I've always been suspicious of things that claim to make learning "easy." Not because I think learning should be hard, but because the human brain is spectacular at learning, and most educational technology seems designed to ignore how it actually works.

Memory research has known for decades that we remember:

• The emotionally resonant

• The spatially situated

• The sensorially vivid

• The bizarre and unexpected

This isn't controversial. It's well-documented. The Method of Loci is 2,500 years old. Tony Buzan's work on memory techniques dates to the 1970s. We know that memory champions don't have different brains—they use different methods.

And yet language learning apps are built on... repetition. Gamification. Streaks.

Not because these work better for memory (they don't), but because they work better for engagement metrics.

I started building Gorgo because I wanted to learn French—actually learn it, conversationally, fluidly—and every tool felt like it was designed for someone who finds flashcards meditative. I don't. I find them numbing.

But show me something surreal, something that unsettles me, something that creates an emotional or sensory response—I'll remember that forever.

I spend my days designing complex systems—thinking about spatial cognition, how humans navigate, how they build mental models. The same neural mechanisms that help you remember how to get home are the ones memory champions use. The hippocampus doesn't distinguish between spatial navigation and memory palace—it's the same system.

Language apps don't use this. Not because it doesn't work, but because it doesn't fit the engagement model.

Gorgo is an experiment in applying actual memory research to language acquisition:

• Surrealist imagery (because your hippocampus prioritizes the emotionally strange)

• Phrase-first learning (because you need language in context, not isolated words)

• Spatial and sensory associations (because that's how memory actually works)

This won't appeal to everyone. It's not trying to.

It's for people who:

• Get bored by systems designed for "everyone"

• Are curious about how things actually work

• Don't mind weird if weird means effective

• Want fluency, not gamification

I'm looking for 100 people to test this hypothesis with me. Not customers—collaborators. People who are genuinely curious whether this approach works, and willing to engage seriously with the experiment.

If that's you, sign up.

If it's not: no hard feelings. Duolingo is free.

-Dana