Let's Complicate It

Dr. Heather Warren
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Philosophy
  • Weekly

In a world full of hot takes, self-help formulas, and pressure to have everything figured out, I invite you to slow down and think more deeply. Together, we'll examine the stories we tell about ourselves, the social forces that shape our lives, and the tensions we navigate every day. This podcast takes a curious approach to the questions that matter most: Why do we feel stuck? How do our identities take shape? What does it mean to live a meaningful life? This isn't a podcast about easy answers. It's a podcast about asking better questions. Because life is complicated. Let's keep it that way.

  1. 2h ago

    Too Many Hobbies, Not Enough Lifetimes (Part 2)

    I want to paint. I want to write books. I want to become fluent in French. I want to sing, cook, garden, read, make videos, practice tarot, travel the world, and get really freaking good at pole dancing. And apparently, I also want to do all of these things while working full-time, maintaining relationships, exercising, getting enough sleep, and occasionally sitting on my couch watching The Walking Dead. So that's going well. In Part 2 of this conversation about hobbies, I'm getting personal. After spending Part 1 questioning what counts as a hobby and why we assign different levels of value to our leisure activities, I'm taking inventory of my own hobbies: the ones I've loved for years, the ones I've abandoned, the ones I'm currently pursuing, and the ones I keep telling myself I'll get around to someday. We're talking about my complicated relationship with theater, my lifelong love of reading, my history of making YouTube videos, the watercolor set that's been staring at me for months, my renewed interest in witchcraft and tarot, my desire to become a better cook, and the many writing projects I've been dreaming about but haven't started. There are also a few tangents about bullet journaling, French lessons, singing alone in my condo, collecting vinyl records, running half marathons for the medals, and, naturally, Taylor Swift. But as I work my way through this increasingly ridiculous list, I keep running into the same questions. Do I actually enjoy doing these things, or do I just enjoy being someone who has done them? How much of my desire to be skilled, knowledgeable, and accomplished comes from genuine curiosity and enjoyment, and how much comes from wanting to be perceived as an interesting, multidimensional person? And why is it so difficult to let myself be bad at something long enough to get better at it? There's also the uncomfortable reality that I simply cannot do everything I want to do. My time is finite, and choosing to pursue one interest means choosing not to pursue another—at least for now. I don't think the solution is to turn every free hour into an opportunity for self-improvement. But I also don't want to spend all my leisure time consuming other people's creations when there's so much I'm longing to create myself. Maybe the challenge isn't figuring out how to do everything. Maybe it's learning how to choose what matters to me right now, allowing other interests to wait, and finding joy in the process rather than just the finished product. And maybe, just maybe, I need to stop waiting until I'm good at something to give myself permission to enjoy it. Because life is complicated. Let's keep it that way.

  2. Oct 25

    Who Decided Some Hobbies Are Better Than Others? (Part 1)

    Does watching TV count as a hobby? What about scrolling social media? And why do I feel so much better about myself when I spend an evening reading than when I spend that same evening watching The Walking Dead while scrolling YouTube Shorts? In Part 1 of this two- (maybe three-) part conversation about hobbies, I'm questioning what actually counts as a hobby—and why we seem to have decided that some ways of spending our free time are inherently better than others. As someone who takes pride in being intellectual, creative, and accomplished, I have to admit that I'm guilty of some serious hobby snobbery. Reading books? Wonderful. Learning a new skill? Even better. Painting, writing, playing an instrument, or making something tangible? Excellent uses of leisure time. But watching television? Scrolling social media? Collecting things? Following a fandom? Why don't those activities seem to count in quite the same way? We get into the difference between consuming and creating, why measurable accomplishments make certain hobbies feel more legitimate, how productivity culture has infiltrated our leisure time, and why being a Swiftie might not be all that different from being a devoted sports fan. I also explore the performative side of hobbies: the pressure to be seen as interesting, talented, and multifaceted, and how social media can turn even our recreational pursuits into opportunities for comparison and judgment. And then there's the vulnerability of being a beginner. Ironically, I had to scrap my first attempt at recording this very episode because I was so frustrated with how badly I thought I was doing. Which is particularly funny considering that one of the things I wanted to discuss was how afraid we can be of being seen trying—and failing—at something we're supposed to be doing for fun. So perhaps this episode is also a little bit about my own perfectionism. Ultimately, I'm not arguing that all hobbies are equally fulfilling for everyone, or that there's anything wrong with wanting to learn, improve, create, or accomplish something. I love those things! But I'm questioning why we've turned leisure into yet another arena for self-improvement, social comparison, and proving our worth. What if our hobbies don't have to make us more impressive people? What if enjoying something is enough? In Part 2, I'll get more personal about the hobbies I have, the ones I want to pursue, and why having so many interests can sometimes make it difficult to do any of them. Because life is complicated. Let's keep it that way.

