Silence and stillness, the universal medicine | with Pico Iyer, Elise Hu

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0:35Learn more at Toyota.com, the new all-electric family. Toyota, let's go places.

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2:59This is Ted Helt, a podcast from Ted, and I'm your host, Dr. Shoshana Ungerleiter. Lately, it feels like my brain rarely gets a break. Stress can be an ongoing struggle and one that most of us have a tough time with at one time or another. Even when I'm resting, there's always something buzzing in the background. Notifications and conversations and endless scrolls that translate into anxieties about what just happened or what might happen next. It turns out over time, that constant mental chatter does more than just distract us. It wears us down. It affects our focus, our sleep, even how we show up for the people we care about.

3:41We talk a lot about physical health, but mental recovery often gets treated like a luxury instead of something truly essential. The truth is, your mind needs space the same way your body needs rest after a workout. Without it, stress builds quietly and steadily. Today's TED speaker explores what the alternative to all that noise looks like, the nourishing power of silence. In this talk, author Pico Iyer invites us to rethink how we care for our inner world. In Pico's view, you don't need a complicated routine or a wellness trend to reset your mind. Instead, he advocates for the lasting impact of a well-curated moment of silence.

4:23And he offers surprisingly practical steps to feel clearer, calmer, and more grounded starting today. And now, Pico Iyer's TED Talk.

4:38One evening, I was fast asleep in our tiny two-room apartment when suddenly the phone began to ring. So I stumbled across the darkened space and I picked up the receiver and I heard a strange voice telling me that my father had been rushed into the hospital. Naturally, I went to be by his side. And for 14 days and nights, my mother and I sat right next to him, urging him on. But one quiet Sunday morning, the zigzagging line on the screen next to his bed flattened out, and two men in black came to carry my father away. And I suddenly realized, as my parents' only child, it was now all up to me to console my grieving mother, to organize the memorial service and the obituary, to notify friends, to alert the banks.

5:40It was really the busiest time I've known. So what did I do? Well, one morning, when I was sure that my mother was well looked after, I got into my car and I drove for four hours along narrow, winding roads up the Californian coastline. And I got out in a place of thrumming silence, high above the sea and sat on a bench overlooking the water. I let my anxious thoughts recede and gave myself over to everything around me, the bells tolling now and then down the road, the water pooling around the rocks, the bees buzzing around the lavender, the wind whistling through the pampas grass. Finally, after two hours completely washed clean by this kind of living silence, I got back into my car and drove home knowing exactly what I had to do and say.

6:43I trust the deepest kind of silence because it doesn't leave room for argument. Let me put that differently, it's hard to doubt what hasn't been said. Silence doesn't ask us to prove or disprove a thing. Words so often cut us in two. I believe this and you believe that. I voted for that person, you voted for this one. I know I'm in the right, which means you must be in the wrong. but when we're joined together in a moment of silence we're united somewhere far deeper than our assumptions or our ideologies and I know many of you find this through yoga or meditation or other such disciplines but for any of us who finds those a little daunting or difficult the beauty of silence is it's available to everyone wherever you happen to be And in this world that feels ever more divided and despairing, nothing gives me greater hope than whatever silence we can find and share.

7:54You all know it's not always like this. I'm sure many of you have been on the receiving end of a sullen silence, a threatening silence, a silence that breaks your heart open in a room that's suddenly empty. Unfortunately, most of us know how to make silence a weapon or a shield, to draw somebody out or to draw her in. Where were you last night? The silence that follows can be worse than a lie and even than the truth. But the silence I'm talking about is something positive and alive that you can almost touch. For me, it's like stepping out of your social skyscraper self and wandering out into a vast open meadow, getting out of your head and coming back to your senses.

8:51Just about all of us are bombarded by more agitation and distraction than we know what to do with, and it's intensifying with every passing moment. and all we're crying out for is a way to cut through the noise. Sirens down on the street, the updates streaming in, those drills constructing yet another hundred-story high-rise, the chatter in our heads. We can't hear ourselves think. We can't even hear what that friend is saying. Somebody's cell phone is ringing. Sorry, I've got to take this. Did you hear what just happened in the Middle East last night? the airwaves fill with curses and opinions and predictions and judgments, and all we're longing for is some blessed silence.

9:40I've been lucky enough for almost half a lifetime now, 34 years, to find a kind of pulsing silence by going to stay for two weeks or two days or even in the wake of my father's death, two hours in a Catholic retreat house, which is funny because I'm not even a Christian and I'm not really a religious person. But as soon as I step into that wide awake silence, all the worries that have been clacking away at me on the long drive up, all the plans and debates and arguments, they all fall away. And I can hear myself not think. Better than that, I can be filled up with everything around me that's much larger than I will ever be.

