Ep. 4 - Anya Ruvinskaya's Conversational Portrait

Anya Ruvinskaya shares about..

- The lifelong search for home within the overlap of many communities

- Connecting connect to the spiritual in any culture

- Finding creativity after living through communism and atheism

- When the answers aren’t the answers and won’t give you what you think you want

- Generational values of living for oneself and living for others, and how financial freedom can obscure community ties

- The development of the individual (and AI) within different cultural values

Chapters

00:00 The Power of Curiosity

00:52 Numbing Silence, Reflective Silence, and Going inward

09:02 Curiosity in Namibia

14:51 Assimilating and Finding the Culturally Universal

24:25 Searching for Home and Feeling Estranged

45:48 Exploring From a Wound

56:36 Giving Myself Permission to Explore Making Art (While Navigating Death)

01:02:31 The Questions I'm Still Holding

01:08:44 Material Success and Letting Myself Feel Free

01:10:44 Do I Want the Answers to My Questions?

01:14:47 Running Away From My Intuition

01:22:40 The (Im)possibility of Belonging

01:30:43 Finding Creativity After Communism and Atheism

01:41:11 Alone, Not Lonely

01:46:44 Encountering the Sacred in Any Religion

01:56:18 Feeling Understood by AI (and People)

02:04:52 Personal Sabbaticals and Communal Roles

02:10:09 Unsuccessfully Filling Social Needs With TV (and AI)

02:21:52 The Development of the Individual (and AI) Within Cultural Values

02:38:43 Fostering Understanding and Connection through Conversation

Show Notes

Gentle high pitch sounds that’s pleasant from Tiesto’s Walking on Clouds, especially around 5:42): https://youtu.be/K2CeXZlSZak

47:34 Laurie Santos’ Coursera offering The Science of Wellbeing https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being

48:40 The Artist’s Way https://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-25th-Anniversary/dp/0143129252/

59:25 The Five Whys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys

01:25:15 - The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky https://www.amazon.com/How-Happiness-Approach-Getting-Life/dp/0143114956

01:29:01 - Thich Nhat Hanh’s book on anger https://www.amazon.com/Anger-Cooling-Thich-Nhat-Hanh/dp/1573229377

01:56:01 - Pi, the emotionally intelligent AI https://pi.ai/onboarding

02:43:15 - James Finley on a Meditation for Two https://youtu.be/E17l20-j8hk

Find Anya Ruvinskaya everywhere

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anya-ruvinskaya/

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Music credits: Mozert by John Vallis (https://johnvallis.bandcamp.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

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