thinner or it wants the device to be cheaper. And we can achieve that by sacrificing modularity. Um, part of the problem with that argument is our preferences as consumers are and that this design aesthetic is preferable, that influences what people value.

And that's what marketing does. And we shouldn't pretend that it serves any other purpose. So Steve Jobs himself, right, who said consumers don't know what they want until we show it to them. And they've been showing us what they want us to value. And it is a product that aligns really well with their economic interests. I think Apple is incredibly, you know, an incredibly skilled company full of incredibly talented designers. And if they wanted to make a product that was more repairable, I think they could achieve that. But the economic incentives aren't there for them to do that. They need us to keep buying new products over and over again. And so that integration you talked about is a really key instance of that logic

kind of playing itself out. So I'll give you one quick example. There's a really cheap part, a chip that regulates the rate at which your battery charges on your MacBook. It's made by a company called InterCell. It costs about $15 for this part. And so sometimes if that chip goes bad and needs to be replaced, right, your laptop isn't going to charge without it. So it's essential. And so you could go to a skilled independent repair shop and have them replace that $1,500 or sorry, that $15 part. The problem is Apple has an exclusive output contract with interseal, which means interseal is not allowed to sell that part to anyone other than Apple and Apple won't sell it to you or anyone else. So instead of replacing that, that $15 part, you have to replace the entire logic board, which means a $1,500 repair.

And of course, are you going to repair a laptop for $1,500 or are you just going to buy a new one? So we know what happens, right? People buy new ones. In fact, if you were to bring that laptop to Apple, to the Apple store and say, hey, it's got this one little problem, would you fix it? They wouldn't fix it. They'd just say, if you're under warranty, if you're under AppleCare Plus and it's covered, they wouldn't fix it. They would just say, here's the new MacBook. They just they just hand it to you. And then they take the old one and they do God knows what with it. Like maybe they repair it. They do sell refurbished products, but those all seem like just, you know, open box returns.

just, you know, open box returns. So like when, when Apple takes that broken one from you that they could repair, it's like unclear if they're even repairing it or if they're just sort of like recycling the parts. Yeah. I mean, we don't have good information about what actually happens with those products under those circumstances. My suspicion is you're right. They are not doing that kind of board-level repair. This is one of the sort of funny secrets about the repair industry is, you know, Apple talks about how its repair people are more skilled and more reliable, but they actually do pretty simple, straightforward repairs. If you want somebody who actually knows how to do the really challenging, intricate, board-level repairs, you don't go ask Apple to do the really challenging, intricate board level repairs,

you don't go ask Apple to do that work. You go to an independent repair provider, because Apple has no interest in doing that sort of fix. They're doing exactly what you just described. They're going to hand you, if it's under warranty, they're going to hand you a new device and send you on your way. And they're probably going to give that laptop to their recycling partners to pull out the copper and the gold and the other valuable components and use that as part of the input in their manufacturing process to make a new laptop to sell to somebody else. But that's not nearly as, you know, talking environmentally or just in terms of preventing waste, that's not nearly as efficient as simply repairing the laptop and selling it on the secondary market saying, hey, this is a fixed up MacBook from three years ago. It works great, would be good for a student or, you know, maybe you need a server for your closet.

You know, you buy an old fixed up Mac mini or something like that. Recycling it is not nearly as good as fixing it and reusing it. I'd love to talk about AirPods specifically because they're often brought up as long as we're on the subject of Apple. Tell me about AirPods and how do they show like how even the design of these

products make them, you know, hostile to repair? Yeah. So AirPods are a really wonderful example of product design that is just entirely hostile to the very idea of repair. You know, AirPods have one obvious, you know, point of failure, and that's their batteries get old, right? And so after you have them for some period of time, a year or two, what used to be a five-hour battery, you know, might go down to 30 minutes on a charge. And that makes them, you know, hard to use on a daily basis. And so it would be great if you could just swap out the batteries and keep all of the other components of your AirPods that you're happy with. But the way they are designed and built makes that nearly impossible. So the AirPods are basically glued and soldered together. So if you want to get at the tiny battery inside of that plastic shell, you basically have to destroy the AirPod in order to remove and replace the battery, at which point, what's the point of replacing the battery? Now, there is a company that figured out a sort of clever high-tech technique for kind of drilling out those batteries.

