Born in France in 1946, Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk who left a career in cellular genetics to study Buddhism in the Himalayas nearly 40 years ago. He is an international best-selling author and a prominent speaker on the world stage, celebrated at the World Economic Forum at Davos and at TED where his first talk on happiness has been viewed by over four million people.

His new book is Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World. His previous books have been translated into over twenty languages and include The Monk and the Philosopher; The Quantum and the Lotus; Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill; and Why Meditate?, as well as five photography books.

As a trained scientist and Buddhist monk, he is uniquely positioned in the dialogue between East and West. He is an active participant in the current scientific research on the effects of meditation on the brain. He lives in Nepal and devotes much of his time to the preservation of Tibetan literature and to humanitarian projects in Tibet, India, and Nepal. www.matthieuricard.com

Pico Iyer is the author of twelve books, on subjects as varied as Cuba, globalism, Graham Greene and the XIVth Dalai Lama, and writes up to 100 articles a year for magazines from The New York Review of Books to Harper’s, and Vanity Fair to Wired. He delivered popular TED talks in both 2013 and 2014—his most recent book is a small TED Original on the theme of stillness, and his talk on the nature of home attracted millions of viewers—and he has written a film script for Miramax, done many liner notes for Leonard Cohen and written introductions to more than 50 other books. Born in Oxford, England, and educated at Eton, Oxford and Harvard, he has been based, since 1987, in Western Japan, while traveling widely, everywhere from North Korea to Ethiopia and Yemen to Easter Island.