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.
Lucky Star
When you are taking risks and you don't know it's risky, and pushing boundaries when you don't know they are boundaries, it's good to be lucky.
- 2008
- 02:55
- Julia Grant
The Great Tree Strike of 1934
A record of one of the most significant cultural events of New Zealand's forgotten history.
- 2008
- 03:00
- Shaun D. Wilson
Sweetgum Handshake
Here's a radio explanation of the Radio Ephemera ShortDocs Challenge, including descriptions from Rick and Megan Prelinger, of the books selected for the project.
- 2008
- 07:46
- Julie Shapiro
- Rick and Megan Shaw Prelinger
Is That My Imagination?
2008 ShortDocs Winner! The story of a mind on strike.
- 2008
- 03:00
- Meghan Vigeant
The Searchers (Based on a True Story)
2008 ShortDocs Winner! Where do lost stories go? Potato pancakes are involved.
- 2008
- 03:06
- David P. Earle
Forest to Desert
2008 ShortDocs Winner! An audio doodle about this phrase: "Humankind is preceded by forest, and followed by desert." Forest versus city / tree versus car / then versus now.
- 2008
- 02:35
- Sarah Boothroyd
Scared
2008 ShortDocs Winner! The bittersweet fear of watching your child grow up.
- 2008
- 03:00
- John Biewen
Tongues Twisting
Clapping games and tongue twisters in multiple languages turn into rich stories when Judith Sloan records young immigrants in a theatre workshop.
- 2005
- 07:20
- Judith Sloan
The Rules Will Be Different
For one recount lawyer in Florida, the political became personal in the wake of the 2000 presidential election.
- 2005
- 07:59
- Melissa Allison
There Was a Whole Lotta Hundreds...
In America's high schools, students are playing a game whose only rule is to break the rules.
- 2005
- 06:11
- Michael Kavanagh
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.
- 2005
- 05:46
- Blake Eskin
The Color Is Black
Here is darkness, construed as manifestations of the color black through history, space, time, and in the natural world.
- 2004
- 05:34
- Jerome Schmidt
- Rick Moody
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.
- 2004
- 07:23
- Hugh Levinson
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.
- 2004
- 08:20
- Jude Fletcher
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.
- 2004
- 07:47
- Adam Burke
Misfire
Misfire is an experimental sound piece that blends 1940s Dr. Pepper radio ads, original violin music, and sounds of thirst and thirst-quenching.
- 2003
- 04:16
- Paul Frey
- Sarah Varney
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.
- 2003
- 06:45
- Alex van Oss
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.
- 2003
- 06:05
- Ann Heppermann
- Kara Oehler
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.
- 2003
- 07:29
- Sean Cole
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).
- 2007
- 02:10
- Mendi and Keith Obadike
The Flickerman (INC)
Cornelius Zane-Gray is being stalked. His girlfriend left him, a good friend was murdered, and he's recently been assaulted, chased, and nearly blown up. Cornelius's life is falling apart, and what's more, it's all being documented through photos posted on the Internet for everyone to see.
- 2009
- 46:45
- Lance Dann
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.
- 2009
- 29:00
- Claire Schoen
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.
- 2009
- 43:00
- Melanie Harris
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.
- 2009
- 02:21
- Laura Mayer
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.
- 2009
- 03:17
- Nate DiMeo