What’s Entering the Public Domain in 2026: Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, All Quiet on the Western Front, Betty Boop & More

Though it isn’t the kind of thing one hears dis­cussed every day, seri­ous Dis­ney fans do tend to know that Goofy’s orig­i­nal name was Dip­py Dawg. But how many of the non-obses­sive know that Mick­ey’s faith­ful pet Plu­to was first called Rover? (We pass over in dig­ni­fied silence the qua­si-philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion of why the for­mer dog is humanoid and the lat­ter isn’t.) It is Rover, as dis­tinct from Plu­to, who pass­es into the pub­lic domain this new year, one of a cast of now-lib­er­at­ed char­ac­ters includ­ing Blondie and Dag­wood as well as Bet­ty Boop — who, upon mak­ing her debut in Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios’ Dizzy Dish­es of 1930, has a some­what canoid appear­ance her­self. You can see them all in the video above from Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain, with much more infor­ma­tion avail­able in their blog post mark­ing this year’s “Pub­lic Domain Day.”

The year 1930, write the Cen­ter’s Jen­nifer Jenk­ins and James Boyle, was one “of detec­tives, jazz, speakeasies, and icon­ic char­ac­ters step­ping onto the cul­tur­al stage — many of whom have been locked behind copy­right for near­ly a cen­tu­ry.”

Nov­els that come avail­able this year include William Faulkn­er’s As I Lay Dying, Dashiell Ham­met­t’s The Mal­tese Fal­con, and Agatha Christie’s The Mur­der at the Vic­arage; among the films are Lewis Mile­stone’s Best Pic­ture-win­ning All Qui­et on the West­ern Front, Vic­tor Heer­man’s Marx Broth­ers pic­ture Ani­mal Crack­ers, and Luis Buñuel and Sal­vador Dalí’s L’Âge d’Or. In music, com­po­si­tions like “I Got Rhythm” and “Embrace­able You” by the Gersh­win Broth­ers as well as record­ings like “Nobody Knows the Trou­ble I’ve Seen” by Mar­i­an Ander­son and “Sweet Geor­gia Brown” by Ben Bernie and His Hotel Roo­sevelt Orches­tra have also, at long last, gone pub­lic.

Reflec­tion on some of these works them­selves sug­gests some­thing about the impor­tance of the pub­lic domain. With the title of Cakes and Ale, anoth­er book in this year’s crop, Som­er­set Maugh­am makes ref­er­ence to “a clas­sic pub­lic domain work, in this case Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night”; so, for that mat­ter, does Faulkn­er, giv­en that the line “as I lay dying” comes from the Odyssey. “To tell new sto­ries, we draw from old­er ones,” write Jenk­ins and Boyle. “One work of art inspires anoth­er — that is how the pub­lic domain feeds cre­ativ­i­ty.” Today, we’re free to take explic­it inspi­ra­tion for our own work from Nan­cy Drew, “Just a Gigo­lo,” Blondie, Mon­dri­an’s Com­po­si­tion with Red, Blue, and Yel­low, Hitch­cock­’s Mur­der!, and much else besides. And by all means use Rover, but if you also want to bring in Dip­py Dawg, you’re going to have to wait until 2028.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s Enter­ing the Pub­lic Domain in 2025: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Ear­ly Hitch­cock Films, Tintin and Pop­eye Car­toons & More

The Harlem Jazz Singer Who Inspired Bet­ty Boop: Meet the Orig­i­nal Boop-Oop-a-Doop, “Baby Esther”

Car­toon­ists Draw Their Famous Car­toon Char­ac­ters While Blind­fold­ed (1947)

Watch Restored Ver­sions of Clas­sic Fleis­ch­er Car­toons on Youtube, Fea­tur­ing Bet­ty Boop, Koko the Clown & Oth­ers

Vin­tage Audio: William Faulkn­er Reads From As I Lay Dying

16 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Brian Eno’s Book & Music Recommendations

If you’re a reg­u­lar lis­ten­er, you know that Ezra Klein wraps up his pod­cast inter­views with a famil­iar ques­tion: what three books would you rec­om­mend to the audi­ence? When Klein inter­viewed Bri­an Eno in Octo­ber, the pro­duc­er had these three books to offer.