  3. Oct 11

    Would You Pass Her Friendship Test? | Judgment Call #2

    Would you stay friends with someone who expected you to text them back within 24 hours, share your location, see them every week, answer spontaneous FaceTimes, like their social media posts, and put maximum effort into taking their pictures? Welcome back to Judgment Call, the recurring Let's Complicate It series where I take a specific person, story, or viral moment that's attracting a whole lot of judgment—and ask what, exactly, we're judging. This time, I'm looking at a viral TikTok from a creator who shared five rules for being her friend. And the internet had...thoughts. Let's Complicate It Episode 17 … I'll admit: some of these rules would immediately disqualify me. But as I work through them one by one, I find myself becoming surprisingly sympathetic to what she might actually be looking for. Maybe the desire for weekly hangouts and spontaneous FaceTimes isn't inherently unreasonable. Maybe she's trying to create the kind of close-knit, chosen-family friendship we see on shows like Friends, Sex and the City, and How I Met Your Mother—friends who don't just schedule occasional hangouts but actually share their everyday lives. Let's Complicate It Episode 17 … So where's the problem? Maybe it isn't the desires themselves. Maybe it's the rigidity. In this episode, I talk about the difference between wanting something from a friendship and requiring it, how lifestyle and personality shape what we're realistically able to give our friends, what it means to share your location with someone, why spontaneous phone calls might actually offer something our increasingly disconnected lives are missing, and whether supporting a friend's creative work means you're obligated to engage with everything they post. I also get mildly sidetracked by internet attachment discourse—because apparently wanting a text back within 24 hours is enough for strangers to start assigning someone an attachment style. As a therapist, I have some thoughts about the way psychological theories become fixed identities once the internet gets hold of them. Let's Complicate It Episode 17 … Let's Complicate It Episode 17 … Ultimately, maybe Tara really is too intense for some people. And maybe that's okay. She's allowed to want a very particular kind of community, and everyone else is allowed to decide they don't want to participate in it. But if our friendship standards become so rigid that other people's jobs, families, personalities, priorities, and changing seasons of life have no room to exist within them, we might have to accept that those standards will limit the relationships we're able to maintain. Let's Complicate It Episode 17 … Because sometimes your friend won't text back. Sometimes they won't answer the FaceTime. Sometimes they won't be able to see you every week. And sometimes, for years at a time, you won't be their highest priority. Does that make them a bad friend? Or does being a good friend sometimes mean allowing the relationship to change shape? Let's make a Judgment Call.

