Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. When we think of the appliances in our homes, very few have stood the test of time like the KitchenAid stand mixer. No, this is not a commercial to sell you one, and it's not a thank-you gift in our membership drive. Maybe you've had one of these mixers for decades, or even inherited one.

A new essay in The Atlantic titled KitchenAid Did It Right 87 Years Ago, examines how one kitchen staple was made to last with a larger point being that so many things being made today are not, right? Author, Anna Kramer joins us now. She's a technology and climate journalist and also writes about food and cooking in her newsletter, Bite into this. Hi, Anna, nice article. Welcome to WNYC.

Anna Kramer: Thank you. It's so great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take some of your KitchenAid stories, but also want to open this up to any other appliances in your home that have endured years of use. What other kitchen appliances or other gadgets, or even we can add tools to this, have stood the test of time? What do you still own that falls into the category of, "They don't make them like they used to."? 212-433 WNYC. Who has one to shout out? 212-433-9692 .

Handheld mixers seem to last. Yes, but what about items outside of the kitchen? Much more recent, anybody besides my producer hanging onto an old MacBook from 2011, that seems to be a legendary long-lasting MacBook model for some reason. What about things that have been passed down to you? Anyone using your grandma's old appliances? What do you still own that falls into the category of, "They don't make them like they used to."? That's our calling question. 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692, maybe there's even an appliance that yes needed repairs, but that you felt was worth putting time and effort and a little money into saving. Call us and tell us about that.

Annie, you're right, you are almost certainly not using your grandmother's phone to call your friends, her toaster oven to cook, or her typewriter to function at your desk job, yet the stand mixer endures. Want to tell us about your KitchenAid stand mixer?

Anna Kramer: Sure. The reason I wrote this piece is because I have a pretty serious relationship with my own stand mixer because it was my dad's and he got it at some point in the early 80s, is the best that I can figure out or date it. He bought it before he'd met my mom. He bought it obviously before I was born, and he's been baking out of it since then. Then when I was moving into my first apartment, he gave it to me because it still works perfectly and because I loved it.

When I go into my kitchen today, the only thing in there, aside from some pots and pans and my cookbooks that I have any feelings about that are emotional in any way or that I have an attachment to, is that stand mixer. It also happens to be a stand mixer that is really old. Because I'm a technology journalist, for a really long time, I've been wanting to write about this stand mixer because I think it's astounding that I have something that's this old that I'm this attached to that still works this perfectly.

To give people a little bit of an image, it's a professional Series one that's a bowl lift, it's white, it's beat up because of all the years. You can see the bits of batter crusted into it from who knows when. I use it all the time, not just for baking, but I recently acquired the pasta rolling attachment, so I've learned to make ravioli, and handmade pastas with it recently. I bake for friends all the time. I bake bread, I bake for myself, and it's something that I just have this profound attachment to. I've been wanting to write about it for a long time.

Brian Lehrer: Is it unique in its longevity?

Anna Kramer: Oh, yes. This is the other thing that I think is funny, and it's something that I was envisioning when I was writing the piece is that my electric water boiler, I'm on the third one in three years. In the kitchen where I live both fridges-- I live with a bunch of roommates. Both fridges, the stove, and the dishwasher have all been replaced within the last year and a half or so. Including, for example, my fridge is a Whirlpool fridge and Whirlpool is the company that owns KitchenAid, so it's the same maker of the products.

Nothing else I own has that long-term lifespan, which is something that I think is pretty extraordinary. It's just modern technology today when you buy it, you do not expect that it will last long enough to be able to pass it down as an heirloom. That's just not an expectation that anyone has anymore.

I think it's really important that we think about that longevity and try to figure out why is it so unique? What could we do to make other appliances last longer? What example does the KitchenAid set? Why is our relationship with technology such that we feel totally comfortable throwing out lots of other stuff when it breaks or we don't get upset when something breaks after a couple of years because it was cheap? I think querying that instinct is important too.

Brian Lehrer: Do you want to hear a great text from a listener that just came in?

Anna Kramer: Absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: It says, "Using my KitchenAid mixer to make Detroit-style pizza dough right now." You've got company [crosstalk] out there. You write that, "Being so durable, the KitchenAid is less consumable." A, how does the company make money if this product lasts for generations? B, do you think corporate America, manufacturing America, got the message like, "Oh, we're going to make things with planned obsolescence?"

