Winners

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

The Trap

2007 ShortDocs Winner! Here's a rumination on the ethics of pest killing and attempts at avoidance of the graphic nature thereof.

Stiff Peaks

2007 ShortDocs Winner! The first step in making cookies is to purchase a metal bike jingle-bell in a western mountain town.

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.

Scared

2008 ShortDocs Winner! The bittersweet fear of watching your child grow up.

Tongues Twisting

Clapping games and tongue twisters in multiple languages turn into rich stories when Judith Sloan records young immigrants in a theatre workshop.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Open Outcry

Sound designer and multimedia artist Ben Rubin employs the cacophony of the New York Mercantile Exchange to create a musical piece commemorating the reopening of the World Financial Center's Winter Garden, which was closed after the events of September 11th.