Click below to read more about each event and to hear some selections from the programs.

September, 2005 - The TCF LIstening Room Presents: StoryCorps Chicago, with Dave Isay
June, 2005 - Radio potluck in Washington DC with Katie Davis and Joe Richman
June, 2005 - Radio Potluck with the Third Coast Festival Staff
March, 2005 - Ask Amy: Radio About Romance, with Amy Dickinson

September, 2005 - The TCF Listening Room Presents: StoryCorps Chicago, with Dave Isay

June, 2005 - Radio Potluck in Washington DC with guests Katie Davis and Joe Richman

Guest Bio: Katie Davis is a Washington D.C. writer and broadcaster. Her ongoing radio series, Neighborhood Stories airs on public radio shows, including NPR's All Things Considered and PRI's This American Life. Her radio essay, Throw That Smoke won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Prize in Radio in 2000. She contributes to the Washington Post and The Washingtonian and is currently at work on a book. Davis runs a youth group, The Urban Rangers (urbanrangersdc.com), and teaches neighborhood teenagers oral history and writing.

Guest Bio: Joe Richman is an independent producer for National Public Radio and the founder of Radio Diaries, a not-for-profit production company dedicated to helping people document their own lives. Richman's pioneering 1996 series, Teenage Diaries, introduced the voices of teenagers across the US to a national audience on NPR’s All Things Considered. Richman is also an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, and has won numerous journalism awards, including the Dupont Award, and the RFK Journalism Award for last year's series Mandela: An Audio History.

This evening's Listening Room took place at the Warehouse Theater in Washington, DC, and included the following excerpts and full audio pieces. Click the link (if available) to hear each selection.

Ice Music
(Gregory Whitehead, All Things Considered's, 1997)
What if sounds could be frozen into ice cubes, then released upon their melting? Everyday movements and actions might become rich musical performances... (2:27)

Throw That Smoke (once you get to the TAL page search for "crime scene")
(Katie Davis, This American Life, 2000)
A former heroin addict becomes a coach for a kids' baseball team and finds a measure of redemption. (6:30 excerpt)

Snow on Plum Blossom
(Malte Jaspersen, Radio-Berlin Brandeburg, 2005)
Japanese Springtime: the motif of countless Haikus and soulful pop songs, spectacular Kabuki and elegant plays, short stories and novels. In Japan, spring begins in winter, and evidently with a lot of noise. (7:10 excerpt)
Note! This piece is in German! Please refer to the transcript! It'll be fun!

You Can't Live Without Cornbread
(Shea Shackleford and Jennifer Deer, NPR's Day to Day, 2005)
In keeping with our potluck/culinary theme, here's a slice from the National Cornbread Festival in South Pittsburgh, Tennessee. (3:00)

Just Another Fish Story
(Molly Menschel, Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, 2005)
Eleven years ago, in a rural town in the poorest county of Maine, a sixty-ton dead whale washed up on the Atlantic shore. Hear the people of Lubec re-live the burial of their giant visitor and in doing so, tell us as much about the town as the whale. (8:27)

Excerpt from Pt. 3: Robben Island, 1964 - 1976
(Joe Richman, All Things Considered, 2004)
While Nelson Mandela and other political leaders languished in prison, the government cracked down. It seemed that resistance to apartheid had been crushed. But on June 16, 1976, a student uprising in Soweto sparked a new generation of activism. (from the 5-part series Mandela: An Audio History, 6:30)

Pirate Station (scroll down to find the program)
(Emily Botein and Sherre DeLys, PRI's The Next Big Thing, 2005)
Writer Rick Moody has developed such a fondness for pirate radio that he even felt inspired to pen this ode to one of his favorite stations (read here by actor and musician John Lurie.) (13:00)

June, 2005- Radio Potluck with the Third Coast Festival Staff

This evening's Listening Room included some of the Third Coast Festival staff's favorite radio stories. Click on the link (if available) to hear each selection.

Dumpster Diving
(Matt Power, for PRI's The Next Big Thing, 2003)
Every day of the year New York City generates 26-thousand tons of garbage. As your mother would say, the amount of food thrown away could feed an army. And come closing time every day, that's exactly what happens. Matt Power follows a band of urban hunter-gatherers into the dumpsters of lower Manhattan. (10:24)

Snow on Plum Blossom
(Malte Jaspersen, Radio-Berlin Brandeburg, 2005)
Japanese Springtime: the motif of countless Haikus and soulful pop songs, spectacular Kabuki and elegant plays, short stories and novels. In Japan, spring begins in winter, and evidently with a lot of noise.
(7:10 excerpt) Note! This piece is in German! Please refer to the transcript! It'll be fun!

Just Another Fish Story
(Molly Menschel, Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, 2005)
Eleven years ago, in a rural town in the poorest county of Maine, a sixty-ton dead whale washed up on the Atlantic shore. Hear the people of Lubec re-live the burial of their giant visitor and in doing so, tell us as much about the town as the whale. (8:27)

The Greater Depression
(Benjamen Walker, Your Radio Nightlight, 2002)
Nobody likes a drunk clown. It's shameful. Really. (3:42 excerpt)

Snooze
(Geoff Siskind, CBC's Outfront, 2005)
Explore the delicious state of snooze button induced sleep. It's a time when the mind doesn’t quite belong to the waking world and is not fully surrendered to the dream world. It can be a confusing, surreal state to linger in -- one that produces some truly bizarre scenes for the imagination. (7:00)

More of our favorite things....We'll close the evening out with a few more audio tidbits we just don't think you can live without.

March, 2005 - Ask Amy: Radio about Romance, with Amy Dickinson

Host Bio: Amy Dickinson is the Chicago Tribune's general advice columnist, following in the tradition of the legendary Ann Landers. Prior to the Tribune, Dickinson was a frequent contributor to Time where she penned a column about family life, often drawing from her experiences as a single parent and member of a large, extended family. Dickinson has been a reporter and essayist for National Public Radio's All Things Considered and has provided commentaries for CBS Sunday Morning. She has written for The Washington Post, Esquire, Allure and O Magazine, among other publications.

This evening's Listening Room was held at Steppenwolf's Garage Theatre in Chicago, where the following radio stories and excerpts were presented. Click on the link (if available) to hear each piece.  

Waiting for Love
(Nicholas Longstaff, 2004)
We know the language of love is cliché and predictable, but Canadian sound artist Nicholas Longstaff manages to turn the phrases we've all heard (and possibly spoken) before into a musical narrative exploring the rhythms, patterns, cycles and semantics of falling in (and out) of love. (2:52)

The Virgin Story
(Abner Serd, 2002)
Here's one man's story about losing his virginity at age 37, at the point when he'd just about given up hope on the subject. (8:51 excerpt)

Arthur and Eleanor
(Joe Frank)
A telephone conversation between a mentally frail woman and her ex-boyfriend, with his new wife listening in, reveals the fear, bitterness, pity and anger that characterizes this polyamorous situation. (7:20)

Karaoke Counselor
(Natalie Kestecher, ABC's Radio National, 2001)
To whom can you turn when your relationship has soured, if you no longer have much in common with your partner and your dreams and aspirations directly conflict? Well, you might try couples' counseling, or you might instead explore the therapeutic possibilities of karaoke.... (7:36 excerpt)

Hard to Say
(Bente Birkeland, Salt Inst. for Doc.Studies / PRI's The Next Big Thing, 2004)
State park ranger Ed Werler lives alone in a quiet, isolated area of Maine. At the age of 90, Ed reflects on his second marriage, revealing a relationship characterized by love, loyalty and uncertainty. (5:56)