First up was Print­ing and the Mind of Man, a cat­a­log from an exhi­bi­tion held at the British Muse­um in 1963. “It was about the his­to­ry of print­ing, but actu­al­ly, the book is about the most impor­tant books in the West­ern canon and the impact that they had when they were released.” “It’s such a fas­ci­nat­ing book because you real­ly start to under­stand where the big, fun­da­men­tal ideas that made West­ern cul­ture came from.”

Next came A Pat­tern Lan­guage by the archi­tect Christo­pher Alexan­der. “It’s real­ly a book about habi­tat, about what makes spaces wel­com­ing and fruit­ful, or hos­tile and bar­ren.” Eno has returned to the book again and again over the years. “Over the course of my life, I’ve bought, I would say, 60 copies of that book because I always give it to any­one who is about to ren­o­vate a house or about to build a house. It’s a great read, and you would love it.”

His third rec­om­men­da­tion was Naples ’44, a war diary kept by Nor­man Lewis, a British intel­li­gence offi­cer sent to Naples dur­ing World War II. “He kept a diary, and this is the most fab­u­lous diary you’ll ever read. It’s just hilar­i­ous­ly fun­ny, deeply mov­ing, and total­ly confusing—and you real­ize that Naples was, like, anoth­er plan­et.”

Under­stand­ably, Klein couldn’t let the inter­view end with­out also ask­ing what albums influ­enced Eno most. In response, Eno offered The Rur­al Blues, a series of record­ings of Black Amer­i­can music from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. It’s the same music that lat­er inspired pop and rock musi­cians in Eng­land when Eno came of age. He also point­ed to the Vel­vet Underground’s self-titled third album, call­ing it a “beau­ti­ful, beau­ti­ful record, beau­ti­ful­ly con­tro­ver­sial in many ways.” He then added: “In fact, prob­a­bly with­out that record, I wouldn’t have been a pop musi­cian.” Many oth­er musi­cians have said the same.

And final­ly, despite being an athe­ist, Eno select­ed a gospel record­ing act known as The Con­sol­ers, best known for their 1955 track “Give Me My Flow­ers.” You can lis­ten to more of their great­est hits here.

Along­side his musi­cal and lit­er­ary influ­ences, Eno recent­ly shared his own ideas in the book What Art Does: An Unfin­ished The­o­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Bri­an Eno on the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

A 6‑Hour Time-Stretched Ver­sion of Bri­an Eno’s Music For Air­ports: Med­i­tate, Relax, Study

Bri­an Eno Cre­ates a List of 20 Books That Could Rebuild Civ­i­liza­tion

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies” Deck of Cards (1975)

Bri­an Eno Lists the Ben­e­fits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intel­li­gence, and a Sound Civ­i­liza­tion

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The Life and Work of Afrobeat Creator Fela Kuti Explored by Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad

When dis­cussing a musi­cian like Fela Kuti, many of our usu­al terms fail us. They fail us, that is, if we came of age in a musi­cal cul­ture in which artists and bands put out an album of ten or so lyrics-for­ward songs every two or three years, pro­mot­ing it on tour while also play­ing their biggest hits. Fela — as all his fans refer to him — could put out six or sev­en albums in a sin­gle year, and refused to play live any mate­r­i­al he’d already record­ed. Even the word song, as we know it, does­n’t quite reflect the nature of his com­po­si­tions, which got expan­sive enough that two or three of them (or just one, half of it on each side) could fill a long-play­ing record.

Wal­ter Ben­jamin said of great lit­er­ary works that they either dis­solve a genre or invent one, and Fela’s musi­cal works invent­ed the genre of Afrobeat. The sound of that genre, as explained by Noah Lefevre in the Poly­phon­ic video above, reflects the dis­tinc­tive for­ma­tion of Fela him­self, who was born and raised in Nige­ria, stud­ied at the Trin­i­ty Col­lege of Music in Lon­don, and came of age dur­ing the end of Africa’s era of decol­o­niza­tion. To a lis­ten­er reared on Anglo-Amer­i­can pop­u­lar music, his sig­na­ture mix­ture of West African rhythms with jazz and funk tex­tures sounds famil­iar enough — at least for the first ten or fif­teen min­utes, after which time the lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence ascends to a dif­fer­ent state entire­ly.

