Sean Carroll

But despite the importance of maintenance for living in a world with the second law of thermodynamics, as a subject, we all know about it, but we don't sort of take it as a particular theme of interest in its own right.

Maybe drain cleaning or fixing your car or something like that is of interest, but the general idea

aspect of maintenance overall is not given a lot of attention.

It should be because the world is becoming more complicated.

And there's even sort of flashpoints of controversy.

Increasingly, various companies don't want to let you fix their stuff.

They want to make it unfixable.

And people have fought against this with the notion of the right to repair things.

They want to have legislation passed saying, I get to fix things when they break.

I don't need to buy a new

iPhone or whatever from you.

So today's guest, Stuart Brand, has written a book that does in fact focus on this theme.

His book is called Maintenance, and it's volume one.

There's going to be more volumes coming up.

So this is volume one, which is Maintenance of Everything, just talking about the general concept of maintenance.

And he's a storyteller, Stuart, and he tells various stories about people in

single sailor sailing ships that have to fix their sails and riggings in the middle of a storm in the ocean, all the way up to fixing modern electronic infrastructure in various ways.

Now, of course, Stuart Brand is a famous guy.

He was the originator of the Whole Earth Catalog,

None of you were alive for that.