Thanks to Olivia, Mark and everyone at Hatchards, Piccadily for hosting me and The World in A Phrase on January 15. And thanks to everyone — shout out to my old Time Magazine colleagues! — who came out to juggle words, ideas, and balls.
There was a blank sheet selected from the globe, and the topic — after much intra-audience discussion — was "shoe-making," among the more obscure subjects to be requested. I managed to deliver a reasonably close paraphrase of an aphorism from The Upanishads, which reads in full:
The mind being full, the whole universe is filled with the juice of nectar; the whole earth is covered with leather to him who has put his foot in the shoe.
It was a classic January evening in Britain, with London looking especially lovely in the rain...
Bonus image: I finally received my copies of the Arabic edition of I Is an Other...