A “emotional fitness community” that just got $26 million in venture capital thrown at them has installed a phone on Valencia Street that lets you “Call a Republican” in Texas, perhaps to foster unity, or perhaps just to record you.
KTVU ran a Monday feature about a new “Call a Republican” phone that was just installed right outside the Black Serum Tattoo Shop at Valencia and 14th streets. This is a real phone that actually works, and the calls from here in deeply liberal San Francisco go to a bookshop in hardcore-conservative Abilene, Texas. The purported goal of the project is to “create space for friendly, human-to-human conversations,” though it might be more fair to say this a publicity stunt for a Boulder, Colorado-based “emotional fitness community” startup.
The phones were installed over the weekend (in both SF and Texas), as seen in the video above. The phone is called The Party Line, and was put there by the Boulder-based Matter Neuroscience, who are now flush with $22 million in fresh venture capital. According the the Chronicle’s writeup, the goal of the project is to “have people from different places have meaningful conversations, because hostile political discourse increases our brains' cortisol levels and suppresses happiness."
The Chron also references that the project hopes to unlock ways to release “endogenous cannabinoids.” Wait, like, marijuana cannabinoids? Yes, marijuana cannabinoids, though these are also organically produced by the human body.
A neuroscience startup set up a phone line between liberal San Francisco and a conservative city in Texas. What could possibly go wrong? Gift link: https://t.co/T7ubIEbwkU
— Rachel Swan (@rachelswan) January 20, 2026
Curious about this, we started Googling Matter Neuroscience and their work with cannabinoids. Our Google search results pointed us to a claim that the company was hoping to create “A new framework for understanding human happiness” using “dopamine, testosterone, serotonin, oxytocin, cannabinoids, and opioids.”
Except the link produced by that Google search is a dead 404 link, which only shows the words, “It all begins with dopamine.”
Here’s what this “Call a Republican” phone looks like. We tried it, it does produce a dial tone (we did not bother calling Texas), and using the phone does not require 50 cents or whatever it is that a pay phone costs these days. Calls reportedly only go to the corresponding phone at the Seven and One bookstore in Abilene, Texas.
But looking at the associated sign, we see a warning from the startup that “We are recording these conversations.” So there is some surveillance or data collection going on here, and we imagine Matter Neuroscience may be hoping to monetize whatever comes of these phone conversations.
We are likely looking at more of a startup publicity stunt here. It seems a stretch that this experiment will produce any useful scientific evidence, but it sure will generate media coverage (the Chronicle was there producing another video segment when SFist visited late Tuesday morning, even though the Chron already ran a feature on this thing Tuesday.)
And that may be the point, so Matter Neuroscience can maybe get themselves another $26 million in venture capital and allow their executives to live like kings, without ever being profitable or producing any medically sound or efficacious products.
Either way, the Chronicle notes that as far as this Call a Republican phone goes, “barring vandalism or an unforeseen catastrophe," it is scheduled to stay there through February.
Related: California GOP Putting Out Bogus Ballot Boxes In At Least Three Counties [SFist]
Image: Joe Kukura, SFist
