Photo, above:  Hour 2, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars by Sonia Faleiro   

The tone of Rashmi’s voice on the other side of the phone was one of happiness. She sounded really excited and engaged me in an animated conversation for a few minutes. “I have gotten a new life and hope I will be able to reclaim what I lost eight years ago,” she told me. Thirty-one-year-old Rashmi has reason to be happy: the Supreme Court lifted the ban on dance bars in the western Indian state of Maharashtra after eight long years. The ban rendered her and thousands of dancers like her jobless. For Rashmi, an illiterate migrant and mother of an 11-year-old boy from the neighboring state of Karnataka who is separated from her husband, dancing was one of the only ways she could earn a living.

When I first met her in Mumbai in 2008 while shooting a television report about the city’s dance bars, Rashmi was a small time sex worker, a profession she claimed she was forced into in the absence of alternatives after the closure of dance bars. This is the story of not only of Rashmi, but of the majority of the 75,000 dance girls spread across the state who have . . .  [more]

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 1, Block A: The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet by Jim Robbins (1 of 2)

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 1, Block B: The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet by Jim Robbins (2 of 2)

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 1, Block C: Vera Gran-The Accused by Agata Tuszynska  (1 of 2)

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 1, Block D:Vera Gran-The Accused by Agata Tuszynska  (2 of 2)

Hour Two

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 2, Block A: The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (America in the World) by Thomas Borstelmann (1 of 2)

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 2, Block B: The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (America in the World) by Thomas Borstelmann (2 of 2)

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 2, Block C: Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars by Sonia Faleiro (1 of 2)

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 2, Block D: Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars by Sonia Faleiro (2 of 2)

Hour Three

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 3, Block A: Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World's Most Famous Revolutionary by Mitch Weiss and Kevin Maurer (1 of 4)

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 3, Block B: Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World's Most Famous Revolutionary by Mitch Weiss and Kevin Maurer (2 of 4)

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 3, Block C: Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World's Most Famous Revolutionary by Mitch Weiss and Kevin Maurer (3 of 4)

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 3, Block D: Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World's Most Famous Revolutionary by Mitch Weiss and Kevin Maurer (4 of 4)

Hour Four

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 4, Block A: The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet by Jim Robbins (1 of 2)

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 4, Block B: The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet by Jim Robbins (2 of 2)

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 4, Block C: Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country In Between by Jeff Sharlet (1 of 2)

Sunday 27 April 2014  / Hour 4, Block D: Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country In Between by Jeff Sharlet (2 of 2)

..  ..  ..