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“On Travel-Writing”—an interview with Rick Steves, broadcast on public radio stations across the U.S. on November 7, 2021

“The Future of Hope”—a conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert broadcast for the “On Being” show and podcast on public radio stations across the U.S. on November 18, 2021

“Navigating the Poles”—an Opinion piece on traveling between Japan and the U.S. during the pandemic, The Los Angeles Times, November 30, 2021

“The Magic of Jan Morris”–a review of the classic historian-traveler’s final book, Allegorizings, for Air-Mail, December 18, 2021.

“Travel after COVID Lockdowns: In Search of Wonder”–a short essay on The Year in Travel for the Wall Street Journal’s Year in Review section, December 10, 2021

“Postcard from Kyoto”—a brief essay on the holiday season during COVID-19 in Japan for the Sunday Times (London), December 26, 2021

“The Good Earth”—a long essay on travel in the age of Apocalypse, for Outlook India, January 7, 2022.

“How To Take a Life-Changing Trip”—a year-long class in seven modules for TED, throughout 2022

A talk with Hindu nun Pravrajika Vrajaprana for the public-radio program, “Life Examined,” broadcast on January 15, 2022.

“Sane, Economy Class Asian-Americans”—a review of the book Joan is Okay, by Weike Wang, for Air-Mail, January 22, 2021.

“Alone in Kyoto”—an essay on the joy of being in an ancient capital with no international visitors—Financial Times, February 5, 2022

“Half a Century of Travel”–a long essay on how the traveling world has changed since 1974, for The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2022.

“To my Lost Trishaw Driver”—A letter to a kind and touching soul briefly met in Burma in the collection Letters to a Stranger, edited by Colleen Kinder (Algonquin Books), March 2022.

“My Flights from the Real”—a short essay on my near-fatal love of illusion, for Lion’s Roar, April/May 2022.

“A Scientist of Sorrow”–a review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun for Air-Mail, February 27, 2021

“All That We Can’t Leave Behind”—an essay on the photographs of Robert Voit, to accompany the exhibition “Aequilibrium” in Berlin, March, 2021.

An imaginative essay on “Why I Write” and a long interview on writing for the inaugural issue of Good River Review, April 2021

“Truth in Fiction”–an essay on the books that for me are the deepest spiritual texts, for Lion’s Roar, May 2021

A 25-minute talk with tennis legend and broadcaster Patrick McEnroe, for his podcast, “Holding Court”—June 4, 2021

“Age of Invention”—a brief profile of hotel-creating visionary Adrian Zecha in Travel + Leisure, July 2021

“The Joy Inside Sorrow”–an essay on Georg Frideric Handel for an anthology of pieces on music, Ways of Hearing (Princeton University Press), September 2021, excerpted in Lit Hub on September 29, 2021

“My Guidebook to Japan”—a long essay on Henry David Thoreau, for the anthology Now Comes Good Sailing (Princeton University Press), and excerpted in The American Scholar, October 2021.

 “Chi ha dimenticato vuole transcinarci in un mondo di muri”–An interview with La Repubblica on the 75^th anniversary of the dropping of a bomb on Hiroshima—August 6, 2020

“The Best Reason to Go to College”—an Op-Ed on the beginning of the new school year, for The New York Times, September 7, 2020

“The Power of the Everyday”–an introduction to In Search of Elsewhere, a fresh collection of works by the photographer Steve McCurry, September 2020.

“The Best Conversations of my Life”–a long essay on the sharing and receiving of books, in the anthology, The Gifts of Reading, September 2020 (excerpted in The Australian).

“A City Built on Books”–a long essay on the 25^th anniversary of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, for The Los Angeles Times, October 11, 2020

“Making a Life, Not Just a Living:–an Op-Ed for The Times of India on the coronavirus season, October 16, 2020

“The Playboy Philosopher”–a review of Matthew McConaughey’s memoir, Greenlights, in Air Mail, October 24, 2020

“Spirituality, Wisdom and What Sustains us”—an interview with Patheos, October 29, 2020.

“Empathy”—a discussion on an essential virtue with Pravrika Vrajaprana, Vedanta nun, on “Life Examined” on KCRW-FM radio, October 31, 2020.

“The Holding Pattern”—an essay on being a traveler in a world without travel, Conde Nast Traveler, November 2020

“Solitude”—a brief, musical essay for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and its current season of virtual concerts, SOUND/STAGE, November 6, 2020

“All I have is this moment right now, and I need to do deepest justice to it”—the first part of a long interview with The Times of India, run on the Op-Ed page, November 9, 2020

“In Praise of Jan Morris”—a short essay remembering a mighty writer, The Guardian, November 23, 2020

 “From Babbling to Listening”—an interview for the Op-Ed page of The Times of India, December 12, 2020

A tiny piece on Antarctica, for the annual collection of Travel Writers’ Discoveries of the year—Financial Times, December 12, 2020

“Absent Foreigners, Kyoto Carries On”—a short piece on Kyoto in November, mid-pandemic, for The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 2020.

“Still Life”—a short essay on traveling around my neighborhood, for Kyoto Journal, Issue 99, December 2020.

“Sacred Place”—an essay on the work of photographer Balarama Heller, in Aperture, Winter 2020.

A remembrance of writer and friend Barry Lopez, Orion, January 11, 2021.

‘The Wonders Close to Home”–a long essay on the joys of traveling close to home, for Westways, January 2020.

“Kyoto”–a love-letter to Japan’s ancient capital, for Vanity Fair (U.K.) March 2021.

“Beneath Us, Beyond Us, Inside Us”—a long introductory essay to the book Masks, by National Geographic photographer Chris Rainier, October 2019

“The Shock of the Old”—an essay on the Naoshima project for the Benesse Art Site Naoshima newsletter, October 2019

“Relative Values”–an essay on Japan and its different relation to reality, for the Times Literary Supplement, November 22, 2019.

“The Newest New, The Oldest Old”—an essay on Koyasan and Koshien, Silver Kris, December 2019

“The Calm Before the Storm”—a letter from Hong Kong in Air Mail, December 7, 2019

“It’s Almost 2020. Have We Really Gotten Wiser?”—an Op-Ed piece for The New York Times, December 23, 2019

“The Dead Prime Ministers’ Society”—an essay on Eton in Air Mail, January 4, 2020

“How to be Cool and Warm At Once”—a tribute to the late Sonny Mehta, for Air Mail January 11, 2020

“The Light All Around Us”–a short essay on the photographic work of Robert Adams—Aperture, February 2020

An interview on the Virus moment for the Sunday Times of India, April 5, 2020– Read here

An interview with Mint, April 15, 2020– Read here

“Joyful participation in a world of sorrow”–A conversation with Cheryl Strayed for the Sugar Calling podcast hosted by The New York Times, April 15, 2020

“Contemplation in isolation”—A conversation with Jonathan Bastian on the pilot episode of “Foxhole” on KCRW radio station, April 25, 2020

“On Returning”–An essay on how and why travel is more important than ever, in Conde Nast Traveler, May/June 2020

“How a stopover at Tokyo Airport changed my life:”—an essay for The Guardian, May 16, 2020

“We cannot function without travel—an Op-Ed for the Globe & Mail, May 30, 2020

“Pico Iyer on the secret of immersive travel”—an essay for BBC.com, June 12, 2020

“The Origin of Paradise”—an essay on Iran for Bloomberg Business Week, June 29, 2020

For an unusually rich, searching and fresh interview, please read “A Friend Afar,” by the exceptional Austrian writer and journalist, Simon Schreyer: – Read here