The Roots of
Progress Blog
Building Intensive
The inaugural cohort of 20 fellows runs from September 15th to November 17th
We need a new philosophy of progress.
The progress of the last few centuries—in science, technology, industry, and the economy—is one of the greatest achievements of humanity. But to keep this upward trend going, we must believe that continued progress is both possible and desirable. The 19th century believed in the power of technology and industry to better humanity, but in the 20th century, this belief gave way to skepticism and distrust. It’s time for a new generation of intellectuals to help the world understand and appreciate progress.
The Roots of Progress Fellowship exists to empower intellectual entrepreneurs for progress.
You’re excited about progress studies. You love to write and have published a few posts or essays on a variety of topics. Now you wonder: what’s next?
Maybe you’d like to explore a career in writing about progress for a general (non-academic) audience, but you’re not quite sure how to get going. Or maybe you’re already blogging and publishing on Substack but would like to get to the next level—find your own topic area, increase your productivity, get more plugged into the community, and grow your audience.
You’re in the right place! Through this program you will (re-)launch a blog/Substack, get into a regular writing habit, improve your writing, and be on your way to growing your audience.
Progress Blog
Building Intensive
8-week cohort. September 15—November 17
An 8-week online program for writers eager to write more and better, to a larger audience, about progress studies topics
The inaugural cohort of 20 fellows runs from September 15th to November 17th
What you’ll get
The program starts off with two weeks of immersion into progress studies. You’ll read key essays, take notes, discuss them with your peers. Our fellow advisors—published authors, think tank leaders, and others—will give talks and answer questions. You’ll meet 1:1 with the Roots of Progress team to discuss your goals for the intensive.
The last week of the program is for you to chart your next steps towards becoming a progress writer. There will be career talks by people at different stages, from successful bloggers to staff writers to published authors. You’ll plan your next steps, and discuss with us how we can support you (e.g., via grants, opportunities to work for senior writers as a research assistant, or ongoing mentoring).
You’ll participate in the 5-week Write of Passage program run by David Perell, in a cohort with other progress writers.
As a participant in the progress studies section of Write of Passage your experience will be tailored to your writing goals:
- A dedicated editor with deep expertise in informational, long-form writing—a writer who has been a writing coach for decades
- Adaptations of prompts that are tailored to long-form informational writing, with a goal of publishing 3 shorter (~500-750 words) and 2 longer (~1,500-2,500 words) essays
- A dedicated progress studies cohort as your peer group—a community of writers as excited about writing essays to make progress real as you are
- An extended 8-week deep dive teaching you the secrets of becoming an effective writer. You’ll learn how to make your writing clearer and more powerful, how to manage the writing process to make it smoother, faster, and less painful, how to break the editing process into manageable stages, and how to master the basics of style and make your writing more colorful and engaging
- Follow-on work for an additional 12 weeks to keep you going: an opportunity to qualify for the Write of Passage Runway program
A three-day onsite event to network and bond with other fellows, Bay Area progress intellectuals and supporters, as well as select advisors
- Thursday: arrival and casual evening event with all participants
- Friday: working sessions & talks during the day + dinner with Bay Area progress supporters
- Saturday: an active offsite day with shared experiences | evening at the shared AirBnBs
- Sunday: brunch & travel home
We’d love for as many participants as possible to join us for this community-building experience. However, if you can’t commit to traveling at this time, we understand: just let us know in the application that you’re opting out of the in-person part.
Program Advisors
As you explore writing in progress studies as a career option we introduce you to those who’ve already made it: successful, established writers in progress studies as well as leaders of progress-related organizations. You’ll have a chance to meet with and learn from the best!
Tyler Cowen
Allison Duettmann
Bret Kugelmass
Johan Norberg
Steven Pinker
Virginia Postrel
Alec Stapp
Derek Thompson
Alex Trembath
Marian Tupy
Tamara Winter
What you need to invest
10–15 hours of your time for 8 weeks. No program fees
Be ready to spend 10-15 hours per week on this program for 8 weeks—to read, to write, to participate in discussions with experts, to provide editing and feedback to your peers, to participate in group meetings.
