I’m more than a little surprised to find myself in this box: my idea of NEWS is something that happened in 1848, and I think there are better things to advertise and take notice of than my tiny doings or scribbles.
But now that DDB Singapore has brought me into the 20th century – with every sign of coaxing me into the 21st – I’m happy to welcome anyone who’s interested to this space, where we may now and then post something that’s not easily found elsewhere, a video clip from our recent journeys or something that might be of interest to anyone who’s traveled as far as this unexpected corner.
Thank you for your time and attention, and if you’re irritated by something here, please blame the brilliant designers of these pages. Without them, I’d still be in some black hole!
VIEW BY CATEGORY
THE NEWS ARCHIVES
- June 2025
- January 2025
- September 2024
- April 2024
- October 2023
- April 2023
- November 2022
- March 2022
- October 2021
- February 2021
- July 2020
- October 2019
- July 2019
- April 2019
- September 2018
- April 2018
- March 2017
- September 2016
- April 2016
- January 2015
- August 2015
- May 2015
- February 2015
- October 2014
- June 2014
- February 2014
- August 2013
- June 2013
- December 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- November 2011
If you’re interested in hearing Pico Iyer speak, here are a few dates and places to try:
| June 24 | Keynote address, Coca-Cola C.E.O. Summit Napa, California |
| June 30 | Keynote lecture, Aspen Ideas Festival Aspen, Colorado |
| July 1 | Conversation with Elaine Pagels, Ideas Festival Aspen, Colorado |
| August 18-23 | Workshop with Chip Conley, Modern Elder Academy, Santa Fe, New Mexico |
| Oct. 4 | Conversation with Ira Glass, Arts & Lectures Santa Barbara, California |
| Oct. 8 | Lecture, Swarthmore College Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Oct. 23 | Tibet Fund Annual Gala New York, New York |
| Oct. 29—Nov. 2 | Bali Literature Festival Ubud, Indonesia |
| Nov. 19 | Conversation with Colm Toibin, Arts & Lectures Santa Barbara, California |
| January 24-25 | Kerala Literature Festival Calicut, India |
| January 27 | Lecture, Mahindra University Hyderabad, India |
| March 13 | Onstage conversation, India Today Conclave New Delhi, India |
| April 11 | Conversation with Paul Holdengraber for Grace Farms New Canaan, Connecticut |
| April 29-May 7 | Lectures, Gohagan ship Japan-Korea |
| May 13 | Conversation with Terry Tempest Williams, A & L Santa Barbara, California |
Many more engagements are currently in the works.
A long chat with the brilliant Christopher Lydon on Radio Open Source—January 23, 2025.
A long talk with Jonathan Bastian on KCRW’s “Life Examined” radio show—January 26, 2025
“To Big Sur, with Love”—an essay on the enchanted coastline for The Guardian, February 1, 2025.
Numerous podcasts with Jonathan Fields, Elise Loehnen, Mitch Joel, James Shaheen, Jeremy Bassetti, Rolf Potts and many others—released January-June, 2025.
A talk with Sean Illing for Vox’s Gray Area podcast—March 10, 2025.
“The Inner Scorecard”—a long interview with the brilliant William Green on his podcast, “Richer, Wiser, Happier,” posted March 17, 2025.
A talk with the really searching Spencer Bailey for his “Time Sensitive” podcast, posted March 26, 2025.
“Unexpected Blessings”—an essay on a wise woman who taught me much in my monastery, published in America, April 2025.
A deep and soulful talk with the remarkable Rachel Schwartzman on her “Slow Studies” podcast—April 16, 2025
“The World Beyond Our Chatter”—a short essay for Conde Nast Traveler, posted April 18, 2025, and offered in print in the May/June 2025 issue.
A virtual conversation with Susan Pollak for Harvard Medical School’s Center for Mindfulness and Compassion—April 19, 2025
“Picture Perfect”–an ode to wonderful Benesse House on Naoshima, for Air Mail, April 26, 2025.
A talk on Pope Francis for the radio program “Life Examined,” broadcast on KCRW, April 26, 2025.
“W is for Walking”—an essay for The New York Times T Magazine’s special issue on Japan, April 27, 2025.
“I is for Iterations”—another essay for The New York Times T Magazine’s special issue on Japan, April 27, 2025.
“The Spiritual Wisdom of Slowing Down”–a long interview with Simran Jeet Singh, for the “Wisdom and Practice” podcast, posted May 14, 2025
“The Geography of Hope”–an essay on Robert Macfarlane’s dazzling new book, Is a River Alive?, for Air Mail, May 17, 2025.
