“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.

 “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

“Japan still inhabits its own ancestral universe”–An essay on Japan for TIME magazine, April 22, 2019

“With New Emperor, Japan Enters the Era of `Joyful Harmony’ “—An Op-Ed on the ascent of a new Emperor in Japan, World Post, Berggruen Institute—April 26, 2019

“The beautiful art-filled Japanese islands left behind by the modern world”—An essay on Naoshima and Teshima for the Daily Telegraph, April 28, 2019

“Does California’s commitment to happiness end up leaving us bereft”—An Op-Ed piece on California and Japan for the Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2019

“The Best of Who We Are”–A long essay on the Dalai Lama on the occasion of his 84^th birthday for Lion’s Roar, July 2019

Introduction to “Pyongyang: Model City”—The preface to a book about the architecture of North Korea’s showpiece capital, published by Thames & Hudson in London, July 2019

This Could be Home—a short book-length essay on Raffles Hotel and Singapore for Epigram Books in Singapore and London, July 2019. Excerpted in Air-Mail, August 3, 2019.

“What Ping-Pong taught me about life”—the opening talk at the second TED Summit, on July 21, 2019, in Edinburgh, posted on TED.com on August 23, 2019.

A Beginner’s Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations: a new book from Alfred A. Knopf in New York and Toronto, Bloomsbury in London and Penguin India in New Delhi, September 2019

“How To Travel”—a short film made for CNN’s Great Big Story series, airing on September 15, 2019.

Inventory—an interview with the Financial Times magazine, September 6, 2019

“The Beauty of the Ordinary”—an Op-Ed essay in The New York Times on the coming of autumn, September 22, 2019

“Rituals of the Fast-Moving World”—a long essay on rituals in the age of cross-planetary movement, for En Route, October 2019

“Archaeology of the Future”–an essay on Hiroshi Sugimoto for the White Light Festival in New York, October 2019

“Stillness”—a long interview in the magazine Shawati, October 2019.

“A Land Apart”—a short essay on why Japan is the Destination of 2019, in Travel & Leisure, December 2018.

“Home, Sweet, Temporary Home”—an essay on Tenzing Dakpa’s series of photographs, “The Hotel,” for Aperture magazine, Winter 2018.

“The Reel World”—a short essay on seeing movies around the world for Airbnb Magazine, January 2019.

“In the Realm of the Gods”—an essay on traveling around Greece for the New York Times T Magazine, April 2019