Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. And listeners, you have now less than a week to get your tickets to the Public Song Project at Joe's Pub. Our people's concert with DJ Rekha, Joanna Sternberg and more is next Wednesday, and we'll be celebrating all things public domain.

Yesterday was Public Domain Day. That's when copyrights expire and works of art become available to adapt, remix, and a whole lot more, which means as of yesterday, I can play as much of this 1924 recording of Rhapsody in Blue featuring George Gershwin on piano as I want to for free.

[MUSIC - George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue]

This year's domain dump includes sound recordings like that one, plus compositions, movies, books, painting, and a whole lot more from 1929. Think of the song Singing in the Rain, Ernest Hemingway, and A Farewell to Arms, and Salvador Dali, not to mention Mickey Mouse, who entered the public domain last year, has some new cartoon neighbors, Popeye and Tintin are now in the public domain too.

Joining me now to walk us through this year's public domain is Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Jennifer, welcome back.

Jennifer Jenkins: Thank you so much. It's great joining you again, Alison.

Alison Stewart: All right. Why should the average person care about the public domain?

Jennifer Jenkins: Because it's a snapshot of a moment in time and it's the opportunity to rediscover and do something creative like with your Public Song Project, which is so cool, with these newly public domain works.

Alison Stewart: We're going to remind people, next Wednesday we'll be celebrating the public domain kicking off this year's Public Song Project with a concert at Joe's Pub. DJ Rekha will be there along with Joanna Sternberg and project winners. Get your tickets at WNYC.org/publicdomain. So just some basics, what does it mean for something to be in the public domain?

Jennifer Jenkins: It means that the copyright has expired and so the work becomes free for anyone to use and build upon without permission and without fee.

Alison Stewart: What's special about this year's Public Domain Day?

Jennifer Jenkins: Oh, there's so much. It's just it kind of blew my mind when I started researching it, but what we're getting is all these works from 1929. That was the end of the Roaring '20s, the beginning of the Great Depression. In film, it's when we finally figured out how to get the synchronized sound working right, and so sound films really took over and displaced silent films in 1929. And so, what we get is all these musical numbers, a whole lot of dance moves. I know we can't show them, we're on radio, but they're good.

We get the very first sound films by directors, it's a who's who. Alfred Hitchcock, Cecil B. DeMille, John Ford. We get the first talkie from Clara Bow, the sex symbol from the time. The it girl that people we're like-- Even Taylor Swift even named a song after her. And with music, I mean, some of the songs are-- I. I could just summon them in my head from hearing them. There's Singing in the Rain, like you mentioned, there's Ain't Misbehavin', there's An American in Paris by George Gershwin. Before Emily in Paris, there was An American in Paris.

[laughter]

And there's the one-- I listened to this song three times yesterday. So it was like Ravel's Bolero, which if you haven't listened to it recently, you have to. And I discovered-- I know it's often associated with eroticism, but actually it's perfect for kitchen clean, which is what I used it for yesterday. And I have to say, it was just about right for doing the dishes. And so those are some highlights. You already mentioned the literature. I mean, Faulkner, Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, wow.

Alison Stewart: The big news last year, that Mickey Mouse was in the public domain. Now this year we've got Popeye and Tintin adding. So what does this mean that I can do with Popeye or Tintin that I couldn't do before?

Jennifer Jenkins: You can make your own adaptation. You can reimagine a gentle Popeye and Olive Oil love story for 2025, I don't know. Just do something other than the slasher film, okay? But it means you can make your own Popeye feature, you can make your own Popeye animation. You can write a children's book where Popeye, Tintin, and the adorable dog Snowy, who I love, go on adventures together. Wouldn't that be interesting? So that's what it means.

Alison Stewart: I want you to take a listen to this, and then I have a question on the other side.

Jennifer Jenkins: Okay.

Popeye: [singing]

I'm Popeye the Sailor Man

I'm pop by the Sailor Man

I'm strong to the finish

Cause I eats me spinach

I'm Popeye the Sailor Man.

Alison Stewart: Okay, so you point out an article that Popeye didn't start eating spinach until the 1931 comic strip. In the public domain is Popeye in the public domain? Is the spinach in the public domain? How does it work?