But, you know, that was after these products were on the market for years and certainly was not, you know, Apple's anticipated use case. Apple just figured these were basically disposable headphones. just figured these were basically disposable headphones. You buy them, use them until the battery is depleted, and then dispose of them in one fashion or another. They're not easy to recycle, so Apple actually has to pay their recycling partners a premium to even take the AirPods because they're so difficult to recycle. The cost of recycling them is greater than the value of the components inside of them. And so I look at that and I see that as a design failure. That's a design that is imposing massive costs on the public. When we think about the tens of millions, hundreds of

millions of pairs of these things that have been produced that we know with a great degree of certainty are going to end up in a landfill somewhere. And those costs aren't reflected in the price tag, right? That's what we call an externality. It is a cost borne by everybody else, not borne by the people who are part of this transaction. Apple doesn't have to pay for it. The consumer doesn't have to pay for it. But, you know, the next generation of, you know, people inhabiting this planet are going to have to pay for it.

And it's part of this trend because, I mean, look, the headphones that you see on my head right now, folks at home, you can imagine, they're a pair of studio headphones, Sony mean, look, the headphones that you see on my head right now, folks at home, you can imagine they're a pair of studio headphones, Sony MDRs, I believe they're called, that I got, you know, over 10 years ago when I started working at College Humor, I needed a pair of office headphones. They're studio headphones. I have been using them almost daily for 10 years. They work exactly the same as they used to. The ear pads get a little bit, you got to replace those every couple of years because they get a little grody. Apart from that, like the thing works great. And they'll also work great

forever until there's like maybe a, maybe it'll get a bad connection in the cable. That might be kind of hard to repair, but they're very, very durable. But AirPods, like, as you say, they, it's impossible for them to last more than three years. They, they have a death date, like stamped on them invisibly every time that they're made. And you're not told that by Apple. Here's the problem. AirPods are incredible. Like from a consumer standpoint, you know, you get them the first time I got them, I was like, oh my God, Apple has solved the problem of the tangled, you know, headphone cable in my pocket, right? They pair so quickly. They sound certainly good enough for me i mostly listen to podcasts but i think it sounds good enough for music right they're unobtrusive they've it makes that nice

clack when you close them right they're like from the one hand a complete consumer design success story they should be in a museum right For like how well designed they are, except for this, this gigantic flaw that you talk about, which is like, you know, lurking under the surface. My question is in your view, is there a way to do both at the same time? Like, is there an AirPod out there that, you know, if you could go, you know, fucking grab Johnny Ive by the lapels and shake him and say, God damn it, man, do it the way I want you to do it. Would he be capable of coming up with an AirPod design that doesn't impose this externality that has a replaceable battery? Or is this a trade-off that the public has to accept to a certain degree? I know that question is very specific to AirPods.

And in many, in the tractor case, it's obviously not a trade-off we need to accept. But, you know, I'm curious what you think about the AirPod case. So I'm not an industrial designer, and I don't mean to kind of wave my hands at the real problems that they encounter in trying to build these products and achieve the goals that they have. But I'm pretty confident that if we had, for example, a government mandate about replaceable batteries in consumer products, that Apple would very quickly find a way to build this device in a way that allowed for user replaceable batteries. Now, they might be a little bulkier than they are now. They might not have the sort of, you know, elegance that we expect with Apple products. I do think

a lot of this, you know, a lot of it's about economics. A lot of it is also about a certain design philosophy that Apple has embodied for decades, where there is a kind of hostility to outsiders interfering with or interrupting the user experience. And so their products are designed in a way to keep the rest of the world out, in part because they want to have that experience that you just described of everything just working. And so Apple will have concerns that if, you know, you create user replaceable batteries, what if you buy cheap batteries that aren't good? And then you blame us for that. Or, you know, what if, you know, allowing independent repair providers degrades the performance of our devices? And, you know, those are legitimate concerns, but I just don't

