Brittany Luce

So it's like when we got to just communicate, what is the point of learning the hard way?

You know, I actually came across this article in The Cut by Katherine Jayser Morton.

She's been on the show before.

She's awesome.

It's called, in 2026, we are friction maxing.

Friction maxing basically means choosing to not smooth your life over with convenience.

And it really spoke to something that I've been thinking about for a while.

Like, the challenge is part of the point.

This is Choosing Inconvenience.

For the next few weeks, we're getting into stories of people who choose the difficult paths toward their goals rather than relying on convenient tech and what they learn along the way.

Okay, we're going to get into that, what we've both learned from doing the hard thing of acquiring or trying to acquire a new language.

But first, I wanted to get into some of the cultural barriers that keep people from even wanting to try.

Emily, I heard this was something that kept you from learning Mandarin, even though you wanted to.

Yeah, I would just like to say that shame is a huge cultural barrier.

I remember back in high school, okay, I was at my cousin's Chinese school.

I just sidled up to his teacher and was like, hey, I know I'm like,

old.

I know I'm 16, but can I pick up Chinese?

And he looked me up and down and was like, ma'am, it's far too late for you.

You are a lost cause.