Anna Kramer: Oh, yes. It's important to understand that the KitchenAid Stand mixer is owned by a much bigger company, Whirlpool, which I alluded to before, right? Whirlpool makes tons and tons of appliances of every size, including KitchenAid products. The mixer, they can use the mixer as a way to draw you into the company. Not every single product they make has the same level of longevity and modularity and repairability that this stand mixer has.

A lot of their stuff breaks, as I talked about before. My fridge is a year and a half old and it's already having problems. They don't need necessarily for the stand mixer to be an enormous income stream where you're constantly consuming it. Then also, B, they still try in their own ways to get you to buy more of them by introducing colors of the year.

I talked about that in the piece a little bit. The color of the year this year is-- I think it's called Blue Salt, and it's like an iridescent periwinkle color that feels very Y2K and I think is supposed to be very appealing in today's aesthetic design trend universe.

I think that the reality of it is that companies, in general, know that if you made products that were all exactly like the stand mixer, that you just wouldn't make money because people wouldn't be replacing things all the time. There's also something to the fact that not everything can last this long. Modern electronic appliances are a lot more complicated and they have parts that do wear down over time, and that's a reality that we have to expect. If we want things to be electronic, if we want things to be digital and to have software, they are going to break faster. It's just the reality of how those things are produced.

It is just true, I think that companies know that the best way to make money is to make things that are designed to fail eventually. Then there's also a consumer element to this. We have, I think, as a society, collectively accepted that we want things that are cheap, and so if we want things to be cheap, they're not going to last forever. There is a social element too.

Brian Lehrer: Here are some examples of things that are lasting coming in. Yellow Waring a blender with glass container. Another one, "I'll will be 74 next week and I still haven't used the Singer sewing machine my parents bought me when I was 13 years old." Another listener writes, "Our Sub-Zero refrigerator that we spent $6,000 for in 1986 is still in tip-top condition." Here's one on the phone, Sharon in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sharon.

Sharon: Hi, Brian. Good morning. Thank you for the topic. Yes, I have a Sears washing machine I've had over 30 years and it still works. I've had several appliances refrigerators, freezer, all those things have stood the test of time. More importantly, to what-- your point your guest is saying, yes, that built-in obsolescence, yes, it's there. I just had to recently replace my printer who I had only for maybe 10 years. One of the things the guy told me, he says, "Well, it's real deal because of the digitized and everything, it's going to go out soon."My Sears washing machine is still working. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: The Sears washing machine, outlasting Sears, I think it's-- No, they are hanging on, I guess. Steve in Woodside has one. Steve, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Steve: Hello. Go Bucks, Brian. I have a Vitamix variable speed, what do you call, blender that my grandfather bought in the very early '80s, and then after he died, it sat in my mother's basement for 15 or 20 years and I've had it for 15 years and we use it every couple days.

Brian Lehrer: Steve, thank you very much. Becky in Long Island City has a different one. Becky on WNYC. Hi, there.

Becky: Hi. I have a popcorn popper from

probably 1950s or '60s, electric that I inherited from my grandparents. It used to have a glass lid, but that's broken. It's got a heating element in the bottom and you put your oil and popcorn, put the lid on, plug it in, got one of those adapters and it makes the best popcorn in the world. If I'm being really bad, I use bacon fat to make the popcorn.

Brian Lehrer: Becky, thank you very much. Yes, today, I guess, Anna, people make popcorn in the microwave.

Anna Kramer: Oh, yes. All of these examples that people are giving too is a great opportunity for us to talk about the way that the interiors of our technology have changed a lot. The reason that a lot of these things are lasting such a long time is because electronics technology just was not nearly as complex or sophisticated when this stuff was built as the things that are built now.

Companies can't really resist this temptation to give you a digital screen, or a little jingle, or an internet connection. Those little things make the technology inside of your appliance so much more complicated, which is part of why they fall apart so quickly or break so easily compared to some of this older stuff.

Brian Lehrer: A few people are writing in about old vacuum cleaners that they still have. One of these texts says, "My best friend boasts the Electrolux vacuum cleaner her family had since her childhood on the Upper East Side, that the seller would service annually back then, still works, and she uses it in her home in Brooklyn."