10:27the breeze and the birdsong and the receding hoosh of the ocean down below. I notice things that I would never see when my mind is filled with words, the light on the water or those rabbits scuffling through the undergrowth. And of course, it's easiest of all if you're in a beautiful natural setting, but even if you're in a busy city, just step into a church or sit quietly in one corner of your room without your devices for 20 minutes and you can taste something of the same. We're really most alive when we're silent because we're most responsive to everything around us. And after I tried this medicine of sitting quietly a few times, I noticed something strange.

11:18I was thinking much more fondly about my friends when I wasn't saying a word. In fact, often they seemed closer to me when I was sitting in silence than when they were talking to me in the same room. I could also register exactly what I should be doing six months from now, which is precisely what is usually drowned out when my monkey mind is fretting about what I should do six minutes from now. I really feel that the deepest part of us lies beyond all words. And again, I know this isn't 100 % guaranteed. Sometimes when I make that four-hour drive up to the retreat house, all I hear all night long is the rain pattering on the roof and the aged heater groaning in the winter cold and the very foundations of the cabin in which I'm sitting, shaking in the wind.

12:17But silence so reliably offers me a sense of release that I realize it's the best investment I will ever make. Because when reality makes a house call, as it will more than once in every life, when suddenly the phone does begin to ring in the middle of the night or nurses race into the room to feel for a pulse, The only thing you have to draw upon is your inner savings account, which for me really consists of such inner resources as you've gathered probably just by sitting quietly alone. And I realize this can all sound a little otherworldly, but to me it's as practical as going to the health club, the emotional or mental health club.

13:07Silence doesn't ask me to believe anything or to fret about non-believers. And it really touches something inside me that no scripture can ever reach. When your mind is silent, wrote Thomas Merton, who as a monk lived on closest terms with silence for 27 years, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real. Your phone is ringing right now, I'm sure. Cable news is reporting some breaking development. Talk radio is filling up with responses to that development. You're worried about where you have to be this afternoon. You're fretting about why Susan said that hurtful thing to you last night.

13:52I hear you. But when you fall in love, or when somebody you love dies, or when you step out into that sunrise, the truest words that come to you may be none at all. We're all worried, as we should be, about the climate crisis and wars and technologies that are racing outside our control. But not far away is a place where debates are beside the point and where actually we gather the reserves we need to deal with wildfires and the refugee crisis and shattered economies. A place where we hear an intelligence that isn't artificial at all. So take a deep breath and step for a moment or two hours into a place where no words are required.

14:48Nothing bad can come of it, and something good, possibly very helpful, may likely emerge. Maybe we can just all try this together by joining in a long moment of saying nothing.

15:26After a long week of words, what a moment to share. Thank you so very much. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. There's a particular kind of joy that comes from a really good workout. When your body feels free, your mind clears, and you remember why movement matters. Peloton built the cross-training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, to help you find that feeling more consistently. Peloton IQ personalizes your workouts, plans your sessions, tracks them, corrects your form, and offers the kind of guidance that helps you unlock new versions of yourself over time. And because real fitness isn't just about running, the Cross Training Tread Plus features a swivel screen that lets you move seamlessly from a treadmill run to strength training, on the floor, one smooth spin, no break in momentum.

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16:36This episode is sponsored by Toyota. One of the most interesting parts of being human is that we're all a little different. Different preferences, different priorities, different ways of seeing the world. And ideally, the things we use should reflect that. Toyota's new all-electric lineup is built as a family, but not a uniform one. Each vehicle has its own personality, from the sleek, expressive design of the CHR to the more rugged feel of the BZ woodland. It's not about standing out for the sake of it. It's about finding something that actually feels like you. Learn more at Toyota.com, the new all-electric family.

17:10Toyota, let's go places.

17:22That was Pico Iyer at the 2025 TED conference. If Pico's talk left you wanting to put your phone down and stare out a window for a while, that's a good thing. If it also left you curious to hear more about his philosophy of science, well, you're in for a treat today. After he left the TED stage, TED Talks Daily host Elise Hu sat down with Pico to dig deeper into his big ideas. I'm excited to share their conversation about how he finds quiet in a hyperactive world. And believe it or not, how a previous TED Talk he gave about ping pong somehow led him to be cast in the 2025 Josh Softee film, Marty Supreme.

18:02Here's Elise Hu and Pico Iyer in conversation. 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.

