Pico Iyer Audio & Video

Watch this 15-minute TED talk by travel writer Pico Iyer on the art of stillness. As we head into another busy year, Iyer urges us to take time out to go nowhere and reflect on our day to day experiences.

Paul Theroux in conversation with Pico Iyer discussing his book, "Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads," at Live Talks Los Angeles on October 13, 2015.

When Pico Iyer decided to go to Kyoto and live in a monastery, he did so to learn about Zen Buddhism from the inside, to get to know Kyoto, one of the loveliest old cities in the world, and to find out something about Japanese culture today…

A follow up to Pico Iyer’s essay “The Joy of Quiet,” The Art of Stillness considers the unexpected adventure of staying put and reveals a counter-intuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug.

Recent technology has made our lives much brighter, longer, fuller and healthier than ever before; but how can we ensure that we're not drowning in information and still have offline lives as well?

Pico Iyer is one of our most eloquent explorers of what he calls the "inner world" - in himself and in the 21st century world at large. The journalist and novelist travels the globe from Ethiopia to North Korea and lives in Japan.

From "one of the most soulful and perceptive writers of our time" (Brain Pickings): a journey through competing ideas of paradise to see how we can live more peacefully in an ever more divided and distracted world.