February 3, 2026
Welcome back, again. Hopefully we’re done with ZoomU for a while.
Some of you may have read about the “call a Republican” and “call a Democrat” payphones in San Francisco and Abilene, Texas. Part experiment and part public relations stunt, the phones were set up by Matter Neuroscience to get people talking across political divides (and plug the company). The science behind it is that disagreements cause stress and lower happiness, while agreement decreases stress and increases happiness. If people have pleasant conversations, even with people they think they disagree with, they will be happier. The phones are a happiness hack.
Bridging political divides and lowering partisan animosity are good things. But I also worry about what the effort both reflects and reinforces.
The phones don’t say “call a Texan” and “call a Californian,” or “call a rancher” and “call a dentist,” or even just “call a stranger.” By saying “talk to someone from a different political party” the phones reflect and reinforce that the political party we belong to is a core part of who we are, reifying an almost superstitious belief in our political differences.* At some point in some of your classes, you have studied affective polarization and tribalization in politics. For a lot of people, political labels are premises from which they reason, rather than shorthand for places to locate a mix of policy views.
The experiment reminds me of religious groups that set up tables and say “ask a ____” so people of one faith can better understand another faith. That’s a good thing to do, understanding and empathy are critical for communities to thrive (or even survive). But faith and politics are not, and should not, be the same thing. Faith helps define who we are as individuals, politics is something we do together.
The phones also reinforce stereotypes about San Francisco and Abilene. I know conservatives in the Bay Area, and while I don’t know anyone in Abilene I do know liberals in other Texas cities.The phones start with the premise of difference, rather than a premise of similarity.
Of course you should talk to people with different political views. You should also talk to people from different parts of the country and world, people whose families have lived in the US for generations and those whose families recently arrived, classmates whose parents and grandparents went to GW and classmates who are the first in their family to go to college. Talk to vegans and omnivores, NASCAR fans and romance novel lovers. Talk to people you don't know because they’re people. It shouldn’t take a pay phone and viral p.r. stunt to make us start a conversation with a stranger.
*I borrowed this line from Rachel Cusk in her book Kudos.