A month or two ago, an artist from Brazil named Daniel Ferreira emailed me to ask me permission to use a Sound of Young America podcast to make a derivative work. I was more than happy to say yes, and the product was a wonderful bit of sound art called "Ahn. Hm."

Here's what Ferreira says about the piece:
"The idea behind this was to remove all audio except for the portions referring to the secondary functions of language, like the emotive (non-verbal sounds) and the phatic (referring to the message itself or to the communication channel)."

I think it's kind of beautiful and completely fascinating. One thing I really like about it is that he focuses on how these sounds do have meaning -- they're not just noises we make if we're too dumb to make words. Sometimes I get an email from an irate radio listener upset because there are too many "likes" and "uhms" in the show. From now on, I'll share this piece with them.

The interview used is our show from last year, with cartoonist Ariel Schrag.