Some­times it takes Fela just about that long to start singing, and when he does, he’s giv­en to procla­ma­tions, chants, calls-and-respons­es, and polit­i­cal exhor­ta­tions deliv­ered in the kind of Eng­lish that sounds high­ly unfa­mil­iar to non-African lis­ten­ers. Not that it’s always alien­at­ing: indeed, this par­tic­u­lar com­bi­na­tion of words and music has cap­ti­vat­ed gen­er­a­tions of lis­ten­ers from far out­side its place of ori­gin. One of them is David Byrne, who used Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light as more or less a medi­um for chan­nel­ing the musi­cal spir­it of Fela. Not that he him­self was gone yet: indeed, he had almost two decades of his event­ful life to go, one you can learn much more about from Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, a twelve-part bio­graph­i­cal pod­cast by Jad Abum­rad.

Brought into Fela’s world by a fam­i­ly con­nec­tion, that for­mer Radi­o­lab host con­duct­ed dozens and dozens of inter­views on the rela­tion­ship between the man, his music, and the polit­i­cal con­text in which he found him­self. The facts, as any Fela fan knows, don’t always align com­fort­ably with main­stream sen­si­bil­i­ties of the twen­ty-twen­ties — the charges range from essen­tial­ism to polygamy — but as Lefevre reminds us, an artist should be inter­pret­ed through the lens of his own cul­ture and his­to­ry. How­ev­er many of us con­sid­er him a “prob­lem­at­ic fave” today, Fela Kuti will always be the man who invent­ed Afrobeat — and since nobody else has quite man­aged to repli­cate his grooves in their simul­ta­ne­ous tight­ness and loose­ness, blunt­ness and sub­tle­ty, per­haps also the man who dis­solved it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to the Life & Music of Fela Kuti: Rad­i­cal Niger­ian Band­leader, Polit­i­cal Hero, and Cre­ator of Afrobeat

When Afrobeat Leg­end Fela Kuti Col­lab­o­rat­ed with Cream Drum­mer Gin­ger Bak­er

Zam­rock: An Intro­duc­tion to Zambia’s 1970s Rich & Psy­che­del­ic Rock Scene

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play Mate­r­i­al From Their Ground­break­ing Album Remain in Light in an Incred­i­ble Con­cert from 1980

The Awe-Inspir­ing But Trag­ic Sto­ry of Africa’s Fes­ti­val In The Desert (2001–2012)

Stream 8,000 Vin­tage Afropop Record­ings Dig­i­tized & Made Avail­able by The British Library

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Hear Debussy Play Debussy: A Vintage Recording from 1913

A cen­tu­ry ago, the great French com­pos­er Claude Debussy sat down at a con­trap­tion called a Welte-Mignon repro­duc­ing piano and record­ed a series of per­for­mances for pos­ter­i­ty. The machine was designed to encode the nuances of a pianist’s play­ing, includ­ing ped­al­ing and dynam­ics, onto piano rolls for lat­er repro­duc­tion.

Debussy record­ed 14 pieces onto six rolls in Paris on or before Novem­ber 1, 1913. Accord­ing to Debussy enthu­si­ast Steve Bryson’s web site, the com­pos­er was delight­ed with the repro­duc­tion qual­i­ty, say­ing in a let­ter to Edwin Welte: “It is impos­si­ble to attain a greater per­fec­tion of repro­duc­tion than that of the Welte appa­ra­tus. I am hap­py to assure you in these lines of my aston­ish­ment and admi­ra­tion of what I heard. I am, Dear Sir, Yours Faith­ful­ly, Claude Debussy.”

The selec­tion above is “La soirée dans Grenade” (“Grena­da in the evening”), from Debussy’s 1903 trio of com­po­si­tions titled Estam­pes, or “Prints.” Debussy was inspired by the Sym­bol­ist poets and Impres­sion­ist painters who strove to go beyond the sur­face of a sub­ject to evoke the feel­ing it gave off. “La soirée dans Grenade” is described by Chris­tine Steven­son at Notes From a Pianist as a “sound pic­ture” of Moor­ish Spain:

