Welcome to Forum. I'm Nina Kim.

Often apps are pitched as ways to make our everyday lives frictionless, door-dashing a meal rather than cooking it, calling a waymo rather than interacting with an Uber driver or taking the bus.

But has this actually made our lives better? What if instead of going

friction less, we friction maxed, invited more inconvenience, more run-ins with the world into our

lives, often by using less technology? More people should try friction maxing in 2026, a sociologist

and columnist for The Cut, Catherine Jaser Morton, and experience the

growth and satisfaction it can bring. Listeners, have you thought about this? Do you do this? Tell us how

and why. Catherine, welcome to Forum. Thank you for having me. Glad to have you. So you have

resolved to friction max in 2026. First,

tell us what friction maxing means in your words. Well, you know, I really see it as not even thinking

in terms of inconvenience. Like, you know, in your intro, you're talking about how, you know,

there's all these ways that we can seek out convenience.

And so that means that we're, for example, taking the Waymo instead of taking an Uber.

And, you know, it's just is, is it really necessary to think of talking to someone as an inconvenience?

It's only become an inconvenience as we've had all of these opportunities to erase these so-called

inconveniences. So I'm just interested in kind of reframing the way that I'm looking at my

experiences and really questioning what even constitutes an inconvenience, because a lot of these

things are just encounters with the world.

Yeah. So what is an example of friction maxing that you have found are helping to achieve

a lot of these deeper truths for you? I mean, I think one that I try to do and that I've heard

a lot of other people doing is I'm just trying to shop less online and,

you know, especially for clothes and things where I have to go into a store and maybe talk to someone

...