“To share or to gatekeep is the question for a travel writer in today’s overtouristed world”—An essay for The New York Times, published June 15, 2025.
“Escape”—a talk with the TED Radio Hour for its “Great Escapes” show, broadcast June 13, 2025.
“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Son”—a review of Nick Harkaway’s novel Karla’s Choice, published in Air Mail, October 21, 2024
“The Moving River”—a short essay on my 37 years in Japan to go with Magdalena Sole’s series of seven artist’s books chronicling her 33 years of visits to the country—October 2024.
“The Zendo called the World”—an essay on art as contemplation and act of worship, based around the islands of Naoshima and Teshima, in Lion’s Roar, October/November 2024.
“The Light in Kyoto”—a short tribute to the irreplaceable editor Ken Rodgers in the indispensable Kyoto Journal, December 2024
“The Kid Stays Out of the Picture”–an essay (accompanied by podcast interview) on staying with some monks, published in Air-Mail, January 4, 2025
“What I Find in Solitude and Silence on the Cliffs of Big Sur”–an essay on Thoreau and the meaning of solitude for the Los Angeles Times, January 5, 2025.
“Pico Iyer’s Wide-Awake Silence”—A long interview with Nautilus, January 10, 2025.
“Hospitals of the Soul”—a long essay on what we stand to lose if monasteries become extinct–Globe & Mail, January 11, 2025.
Aflame: A book on my first 100 retreats at a Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, California—published by Riverhead, January 14, 2025 (published by Cornerstone in Britain and Penguin India as Learning from Silence, in February 2025).
A long talk with Terry Gross for “Fresh Air” on public radio—January 15, 2025.
A very long talk with soulful Jenna Abdou on the 33 Voices podcast—January 15, 2025
An hour-long chat with Mina Kim at KQED’s “Forum” show—January 16, 2025.
“Losing Everything to Fire Changed How I Lived”–An essay on the Los Angeles Fires, for The New York Times Opinion page—January 18, 2025
A podcast interview with New York Times Book Review editor Gilbert Cruz—January 19, 2025
An essay on a cure for hopelessness, recorded as part of the Hidden Brain podcast (the first such essay ever to be a part of Hidden Brain)—January 20, 2025.
A conversation with the amazing William Green at the Asia Society, on January 22, 2025–
The Search for Liberation”—an essay to serve as Introduction to a new edition of Pankaj Mishra’s The End of Suffering. Published by Penguin India, January 2025.
Numerous podcasts with Jonathan Fields, Elise Loehnen, William Green, Christopher Lydon, Jeremy Bassetti, Rolf Potts, Jonathan Bastian, James Shaheen and many others—released January 2025.
If you’re interested in hearing Pico Iyer speak, here are a few dates and places to try:
| Jan. 27 | Conversation about Aflame, Zen Luminaries Podcast Online |
| Jan. 28 | Conversation around Aflame, Vroman’s Books Pasadena, California |
| Jan. 30 | Conversation on Aflame, Books and Books and others Online |
| Feb. 23 | Conversation with Richard Powers, UCSB Santa Barbara, California |
| April 7-11 | TED Mainstage Talk, TED Annual Conference Vancouver, Canada |
| April 13 | Conversation around Aflame Dayton, Ohio |
| April 22 | Conversation with Paul Holdengraber, JAACC Los Angeles, California |
| April 26-27 | Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Los Angeles, California |
| May 6 | Conversation with Marina Abramovic, UCSB Santa Barbara, California |
| May 27 | Keynote conversation at NAFSA annual conference San Diego, California |
| August 18-23 | Workshop, Modern Elder Academy Santa Fe, New Mexico |
| October | Bali Literature Festival Ubud, Indonesia |
| April 29-May 7, 2026 | Lectures, Gohagan ship Japan-Korea |
Many more engagements are currently in the works.
