DESCRIPTION

What if the most honest conversation you can have begins with how your body will be disposed of? In the Season 4 premiere of Open Heart, Lu walks into a small meeting hosted by a company called Smart Cremation and walks out seeing everything more clearly. Not with grand ambition. Not with urgent purpose. With the sharp, quiet focus that comes when you stop pretending you have forever. 

This is where Season 4 begins — not with an answer, but with an admission. We are organisms on this planet, carrying consciousness we didn't ask for and inherited dung we didn't choose. Season 4 brings our mortality into focus and asks what happens when we show up for each other.

SHOW NOTES

EPISODE 1 — AN ORGANISM ON THIS PLANET

This episode asks:

• What does all of this human activity mean at the end?
• Do we keep searching for an answer — or do we simply live?
• What does it take to look honestly at our own flaws without shame?

IN THIS EPISODE:

Opening — The Turn Outward
Season 4 begins with a question about how we connect to another person's world. Before we can talk about others, we have to be honest about what we're willing to risk, give, and share.

Act 1 — The Room
A meeting with Smart Cremation brings death into focus as something real. Each of us leaves this planet as we arrived. Choosing how to dispose of our remains becomes a thoughtful final gift to the people we love.

Act 2 — The Clock
Humans move around as if nothing changes — like ants doing exactly what they are made to do. Two thinkers from opposite ends of the world, Camus and Lao Tse, reached the same conclusion 2,500 years apart. Freedom comes from acceptance. The clock is not the tragedy. The clock is the invitation.

Act 3 — The Dung
The flaw that belongs to all of us — we are unpredictable beings who cannot perceive cause and effect rationally. That unpredictability is our flaw and our beauty at the same time. Like the dung beetle, we are purposeful, unglamorous, and completely necessary to the ecosystem we live in.

Closing — The Admission
Not who will remember me — but what I do and say matters to how they will remember me. We are temporary beings, reaching toward other temporary beings who are doing exactly what we are doing.

THE EPISODE IN ONE LINE:
"Death wakes us up to what matters in the present moment."

NEXT EPISODE:
Open Heart returns next week with Episode 2 — the invisible thread that connects us across everything.

SHARE YOUR STORY:
 [email protected]

CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST:

🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com
🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448
🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9
▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@luleslan
📧 [email protected]

Open Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

Tick tock hear the clock
Wake me up and say good night
Kiss my salty tears

DESCRIPTION

Season 3 asked who we are. Season 4 asks how we can look after each other as neighbors. This season, we look outward — at who we become when we truly show up for each other. It'll be surprising, terrifying, and unpredictable. Open Heart returns September 3rd.

SHOW NOTES

A new season of Open Heart with Lu Leslan will ask more questions, sharing new ideas and observations. Together we continue the journey in the mystery about what it means to be human, here on Earth.

CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST:

🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com
 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448
🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9
▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CM

SHARE YOUR STORY:
 [email protected]

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

What does it mean to live well, knowing everything will vanish without a trace? In the Season 3 finale of Open Heart, Lu gathers the threads of the whole season into one philosophy — the wisdom of effortless action. From the flow of playing the piano, to the pain and joy that arrive together, to the anger she has learned to turn into art, to the ancient words of Chuang Tsu — this is an episode about how to hold a finite life with an open hand. Not to grasp. Not to keep. Only to live it, fully, while we can.

SHOW NOTES

EPISODE 10 — A NEW PHILOSOPHY FOR LIVING

Everything vanishes without a trace. Everything. So let's enjoy the ride.

This episode asks:

• What if our existence is meaningless?
• Why do we care if anyone remembers us?
• How do I want to live my life, knowing everything will vanish without a trace?

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Effortless action does not mean to do nothing — it means to act without force or expectation
• The flow zone — losing yourself in playing the piano, letting it play by itself
• Pleasure and pain arrive together — one cannot exist without the other
• The day my mother gave birth to me: joy and pain, the first human connection
• How depression taught me to be a true friend to myself
• The demon within us is not our enemy — it is a part of us that has yet to be heard
• Turning anger into creativity, creativity into art, art into humanity
• The wisdom of Chuang Tsu and the Inner Chapters — to serve the mind, unmoved by sadness or joy
• The perfect human mind is like a mirror — it reflects but does not hold
• At the core of our existence, there is no label, no color, no category — just a human being
• The brokenness itself is the wisdom for living

THE EPISODE IN ONE LINE:
 "Everything vanishes without a trace. Everything. So let's enjoy the ride."