Debussy’s first-hand expe­ri­ence of Spain was neg­li­gi­ble at that time, but he imme­di­ate­ly con­jures up the coun­try by using the per­sua­sive Haben­era dance rhythm to open the piece–softly and sub­tly. It insin­u­ates itself into our con­scious­ness with its qui­et insis­tence on a repeat­ed C sharp in dif­fer­ent reg­is­ters; around it cir­cles a lan­guid, Moor­ish arabesque, with nasal aug­ment­ed 2nds, and a nag­ging semi­tone pulling against the tonal cen­tre, occa­sion­al­ly inter­rupt­ed by mut­ter­ing semi­qua­vers [16th notes] and a whole-tone based pas­sage. Debussy writes Com­mencer lente­ment dans un rythme non­cha­la­m­ment gra­cieux [Begin slow­ly in a casu­al­ly grace­ful rhythm] at the begin­ning, but lat­er Tres ryth­mé [Very rhyth­mic] in a bright­ly lit A major as the dance comes out of the shad­ows, ff [Fortissimo–loudly], with the click of cas­tanets and the stamp­ing of feet.

Debussy was 52 years old and suf­fer­ing from can­cer when he made his piano roll record­ings. He died less than five years lat­er, on March 25, 1918. Since then, his beau­ti­ful and evoca­tive music has secured a place for him as one of the most influ­en­tial and pop­u­lar com­posers of the 20th cen­tu­ry. As Roger Hecht writes at Clas­si­cal Net, “Debussy was a dream­er whose music dreamed with him.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear The Rite of Spring Con­duct­ed by Igor Stravin­sky Him­self: A Vin­tage Record­ing from 1929

Hear a 1930 Record­ing of Bolero, Con­duct­ed by Rav­el Him­self

Rare 1946 Film: The Great Russ­ian Com­pos­er Sergei Prokofiev Plays Piano, Dis­cuss­es His Music

Tom Jones Performs Prince’s “Purple Rain” Accompanied by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour (1992)

Over the decades, Tom Jones has per­formed with the best of them. In 1969, we can find him singing “Long Time Gone” with Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young, and tak­ing them delight­ful­ly by sur­prise. The same goes for his duet with Janis Joplin in that same year. Now fast for­ward to the 1990s. In this decade, Jones teamed up with the Swedish rock band The Cardi­gans and per­formed a rol­lick­ing ver­sion of the Talk­ing Heads “Burn­ing Down the House.” And, rather unex­pect­ed­ly, he would get paired with Pink Floy­d’s David Gilmour and croon Prince’s “Pur­ple Rain.”

The record­ing above comes from Jones’ show The Right Time, a six-episode tele­vi­sion series that aired in 1992. Trac­ing the evo­lu­tion of pop music, the show fea­tured appear­ances by Bob Geld­of, Cyn­di Lau­per, The Chief­tains and Ste­vie Won­der. When it comes to his ver­sion of “Pur­ple Rain,” don’t miss the Gilmour solo mid­way through. Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Tom Jones Per­forms “Long Time Gone” with Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young–and Blows the Band & Audi­ence Away (1969)

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

Tom Jones Cov­ers Talk­ing Heads “Burn­ing Down the House”–and Burns Down the House (1999)

Prince Plays a Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solo On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps”

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Talking Heads’ David Byrne Performs a Tiny Desk Concert

If you’ve seen a David Byrne con­cert in recent years, you know that he per­forms with a large ensem­ble of musi­cians, each car­ry­ing their own instru­ments across the stage, all while mov­ing in intri­cate­ly chore­o­graphed pat­terns. On his cur­rent tour, Byrne and his band stopped by NPR’s stu­dio and played a very dif­fer­ent kind of show—a show tight­ly squeezed behind NPR’s Tiny Desk. As you will see above, they per­formed two songs (“Every­body Laughs” and “Don’t Be Like That”) from Byrne’s new album, along with two Talk­ing Heads favorites, “(Noth­ing But) Flow­ers” and “Life Dur­ing Wartime.” Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

David Byrne Explains How the “Big Suit” He Wore in Stop Mak­ing Sense Was Inspired by Japan­ese Kabu­ki The­atre

A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of NPR’s Tiny Desk Con­cert

Watch a Very Ner­vous, 23-Year-Old David Byrne and Talk­ing Heads Per­form­ing Live in NYC (1976)

Watch David Byrne Prac­tice His Dance Moves for Stop Mak­ing Sense in New­ly Released Behind-the-Scenes Footage

