Winners

Immerse your ears in the best audio documentaries and storytelling since 2001, the winners of the Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition.


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.

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."

Grandpa

How do we deal with dying? Most of us look away, but in the case of the Zagar family, they look closer.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.