Filmmaker Tony Hill took his friend Sally Goode, who was born blind, to a place she’d never been before, then taped her trying to figure out where she was. We first heard Hill’s story care of our colleagues at the Third Coast International Audio Festival. They got it from the Audible Picture Show. (5 minutes)

From This American Life

The Audible Picture Show is a growing collection of works by a diverse range of people responding to the challenge of creating short works of audio for ‘a dark cinema.’ Go here.

These enclaves have emerged on the outskirts of prospering, overburdened cities, from this frontier town next to the capital to the edges of seam-splitting Bangalore. They allow their residents to buy their way out of the hardships that afflict vast multitudes in this country of more than one billion. And they reflect the desires of India’s small but growing ranks of wealthy professionals, giving them Western amenities along with Indian indulgences: an army of maids and chauffeurs live in a vast shantytown across the street.

Somini Sengupta in the New York Times writes about Gurgaon: “The slum is as much a product of the new India as Hamilton Court, the opportunities of this new city drawing hundreds of thousands from the hungry hinterlands.” A very interesting point about China:

In China, the main Asian competitor to which India is often compared, the state managed early on to harness economic expansion for huge public works projects and then allow more and more Chinese to partake of the benefits. There, the poor are far less likely to be deprived of basic services, whether clean water or basic schooling.