Pico Iyer

speaker

117 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 17 Jul

Pico Iyer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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TED Radio Hour · Searching for paradise · 17 Jul 2026 podcast

And for centuries, Persians, as most residents of Iran were then known, had cultivated detailed and ravishing visions of paradise in their walled gardens as emblems of enticements towards the higher garden that awaits the fortunate.

But what gave particular power to the world's largest theocracy right now was that so many competing visions of paradise seemed to be crisscrossing every hour here with furious intensity.

Exactly.

The ruling clerics in Iran currently have a very precise notion of paradise.

They believe that paradise belongs only to the faithful and most of all to those martyrs who give their lives to Islam.

And of course so many of the Iranian citizens have a very different notion of paradise.

I think a much more worldly one, taking place behind closed doors of maybe sex and drugs and rock and roll and all the delights of the earth.

And meanwhile...

I think both the rulers and the regular citizens are quoting the great Sufi poets like Rumi and Hafez who remind us that paradise exists only within.

So Iran seemed like the perfect convergence of many different ways of thinking about paradise and maybe a way of reminding me that sometimes it's notions of paradise that get in the way of our finding it.

Yes.

I mean, my very first night in Iran in the great holy city of Mashhad, I had spent a wonderful day seeing the official sites with my guide and my driver.

But I wanted to see the place unchaperoned.

But instead... I slipped down to the taxi desk in the hotel of my lobby, and I asked them if they could find somebody to take me into the heart of town.

And very quickly, a young man, very friendly, in his late 20s, speaking pretty good English, led me off into his battered compact.

You come for the festival?

He asked.

Festival?

This week, the driver explained.

The anniversary of Imam Reza.

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