Winners
Immerse your ears in the best audio documentaries and storytelling since 2001, the winners of the Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition.
Summer Rain
To have and to lose control.
- 2018
- 03:00
- Nanna Hauge Kristensen
Songs of Speculation (excerpt)
Songs of Speculation is a lecture that explodes into multi-form performance, calling on the body, time, and the power of music to reclaim histories forgotten or lost.
- 2020
- 39:37
- Jillian Walker
- Ben Williams
Somebody
When Shapearl Wells's son Courtney is found outside a Chicago police station with a fatal bullet wound, Shapearl immediately distrusts the official narrative.
- 2020
- 28:43
- Shapearl Wells
- Alison Flowers
- Bill Healy
- Sarah Geis
- Bart Warshaw
Simultaneous
To experience this award-winning piece in full, including the credits read out loud, click here.
- 2021
- 44:33
- Pamela Z
Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
Winner of the 2022-23 Third Coast/RHDF Competition Impact Award, selected by Final Round Judges Katherine Nagasawa, Habiba Nosheen, and Richard Yeh.
- 2023
- 32:47
- Emily Hanford
- Catherine Winter
- Christopher Peak
- Chris Julin
Scared
2008 ShortDocs Winner! The bittersweet fear of watching your child grow up.
- 2008
- 03:00
- John Biewen
S-Town
S-Town is hard to describe. It’s a podcast that starts as a traditional investigation into corruption and wrongdoing in rural Alabama.
- 2017
- 08:05
- Brian Reed
- Julie Snyder
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
Salt On the Lips
2013 ShortDocs Winner! David channels his frustrated desires into detailed fantasies for the perfect sensual feast.
- 2013
- 03:00
- Jenny Asarnow
Standing Out From the Crowd at a Trump Rally
As the Iowa caucuses approached in February of 2016, Donald Trump’s political campaign was gaining traction with voters. One major theme became clear: fear.
- 2017
- 09:26
- Ike Sriskandarajah
Structural Integrity
When it was built in 1977, the 59-story CitiCorp Center had a fatal flaw that could have caused the building to collapse, and take out the entire mid-town Manhattan skyline with it.
- 2015
- 21:54
- Joel Werner
- Sam Greenspan
Sel: Trois Façons (Salt: Three Ways)
2013 ShortDocs Winner! No one has an appetite for perfection and swearing like a Québécois in search of poutine.
- 2013
- 02:59
- Kelly Jones
Stiff Peaks
2007 ShortDocs Winner! The first step in making cookies is to purchase a metal bike jingle-bell in a western mountain town.
- 2007
- 03:03
- Jeffrey Letterly
The Search for Edna Lavilla
In 1942, Edna Lavilla Haynes died from a backyard abortion. After her death Edna was never mentioned again.
- 2007
- 51:29
- Eurydice Aroney
- Sharon Davis
She's Alright, My Mum Is
When mothers suffer from mental or physical illnesses, their eldest children often take on responsibilities far beyond their years.
- 2004
- 27:25
- Kim Normanton
- Nigel Acheson
The Sleeping Fool
Art museum security guards spend their days in uniform, speaking quietly or not at all, surrounded by works of irreplaceable art.
- 2010
- 10:22
- Sofia Saldanha
Sucked into the Tunnels Beneath Las Vegas
There are some 14,000 people living on the streets of Las Vegas, and Nevada ranks second in the nation in homeless population per capita.
- 2010
- 08:32
- Adam Burke
Studs & Jimmy
Jimmy Yancey, the blues pianist and White Sox groundsman, and Studs Terkel, the broadcaster and author, may have lived at different ends of Chicago but they're both as integral a part of the city as the El...
- 2009
- 02:59
- Alan Hall
Shattered School
Among the victims of the powerful earthquake near Chengdu, China, are hundreds of young students who are feared dead after being trapped in the rubble of their middle school.
- 2008
- 04:02
- Andrea Hsu
- Melissa Block
She Sees Your Every Move
While traditional street photography usually catches strangers passing by in a public space, the photographer Michele Iversen has been catching strangers passing by in their own private spaces, without their permission.
- 2012
- 06:33
- Jonathan Mitchell
Sight Unseen
In December of 2009, photojournalist Lynsey Addario was embedded with a medevac team in Afghanistan. After days of waiting, one night they got the call - a marine was gravely wounded.
- 2015
- 27:51
- Jad Abumrad
- Soren Wheeler
The Sonic Memorial Project
The Sonic Memorial Project is an intimate and historic documentary commemorating the life and history of the World Trade Center and its surrounding neighborhood, through audio artifacts, rare recordings, voice mail messages, and interviews.
- 2003
- 01:00:48
- The Kitchen Sisters
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
Sounds Up There
Gravity director Alfonso Cuarón presented Glenn Freemantle with a challenge - to create authentic sound design in the vacuum of space.
- 2015
- 27:28
- Colin McNulty
String
Ever noticed it's the hard decisions that are often the easiest ones to make, and the inconsequential ones that can twist you into a knot?
- 2012
- 20:19
- Natalie Kestecher