Third Coast Audio Library

Our vast and ever-growing collection contains thousands of carefully curated audio stories, episodes from Third Coast podcasts, educational sessions on craft from the best makers on the planet, and more.

We’ve also featured some incredible audio work beyond this audio library, in other ways and using other formats: don’t miss the 2021 Web Showcase, featuring a more in-depth look at the winners, judges and even a list of 40 finalists from the 2021 Third Coast/RHDF Competition.

Tree Body

Three children talk of how trees are good control of body and mind, recite poetry about trees, call out tree names, and make all kinds of lovely unexpected connections.

Walt Whitman: Song of Myself

This is an excerpt from Curtis Fox's portrait of Walt Whitman, one of the world's greatest poets, and his radical vision of America.

Listening to Jamie

Imagine a cold London winter, where the bizarre and unpredictable sounds made by producer Hugh Levinson's sleeping newborn punctuate the dark nights in the most unimaginable ways.

Memento Mori

Some members of Jude Fletcher's family have a fondness for taking pictures of the dead. Their photo albums boast the typical shots of joyous celebrations and family gatherings, side by side with shots of loved ones in their caskets.

Dinner at the Blind Cow

From the moment you enter the restaurant's dining room, you're in complete darkness. Blind waiters take your order, help you find your water glass, and lead you to the bathroom as needed.

Misfire

Misfire is an experimental sound piece that blends 1940s Dr. Pepper radio ads, original violin music, and sounds of thirst and thirst-quenching.

Vagy/Szomjusag/Thirst

As a boy, George Bien was sent thousands of miles away from Hungary to Siberia, to the notorious Gulag - the prison camp system in the Soviet Union, where millions of people perished.

And I Walked...Stories From the Border

Much of the Sonoran desert between Tucson and Mexico is a haunting wasteland of discarded shoes, shirts, and empty plastic water jugs, discarded by desparate illegal immigrants who risk their lives as they cross the desert from Mexico into the United States in search of better-paying jobs.

X-Town

In the late 1930s, Massachusetts flooded four towns in the central part of the state to create a reservoir for the city of Boston. More than 2,000 people lived in those towns.

Big House / Disclosure

Big House/Disclosure is a multimedia project exploring the legacy of slavery, the genesis of house music, and Chicago's role as the first U.S. city to adopt a Slavery-Era Disclosure Ordinance (which requires companies doing business with the city to reveal if they profited from slavery in the past).

Survivors

Tens of thousands of inmates in American prisons live in total isolation. They don't see anyone. They don't talk to anyone. They are completely alone, sometimes for years, in a cell the size of a small bathroom.

Nina Black

Imagine being so hyperactive and distractible that you can barely keep track of where you are, who you're talking to, and what you're talking about.

The How Are You Doing Project

The How Are You Doing Project is an interactive audio experiment that invites anyone and everyone to call an anonymous hotline and respond to the most frequently posed question of them all.

The Memory Palace: These Words Forever

In this episode of The Memory Palace, Guglielmo Marconi, the Father of Radio, dreams of a super-radio that would allow him to hear every sound ever made. Melancholy ensues.

The Memory Palace: Lost Pigeons

In this episode of The Memory Palace, the passenger pigeon dwindles from five-billion strong in the first quarter of the 19th Century down to one lonely widow in the Cincinnati Zoo in less than a hundred years.

Nocturne

The National Gallery, London, is one of the world's most prestigious art galleries. Every day, thousands of people pass through its doors to look at masterpieces by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and many others.

The Ambassador of Go

Most Americans have never heard of Go, an ancient board game that has simpler rules than chess but such complex strategy that computers can't even beat a talented amateur.

Aftermath

The Aftermath, Inc., headquarters is nestled in a strip of ordinary office buildings in the Chicago suburbs, but there's nothing bland about the service the company provides.

Wellington, Texas

When you enter Wellington, Texas, one of the first things you see is a large billboard that says: Welcome to Wellington: Great Past, Bright Future.

A Square Meal, Regardless

When Cedric Chambers and John Gallagher met by chance 45 years ago, neither imagined that they'd be caring for each other into old age.

Thinness and Salvation

The American "obesity epidemic" has been all over the news -– from stories about the viability of the Atkins diet to tabloid profiles of 100-pound toddlers.

The View From Here

A patient, blinded in an accident, wakes to another day of darkness. Resolved to sidestep the persistent murk of her obscured vision, she turns instead to the world of her imagination and memory, where the everyday patterns of human routine take on a new significance.

The Happiness Project: Mrs. Morris

Musician Charles Spearin lives with his family in a lively neighborhood in downtown Toronto. A year ago, Charles decided to invite neighbors and friends over to conduct interviews loosely based around the topic of happiness.

The Mender of Lost Hearts

Child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo lead grim lives -- they're forcibly recruited to serve with government forces or rebel troops in a long and bloody civil conflict that's ravaged the region for years.