224 Books About Music in David Byrne’s Per­son­al Library

The Illustrated Version of “Alice’s Restaurant”: Watch Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Counterculture Classic

Alice’s Restau­rant. It’s now a Thanks­giv­ing clas­sic, and some­thing of a tra­di­tion around here. Record­ed in 1967, the 18+ minute coun­ter­cul­ture song recounts Arlo Guthrie’s real encounter with the law, start­ing on Thanks­giv­ing Day 1965. As the long song unfolds, we hear all about how a hip­pie-bat­ing police offi­cer, by the name of William “Obie” Oban­hein, arrest­ed Arlo for lit­ter­ing. (Cul­tur­al foot­note: Obie pre­vi­ous­ly posed for sev­er­al Nor­man Rock­well paint­ings, includ­ing the well-known paint­ing, “The Run­away,” that graced a 1958 cov­er of The Sat­ur­day Evening Post.) In fair­ly short order, Arlo pleads guilty to a mis­de­meanor charge, pays a $25 fine, and cleans up the thrash. But the sto­ry isn’t over. Not by a long shot.

Lat­er, when Arlo (son of Woody Guthrie) gets called up for the draft, the pet­ty crime iron­i­cal­ly becomes a basis for dis­qual­i­fy­ing him from mil­i­tary ser­vice in the Viet­nam War. Guthrie recounts this with some bit­ter­ness as the song builds into a satir­i­cal protest against the war: “I’m sit­tin’ here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough to join the Army, burn women, kids, hous­es and vil­lages after bein’ a lit­ter­bug.” And then we’re back to the cheery cho­rus again: “You can get any­thing you want, at Alice’s Restau­rant.”

We have fea­tured Guthrie’s clas­sic dur­ing past years. But, for this Thanks­giv­ing, we give you the illus­trat­ed ver­sion.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry Behind “Alice’s Restau­rant,” Arlo Guthrie’s Song That’s Now a Thanks­giv­ing Tra­di­tion

What Amer­i­cans Ate for Thanks­giv­ing 200 Years Ago: Watch Re-Cre­ations of Recipes from the 1820s

Read 1,000+ Thanks­giv­ing Books Free at the Inter­net Archive

William S. Bur­roughs’ Scathing “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Left­over Thanks­giv­ing Turkey

AC/DC Plays a Short Gig at CBGB in 1977: Hear Metal Being Played on Punk’s Hallowed Grounds

Punk rock and heavy met­al were two gen­res that evolved over the ‘70s, but seemed to run par­al­lel to each oth­er, despite shar­ing com­mon fash­ion, sounds, and atti­tudes. But then there are moments in his­to­ry, where every­body plays togeth­er in the same sand­box. For exam­ple, the above remas­tered audio, which cap­tures the Aus­tralian band AC/DC on their first Amer­i­can tour, play­ing New York’s CBGB, syn­ony­mous now with punk and new wave music.

The date is August 24, 1977, and AC/DC were on a cross-coun­try trip that had tak­en in both club dates and are­nas, where they supported—yes, hard to believe, I know—REO Speed­wag­on. Their album Let There Be Rock had just dropped in June. The band would be in the States until the win­ter.

This CBGB gig finds them on the same bill as Talk­ing Heads and the Dead Boys, accord­ing to a poster from the time. And while there’s no video for this show, you can find a few pho­tos that doc­u­ment the con­cert here. You can feel the mug­gy New York sum­mer in these pho­tos, but also the excite­ment of an unfor­get­table gig.

At 15 min­utes, the set is short, but still three min­utes longer than the Ramones’ first set at the same club three years ear­li­er. That’s pret­ty met­al, man.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NYC’s Icon­ic Punk Club CBG­Bs Comes Alive in a Bril­liant Short Ani­ma­tion, Using David Godlis’ Pho­tos of Pat­ti Smith, The Ramones & More

CBGB’s Hey­day: Watch The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Bad Brains, Talk­ing Heads & Blondie Per­form Live (1974–1982)

Lis­ten to Pat­ti Smith’s Glo­ri­ous Three Hour Farewell to CBGB’s on Its Final Night

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club That Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Watch an Episode of TV-CBGB, the First Rock ‘n’ Roll Sit­com Ever Aired on Cable TV (1981)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

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