think they come close to outweighing the kinds of harms that we've been talking about, both in terms of economics for consumers and in terms of the environmental impact. And so I do think that companies could comply with these sorts of laws. I mean, we've seen lots of examples over the years of design mandates that companies really resisted and learned to live with, and they created better products for consumers. There's so many examples of that. very simple one is like mileage requirements for gas powered vehicles. Every time the government sets, you know, these companies pump out cars that get 15 miles a gallon and then or even less in the past, then the government says, well, no, it's got to be 20. It's got to be 30, whatever it is. And the companies grumble and then they just do it. And then we get cars that are, you know, that are more efficient. Or I think one of the best examples of this is probably like Energy Star for home appliances, right?

That like home appliances have gotten vastly more efficient. And it's because there's various, what, incentives and rules and regulations. I don't know the specifics of them, but I know that that transition has happened, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, the clearest example of this that we've seen in the repair context are these eco-design regulations that have been implemented in Europe for the past year and a half or so in the UK and in the EU. white goods, home appliances, like washing machines, dishwashers, those sorts of things. And those are rules that say, if you're going to sell these products in the European market, the parts have to be replaceable using common everyday tools. You can't expect people to go out and buy special equipment to do repairs. You have to be able to take these machines apart in a way that doesn't do lasting damage to them. And companies figured out a way to comply with those rules.

And so now if your washing machine breaks down, it's a lot easier to take it apart and replace the failed components than it was five years ago. They're thinking about and they're in the process of developing rules for smartphones and laptops that would approach a similar set of problems. And one proposal, this is not law yet, and it might never be, but one proposal at least is to require these devices, including smartphones, to have user-replaceable batteries. And if Europe requires that, then Apple's going to figure out a solution to making an iPhone with a battery that can be easily replaced.

Wow, that'd be a huge step. Let's talk more about positive movement in this direction, but we've got to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Aaron Persinowski. Okay, we're back with Aaron Persinowski. We're talking about right to repair. And you just told us about this EU regulation that might impel Apple to, for instance, come up with a way to have a user replaceable battery. You also said, by the way, that this rule would require products to be opened using easily

acquirable tools. And that's a really, that is a really common one that I know for my own efforts to repair my own devices, that a lot of times devices will come with like proprietary screwdrivers that you like need, you need Apple's special screwdriver, or you need someone else to reverse engineer Apple's special screwdriver just to open the backs of the, of the stuff. It's really wild. Yeah. So, you know, like a decade or so ago, Apple started using this new type of screw, the pentalobe screw. And, you know, at the time, nobody had these things. And it was really difficult initially to find them. And now, you know, because of Apple's kind of, you know, large presence in the consumer market, you can pick them up on Amazon for a few dollars. But there's a whole universe of these exotic fasteners

that are really designed to make it difficult for you to open up a device and just, you know, diagnose what's going wrong and replace a part or even just understand how it operates. The other thing that we're seeing more and more of now, which is even worse, I think, than these exotic screws is the way glue is being used, right? So, you know, you've got to like microwave a bag of rice and let it sit on your, uh, the screen of your device for 10 seconds to loosen up the glue so you can pry the screen off. Wow. You know, all sorts of, you know, techniques like that, that even if they're not intentionally designed to make it difficult to repair a product,

really raise those barriers in a way that non-professionals are just scared away from trying to repair a device. Yeah, I mean, I've had the experience so many times of going on, I fix it to see how I might fix something that I own and going, oh, I can't do that. Like I can't remove glue. If there's glue involved, I don't do it because it's like, I'm going to fuck with something and break it as opposed to something that was designed, you know, for you to be able to repair. I mean, you know, there's plenty of devices. Good example is I once was able to replace the battery on my older Kindle and it wasn't that hard. You know, I was able to order a battery and I, and just in,

