
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!
“Why the Dalai Lama Continues to be a Counselor to Us All”—an essay on the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday, published in Time, July 5, 2025.
A curated set of 10 Favorite Movies for Galerie.com, July 31, 2025.
“The Gospel According to Matthew”—a long review of Matthew McConaughey’s Poems & Prayers, published in Air Mail, September 6, 2025.
A long, rich conversation with Nathan Gardels on how the world has changed—and hasn’t—since Video Night in Kathmandu, for the Berggruen Institute’s Futurology podcast, broadcast on September 16, 2025.
“Our Common Global Humanity”—an extended essay on the work of Steve McCurry, to introduce a new book of his images, from Artika Press—September 16, 2025.
“The Lone Seabird”—a review of True Nature, the new biography of Peter Matthiessen, run in Air Mail, September 27, 2025.
“How to find Calm in a World on Fire”—an interview with Dan Harris on his Ten Per Cent Happier podcast—October 8, 2025.
“The Unspoken Space We Share”—a short essay on the “ma” of conversation, written for Ma, a book published by Tuttle, October 2025.
“Matter of Faith”—an essay on the spirit of pilgrimage for the 15th anniversary edition of Conde Nast Traveller India, November 2025.
“The Depth of Simplicity”—a long essay on Michael Mandapati’s collection of kilims to introduce the new book Kilims, Warp & Weft, published by Hali, November 15, 2025.
“Time Out of Time”—an essay on Bhutan to introduce the volume Bhutan: Portrait of a Kingdom, with a Foreword by Her Majesty Jetsun Pema Wangchuck, and featuring photographs by His Majesty King Jigme and ten others, published in November 2025.
“Flow Zone”—a long essay on Yamanaka Onsen and Fukui-ken, two overlooked treasures in Japan, for Conde Nast Traveller (U.K.), December 2025.
“The Zarafshon Parkside Hotel, Samarkand”—a short piece on my Discovery of 2025 (and the Disappointment, Bali) for the Financial Times, December 6, 2025.
“Pico Supreme”—An interview with Santa Barbara Film Festival Director Roger Durling on appearing in the movie Marty Supreme, run in The Santa Barbara Independent, December 11, 2025.
A small part as Ram Sethi, opposite Timothee Chalamet’s Marty, in Josh Safdie’s film Marty Supreme, released by A24 on December 25, 2025
“Peace Be With You”—a short but lavishly illustrated essay on seeing Japan through its three Aman properties, published in Air Mail, December 27, 2025.
“Naoshima and Teshima”—a tiny piece on Japan’s art islands for a short collection of tributes to cultural pilgrimage, Financial Times, December 27, 2025.
“Silence, the Universal Medicine”—the closing talk at the TED Annual Conference in Vancouver, delivered on April 11, 2025 and posted online on January 6, 2026.
“How a Travel-Writer Became Timothee Chalamet’s Ping-Pong Nemesis”—a Guest Essay on acting in Marty Supreme for The New York Times, January 9, 2025.
“Our Unseen Sanctuary”—a long essay on an imaginary place for the 30th anniversary issue of Outlook, published January 21, 2026.
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.
“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).
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.
“The Vedanta Temple: Our Second, Deeper Home”—a short essay for the Santa Barbara Independent, October 15, 2022
“A Man of Parts”--a review of A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carre, for Air Mail, December 3, 2022
A discussion of le Carre, on “Monday Meeting,” the Air Mail podcast, December 5, 2022
My annual little essay on the Discovery of the Year (the Dining Room in the Park Hyatt, Zanzibar) and Disappointment of the Year (the Seychelles)—for the Financial Times, December 11, 2022
“Heaven’s Door”--a short essay on Iran, excerpted in Harper’s, February 2023 issue and online as of December 19, 2022.
“Autumn Radiance”—an essay on a week in Hanover, New Hampshire for the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, January 2023.
“The Holy Mountain”—a short essay on Koyasan, in Japan, and the lessons of the pandemic, in Oprah Quarterly, January 2023
“Paradise Found”--an interview with Jim Kelly for Air Mail, January 7, 2023.
The Half Known Life—a book on paradise and the many parts of life we can never fathom—published by Riverhead Books in New York (and Bloomsbury U.K. and Penguin India), January 10, 2023.
A podcast with James Shaheen of Tricycle, online and excerpted in the February issue of the magazine. January 11, 2023
A rich conversation with brilliant Elyse Loehnen for the podcast “Pulling the Thread,” January 12, 2023.
“On the Lake”—an excerpt from The Half Known Life set in Kashmir, Lit Hub January 11, 2023
A very long conversation with the remarkable Jenna Abdou, for the “33 Voices” podcast, January 12, 2023.
“Stay Resolved”--an audio-essay included in the TED Radio Hour, January 13 2023
“The Trouble with Paradise”—an Opinion piece for The New York Times, January 14, 2023
A long essay on Iran for Toronto’s Globe & Mail, January 14, 2023
A long conversation with Jonathan Bastian for the KCRW program, “Life Examined,” January 22, 2023
“In Conversation with Caryl Phillips”—a long e-mail conversation with novelist Caryl Phillips on migration, exile, writing and home. Granta, January 23, 2023
A conversation with Katherine May for 5 X 15, January 24, 2022
A conversation with Isabel Pinner for San Francisco City Arts and Lectures, broadcast on NPR, February 5, 2023
A conversation with Lori McGarry for the Real Fiction Radio podcast, broadcast February 12, 2023.
“Varanasi, India’s holy `City of Death’ ”—an excerpt from The Half Known Life published in BBC Travel, February 16, 2023.
“Notes from an Author”—a short essay on Koyasan for National Geographic Traveller, February 16, 2023
A rich and literary conversation with the brilliant Cal Flyn, for the Royal Society of Literature, February 21, 2023.
A conversation on Japan with Dan Riley for the Keep Talking podcast, broadcast on March 18, 2023.
“Things are Never as Dark as they Seem”—a long interview with Pooja Pande in The Los Angeles Review of Books, March 19, 2023
“Staycations”—a short essay for The New York Times, April 4, 2023
Around Deer’s Slope”--an essay on walking for the book Where My Feet Fall, published by William Collins in Britain and excerpted in Orion, as “Never the Same River Twice,” March 16, 2022
“At a Loss”--an essay on Juzo Itami’s film The Funeral, for a new Criterion Collection DVD and Blu-Ray released on May 17, 2022, and adapted into an essay, “Last Rites and Comic Flights”, appearing in the Summer 2022 issue of The American Scholar.
“Open Borders, Fresh Perspective”—an essay on the art-island of Naoshima, for the Financial Times, June 18, 2022.
“A Broken Town”--a short piece on Yemen for Lion’s Roar, July 2022.
Essays on the four seasons in Japan for a catalogue and exhibition, “Spirit of Shizen” produced by the Luxembourg Museum of Natural History, July 2022
“Kuwait from On High”—an essay on Imagine a City, by Mark Vanhoenacker, for Air Mail, June 25, 2022.
“Epiphany”—a long essay on Ethiopia and spiritual transport for Chris Rainier’s book of photographs, Sacred, September 2022.
“A Journal of the Plague Year”—an essay on Lucy by the Sea, by Elizabeth Strout, for Air Mail, September 17, 2022
“Mysteries in Plain Sight”—an essay on the photographs of Tom Sandberg, appearing in a new book called “Tom Sandberg,” put out by Aperture Press and excerpted in The Observer, October 16, 2022.
The debut podcast for Satori magazine in Britain, with Lawrence Rice, October 28, 2022.
“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.
