A Potluck Experiment

In 2025 I decided I was going to finally do something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time: start hosting a regular potluck. The goal—feed people I don’t know in my home.

Every other month, on Sunday evenings, people bring a dish for dinner at my house. Anyone is welcome. It’s not fancy, but the food is good and so is the company.

Post-Covid, everyone seems to have fallen out of the habit of gathering in person. And with fewer gatherings, we seem to be more and more selective about who we spend that very limited time with. We tend to pick the people who are most like us (which is certainly important and pleasant and bonding). But what about the people who are very different from us?

We need to spend time with people not like us, too. That’s how we build communities. And that’s the point of my potluck.

Despite what the news and social media say about a divided America, there are plenty of red, blue, and purple Americans who work and play together. In my small town of Pendleton, SC, people may have differing political beliefs, but we manage to keep the town running just fine. We pick up litter. We hold the Spring Jubilee. And the roads and schools and library are in working order.

The reason is pretty simple—because those are things we do together, in person. And being together in person is a recipe for getting along. Humans didn’t evolve to interact with other humans through texts or over video calls. We evolved to understand and cooperate with each other in the real world. And we are very, very good at it.

My research is grounded in the field of social psychology, which examines exactly how people understand and cooperate with other people. Studies of the mental capacities we have for relating to each other show our brains at their most efficient. Humans evolved to relate to each other by relying on information that our bodies collect outside our conscious awareness. That information transits poorly or not at all through a screen.

Being together in the real world is essential for building relationships. It’s not that we need to have deep and close relationships with everyone around us (weak-tie relationships are every bit as important as strong-tie relationships). Both strong- and weak-tie relationships are characterized by trust, which allows us to work together cooperatively. Trust is helpful for solving simple problems like picking up trash, but essential for complex problems like whether to prioritize renewing infrastructure vs. giving tax breaks to new businesses in order to drive economic growth.

It’s easy to attribute all sorts of inaccurate, negative characteristics to other people, especially those who are different from us. But in-person interaction confronts us with the reality that the characteristics we attributed to other people aren’t very accurate. We have to correct our assumptions based on the person in front of us.

So if you look at a world divided by political party and wonder where we go from here and what anyone can do to make a difference, it’s not as hard as you think. Invite people over for lemonade and cookies. Host a potluck. Maybe even a progressive dinner, if you’re feeling adventurous.

Feed people you don’t know in your home.

Let me know how it goes and I’ll report back too.