Something to watchGetting ahead
Everything is a Remix Part 1 (2021)
A 23-minute video essay on how copying, changing and combining old work makes new work
Why it’s worth your time
Everything is a Remix Part 1 makes the case that new work is mostly old work, copied, changed and recombined, which can make a new project feel less daunting to begin. Kirby Ferguson builds the argument song by song, and the same pattern tends to show up in the decks, plans and products people make at work.
How copying and combining lead to original work
- Watch the video.
It opens with a one-line definition of remixing. Listen for the folk singer Odetta's answer when an interviewer suggests Bob Dylan stole from her. The 2021 upload ends with a segment after the credits.
- Combine two approaches from far apart.
Pick a problem you're working on this week. Write down how your own team usually handles it, then find how a completely different field or industry handles something similar, and sketch one version that uses a piece of each. A rough page is enough.
Good moments for this: when a project needs a fresh anglebefore you build something your team will reusewhen your team keeps solving things the same way
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Borrowing a well-known format or a competitor's public approach is usually fine; confidential material, or code used outside its license terms, usually isn't. It helps to know where your company draws the line before you borrow.
What might make this harder
Present the combination as research: here's how our team usually does this, here's how another field does it, and here's what I think a mix of the two could look like for us.
Questions people ask
What is Everything is a Remix Part 1 about?
It's the first part of Kirby Ferguson's 2021 remake of his video essay series. It defines remixing as copying, transforming and combining existing material, traces that through hip hop sampling and Led Zeppelin's debts to earlier songs, and ends its main section on the point that copying is complicated, which Part 2 takes up.
What does copy, transform, combine mean?
It's Ferguson's three-part description of how new work gets made: you copy what you admire, change it as you go, and merge sources into something new. He considers combining the most powerful of the three, and points to Part 3 for more on the framework.
How is the 2021 Everything is a Remix different from the original?
The original four-part series ran from 2010 to 2012. Ferguson rewrote and overhauled it in 2021, then in 2023 combined the four new parts into a single hour-long video with minor edits. That combined version leaves out a post-credits segment on Kanye West that ends the 2021 Part 1.
How do I come up with original ideas at work?
Start from work that already does something well, change it to fit your problem, and look for an approach from a different field to combine it with. A rough sketch that mixes the two is often enough to show whether there's something there.
What it says, and how it holds up
Part 1's evidence is the history of popular music: DJs looping the best bits of records, producers building a whole album out of hundreds of samples, a rock band lifting lyrics and melodies from the musicians before them. Copying, changing and combining, in Ferguson's account, is how creative work gets made, not a way of cheating at it. It moves quickly through dozens of songs, and it trusts you to make the jump from Daft Punk to your own desk.
The idea has company. Lawrence Lessig's Remix (2008) argued from the legal side that this kind of creativity needs room under copyright law, and Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist (2012) turned it into advice for anyone making things. The video is also honest that the legal side is messy: its Zeppelin section moves from a settlement over one song to a 2020 court win over another, with musicians still divided. When copying stops being good is the question Ferguson saves for Part 2.
When your team's problem is new enough that the nearest examples only look similar, borrowing can lead you to copy the wrong thing well, and time with the people who actually have the problem tends to serve better than another search for templates.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.