END OF SEASON 3:
 Open Heart will return September 3rd with Season 4 — more ideas, observations, and questions about what it means to be human, here on Earth.

SHARE YOUR STORY:
 [email protected]

CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST:

• 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com
• 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448
• 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9
• ▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CM

Open Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

EPISODE 9 — THE INVISIBLE CONNECTION

DESCRIPTION

We spend so much energy drawing lines between ourselves and everything else — classifying, ranking, deciding what matters. But what if the deepest connection is the one we cannot see? Episode 9 of Open Heart Season 3 follows a widening circle — from the self, to a cricket saved from a swimming pool, to a sky over Prince Edward Island that seemed to breathe with loving kindness — and asks whether we are all one living thing under the same watchful sky.

SHOW NOTES

EPISODE 9 — THE INVISIBLE CONNECTION

The will to live doesn't ask what species you are. It just asks — is anyone there?

This episode asks:

• How does the connection with ourselves change over time?
• Can we cultivate a connection to all living beings — and would it make us less self-serving?
• Are we all connected as one gigantic organism, under the same sky watching over us?

IN THIS EPISODE:

• The connection with the self goes through many doors of knowledge
• The more we learn about who we are, the less we know
• How family, appearances, and the years between thirty and fifty blur our connection to ourselves
• Finding a cricket drowning in a swimming pool — and one small act of noticing
• All creatures great and small are born with an innate drive to live
• A botanical garden, and paying attention to where we step
• We spend so much energy drawing lines between ourselves and other living things
• All living things deserve care and respect — the cricket, the plants, the person standing next to you
• A sky over Prince Edward Island, melting into pink, blue, and violet
• The sky spoke with a loving kindness, breathing with me, transmitting the energy of life and mystery

THE EPISODE IN ONE LINE:
 "To live with more courage, more beauty, more heart."

NEXT EPISODE:
 A New Philosophy for Living.

SHARE YOUR STORY:
 [email protected]

CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST:

• 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com
• 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448
• 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9
• ▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CM

Open Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

Some of us learn early to carry other people's pain. We become the healer — the one who shows up, who gives, who lights the way for others. But what happens when we never turn that healing toward ourselves? Episode 8 of Open Heart Season 3 traces the story of the wounded healer from a first, unexpected moment in Lu's teens to a foggy shoreline in Prince Edward Island — and arrives at a quiet, radical idea: the brokenness itself may be the wisdom for living.

SHOW NOTES

EPISODE 8 — THE SOURCE WITHIN

There is nothing we need to do to make ourselves whole again. Because the brokenness itself is the wisdom for living.

This episode asks:

• Do we have control over our own suffering?
• Do we trust the source within ourselves?
• Do we have the wisdom to heal ourselves?

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Trust the body's signals — the nervous system and intuition as our first line of defense
• The first memory of playing the role of a healer, and the guilt that arrived without warning
• Growing up — marriage, motherhood, and never learning what healthy attachment really was
• Having gone through breakups, we are completely exposed to unknown forces
• Giving too much — and paying the price with our own physical and psychological well-being
• True partnership is rare. Not everyone can find it. But it needs a solid foundation of trust, respect, and mutual support.
• Through self-reflection and talk therapy — releasing the pain stored inside
• A walk through the fog at Covehead Lighthouse in Prince Edward Island, and the woman who showed the way back
• I need to be the lighthouse for my own salvation
• The brokenness itself is the wisdom for living
• Closing with an original haiku — Healer's Song

THE EPISODE IN ONE LINE:
 "There is nothing we need to do to make ourselves whole again. Because the brokenness itself is the wisdom for living."

NEXT EPISODE:
 The Invisible Connection.

