Winners
Immerse your ears in the best audio documentaries and storytelling since 2001, the winners of the Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition.
Thembi's AIDS Diary
In South Africa more than five million people are living with HIV/AIDS, including a young woman named Thembi Ngubane.
- 2006
- 23:30
- Joe Richman
- Anayansi Diaz-Cortes
My Lobotomy
My Lobotomy explores one of medical history's most controversial chapters -- when transorbital lobotomies were widely condoned -- through one man's personal journey.
- 2006
- 24:45
- David Isay
- Piya Kochar
The Dead Can't Do You Nothin'
Producer Katie Mingle narrates her quest to find ghosts in a "pauper's graveyard" in New Orleans.
- 2007
- 10:53
- Katie Mingle
The Ground We Lived On
The Ground We Lived On documents the loving relationship between journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and her father, Adrian Leon LeBlanc, in the last months of his life.
- 2007
- 11:33
- David Isay
- Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Before the War It Was the War
In the 2006 conflict between Hezbollah and the state of Israel, one man took it upon himself to "resist with his pen," to bear witness for his people and bring the world, in his words, "the real news from Beirut."
- 2007
- 28:42
- Anna Burns
Grandpa
How do we deal with dying? Most of us look away, but in the case of the Zagar family, they look closer.
- 2007
- 10:02
- Lu Olkowski
A Fragile Son
Surjit Sachdev grew up in a conservative family in India. Surjit's father was an engineer, and he's an engineer, but the family tradition ended when Surjit's son was born with a severe mental disability.
- 2007
- 14:01
- Carma Jolly
- Surjit Sachdev
Except Me
Andrew Skillings is eleven now, but he was first diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a high functioning form of autism, when he was just two.
- 2008
- 06:26
- Erin Davis
Dreaming of Osama
Dreaming of Osama explores the ever-moving boundaries of the "war on terror" and its influence on the collective unconscious. Osama Bin Laden has a way of lying low -- then, just as the public begins to forget about him, he makes an unexpected reappearance.
- 2008
- 28:02
- Pejk Malinovski
Searching for Farming's Future in Its Past
Searching for Farming's Future in Its Past is part of a series produced by Rachel Leventhal about the impact individuals can make on their world.
- 2008
- 10:10
- Rachel Leventhal
Growing Up in the System
At age 21, Shirley Diaz is on the brink of aging out of the foster care system. Her life isn't easy now, and soon she'll be on her own, facing a new set of daunting issues.
- 2008
- 11:40
- Melissa Allison
- Shirley "Star" Diaz
Between Friends
"Between Friends" is the story of one woman's coming to terms with being sexually victimized by her father.
- 2006
- 13:06
- Jody Porter
- Neil Sandell
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
Oakland Scenes: Snapshots of a Community
Youth Radio producers Ise Lyfe, Gerald Ward II, and Bianca Yarborough chronicle the tense summer of 2002 in Oakland, California, when an alarming number of youth homicides weighed heavily on the community.
- 2003
- 05:45
- Youth Radio
Mandela: An Audio History
On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of South Africa's first democratic election, Radio Diaries produced this five-part series featuring newly discovered archival tape of Nelson Mandela, his supporters, and detractors.
- 2005
- 15:51
- Ben Shapiro
- Joe Richman
- Sue Jaye Johnson
Just Another Fish Story
Ten years ago, the people of Lubec, Maine, were met with an unpleasant surprise: an enormous finback whale had washed onto the beachfront of their tiny coastal town.
- 2005
- 08:28
- Molly Menschel
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
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
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
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
Dr. Phil
In the wake of a break-up, writer Starlee Kine finds so much comfort in break-up songs that she tries to write one herself, even though she has no musical ability whatsoever.
- 2008
- 29:13
- Starlee Kine
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
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
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
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