If you’re interested in hearing Pico Iyer speak, here are a few dates and places to try:
| September 14 | Jaipur Literature Festival Boulder Boulder, Colorado |
| Sept. 16 | Conversation with Katherine Bucknell, Huntington Lib. San Marino, California |
| Sept. 22 | Keynote, Trinity Church Wall Street New York, New York |
| Sept. 23-Oct. 12 | Montgomery Fellow, Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire |
| Sept. 30 | Keynote, Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Oct. 1 | Lecture, Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire |
| Oct. 7 | Roundtable discussion, Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire |
| Oct. 29 | Conversation with Yung Pueblo, UCSB Santa Barbara, California |
| Nov. 15-17 | Mumbai Literature Festival Mumbai, India |
| January 14, 2025 | Conversation around new book, Aflame, Kepler’s Menlo Park, California |
| Jan. 15 | Conversation about Aflame, Book Passage Corte Madera, California |
| Jan. 16 | Conversation around Aflame, Elliott Bay Books Seattle, Washington |
| Jan. 21 | Conversation around Aflame, City of Asylum Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Jan. 22 | Conversation around Aflame, Asia Society New York New York, New York |
| Jan 27 | Aflame, Zen Luminaries Podcast Online |
| Jan 28 | Conversation around Aflame, Vroman’s Books Pasadena, California |
| Jan 30 | Conversation on Aflame, Books and Books and others Online |
| Feb. 23, 2025 | Conversation with Richard Powers, UCSB Santa Barbara, California |
| April 26-27 | Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Los Angeles, California |
| April 28-May 1 | Keynote, Chapman University Orange, California |
| May 6 | Conversation with Marina Abramovic, UCSB Santa Barbara, California |
| August 18-23 | Workshop, Modern Elder Academy Santa Fe, New Mexico |
| October | Bali Literature Festival Ubud, Indonesia |
Many more engagements are currently in the works.
“Leave Your Ideas—and Ideologies—Behind”–an essay on how travel can help us overcome our prejudices, for the new magazine in India, The Nod, May 2024
“Calm Behind the Clamour”–an essay on the new Six Senses, Kyoto and the city around it—Conde Nast Traveller (U.K.), July/August 2024
“Prague’s Second Act”–a longish account of the capital of the Czech Republic for AAA Explorer, July 2024 and Westways, August 2024.
“Awakening to Rain”—an essay to go with the new album, “Migratory,” by Masayoshi Fujita, released August 2024.
“A Singular Man”—a review of Katherine Bucknell’s Christopher Isherwood Inside Out for Air Mail, August 17, 2024.
“How Far Would you Travel for Happiness?”–A rich conversation with Marianna Pogosyan for her Psychology Today blog, posted November 8, 2023.
“Our constant search for Paradise”—a long interview with the TED Radio Hour, broadcast on November 10, 2023
A long and rich e-mail conversation with Caryl Phillips, on migration and exile, in The Palgrave Handbook of European Migration in Literature and Culture—published November 21, 2023.
“The Mahabharata of Literary Festivals”—an essay on the Jaipur Literature Festival for Air Mail, January 27, 2024
“The Truth in Search of Itself”—a review of the powerful book American Mother, by Diane Foley and Colum McCann in Air Mail, February 3, 2024.
“The Deformative Years”—a very personal review of A Very Private School by Charles Spencer for Air Mail, March 17, 2024
“Love and Let Die”– a review of Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, by Nicholas Shakespeare for Air Mail, March 31, 2024
A very brief text for the book of photographs Devotion, by Steve McCurry, published in the U.S. in March 2024 (in Europe December 2023).
If you’re interested in hearing Pico Iyer speak, here are a few dates and places to try:
| April 9 | Conversation for Lauren Groff, UCSB A&L Santa Barbara, California |
| April 11 | Keynote, Convent and Stuart Hall School San Francisco, California |
| April 13 | Conversation for Book Passage Book Group (virtual) Corte Madera, California |
| April 16 | Conversation with Helen Tworkov, Asia Society New York, New York |
| April 20-21 | Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Los Angeles, California |
| April 22 | Conversation with Jim Doti, Chapman University Orange, California |
| April 25 | Isherwood- Bachardy Lecture, Huntington Library San Marino, California |
| April 30 | Conversation with Amanda Gorman, UCSB A&L Santa Barbara, California |
| May 4 | Commencement Address, Lewis and Clark College Portland, Oregon |
| July 8-13 | Modern Elder Academy workshop with Chip Conley Santa Fe, New Mexico |
| September 13-15 | Jaipur Literature Festival Boulder Boulder, Colorado |
| September 16 | Conversation with Katherine Bucknell, Huntington Lib. San Marino, California |
| September 22 | Lecture/Conversation, Trinity Church Wall Street New York, New York |
| Sept 23 – Oct 12 | Montgomery Fellow, Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire |
| Sept 30 | Keynote, Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Nov. 15-17 | Mumbai Literature Festival Mumbai, India |
| October 2025 | Bali Literature Festival Ubud, Indonesia |
Many more engagements are currently in the works.