SHARE YOUR STORY:
 [email protected]

CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST:

• 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com
• 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448
• 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9
• ▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CM

Open Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

All life begins with shit. That's not a metaphor — it's biology. And it might be the most honest thing anyone has said about the human condition. Episode 7 of Open Heart Season 3 traces the same cycle across three scales — the biological, the personal, and the planetary — and arrives at the most uncomfortable question of the season: are humans the cancer cell of their own planet?

SHOW NOTES

EPISODE 7 — PARODY IN PARADOX

Everything turns to shit. That's the bloody truth about life. And yet — we keep building.

This episode asks:

• Why do we feel so good after we eliminate waste from our bodies?
• Why do we destroy our relationships in order to start over again?
• And why must we live in perpetual conflict in order to feel alive?

IN THIS EPISODE:

• All life begins with shit — the biological truth no one talks about
• Plants, animals, compost, soil — the cycle that sustains all life
• We enter every relationship believing this one will be different. That is the parody. It always is different. And it never is. That is the paradox.
• Human emotional energy — a circular current flowing through us without purpose or destination
• Most of us confuse being needed with being valued
• That asymmetry is the loneliest human experience
• The body keeps the record
• We loved a possibility — and yet what we imagined was not false. It was real. It was simply ours.
• The last 300 years of human progress built at the expense of ecology and biodiversity
• Like a cancer cell — multiplying exponentially, guaranteeing its own destruction
• We are all innocent and guilty. We are all capable of deception and honesty. We are all trapped in the illusion of what we want to believe.
• What's the chance of that happening is anyone's guess.
• Everything turns to shit. That's the bloody truth about life.

THE EPISODE IN ONE LINE:

"We enter every relationship believing this one will be different. That is the parody. It always is different. And it never is. That is the paradox."

NEXT EPISODE:
Next time — The Source Within. The most terrifying and beautiful place you will ever find.

SHARE YOUR STORY:
[email protected]

CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST:

• 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com
• 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448
• 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9
• ▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CM

Open Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

S-O-R-R-Y. The most spoken word in everyday conversation — and perhaps the least understood. Episode 6 of Open Heart Season 3 takes apart the word sorry letter by letter, examines what apology actually does versus what we hope it does, and asks the harder question — if we are the enablers of our own suffering, what exactly are we forgiving?

SHOW NOTES

EPISODE 6 — FROM APOLOGY TO FORGIVENESS

Apology without respect is performance. Apology without appreciation is hollow.

This episode asks:

• Does apology and forgiveness open the door for an endless loop?
• Can we forgive what was never acknowledged?
• And if we are the enablers of our own suffering — what exactly are we forgiving?

IN THIS EPISODE:

• S-O-R-R-Y — the acronym that takes apart the most overused word in the human vocabulary
• Apology as habit, reflex, and emotional crutch
• The deeper damage — invisible, living inside the person who kept believing
• The multilayered, multidimensional human being
• A childhood of physical abuse — never acknowledged, never discussed
• They did what they knew at the time. I did what I could at the time.
• The enabler — how we create our own suffering again and again
• Forgiveness as mirror — in order to forgive anyone else we must first forgive ourselves
• The tears that flow from our own eyes are the beginning of real awakening
• The unavoidability of life itself is Continuation. With a capital C.

THE EPISODE IN ONE LINE:

"And perhaps it is the core of humanity. The unavoidability of life itself is Continuation. With a capital C."

NEXT EPISODE:
Parody in Paradox. Everything turns to shit. That's the bloody truth about life. And yet — we keep building.

SHARE YOUR STORY:
[email protected]

CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST:

• 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com
• 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448
• 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9
• ▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CM

Open Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

Every border we live inside — we inherited. Episode 5 of Open Heart Season 3 asks what it cost in human lives — and tells the story of one woman alone in a motel room with yellowish curtains in Tijuana in 1979 — who crossed a border she wasn't supposed to cross. And a woodcarver on the Victoria Falls Bridge who crosses one every day just to feed his family.

SHOW NOTES

EPISODE 5 — THE BORDER

The border between nations is the history of human suffering. It will take curiosity and humility to understand the ground we are standing on.

This episode asks:

• Do we know we inherited the border between nations without knowing the human suffering?
• Do we have a choice to pick a side to stand on?
• Do we abandon rules when our livelihood is at stake?