Jennifer Jenkins: We get to talk about spinach on there. Isn't this great? I haven't thought about spinach as much in yonks. Initially I just assumed, because the copyrights in the original appearance of Popeye from 1929 were renewed, that the comic strip where he's being asked how he has these superhuman capabilities and he says, "I eats my spinach." I thought they would have renewed that but this was one of these really fun research rabbit holes.

So far as we can tell, the copyright in the comic strip where he first talks about spinach was not renewed, meaning it's been public domain for decades because you used to have to renew it after 28 years. I mean, lawyers out there, we searched every single record with the word Popeye, Thimble Theater, which was the comic strip, the name of the author, E.C. Segar, the name of the copyright holder, King Features, I mean, nothing came up under any of that so I don't think it's out there. You know what that means? That means the original Popeye character and his spinach-fueled superpowers are both in the public domain now. So you actually can, if my research is right, and this is, I'm talking two days' work, so if I'm missing something, somebody tell me, or somebody tell WNYC. If my research is right, he can eat spinach.

Alison Stewart: All right, well, let's talk about a little bit of Mickey Mouse news. We'll leave this in a moment, but about a dozen animated films featuring Mickey Mouse enter the public domain. Now, if Mickey Mouse was already in the public domain last year, why does this matter?

Jennifer Jenkins: This matters because he develops some interesting characteristics and traits in 1929. Without having this whole spinach debate that we're having, we know everything from the 1929 cartoons is public domain too now. He wears his white gloves, so that's public domain. He talks for the first time. His very first words are "Hot dogs." Hot dogs.

Alison Stewart: I think we have that. Wait a minute. Hold on. I believe we have Mickey Mouse saying, "Hot dog."

Mickey Mouse: Hot dog. Hot dog. [barking]

Alison Stewart: There you go. I just had to say that.

Jennifer Jenkins: There you go. Even a better voice than your, "Popeye the Sailor Man," but yeah, so, "Hot dogs, hot dogs," and there's all the plot elements. I mean, the cartoons are really fun to watch, but there's a lot of flirting between Mickey and Minnie, there's a lot of dance sequences, there's some good horror tropes in there in one called The Haunted House and some other ones, and so all of that material, material is now public domain too.

Alison Stewart: We're marking Public Domain Day with Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke University's Center for the Study of Public Domain. You can also join us at Joe's Pub next Wednesday at 7:00 PM for a celebration of the public domain with the Public Song Project. Get your tickets at WNYC.org/publicsong. This year's public domain dump for movies features the Marx Brothers' first film, Cocoanuts, Alfred Hitchcock's first film with sound, I should say, Blackmail, one of the first major studio films with an all-Black cast, Hallelujah. What can you do with a movie that has entered the public domain?

Jennifer Jenkins: You can screen it in your community theaters, which is kind of exciting. If you are a small theater and you can actually afford the licensing fees to allow people to watch these amazing films from almost 100 years ago, now you can screen them freely. You can also interpolate clips into your own movie, which is kind of exciting. Maybe you're into dancing like I am and you'd want to show-- We actually made a mashup of all of our favorite dance moves. Now we're free to do that and put that out there, which we just did on YouTube. So start your engines, get creative, do something with these movies from 1929.

Alison Stewart: All right, we've gotten this text from several people. I'll just sort of say it in my language. Trademark works vis-à-vis copyright. What's the difference?

Jennifer Jenkins: Isn't the law wonderfully complicated? So, yeah, trademarks and copyrights are different. Here's my attempt to do it quickly. Copyright covers creative works and copyrights expire. Trademarks are different. Trademarks are protections for brands. They can last forever so long as the brand is still being used. If Amazon is still around 500 years from now, which I don't know, I don't want to make predictions, but they can still own the Amazon brand name if they're using it.

But importantly, trademarks, the rights are more limited than copyrights. You're only violating someone's trademark rights if you're using the brand name or the similar brand name in a way that confuses consumers about where the products come from. Yes, the word Popeye is still trademarked for certain things, but if you make a Popeye feature and no one thinks that your Popeye feature is coming from the trademark owner, then there shouldn't be a trademark problem. Does that clear things up at all?

Alison Stewart: It did indeed. Here's another question.

