Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Those who know author Pico Ayer may know he doesn't have a cell phone, a rare feat for anyone in today's day and age.
I sat down with Pico after he gave his moving talk at TED 2025 to learn more about why not being able to connect with people quickly actually helps him connect with the world more deeply.
We discuss his journey, how TED has transformed the way he looks at ideas, the lessons he's learned from slowing down in a world that's intent on speeding up, and what home, silence, beauty, and ping pong all have in common. Pico, congrats on your fifth TED Talk. Thank you. So you have explored many ideas over the years. Home, stillness, finding beauty in the unknown, even ping pong, I believe.
And this year, of course, silence. Would you say there is a through line besides you being the author and the speaker behind the talks? Such an interesting question. Of course, nobody's ever asked me that before. I don't. I think for me, the excitement of TED is to try and take myself in constantly different directions.
And, you know, I'm always a little embarrassed when I'm at TED because there's so many specialists who are sitting on remarkable knowledge and they've devoted 40 years to studying one thing. Right. And I'm the opposite, as maybe you are. I feel the same way. Yes. For me, the fun of it is to go in different directions every time.
Of course, talking about silence overlaps quite a bit with talking about stillness. And that made me think, oh, I don't want to repeat myself. But something like ping pong was a happy diversion. From your first talk that you gave, I believe in 2013. Yes. How would you say things have grown and how have you grown since then?
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Chapter 2: What insights does Pico Iyer share about silence and stillness?
And yet when I'm on a silent retreat and I'm hearing these much more enduring, ageless sounds of the world around me, I'm freed from my head and my own little plans and anxieties. And I'm also released into a kind of sound that actually fills me with hope and possibility and hope. puts me in place.
I suppose it's the difference between being stuck inside your head and being released to the beauty of the larger world. You mentioned in your talk that silence helps you connect or feel more connected with the world around you. Others might hear this idea and consider it kind of a retreat or isolating.
So in a time where we do feel atomized and disconnected, how might silence or stillness, the idea before it, be tools for connection? Can you draw the line between not speaking and listening and feeling connected? Yes, very much so. Because I think it's only when I separate myself from society and noise and clamor that I can reclaim my humanity and remember what I really care for.
So one of the interesting things I find is that, as I say in parts in my talk, when I go into silence, that's when I really remember the people I care about. And that's when I can actually, to some extent, hear them. When we're in the same room, too much is going on, both sides, for us really to attend to each other.
So actually I see the silence I'm describing as a way to step out of the world so it's better to remember connections and community and compassion. and then come back into the world with a clearer sense of where to go.
Because I find when I'm driving from the bank to the supermarket to the pharmacy, a thousand things are going on in my head, but they're actually keeping me away from what's important and the people I really care about. And so I have to actually separate myself from that noise
partly in my head and partly in the culture, in order to hear my mother, to hear my wife, and to remember what I need to be doing. It's almost like there are a thousand things at any point on a desk or in my head, and so many of them are trivial and some are essential, but in the rush of the world, you can't sift the trivial from the essential.
So you have to step away from the world, and then the essential rises to the top, and you remember this is what I need to attend to.
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Chapter 3: How has TED influenced Pico Iyer's perspective on ideas?
Is there a point at which you recall you realized this silence practice was making a difference for you? Oddly, the first time I went on a retreat, it was instantaneous. I felt liberated and cleansed. Wow. So right away. Yes. And what's striking about that now is that that was in 1991. So I'd never heard of the internet. There were no social media. There were no smartphones.
The world was already... much quieter then than now. And already something in me was feeling that as I was going about my daily life, this can't be the whole of the story. Something is missing. There must be more to my life. There must be more to reality than just going down the freeway to the tax accountant's office and then to the bank. You know, 70 years ago, T.S.
Eliot said, where is the life we have lost in living? I think many of us have this sense now as we're moving very, very fast. We're living to some extent, but our life is somewhere else. And how do we begin to reclaim it?
And we can only reclaim it, to speak to your previous question, by stepping out of the rush and suddenly remembering this is the hidden treasure that we've been neglecting as we're concentrating on the latest TMZ report. Right, right. So... Yeah, it seems like a balm for this time of spiritual malaise. Beautifully said, spiritual malaise. And I think it speaks to a universal longing.
I think most of us feel that there's something out there we're not getting and we don't know how to get it. And I think that's one reason I wanted to share the talk now because I've been staying in this place, as I say, for 34 years, but I've never seen the world so distracted, so divided, and so despairing as right now.
And so for those three reasons, I thought this is the moment I want to share that message. How are you coping with this time of tumult? All the time I've spent in the silent retreat has changed the way I live. So I live in a little apartment in the middle of Japan. I've never used a cell phone, even though I'm a journalist and I travel a lot.
And I've incorporated various practices to try to just clear my head and keep myself close to what really matters. So, for example, instead of killing time, I try to restore time. Sometimes when I'm waiting for my wife to come back from work, just turn off the lights and listen to some music.
So it both cleanses me in a way and it makes me more responsive to my wife when she returns and less distracted and it makes me sleep better and I hope makes me physically healthier as well as emotionally and mentally. And what's your advice for those who can't afford the luxury of going to a retreat regularly? Are there ways to incorporate silence or this practice in our daily lives?
Take a walk every Sunday. Go and meet a friend without your cell phone. Put a mail away message on your email every Saturday or Sunday or both. Or maybe best of all, just sit quietly for 20 minutes every morning in your room, in your home, without your devices to set a tone for the day. And I think just making that little clearing makes the clutter that's on its way much fresher.
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Chapter 4: What are the differences between silence and stillness in Pico's talks?
Genomics pioneer Robert Green says many parents want their healthy newborn's DNA screened for diseases that may or may not show up later in life. There is an argument that knowledge is power, and many families would like to know everything, whether it's treatable or not. The debate over revealing the secrets in babies' DNA. That's next time on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR.
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