Sites Unseen: What’s Revealed by Traveling With the Blind

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.3 • 107.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2026

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Andy Isaacson is a writer and photographer. His work for The Times has taken him to every corner of the world, and he has transmitted what he’s experienced through his images. But recently, Isaacson took a trip unlike any he’d taken before. Not because of where he traveled, but because of how he traveled. Paired with a set of unlikely travel companions, he put down his camera and experienced the word through touch, smell and sound. On today’s episode of “The Sunday Daily,” Isaacson talks with Host Michael Barbaro about a trip that forever changed the way he travels.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bavarro.
0:04.7	This is the Daily on Sunday.
0:12.5	Travel is an inescapably visual experience.
0:17.9	The entire vocabulary we attach to travel confirms that.
0:22.2	We go sightseeing.
0:23.7	We ask for rooms with a view.
0:26.1	We memorialize our trip, or we brag about it,
0:29.4	by posting photographs on social media.
0:33.3	But my colleague, Andy Isaacson,
0:35.8	an accomplished photographer and writer,
0:38.3	recently took a trip with a group of blind travelers
0:41.6	that directly challenged the idea that we best understand the world through our eyes.
0:50.2	Today, Andy talks to us about that trip
0:53.8	and about the deeper layers of experience that
0:57.4	are revealed by travelers who cannot see. It's Sunday, May 24th.
1:10.4	Andy Isaacson, welcome to The Daily.
1:13.1	Thanks so much.
1:14.4	You have traveled all over the world for your work.
1:18.1	You've reported, for the Times, from every continent on Earth.
1:23.3	Yeah.
1:23.7	And I have to say, that sounds like the most romantic job in the universe.
1:28.3	Do you hear that all the time?
	...

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