A conversation with celebrated essayist, novelist, and travel writer Pico Iyer as he discusses his new book, “The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise,” with Robert Mintz, scholar of Japanese art and deputy director, art & programs at the Asian Art Museum. Using the book as a starting point, they contemplated Iyer’s travels and the lessons gleaned from a lifetime of exploring the globe and observing cultures, resting on the question of how we might find peace amid collective suffering.

Pico Iyer is the acclaimed and bestselling author of more than a dozen books, translated into twenty-three languages. His journalism has appeared in Time, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, and more than 250 other periodicals worldwide. His TED talks have been viewed over eleven million times. He divides his time between Japan and a Benedictine hermitage in California.