  4. Oct 4

    You’re Living a Life You Used to Look Forward To

    What if gratitude isn’t about listing what you’re thankful for—but remembering that some of what feels ordinary now used to be the future you couldn’t wait to reach? I have always been a future-focused person. Even as a kid at sleepovers, I wanted to lie in bed and “plan for the future.” As an adult, that became lists, countdowns, milestones, trips, achievements, and an ongoing question: What’s the next thing I get to look forward to? For years, I’ve kept a running list on my phone of things I’m looking forward to. It started during a difficult period in college, when sometimes even something as small as the first day of fall, a new album, a birthday, or a book release gave me a reason to keep moving forward. Over time, the list grew to include degrees, trips, jobs, holidays, and major life milestones.  But at one point during my PhD, that list stopped at 2026. Because this was the year I was waiting for. And now I'm here. So in this episode, I'm trying a different kind of gratitude practice. Instead of asking what I'm thankful for, I'm looking back at a version of myself from December 2022—a version of me living alone in a tiny studio apartment, unemployed, studying for the exam I needed to graduate with my master's degree, and desperately looking forward to becoming a therapist—and asking: What would she think if she could see my life now? She'd learn that she passed the exam. She became a therapist. She finished the PhD. She built a career she loves. She moved in with Tyler. She has rooms, air conditioning, a dishwasher, a washing machine, a car with the backup camera she wanted, friendships that grew deeper, hobbies she can afford, and a body she's learning to experience differently. And so many of those things that would have seemed extraordinary to her have become completely ordinary to me.  That's the hedonic treadmill. We arrive, adjust, and start looking toward the next thing. But the things that frustrate or overwhelm us today don't erase everything that's also good about today. And whatever future we're fantasizing about now will probably contain its own annoyances, responsibilities, stressors, and reasons to start fantasizing about whatever comes after that.  So maybe every once in a while, before asking what's next?, we can ask something else: What about my life right now would a past version of me be so f*****g excited about? Because now is eventually going to become something we look back on, too. And now is the only time it's ever going to be now.

  5. Sep 27

    Pumpkin Spice, Nietzsche & Pole Dancing | The Shallow End

    Welcome to the shallow end of Let’s Complicate It. Not every episode needs to interrogate society, deconstruct a dominant discourse, or send me spiraling into an existential question. Sometimes I just want to talk about what I'm eating, reading, watching, listening to, and enjoying right now. So this episode is a little snapshot of my life in September 2026, told through my current favorites. I'm talking about the “egg thing” Tyler made me approximately every night during my wildly overcommitted summer, my annual transition into pumpkin-spice coffee season, the restaurant that taught me I apparently do like dates, the music I can't stop singing in my car, and the podcasts that feel like hanging out with friends.  Then we get into what I've been watching and reading: the movies that have stuck with me this year, my ongoing journey toward becoming an accidental Trekkie, why I'm revisiting The Walking Dead more than a decade later, the shows I'm willing to wait years for, the books I can't stop recommending, and my current reading lineup—which somehow includes both Taylor Jenkins Reid and Friedrich Nietzsche. And because apparently I am incapable of remaining completely in the shallow end, we accidentally brush up against attention spans, ambition, consumerism, pleasure, body image, and the strange ways our tastes change alongside us. I also talk about my newest obsession with pole dancing and how it's changing the way I experience my body—not just what it looks like, but what it can do.  Oh, and I bought a lamp for my shower. It is completely unnecessary. I love it. This episode isn't trying to arrive at a grand conclusion. It's just a record of the things bringing me comfort, curiosity, pleasure, and a little bit of whimsy in this particular season of my life. We're making the frivolous deep—but this time, we're allowed to stay in the shallow end for a while.

  6. Sep 20

    He Called His Dad Misogynistic. Who Was the A**hole? | Judgment Call #1

    Welcome to Judgment Call—a new recurring series where I take a moral dilemma from the internet, make a judgment...and then complicate the hell out of it. For the first Judgment Call, I'm reacting in real time to a post from Reddit's Am I the A*****e? A 24-year-old man describes a heated family conversation in which his father argues that wives should submit to their husbands—even in the context of mistreatment. His sister pushes back. He stays quiet. Later, he posts on social media about his father's "misogynistic remarks." His father finds the post and is furious. So...who's the a*****e? In this episode, I unpack whether the father's comments are actually misogynistic, what it means to "respect" a parent whose beliefs you don't respect, whether posting about someone's behavior publicly is meaningfully different from processing it privately, and whether causing someone shame or discomfort necessarily means you've harmed them unfairly.  But as I read through the comments, another question starts bothering me: Why was this man willing to call out his father's misogyny online when he wasn't willing to challenge it in the moment? Because when you're a man listening to another man make sexist or misogynistic remarks, your voice may carry power that the women being targeted by those beliefs don't have. And sometimes staying silent isn't quite as neutral as we'd like it to be.  Maybe the most interesting thing about judgment isn't deciding who was right and who was wrong. Maybe it's figuring out what we're actually judging in the first place. This is Judgment Call #1.