in doing it, I was like, this is clearly not designed for me to do it, but there's nothing in it that's preventing me specifically from doing it. There's no, there's no hostility to it. Like you open up the back and the, the batteries right there, or even like, you know, older Mac laptops, you could install RAM on them. I remember buying, just buying extra Ram. You open it up. The Ram is visible. You just push it right in. You put the screws back on, you know, it's something that like, it's fun to do it right. Like, Oh, I upgraded it myself or replacing a hard drive or something like that. It's really a sea change that we've had. Well, let's talk about in the U.S., there is a growing movement behind right to repair. I believe some states and maybe even the federal government have been considering

putting in some laws or some regulations around it? Are there any updates around that? Are our governmental regulators finally starting to wake up about this issue? So this has been a years-long fight to try to get some recognition of the rights of consumers in the repair space. And this started in the early 2010s in Massachusetts, where by referendum, the voters of Massachusetts passed a law that addressed repair in the automotive space. That says car companies have to make parts and tools and information available to car owners and to independent repair shops. And that became kind of a model that the industry adopted across the United States and has really led to greater repairability of cars. There have been some changes since then that make it a little bit more difficult with the shift to telematics and the kind of wireless sharing of information between the vehicles and dealers. But that became kind of the model for a much broader right to repair legislation for all consumer electronics devices.

And we've seen more than half of the states in the U.S. have introduced bills to expand the ability to repair devices. We haven't seen any of them pass yet. They haven't been signed into law. But every year we see more progress. We still have bills pending in a whole bunch of states right now and still could see them pass this year. We still have bills pending in a whole bunch of states right now and still could see them pass this year. There's also three or four different pieces of federal legislation that have been introduced in the U.S. Congress that would address repair.

Some of those, I think, are going to see some movement in the coming year. The Federal Trade Commission has been active in this space, thinking about enforcing existing consumer protection rules in a way that would crack down on some of these repair restrictions. And they're, I think, contemplating making some new rules that would apply more broadly to give companies a clearer sense of what kinds of restrictions are sort of, you know, beyond the pale. So I think that's a process that's ongoing, but one that I think is really promising. So we've seen more movement in the past couple of years than we have in a long time. But I always tell people this is not a fight that is ever going to be won. Companies will always find new ways to design around existing regulations. There realizes that this is a fight that you've got to be ready for the long haul. Yeah, but it has had a little bit of an effect on some of the company's practices. Like just, you know, the specter of federal action or state action can cause these companies to make a shift or at least make the appearance of a shift.

So I know that Apple last November announced, what did they call it? The self-service repair program that would do, let's see, I've got it up here on CNN. let's see, I've got it up here on CNN, you know, make different parts and tools available at launch for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13. I mean, was this program, what do you know about it? Was this a real program or is this just, you know, the appearance of trying to mollify regulators by saying, oh no, we're doing it, we're doing it,

but, you know, not really making a big difference? It's hard to say, right? So right now it is an announcement of a future program. It is not a thing that exists in the world at this point. Assuming Apple makes good on this promise, which I expect it to do because it was so public about it that it's not going to be easy for them to back down from this. But assuming they make good on the promise that they made, they're going to make screens, batteries, and cameras available for two models of iPhones. That's a big policy reversal for Apple. They have been incredibly reluctant to make parts available to anyone outside of their sort of authorized repair network.

Because let me ask, I remember I used to have friends when I was living in New York, people would smash their phone screen and they'd say, oh, instead of going to the Apple store, you can go to the guy on the corner can repair your iPhone screen. But they're using a third party screen, not an Apple screen. And that can cause, you know, incompatibility problems or Apple, I think even sometimes will like recognize a part as not being first party and like your phone gets bricked. So this, so the change here would be that that guy on the corner could get an official Apple screen or gal on the corner. I want to be clear. I could get an official Apple screen