18:44And I'm the opposite, as maybe you are as a journalist. 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, 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, how would you say things have grown and how have you grown since? TED has changed my life in all kinds of ways and opened so many doors and made me think much more about how to shape an argument and how to talk to an audience.

19:20I think that first talk was about how so many of us have many homes. And of course that is intensifying with every passing moment. And I think that's a really happy development because I think the big change since 2013 is that so many larger institutions and governments are trying to push back at that. And I feel nationalism is on the rise partly because it's on the run. So although people are trying to push us back into the past more and more furiously, I think what I was talking about is only intensifying and black and white divisions are dissolving, actually. Yeah. How do you explain this moment then?

19:55Is it a backlash, would you say, this nationalistic or authoritarian rises that we've seen in various parts of the world and not just the United States? Would you say it's a backlash to more and more migration and more immigration that's happening globally? Exactly. People are unsettled because all the clear lines of the past are dissolved. It's as if everything used to be in nice boxes and now it's a Jackson Pollock canvas and we don't know what to make of anyone or anything. And so it is disconcerting. But I think it's a lost cause to try to move back. What is the difference between your talk about stillness versus silence this time around?

20:33They arise from the same feeling that the world is moving at the furious rate and that humans were never designed to live at a pace determined by machines. And we're all longing just to clear out some space in our heads and our days. But my talk on silence, as you know, was very much rooted on one particular experience and practical tip I've crafted for myself of going to this silent retreat place again and again more than 100 times over 34 years. And so the stillness one was almost like describing the predicament that we're all facing. And this is perhaps an attempt to offer an answer. And I don't expect anyone to do what I have done.

21:14But my hope is in mentioning one thing that I found useful, others will find their equivalence. So for me, the first was almost like a diagnosis. And this one is more like offering some medicine. The way if I find Tylenol extra strength really works well for me, I'll tell my friends, oh, you should try it. You've got a headache. This is equivalent. And just to be clear, silence doesn't mean no sound completely. Obviously, the noise of the world continues around us. So how do you determine noise that's actually appropriate or helpful and useful versus noise that kind of gets in the way? I love that question because it hadn't struck me until you asked it that you're absolutely right.

21:55It's about choosing what we want to listen to and what we sleepwalk past. So as you say, when I'm on silent retreat, actually I'm hearing the water pounding around the rocks below and I'm hearing the birds singing and I'm hearing the bells turning. Actually, what I don't hear when I'm usually listening to the chatter in my head and updates are coming in and the radio is reporting some breaking development. And most of that makes me feel powerless and hopeless. And yet when I'm on a silence 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.

22:34And I'm also released into a kind of sound that actually fills me with hope and possibility and 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?

23:14Yes, 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 of 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.

23:56because 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.

24:29So 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. Is there a point at which you recall you realize 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.

25:08Something 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. 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.

25:42Right, right. 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?

26:16All 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.

26:56And 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. I noticed my challenge to myself every day is to see how long I can go before going online.

27:39Because as soon as I'm online, it's like being in Times Square on New Year's Eve. And before that, I'm quite clear and calm and uncluttered in my thinking. So I try to go as long as I can. But of course, as you say, with little kids and jobs and other things, most people can't afford to go a long time. But I think 20 minutes is a really good investment. And it's what I think of, as I say in my talk, as an inner savings account. And once you make that deposit, that's what you can draw upon when things become really difficult, as they will, in every day, probably, and in every life. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One.

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30:18Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. All right. Before we wrap, we have some rapid fire questions that we're asking. All right. What does innovation or a good idea look like to you? Something that draws upon the wisdom of the past. I think we can only see what's new if we have a strong sense of what has happened and what is old. What would you say is the merit to distilling big ideas into something like a TED Talk? That they're portable. You can carry them in your head. I can't carry a 300-page book in my head. I can carry a 10-minute talk. That makes sense. On the flip side, are there dangers to breaking something down into something so portable?

31:04There are dangers in breaking something down into something so small only if you forget that the 10-minute talk is an opening. It's not the first word and the last word. It's a chance for you to take this idea and expand on it or elaborate upon it. So remember that the 10-minute talk is like a suggestion rather than the entire portrait. Yeah, it could be a starting point. Exactly. And for a lot of our speakers, it's a starting point to what then becomes a 300-page book, right? Yes, yes. Okay. What is something new that you brought into your life in 2025 that wasn't in existence before, that you didn't do before?

31:39Through most of my life, as you know, I've traveled a huge amount. And that's been my way of looking around the corner. Now I travel less, so I try and challenge myself by doing things I never would have done before. So in recent months, including 2025, I acted in a big movie, which is so something I'm qualified to do. I thought, if nothing else, it'll make me see movies differently, which it has. And then I drove across the West to a place in a New Mexican desert to engage in a very intense, intimate psychological workshop. It's exactly the kind of thing I ran away from. And so I thought that's the reason I should run towards it.