  7. Sep 13

    I Think I Was Always Going to Be a Therapist

    How does someone actually become a therapist? In my case, apparently by taking the longest possible route there. In this episode of Let's Complicate It, I'm telling the story of how I became a marriage and family therapist—from the teenage version of me who thought psychology might be her future, through years of jobs that never quite became careers, an extremely brief attempt at becoming a Naval officer, a first attempt at graduate school, a detour into acting, and eventually a global pandemic that forced me to confront a question I'd been avoiding: What did I actually want to do with my life? When theater disappeared during the pandemic, I began realizing how much it had distracted me from my dissatisfaction with my job. And after one seemingly small incident at work became the catalyst for another job search, I caught myself repeating a familiar pattern: learn a job, get good at it, get bored, and make another lateral move. This time, I decided to do something different.  That decision eventually led me back to something I'd been circling since I was a teenager: becoming a therapist. I talk about returning to graduate school, discovering during practicum that therapy felt surprisingly natural to me, navigating the long road from student therapist to associate to licensed marriage and family therapist, pursuing a PhD along the way, and eventually becoming a therapist, supervisor, mentor, and leader in community mental health.  But underneath the career timeline is another story: why this work fits me. I know what it's like to believe you've done life wrong. To measure yourself against an ideal, find yourself deviating from it, and turn that difference into evidence that something is wrong with you. Therapy gave me a place to use that experience—and my capacity to sit with other people's pain—to help people question the rules they've been measuring themselves against, recognize the choices available to them, and maybe even celebrate some of the things that once made them feel like the "weirdo."  This one is less theory and more story: no script, no outline, just the winding path that brought me here.

  8. Sep 6

    Judgment Is the Call Coming from Inside the House

    We’re often told that good people shouldn’t judge others. But what if judgment itself isn’t the problem? In this episode of Let’s Complicate It, I’m exploring judgment as something fundamentally human: a tool we use to recognize harm, clarify our values, make ethical decisions, and navigate relationships. The trouble begins when our judgments feel like objective truths rather than beliefs with histories—beliefs shaped by family, culture, institutions, social norms, and dominant discourses.  I break down the difference between judgments that identify harm, judgments that express our values, and judgments that simply enforce ideas about what is “normal.” I also bring in Michel Foucault’s concepts of normalizing judgment and the panopticon to examine how social expectations become internalized until we start monitoring not only other people, but ourselves. Eventually, we become both the person being watched and the one doing the watching.  Along the way, I ask questions like: Where did I learn that this behavior was wrong? Is someone actually being harmed, or are they simply living differently than I would? What value is underneath my judgment? Who benefits from the standard I’m enforcing? And am I judging someone else for breaking a rule I secretly resent having followed myself? Because sometimes judgment protects our ethics. Sometimes it protects us from envy, shame, fear, grief, or uncertainty. And sometimes it quietly reinforces a social rule we never consciously chose.  Understanding context doesn’t mean abandoning accountability. We can understand how someone became who they are, acknowledge the systems that shaped their choices, and still name harm, maintain boundaries, or disagree with what they’ve done. Curiosity can complicate our certainty without requiring moral neutrality.  So the goal isn’t to become someone who never judges. It’s to become someone who knows what their judgments are accountable to. Because judgment may be the call coming from inside the house—but just because the voice sounds like ours doesn’t mean it originated with us.

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

In a world full of hot takes, self-help formulas, and pressure to have everything figured out, I invite you to slow down and think more deeply. Together, we'll examine the stories we tell about ourselves, the social forces that shape our lives, and the tensions we navigate every day. This podcast takes a curious approach to the questions that matter most: Why do we feel stuck? How do our identities take shape? What does it mean to live a meaningful life? This isn't a podcast about easy answers. It's a podcast about asking better questions. Because life is complicated. Let's keep it that way.

Information

  • Creator
    Dr. Heather Warren
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    19
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Dr. Heather Warren
  • Show Website
    Let's Complicate It