and install that. And that would be an improvement in the regime if it were to actually come to happen. Right. So what Apple has said is they will make these parts available to iPhone owners, so directly to the consumer. Now, what the consumer does with it, they might take it to that person and have them do the installation. But I think Apple remains pretty skeptical about the idea of selling parts to repair providers unless they've signed some sort of contractual agreement with Apple that restricts what they can do in terms of repairs. So they're going to make these things available to consumers. And that's good. But there are a lot of unanswered questions here. That's good. But there are a lot of unanswered questions here. I don't know what these parts are going to cost. If Apple tells you, yeah, sure, we'll sell you a screen for $399, or you can have

us repair it for 450 or whatever the price might be. That doesn't strike me as like really changing things all that much. Apple has a lot of software restrictions as, as, as you mentioned, um, when it comes to recognizing those parts, once they've been installed, we don't know exactly how that software authentication process is going to work for consumers doing self-repair. Um, we don't know how easy the process is going to be. Um, how many hoops are you going to have to jump through to prove that you own this phone and that you need this particular part? Even with Apple's own authorized service providers, they don't just sell you parts at whatever

volume you want. You have to, as an authorized service provider, you have to show I have a customer here with this phone, with this problem, send me one part to fix this device. So Apple's really, really, you know, keeps a tight grip on these components because they're really worried about, you know, the repair market sort of thriving and cannibalizing sales of new devices. But so this is the equivalent to when you take your car to the shop and they're like, yeah, we can solve your problem,

but we don't have the part. We got to order the part and it'll take three weeks. And you're like, I don't get my car back for three weeks because you need to order it. Why don't you just have the part? And so this is, I never thought of that. That's like a completely manufactured problem. Like these companies could

just like, they could have a system where just like, yeah, I got a whole stack of parts right here. But instead they restrict the supply to make the repair harder. That is, I'm going to say that's bad. It's, it is not great. I think is yeah, it's a fair, it's a fair assessment. So you're right, though. Apple has made this really big concession. We've seen in the past couple of weeks other companies, Samsung, Google, have announced partnerships with iFixit to make parts available. You've seen companies like Microsoft reconsidering their position on repair in part due to these regulatory efforts that are kind of looming over them, but also because these companies have been getting pushback from their shareholders who are saying, we're worried about the environmentalides of limiting repair. And so companies are, I think, starting to recognize their current positions are pretty untenable. John Deere right now is facing 11 private antitrust lawsuits over their repair restrictions, class actions, and an FTC investigation. So

people are feeling the pressure. And so we're starting to see them back off of, you know, these, you know, pretty, pretty aggressive positions they've been maintaining for the last several years. Yeah. Well, let's end on this because one thing I'd love to talk about is that in the last year, I have discovered myself how many repair options there actually are for my technology. Despite this huge problem there, you know, once you start looking for it, there, it is a little bit easier to repair your stuff than you might think. I've had the experience of like looking on iFixit, which is a site we've mentioned a couple of times. It's a site and

company that publishes repair guides for all kinds of different products and will sell you the tools and sometimes even the parts that you need. So I'll give you a great example. Something I did myself as a little hobby project over the winter break was I am a video game player, as folks who listen might know. And I had an Xbox one controller that the top right bumper broke. Like it was, you know, the R1 button for those who play or the RB button. And it just like suddenly something snapped in it and the button just stopped working. And I was like, I was like, I was literally in a box of shit to donate to Goodwill.

And Goodwill had just thrown out because it didn't work. But instead, I went on iFixit and I looked it up and they had not just a guide to fixing the button. They would actually sell me the little button assembly, like the literal, just plastic piece, literally like probably costs a nickel, this piece. Like it was just a little plastic tab that snapped off. And so I bought that from them and I bought a toolkit. They have like a toolkit of all the different tools you might need to repair any kind of device. And I got it and I opened up the controller. I started, you know, I swore and cursed a little bit because it took me like two or three tries to actually do it right. Cause I'm not used to repairing things. I had to like put it together. It still wasn't working. I had to take it apart and do it again. But then I finally fixed it. And I closed it all up and I was like,

oh my God, it's as good as new. It cost me seven dollars for the part, plus the price of the tools. But I can use the tools forever. And I felt so empowered and happy. And, you know, now there's a little story for this device that I have. It's not just some Xbox controller that I that I got for free with the system. It's a it's a controller that I myself fixed that is special to me. And it was so super empowering. And I'd love for more people to have that experience. And I'd love to talk about some ways that they can.

