Pico Iyer | Learning from Silence

What can silence teach us in an age of relentless distraction? Drawing on his bestselling memoir Learning from Silence, Pico Iyer reflects on 3 decades of periodic retreats at a Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, California, where stillness became a means towards kindness, resilience and joy. Weaving together his memoir, philosophy and lived experience in a conversation with journalist Julia Baird, he explores solitude, not as an escape from the world, but as a path to deeper connection – with ourselves, others and life’s most profound questions.