Back on New Year’s Eve 2019, after the clock had struck midnight, I led a rousing chorus of “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” a song published in 1923 that had just entered the public domain that minute and uploaded it to YouTube.

Every January 1 for the next 42 years, another tranche of work from 95 years preceding will enter the public domain, too! (For work published after 1977, copyright is the life of the author plus 70 years, which means every copyright has to be sorted out by death date.)

NPR ran a great story on Morning Edition today about this year’s release, and why more hasn’t been done with newly entered public-domain works. The most notable example so far is Nick, a book about the narrator of The Great Gatsby, which enters the public domain today. The author wrote the book a few years ago, and his published explained he’d have to wait until now to see it go into print! (Conceivably, the Fitzgerald estate could have licensed it, too, or whomever possessed the rights to the work until yesterday.)

I was interviewed for the story and get a few choice quotes in, but there’s also a snippet of “Yes, We Have No Bananas”!