ShortDocs

Discover hundreds of short audio gems produced in response to a prompt from Third Coast for the ShortDocs Competition, hosted between 2003 and 2016. Each year ushered in a new set of rules, new creative partners, and ever-more magical results.

The Mousetrap

This is a highly fictionalized retelling of a real life tale of the trapping and killing of a mouse in Fresno, California.

Invasion

One mother's attempt to fight off an invasion of mice just after her two-year-old son has been diagnosed with leukemia.

Tea for Matilda

Feminist historian Sally Roesch Wagner muses that well-behaved women rarely make history while mis-behaved radicals, such as 19th century women's rights and peace activist Matilda Joslyn Gage, seldom make history books.

Mouse Trap Music

Composer Mark Applebaum describes the creative process he uses when inventing new instruments. He calls one of them "The Mouse Trap."

House Trap

"The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry"- Rober Burns, To a Mouse [The mousetrap set recalls a long-forgotten incident in the producer's first residence in Toronto.]

Dollar Daze

Third Coast Festival artistic director Julie Shapiro describes her rendez-vous with Dollar Store founder Jonathan Messinger at Dollar Daze in downtown Chicago, where the Dollar Storeys items were chosen.

Are You Sure?

A look at the age old dilemma -- the unexpected pregnancy, and a peek into how today's busy, independent woman approaches the unexpected news.

Kid Lit

A periscope of my grandmother's death and how babies are made.

Lady Bait

Lizzie and her sister think they are coming to Ray's just to see his monkey, but little do they know that Ray and Oscar have been sweating to the Harvey Carne Workout Method and Guide to Romance.

Stiff Peaks

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

The Trap

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

How to Be Heard

2007 ShortDocs Winner! Advice for the bicycle bell with aspirations, featuring voice teacher Rachel Nicholson.