So I love that story so much. That's really great. Because it illustrates a couple of points, great. Cause it illustrates a couple of points, right? One is we are living in an era that like could be the golden age of repair, right? Information is available all over the place, right? Not only will I fix it, sell you tools and parts and give you a really beautiful step-by-step walkthrough. I guarantee there are a hundred videos on YouTube of someone showing you right in real time, how to execute this repair. So information is all over the place. And that's part of what these companies are reacting against. It is a nightmare for them, for this information to be out there in a way that the average person can figure it out for themselves. Right. And so that's part of the reason we've seen all of these

restrictions emerge. It's a losing battle in the long run. And I think they understand that. The other thing that your story really highlights is the way that repair changes our relationship with the things that we use, rather than it just being some off-the-shelf device, indistinguishable from the millions of other controllers that were produced by Microsoft, this one is yours in a unique and palpable way. You've got a connection to it. You feel a different kind of dynamic,

a different kind of relationship with that device. And you see this all the time, right? People who drive around the same beat up old truck for 25 years, it's not because they can't afford a new one necessarily, but it's because they're like emotionally invested in this one. They have got a lot of stories to tell, right, about wrecks they were in and fixes they made. And that I think is really important, right? It's part of our kind of individual autonomy that we feel're playing an active role in interacting with the technology that we all depend on so much. And I think that's a big piece of why repair matters because we need to feel like we are actively engaged with all of these devices that they're not running our lives. We're using them to kind of fulfill our goals. So I think that repair really helps us see things from that perspective. Yeah. And it, I mean, it turns it from a passive consumer relationship into a hobby relationship or a more involved relationship. I mean, I've started also in the last year, you know, I would hesitate to say collecting retro video games and equipment, but just sort of like, you know, purchasing them

occasionally and, and, you know, uh, you know, being a little bit more intentional in how I use them. And one of the really cool things about that community is that, you know, that's, that's generally a bunch of technology from the eighties and nineties, and it's extremely tinkerable. And so, you know, a lot of being a part of that community for people is like, okay, I have an old busted Game Boy and what do I do with it? You know, I can fix it. I can put a new screen on it.

I can put a new shell on it. I can make it mine. I can customize it. You know, one of the reasons I bought this equipment for my fix, I bought a soldering iron was I was like, oh, I have an old game and I can replace the battery so that it can start saving again.

I can buy a little button battery and there's all these guides to that. And it's like, I can love on it. I can love it. And I can make it, I can make it new again. And I can continue, you know, my relationship with it. And the crazy thing about that is that's something that the users of these, of this technology are doing. Nintendo itself, the company that I, you know, was basically brought up loving, right? Like I have such a long, deep relationship with this company. This company doesn't give a shit about its old hardware. You know, you can't buy an old game. People love the Game Boy Advance so much, but you can't go buy an old Game Boy Advance for them. They won't sell it to you. They won't sell you the parts. They won't refurbish it. They won't repair it. They won't do any of you. They won't sell you the parts. They won't refurbish it. They won't repair it.

They won't do any of it. But there's this community of people who just like, I love these things and I'm going to do it. That's very beautiful. And it's something that as a society, we could be encouraging on a wider scale. People certainly love Apple products that much. People love Apple products 10 times more

than they love Nintendo products. 10 times as many people do. But because of Apple, there's no, there's no community around that. There's no iPhone tinkerers who are like, Oh, check out how I modded my, I souped up my old iPhone 3g to like make it modern because I love it so much. Like you can't do it. And that's a, that's a bummer. Yeah. Repair does build community and in a whole bunch of different areas, right? I mean, you think about car culture in the United States over the decades, you know, in a group of people hanging out in a garage, trying to figure out what's wrong with a device