Jennifer Jenkins: By the way, if you want the longer legal analysis, you're welcome to go to my annual Public Domain Day celebration and spell it out there too.

Alison Stewart: Here's another question for you. "Are images, photos, art in the public domain? How do we check?"

Jennifer Jenkins: Yeah, well, that's a great question. Yes, images that were "published' as copyright defines that in 1929, those images are in the public domain. I mentioned the word publish with an emphasis because it's a little more difficult to figure out sometimes whether artwork and images were published as opposed to things like books and movies, because with a book, you know it's publication date, with a movie, you know when it was released. With some of these amazing works of art, they were only published if they were at an exhibition, put on display without restrictions, or if they were disseminated in like a periodical or a magazine. But if they just sat in the artist's studio, that probably doesn't count as publications.

Some things that were on display, on exhibit, like the Dali you mentioned, those were published, but the one that I had been really, really running into a wall on is Magritte's famous Treachery of Images, Cest N'est Une Pipe, that one. I can't figure out for the life of me whether it was officially published or it was just sitting in Magritte's studio. You'll see a lot of websites saying, "Okay, well, that's public domain in the U.S." I'm not sure yet.

I know that an image with a pipe reverse was in a magazine, but I still-- we've got interlibrary loan and all this kind of stuff. We can't figure out whether it was actually on display somewhere without restrictions in 1929 or later, and so it gets a little more complicated. The short answer is yes, but only if they were published as copyright defines that term in 1929.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about music. There are two ways that music can enter the public domain, as a composition and as a recording. What's the difference?

Jennifer Jenkins: A composition, I write a song. It's the words and music like you might see on a piece of sheet music. That's the composition and they're on the same timeline as all the other works we were talking about. It's compositions and songs from 1929 that are public domain now. Recordings have their own separate copyright. If I wrote that song WNYC is Awesome, that's my song, right, but I can't sing, which I can't. But say you have a beautiful voice, which you do, if you record it, that's a different copyright over your recording of the song that I wrote.

Somewhat confusingly, recordings are on a different timeline in the United States and so this year, recordings from 1924 just went into the public domain.

Alison Stewart: All right.

Jennifer Jenkins: Like the Rhapsody in Blue clip that you played of George Gershwin tinkling the keys masterfully.

Alison Stewart: Well, let me play this clip, and then you can explain what's going on. This is from The Hollywood Revue of 1929.

[MUSIC - Singing in the Rain]

I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the rain

What a glorious feelin', I'm happy again

Alison Stewart: Okay, so my big question to you, Jennifer, is can I play the Gene Kelly version?

Jennifer Jenkins: No, not yet. That's for much more recently. That's a great example. That's a recording of the underlying composition that was recent enough that it's still going to be copyrighted for a while. But I've got another fun lingual recall about what you just played, though, which is you just played a recording, right? But the definition of sound recording in the Copyright Act specifically excludes sounds accompanying a motion picture. Unlike separate recordings, if it was part of a movie like what you just played, that's actually going into the public domain this year along with the film, The Hollywood Revue of 1929 that you mentioned.

Alison Stewart: I want to talk about visual art. You've mentioned it a couple times because Salvador Dali paintings also entered the public domain this year. Why is it trickier when you're talking about art?

Jennifer Jenkins: It's trickier because of what I mentioned. In some cases, unlike with Dali, we know that there was an exhibition that you don't know whether the art was published or not, so you don't know when the copyright clock actually started ticking. I'm not going to mention the name of all of the Dali paintings on the air because-- yeah, we'll just leave that where it is.

Alison Stewart: And finally, books. Is there any literature that you're particularly excited about?

Jennifer Jenkins: Oh, I'm beyond excited about the literature. I was an English major million years ago, and so I read the Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, Virginia Woolf, who I adore, A Room of One's Own. And I'm actually rereading Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon right now as it was serialized in Black Mask magazine and I realized that I don't remember how it comes out and so I'm actually discovering all the plot twists for the first time. I'm like, "What happened? I don't know." It's there's a lot of sexism in it. You should be warned, our readers.

Some of the stuff's cringe, as my students would say, but man, he can write a detective story. I don't know what's going happen. I'm like about 80% of the way through.

Alison Stewart: Jennifer Jenkins is the director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us.