That brings us to the question of New York State has a recent right-to-repair law which means we can get a lot of things repaired anywhere, not just at places affiliated with the manufacturer. That doesn't make things last longer before breaking down. Do you think it's important nonetheless for that to be part of the conversation?

Anna Kramer: Yes, absolutely, that was one of the original ideas I had when I was working on this piece, was to talk more about right to repair because I think we'd actually see more objects like the stand mixer that last pretty long if we had right to repair laws.

I think the reality of it is, right, that if a company absolutely has to provide the parts and the manufacturing instructions to everyone, not just to their certified repair techs, there's more incentive to make something that lasts a little bit longer. That in general could be good for all of us.

It's also really important for people to understand that right-to-repair laws really do vary in the different places where they're being talked about or passed. New York has quite a lot of exceptions for different types of technology, like farming equipment, for example, it's been very, very controversial in the world of farming, that there's a lot of stuff that farmers use that they wish they could fix themselves, and they're not allowed to. That type of equipment has an exception in US law, so farmers don't get any benefit from this protection.

Brian Lehrer: I'm sure you know about these events that are like repair cafes, libraries host them, other places, right?

Anna Kramer: Yes, that stuff is fantastic and I totally recommend. One of the things that we could all do is spend a little bit more time thinking about how to fix the things that we have, learning how to fix things, going back to that culture of repair that I think used to exist.

The woman whose vacuum cleaner was serviced every year, that's the thing that you don't see anymore when you buy a vacuum cleaner, but that culture where it's like, you find somebody to service what you have and maintain it is really valuable. We've lost some of it and I think it's important that we try to return to that.

Brian Lehrer: Because for you as an environmental reporter, this is also an environment story, right?

Anna Kramer: Absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: In the United States alone, we threw out 2.2 million tons worth of hair dryers, coffee pots, toasters, and other small appliances in 2018, the most recently available data. That's a lot of appliances gone in the dump.

Anna Kramer: Yes, and think about all of the valuable stuff that's in all those appliances, like the copper wiring, for example, that stuff that technically, if we could find a way to recycle, it has a lot of value in today's world when we're building-- we're electrifying everything to make it more climate-friendly.

It's also just true that the more stuff you throw out, the more stuff you have to buy. The more stuff you buy, the more carbon emissions, the more pollution, the more resources, right? This is a climate story, it's a technology story, it's a design story, it's so many different elements here that are all at play.

Brian Lehrer: We're getting so many tributes to exactly the thing you centered in your article, the stand mixer from KitchenAid, a lot of people seem to have them. Another one, "My Oster blenders acquired for S&H Green Stamps used daily since mid-1962."

Anna Kramer: It's amazing.

Brian Lehrer: Another one writes, "Vintage Philco fridge since the 1940s." We're going to take one more on the phones and then we're going to run out of time, but this is appropriate for us to end with. Vito on the Jersey Shore, you WNYC. Hi, Vito.

Vito: Hello, Brian. I'm a big fan. I have handed down to me, and it still works, an RCA vacuum tube radio. On that radio, on the front cover, it's made of glass. There are cities and countries of the world like [inaudible 00:15:25], Paris, because back in Europe, the pre-television, this is what people did, they listened to the radio. Also on it, says the Vatican. When the Vatican broadcasted they would-- you could turn this radio on and listen to it. I still have it, I love it, and that's my story that I wanted to share.

Brian Lehrer: It's not just an AM and FM, it's a world band radio.

Vito: Yes. It's really neat, but you have to have-- You [inaudible 00:15:55] an antenna for it. I just use it for AM-FM but I grew up with it in my bedroom. I had a lot of fun with it and I still do.

Brian Lehrer: That is awesome Vito. Thank you very much. How about that? A radio with vacuum tubes, I'm glad we're past that day, but I'm glad--

[laughter]

Anna Kramer: There are some wonderful advancements through.

Brian Lehrer: Anna Kramer is a technology and climate journalist who also writes about food and cooking in her newsletter, Bite into this. Anna, thanks so much for joining us.

Anna Kramer: Thank you. It's really fun.