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Each year, the Third Coast International Audio Festival brings the best new documentaries produced worldwide to U.S. airwaves in a special two-hour program. Hosted by award-winning writer, producer and humorist Gwen Macsai, the Third Coast Festival broadcast features documentaries that prove just how powerful radio can be. Innovative and insightful, the stories engage, provoke, entertain and transport listeners, proving that all one needs to discover new worlds is a little box and an antenna.

Massachusetts gets a lot of credit around the founding of Thanksgiving, but what many don’t know is the role New Hampshire played. Our state’s first permanent resident, David Thompson, helped Miles Standish and many of the Pilgrims survive a few years after their historic feast. Then there’s Sarah Josepha Hale, who lobbied for over twenty years to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. We’ll learn more about New Hampshire’s role in this cherished holiday as well as how we’ve celebrated it over the years.

Guests

• J. Dennis Robinson, editor of SeascoastNH.com and author of several books on New Hampshire history, including Strawberry Banke: A Seaport Museum 400 Years in the Making
• Stuart Wallace, New Hampshire historian and Associate Professor of History at New Hampshire Technical Institute

This program was originally broadcast on November 26, 2008

American scientists recently crashed a probe into the moon and found lots of frozen water, a discovery that could have major implications for future space exploration. Also, the end is in sight for the shuttle program, and new images from a souped-up Hubble telescope give us the best pictures ever of the birth of a star. We’ll talk about these and other ‘out of this world’ news from space.

Guest

• John Gianforte, astronomy instructor for Granite State College and co-founder of the Astronomical Society of Northern New England

Granite State business has been forced to think outside the box in order to survive. We'll see what businesses are doing to adapt to our ever-changing economic times.

Guests

• Matthew Lowry, editor of Business NH Magazine
• Jon Greenberg, NHPR executive editor and curator of our Working It Out project

We'll also hear from

• Arthur Learned, owner of Things Are Cooking, a kitchen supply store in Concord and board member of the New Hampshire Retail Merchants Association
• Kathryn Underwood, president and CEO of Ledyard National Bank in Lebanon

Free speech allows us to say what we want, but it does have its limits. A new case being heard by the New Hampshire Supreme Court brings the First Amendment to 2009; in question, whether media outlets can protect the identities of anonymous online commenters. It’s a case that with not only bring the First Amendment to posting sites, blogs and citizen journalists, but also see where they fit in today’s media landscape. We’ll look at this case and what it may mean to the future of online posting.

Guests

• Sheldon Toplitt, Media Law Instructor at Boston University, Attorney, and Author of the blog The Unruly of Law
• Clint Hendler, staff writer for the Columbia Journalism Review