or with a vehicle or figuring out how to, you know, add some new capability. Same thing, you know, for farmers, right? Farmers are in these relatively isolated rural communities. And historically, they'll get together. And if somebody's got a problem with their equipment, it's not just one person out there on their own. It's a kind of collaborative effort. And historically, that's been a collaborative effort that happens face to face. But now we have the ability to collaborate with people in a kind of global community around repair, right? So even if nobody else in your neighborhood is, you know, trying to fix, you

know, their old Game Boy Advance, there's hundreds or thousands of people uh scattered around the world who you can share information and and you know share your successes with and so you know that that kind of community building aspect of repair is something that i also really worry that that we might be losing um but at the same time there's all this evidence that um that instinct is one that's like so deeply ingrained in who we are as humans that no matter what policies, you know, the John Deere's of the world try to adopt, you're not going to beat that out of us. Right. Like this is something that people just inherently do and value. And what we want to do is rather than stifle it, rather than let John Deere or Apple stifle it, we want to unleash it. We want to let it flourish because it's such a positive thing about humanity that we can encourage and we'll make the world better for everybody. it and, you know, figuring out I could fix this controller. And I have a couple other things in my house. I'm like, ooh, maybe I could fix sometime. But what do you suggest for folks who want to get involved in the fight for right to repair or want to have that relationship with

their own technology? So one thing that's great about this community is there are so many opportunities to like learn how to do repairs yourself, right? So there's this kind of worldwide phenomenon of the repair cafe, right? A spot in your town where you can show up with your broken stuff and there will be people there who are like eager to help you figure out why isn't your toaster working? What can we do about it? Why is your printer jammed? And how do we fix that? And it's a kind of collaborative face-to-face kind of process. So you've got repair cafes, you've got fix-it clinics, you've got restart parties. These things go by all sorts of different names, depending on what part of the world you're in.

And that's really like the grassroots on the ground repair effort. There's also opportunity at the policy level to, you know, do the kind of democratic work to pressure legislatures, right? Call your local state senator or state representative and ask them why aren't they supporting the right to repair bill in your state or call your congressman and have those kinds of conversations. is it is a truly nonpartisan issue. The public polling on repair shows number one, overwhelming support, like over 80% of people support the idea of the right to repair. And it's true for Republicans, Democrats, independents. If you look at who's introducing these state level bills, you know, it's a coin toss as to what party that person belongs to. So this is an issue that like cuts across all of the usual kind of political divides. And I think that's part of the reason that the success here is starting to feel so much more possible, so much more likely, because you don't get to just disregard this issue

as like, oh, that's just something that people on the left care about, or that's just something that, you know, that the MAGA crowd is into. No, actually pretty much everybody is aligned on this one, except for the most valuable corporations in the history of the planet. That's the one down side. Yeah, the biggest political donors and all that. But there, I mean, there really is a movement around this stuff. And there's also companies that are trying to build their businesses around it. Like iFixit or you mentioned this company, The Swap Club, which figured out how to replace the batteries on AirPods. I've used that company myself because I had AirPods that were dying and this thing had just come out and it worked great. You send them your old AirPods. They send you a new pair and repair your old ones. They don't repair your old

ones. They send you a preview. They send you someone else's repaired AirPods. And if you, if your AirPods are running out of batteries, you don't want to give Apple what, like almost $200 for a new pair of AirPods. You can get them repaired for 60 from this company. And if you look for it, there are other examples like that of ways you can fix your own stuff or companies that will allow you to buy something refurbished, buy something used. I mean, one of the consequences, by the way, of the lack of these things being repaired and the incredible turnover, the degree to which Apple wants you to buy, incredible turnover, the degree to which Apple wants you to buy, you know, a brand new phone every two years, is there are so many used phones just floating around all over the place. Or if you want to buy a Kindle, like there's no reason to buy a new Kindle. You can find so many cheap

