Pico Iyer is a travel writer and a novelist who has spent time in far flung places like Ethiopia, Tibet, North Korea, Bhutan and Nepal exploring the history, culture and food of diverse cultures. In contrast to his life on the road, Iyer is now spending more time exploring his inner life. That’s what his latest book called Aflame: Learning from Silence is all about. Several times a year, Iyer visits a Benedictine monastery in Big Sur which he finds to be a refuge from the crowded noisy world he usually inhabits. Iyer examines the benefits of just sitting still and doing nothing. We talk about stillness and how the places we live in help to define the people we become. We also hear about Iyer’s relationship with the Dalai Lama and with singer Leonard Cohen when Cohen was a Buddhist monk living on a mountaintop.