It was Summer 2022. I was listening to a bunch of Paul Wheaton’s podcast episodes. I was in the heyday of my first major foray into
permaculture. It was a wonderful time to be on the internet.
At the time, I was also in a “regressive” musical state – regressive in the sense that I was returning to the things that I liked in the past. My favorite one of those things that I liked were violin plucks.
There I was, listening to a
particularly profound conversation between Paul Wheaton and Toby Hemenway on native plants. I was simultaneously working on a song with violin plucks that felt like it needed something…
more. Then, I realized you could download Paul’s podcast episodes. I downloaded the episode. I found the part of the conversation I thought was great. I put it behind the music and modulated it (to keep things engaging). Here’s what I got:
link to my blog version of this post with embedded audio file.
The idea was then that I would listen to Paul’s podcasts, find and isolate soundbites that I like, vet them with the forums at permies.com, then put them into chill beats songs. Fun way to repurpose existing content, spread
permaculture knowledge, etc.
However, I soon dropped the
project. I was slightly nervous about so blatantly repurposing Paul’s content (i.e. in the “publishing it without express permission” realm), but in order to get this “permission”, I would have to present it… aka post it. And that presents a public behavioral barrier that I didn’t really start crossing on permies.com until more recently.
No matter; here we are today.
1. What do you think of this idea of repurposing podcast clips into songs?
2. Do you know Paul’s attitude towards this type of repurposing? (I know this caliber of
reuse is probably “legal” under the Fair Use doctrine but I prefer laymen over the law).
3. What do you think of the invasives edit (linked above)?
4. If your responses to all of the above are positive, do you have any favorite podcast clips to suggest?
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