The Brian Lehrer Show Have You Heard of 'Friction-Maxxing?'
Mar 20, 2026
Kathryn Jezer-Morton, author of The Cut’s Brooding newsletter who writes on cultural trends and parenting, explores the idea of deliberately adding inconvenience to everyday life. She discusses how predictive tech shapes behavior. Short stories cover parenting tech breaks, choosing slower creative tools, and everyday practices that reclaim decision-making and intimacy.
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Predictive Tech Shapes Private Decision Making
- Tech platforms steer behavior by predicting past actions into future choices.
- Kathryn Jezer Morton says personalization and suggestions create a matrix of prediction models that pre-decide many of our choices.
One-Click Shopping Exposed Hidden Dependency
- A quick purchase habit made Kathryn irrationally frustrated when forced to enter her address on a small vendor's site.
- The Amazon one-click habit revealed how convenience had seeded control over mundane tasks.
A Low-Tech Family Embraces Everyday Friction
- Caller Ben describes living with low-tech habits: flip phone, biking, home-cooking, no streaming, and no Uber.
- His family doesn't give kids iPads and he navigates without Google Maps, framing convenience as always having felt inconvenient.