If you’re interested in hearing Pico Iyer speak, here are a few dates and places to try:
| October 25 | Conversation for UCSB’s Lifelong Learning Initiative Santa Barbara, California |
| October 26 | Conversation with Walter Isaacson for UCSB A&L Santa Barbara, California |
| October 30 | Conversation with the Zen Luminaries series (online) Santa Rosa, California |
| November 6 | Keynote, International Symposium on Stewardship Ottawa, Canada |
| November 9-10 | Keynote, Tatler Gen T Summit Hong Kong |
| November 13 | Conversation for Stephen Batchelor, Musashino U. Kyoto, Japan |
| February 21, 2024 | Conversation for Abraham Verghese, UCSB A&L Santa Barbara, California |
| February 23 | Conversation on haiku for Upaya Zen Center (online) Santa Fe, New Mexico |
| April 9 | Conversation with Lauren Groff, UCSB A&L Santa Barbara, California |
| April 11 | Keynote, Convert and Stuart Hall School San Francisco, California |
| April 13 | Conversation for Book Passage Book Group (virtual) Corte Madera, California |
| April 16 | Conversation with Helen Tworkov, Asia Society New York, New York |
| April 20-21 | Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Los Angeles, California |
| April 22 | Conversation with Jim Doti, Chapman University Orange, California |
| April 25 | Isherwood-Bachardy Lecture, Huntington Museum San Marino, California |
| July 8-13 | Modern Elder Academy workshop with Chip Conley Santa Fe, New Mexico |
| Sept 22 – Oct 12 | Montgomery Fellow, Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire |
Many more engagements are currently in the works.
An hour-long interview with Doug Fabrizio for Radio West on KUER, April 6, 2023.
A long talk with the wonderful editor Melvin McLeod for the Lion’s Roar podcast, April 17, 2023, excerpted in the July/August edition of Lion’s Roar.
“The Man from Everywhere”—a short essay to introduce the latest book of photography from Basil Pao, Carnival of Dreams, April 30, 2023
“The Rain on the Rooftops”—a foreword to the book The Nature of Kyoto: Writers in Kyoto Volume 5. May 2023
“Covid taught me what life might look like after death”–A short essay on my life post-pandemic—Washington Post, June 28, 2023
A talk of more than two hours with the brilliant and penetrating William Green for his podcast “Richer, Wiser, Happier”—July 9, 2023
A 30-minute talk on “The Japanese Art of Happiness” for the KCRW program Life Examined—July 22, 2023
“Medicine for the Mind”—a short Foreword to The Little Zen Book of Healing, by Paula Arai—August 2023.
“Second Thoughts”—an essay on Key West for the anthology, Key West Sketches: Writers at Mile Zero, published in August 2023.
A talk with the wise business mind Mitch Joel for his “Six Pixels of Separation” podcast, broadcast on August 10, 2023
“An Ode to the Pool”—a short riff on swimming-pools, for the Financial Times, August 19, 2023
“We May Believe the Places We Love Will Outlast Us”—a long essay on the fragility of all our monuments, for The Globe & Mail, August 26, 2023
A talk with Sam Harris for his podcast, Waking Up—broadcast on August 29, 2023.
“Ticket to Telluride”—an ode to my greatest cultural highlight of every year, the Telluride Film Festival, for Air Mail, September 2, 2023.
“A Riddle beyond Reckoning”—a short essay on the mystery of my father for the “Hey Pop” series on Substack, September 8, 2023.
“A Cry from the Submerged Life”—a review of J.M. Coetzee’s haunting new novel, The Pole, for Air Mail, September 16, 2023.
“No small world”—a long interview with The Times of India, September 17, 2023
“Casualties of Love”—an essay on Michael Ondaatje for the new anthology of critical writings on the man, Do You Want to be Happy and Write?, published September 25, 2023
“A home that had been with me forever”—a 14-minute audio-essay for Wait What’s “Meditative Story” series, now broadcast on “A Sense of Serenity”—October 1, 2023
“A Cure for our Age of Distraction”–a long essay on Hiroshi Sugimoto for the Daily Telegraph, October 1, 2023.
“The Pilgrim’s Way”–a series of audio-essays for the Waking Up app, released October 2023
“The Sound of Becoming”–an essay on Philip Glass for The Etudes, a celebration of the composer, published October 31, 2023.