IN THIS EPISODE:

• The inherited border — drawn before we arrived
• Tijuana 1979 — alone in a motel room with yellowish curtains
• The vase — the small plane — the pounding heart
• The naturalization question I didn't understand but answered anyway
• The friend who drove me — who later became my husband
• Honor and pride go out the window when survival is the only thing that matters
• The woodcarver on the Victoria Falls Bridge crossing the Zambezi River
• The randomness of the cards handed down to us — the absurdity of life itself

THE EPISODE IN ONE LINE:

"The randomness of the cards handed down to us makes who we become who we are — it is the absurdity of life itself."

NEXT EPISODE:
Forgiveness. What it costs. What it frees. And whether we can forgive what we never fully understood.

SHARE YOUR STORY:
[email protected]

CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST:

• 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com
• 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448
• 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9
• ▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CM

Open Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

Where does superiority come from — and what does it cost us? Episode 4 of Open Heart Season 3 traces the origins of superiority from a ten year old girl winning a woodwind competition to the labels we use to divide ourselves. And then shows what dignity looks like in the faces of people who never needed a stage to prove their worth.

SHOW NOTES

EPISODE 4 — SUPERIORITY VS. DIGNITY

Superiority needs a stage to show off. Dignity is a quiet recognition of mutual respect.

This episode asks:

• Do we know where our superiority originates?
• Do we question our own superiority?
• Do we need superiority to survive?

IN THIS EPISODE:

• The woodwind competition at age ten — where pride became the seed of arrogance
• The Golden Rule — superiority disguised as empathy
• Progressive language — superiority disguised as sensitivity
• The onion — is it necessary to name every layer?
• At the core of our existence — just a human being
• Rene — eleven years old — whose favorite subjects are math and science
• Beauty — camp director at the Okavango — fifteen years of quiet leadership
• MC — whose patience and kindness never wavered
• Respect is the soil for dignity to flourish

THE EPISODE IN ONE LINE:

"At the core of our existence — there is no label, no color, no category. Just a human being."

NEXT EPISODE:
The Border. We inherited it. We live inside it. And sometimes — survival demands we cross it without permission.

SHARE YOUR STORY:
[email protected]

CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST:

• 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com
• 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448
• 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9
• ▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CM

Open Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)

Why do we want what we want? Why do we stop asking the most important question — and fill the silence with consumption, shortcuts and masks? Episode 3 of Open Heart Season 3 traces the why question from the first human who looked up at the sky — to the hunger for dignity that drives everything we do.

SHOW NOTES

EPISODE 3 — THE WHY QUESTION

Why is not just a question. It is how the human story begins.

This episode asks:

• Why do we hold on to our feelings when we know they are only the stories we tell ourselves?
• Why do we choose wants over needs when dignity is what we truly seek?
• Why do we want human experiences when we know they will become fragmented memories of the past?

IN THIS EPISODE:

• The first human-like being who looked up at the sky and asked why before language existed
• From fire to space stations — humans never stopped asking why
• We cannot stop inventing — but we stop asking why
• Dignity — the one thing above all else that a human being truly wants
• The piano practice room — countless hours in search of respect
• The breaking point — we act not from courage but from necessity
• Our dignity is the foundation of a civilized world

THE EPISODE IN ONE LINE:

"Desire creates the need for dignity. But first — we have to understand what we truly want."

NEXT EPISODE:
Superiority vs. Dignity. Dignity stands on the ground. Superiority stands on the stage.

SHARE YOUR STORY:
[email protected]

CONNECT WITH OPEN HEART PODCAST:

• 🌐 Website: leslancreativestudio.com
• 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/open-heart-with-lu-leslan/id1861169448
• 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2duSwoSJVHFG8wn7SsC1F9
• ▶️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/C47yEyI19CM

Open Heart with Lu Leslan is for anyone who aspires to understand themselves and the world more deeply. Through honest personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical wisdom, each episode invites you to live with more clarity, courage, and compassion. Subscribe and share with someone ready to open their heart.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Lu's first documentary: Take a Bow: The Ingrid Clarfield Story (2011)