Kindles on eBay. At the very least, you're not then buying a brand new thing. You're a little bit further down the stream, the supply chain. But there are ways to, in addition to that public pressure, to just sort of like work used and repaired goods into your own life in ways that are really, really nourishing, I think. Yeah. And there are companies making new products that are designed to be repairable. So I'm a big fan of secondary markets. I'm a big fan of buying things used. Companies do their best to deny people access to that market. So I'm a big fan of secondary markets. I'm a big fan of buying things used. Companies do their best to deny people access to that market. So Apple loves to do these trade-ins where like, give us your old phone and we'll give you a big discount. That's because they don't want that

thing floating around for someone else to buy it used, right? So that's why they're always encouraging us to trade in. So they're literally just trying to take it off the market so that you can't buy it on Swappa or eBay or one of these other sites. They want to restrict the supply of used phones. And they can sell it refurbished, but they'll sell it at a higher price or they'll use it, as I said before, they'll recycle it and extract those raw materials.

If you want to buy a product that is designed to be repaired from the outset, there's a great company called Fairphone that sells a modular smartphone where literally you open up the back of it and the instructions for replacing and repairing components are printed inside the phone. It's like step-by-step instructions that are just there for you. They make it as easy as possible. If they come out with a new upgraded camera, you can just buy the camera module and swap it out. Keep your phone, upgrade the camera. There's a company called Framework that makes these repairable laptops. There's a company called Framework that makes these repairable laptops.

It's, you know, these are sort of kind of niche markets still at this point. But the success of these companies, I think, demonstrates that there are people who want to make purchases with repair in mind. You know, big manufacturers like Dell have announced plans for these like ultra repairable products because they see this as a way of competing with, you know, the dominant firms like Apple in this space that so far have not been particularly hospitable to repair. So I see the market as evolving in a positive direction here. But you're up against companies that have some pretty strong footholds in the market already. Yeah, I mean, Apple's supply chain domination is so extreme that it's hard to see that happening. It's hard to see anyone competing with them because they've got this vertical integration that is like unmatched worldwide in the absence of some kind of regulation. But we're starting to see movement on that regulation and we're starting to see other companies sort of want to step in and fill the gap. It's actually pretty encouraging. I think it is. I mean, I'm not by nature an optimistic person, but this is an area that I've been working in for several years now, and I do see really encouraging signs. from big changes and big changes that are driven by, you know, shifts in the market and consumer

preferences, shifts in law and regulation. And eventually, I think we're going to reach a point that is significantly better than the one we're in today. Then, you know, the fight is probably going to shift to, you know, how repairable are your VR glasses instead of how repairable is your smartphone. So it doesn't end, but I think that those wins can be translated into new areas pretty easily. Amazing. Aaron, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show to talk to us about it. It's been incredibly fascinating. The name of your book is, once again? It's The Right to Repair, Reclaiming the Things We Own. Great. And you can get it, of course, on our special bookshop at factuallypod.com slash books

or at your local bookstore, wherever you want to shop or go to your local library. Aaron Przanowski, thank you so much for coming on the show. Can't thank you enough for being here. This was great. I really appreciate it. Well, thank you once again to Aaron Perzanowski for coming on the show. You can find his book at factuallypod.com slash books. That's factuallypod.com slash books. I want to thank everyone who supports this show at the $15 a month level on Patreon.

That's Adam Simon, Adrian, Allison Lipparato, Alan Liska, Ann Slagle, Antonio LB, Aurelio Jimenez, Charles Anderson, Chris Staley, Courtney Henderson, David Conover, my dad Tigenoff, Mark Long, Michael Warnicke, Michelle Glittermum, Miles Gillingsrood, Mom Named Gwen, Nicholas Morris, Nuyagik Ippaluk, Paul Malk, Rachel Nieto, Robin Madison, Samantha Crockett, Spencer Campbell, Susan E. Fisher, and Tyler Darich. And if you want to join them, once again, head to patreon.com slash adamconover to join our community. I want to thank our producer, Sam Roud to thank our producer, Sam Roudman, our engineer, Ryan Connor, Andrew WK for our theme song, the fine folks at Falcon Northwest for building me the incredible custom gaming PC I recorded this very episode for you on. You can find me online at adamconover.net or at Adam Conover wherever you get your social media. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next time on Factually.