Jennifer Jenkins: Have a great time with the Public Song Project. That sounds so cool.

Alison Stewart: Speaking of the Public Song Project, producer Simon Close is here to talk a little bit more about next week's plans. Hi, Simon.

Simon Close: Hi, Alison.

Alison Stewart: So there's going to be a concert Wednesday, January 8th at 7:00 PM at Joe's Pub. What will we be celebrating? Who will be performing?

Simon Close: We'll be celebrating what we were just talking about with Jennifer, all the stuff entering the public domain this year. We're going to be launching the 2025 edition of the Public Song Project. We're also celebrating the album that we put together this year for the Public Song Project. And yeah, we're doing it at the Public Theater because what better place to celebrate the public domain, the-

Alison Stewart: There you go.

Simon Close: -Public Radio Project, than the Public Theater?

Alison Stewart: Remind us who is featured on that awesome vinyl that you guys produced.

Simon Close: Yeah, so vinyl features, Bela Fleck is on it, Nellie MacKy, the Lemon Twigs, Rhiannon Giddens, a bunch of other people, including DJ Rekha and Joanna Sternberg, who will both be performing at Joe's Pub on the 8th. That vinyl you can get online right now, but also, if you go to the concert, we're going to be doing some trivia segments with-

Alison Stewart: Oh, cool. Tell me more.

Simon Close: -the public domain and we'll be giving that out as a prize. I will tell you more as soon as I figure out what the questions are going to be. But yeah, we'll be handing out some of those records if you know your public domain stuff

Alison Stewart: You said the concert's also marking this year's Public Domain Day. Will any of the new public domain material be part of the show?

Simon Close: Yes. I'll talk a little bit about some of the stuff that we just talked about with Jennifer, but specifically, if anyone attended the concert we did last year, we did sort of a group song at the end-

Alison Stewart: That was great.

Simon Close: -and so this year, can I do a pun on the air?

Alison Stewart: Sure, why not?

Simon Close: This year, in the event of bad weather, the show's going to go on, which is to say that we'll still be singing in the rain as a group.

Alison Stewart: Bonham Cha.

Simon Close: Bonham Cha, yeah.

Alison Stewart: Our engineer's rolled his eyes.

Simon Close: But yeah. So we'll be talking about new stuff in the public domain this year too.

Alison Stewart: All right. Tell us a little bit about-- let's see, how it works. Oh, how can people get tickets?

Simon Close: That's a great question. People can go to WNYC.org/publicsong to get tickets.

Alison Stewart: All right. We're going to play a little bit of one of the songs we're going to hear or that we-- Will we hear this song?

Simon Close: Yes. Yeah. Juliette Reilly. I can set this up. Juliette Reilly will be-- She was one of the winners this past year and she'll be performing her song at Joe's Pub on Wednesday, January 8th at 7pm next week. This song, she titles it Summer Sang. It's based on an Edna St.-

AliSon Stewart: Oh, it's good.

Simon Close: -Vincent Millay poem Yeah. Which was originally called What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where and Why. She does a really wonderful, delightful, popy take that shows how timeless the words of the original poem are.

Alison Stewart: Where can people get more information?

Simon Close: WNYC.org/publicsong.

Alison Stewart: Here's Juliette Reilly.

[MUSIC - Julliette Reilly: Summer Sang]

What lips my lips have kissed and where and why

I've forgotten, I've forgotten

Then they only stayed til morning came

But the rain is full of ghosts tonight

That sigh and listen for reply.

And in my heart there still is a quiet pain

For all the unremembered men

I don't know, yeah, I don't know anything

I only know that summer sang in me a while ago

Don't sing in me no more, more silent than before

But that song is sang so pure

Oh, it sang, it sang for me on my lips like a kiss

What lips my lips have kissed

What lips my lips have kissed

Alison Stewart: And that is All Of It. Coming up on tomorrow's show, we'll kick off our new series, What The Heck. All year long, we're going to talk about ways that you can improve all areas of your life. Tomorrow we'll speak with New York Magazine city editor Christopher Bonannos. He joins us to talk about ways to hack New York from how to game the subway exits, to getting discount Broadway tickets, and scoring restaurant reservations. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here tomorrow.