32:13In both cases, it was like traveling to a foreign country. Okay, fantastic. Did you play yourself or did you have to play a different role? I did have to play a different role. And now it hadn't occurred to me until this very moment. why did a major director suddenly cast me, and I have no acting experience, he'd seen a TED Talk of mine. No way. And so he cast me on the basis of the person he imagined from the TED Talk. And I hope that what he imagined was very different from the real me because he cast me as a very, very stuffy kind of English guy from the 1950s. So I hope that's not entirely typecasting.

32:52So TED speakers don't even realize that their TED Talks could be audition videos. Yes. I mean, to go back to your very first question, I've been amazed at the things that have come to my life through my TED Talks. Never in a million years would I imagine, not just invitations to speaking, but people who want to use sentences for my TED Talk in an ad or suddenly getting a call to be in a big movie. It sounds like quite an adventure. Quite an adventure. This conference is going to, as it has the last couple of years, focus a lot on AI. For you, is there anything about the conversation about AI that's missing?

33:28Or is there something kind of a dimension of it that we're not talking about? You know, I speak from a position of huge ignorance, and I know less than probably everybody at this conference about AI. But I'm glad when many of us stress the many things that humans can do that it will be very, very hard for machines to replicate, such as surprise ourselves and go off book or offline or whatever. So I am less worried about AI's threats, at least to what I do, in terms of reading and writing than some people might be. Because I feel they can always catch the letter, but not so easily the spirit. And so people have sent me AI versions of a Picoaya essay.

34:09And of course, it's a very, very good copy. But I feel that any reader could sense something that's missing. The humanity of it. Or some indefinable quality. You know, they could get all the words, but they couldn't get that. And if they don't have that, they don't really have me. Yeah. Is there a regret you have or a mistake that you've made that's really taught you something? Every mistake. I feel that way too. Yes, has taught me something. And therefore, I don't have a regret because I was always doing the best. I was trying to do the best at the time. And I would usually get things wrong. But for that reason, I don't regret any mistake because without the mistakes, I wouldn't have evolved beyond those mistakes.

34:49Yeah, yeah. If we metabolize those past struggles or mistakes, they become great lessons, right? Yes, yes, yes. All right. Pico Iyer, thank you so much. Such a delight to talk to you again. Thank you.

35:05That was Pico Iyer in conversation with me, Elise Hu, at TED 2025. You can check out Pico's talk on the TED Talks Daily feed and at TED.com. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced by Lucy Little and edited by Alejandra Salazar. This episode was recorded by Rich Amies and Dave Pulmer of Field Trip, production support from Daniela Ballarezzo and Shu Han Hu. The TED Talks Daily team includes Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, and Tansika Sangmar Nivang. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.

35:43Thanks for listening.

35:51I once did an interview with Oprah. Oh, no big deal. Oh, just her. She had unbelievably kind producers, of course, and really, really nice people. They told me there are going to be some lightning questions at the end, so we'll tell you what they are so you're not completely surprised by them. this was just before I was going out there. And then I went out and the lightning questions she gave me were completely different from the ones they were put. Oh, interesting. Yes, I think they mixed up the guests. Oh, okay. Because she had a series of guests. Why prep you at all? Okay. And so I went out there.

36:19She said, what's your definition of God? It was the first one. Wow. I'll never forget that. I haven't done lightning round questions very often, but that's the one I always remember. What's your definition of God? Yeah. That's a hard one. Yours would be much nicer.

36:37And that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. TED Health is a podcast from TED, and I'd love to hear your thoughts about this episode. Send me a message on Instagram at ShoshanaMD. This episode was produced by me, Shoshana Ungerleiter, and Jess Shane. Edited by Alejandra Salazar and fact-checked by Vanessa Garcia-Woodworth. Special thanks to Maria Lages, Farah Degrange, Daniela Balarezo, Constanza Gallardo, Tansika Sangmarniwang, and Roxanne Heilash.

37:23This episode is sponsored by Toyota. There's a difference between having options and having the right options. When something is designed well, it doesn't just give you more choices. It gives you choices that actually make sense for how you live. That's the thinking behind Toyota's new all-electric lineup. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, they've built a family of vehicles. The versatile BZ, the adventurous BZ Woodland, and the expressive CHR. Each one meeting people where they are. Because independence isn't about doing everything differently. It's about doing things in a way that feels natural to you.

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