This program is supported by our sponsors and donors who are passionate about creating a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century and a progress movement to make progress real. We’ll pay your Write of Passage tuition. We will also provide lodging and food at the in-person event at the end of the program, and will reimburse reasonable travel expenses for the event.
Applications are now closed.
We are excited to share that we received well over 450 applications by the August 11th deadline, many from strong candidates. They range from college students to industry experts to academics. Many of them are experienced writers, some from relevant think tanks or who have already been published in mainstream media. They’re writing on a wide range of topics, from specific cause areas like housing, energy, space exploration, robotics, and AI; to meta-science and the philosophy of progress. We’re in the final stages of selecting participants, and we’re excited to see what our Roots of Progress blog fellows produce in this program, how we can help them, and how they will help each other.
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Frequently Asked Questions
The ideal candidate is someone who is exploring making a career out of writing on progress studies topics, such as those outlined in this post. The program is also great for those who have ambitious growth goals for their blog, with a goal of writing on progress topics.
You’ll benefit most from this program if:
- You have demonstrated skill in clear, compelling writing (though not necessarily on progress studies) and are excited about writing (despite all its challenges!)
- You are familiar with and aligned with the ideas of human progress, agency, and a solutionist approach
- You are insanely curious and love to go deep in topics you’re excited about
- You can dedicate 10-15 hours for 8 weeks to this program. This program is great for a wide range of people – students, recent graduates, for people exploring a career change, writers of all kinds, people returning to professional work after a break, or people who retired from a full-time career and are looking to make a difference by bringing their expertise to bear on progress studies.
- You either have already decided to make writing about progress topics a part of your career, or you are actively exploring it and eager to figure out how to make a unique contribution
Both! The 8-week online writing intensive is online, with live talks, deep dives, expert conversations, networking within the peer group, and more.
We highly recommend that you attend the in-person cohort event at the end to deepen your connection with your peers and meet some of the advisors in person. If you just can’t make it, let us know at the outset and if you are otherwise a great candidate we’ll find a way to make it work.
The program is structured so it can fit into your life even with other commitments, like family or a full-time job, and independent of the time zone you’re in. You’ll need a minimum of ~10 hours per week, with ideally more time especially on weeks where you write one of your two longer pieces.
- The progress immersion phase will have most group sessions either 8a PT/11a ET or 4p PT/7p ET to leave most of the workday available for regular work. If you’re joining from from a time zone that makes attending live difficult, you can listen to recordings for the evening sessions.
- The Write of Passage program is structured to be flexible on timing. While live sessions and deep dives happen at fixed times, there are live watch parties for people who need to miss (or who are in different time zones) as well as recordings to listen asynchronously.
- Each writing week goes from Wednesday to Wednesday to give you time on the weekend to write.
- You research and write on your own time (at night or on the weekends); silent writing sessions are optional.
- 1:1 mentor sessions have a flexible schedule
To get the full benefits from the program you will need engage for 10-15 hours per week.
- 10 hours per week is the minimum commitment. This works out to 2-4 hours of group live sessions + 1-2 hours of mentor/peer/feedback sessions + 4-5 hours for research, writing, and editing.
- 15 hours is optimal if you want to access all the content, contribute to the community, and for weeks where you write longer pieces with more research. You can choose to participate in 2-4 “deep dive” sessions per week, on everything from writing style to getting distribution for your writing. Plus, you and others benefit if you give peer feedback and engage in group working sessions.
Much of the optional additional content is recorded, so on weeks where you have less time you can save it and watch it later. Plus, all the Write of Passage content is accessible after the course ends. If you are excited about this program we encourage you to apply, even if most of the time you will have just 10 hours/week to dedicate to this program.
Enough to be clear that you are aligned with the basic ideas, and that you are excited about exploring a writing career in the field. Some fellows may have read multiple books, participated in the Progress Forum online and followed The Roots of Progress and other blogs and podcasts for years. Others may have only recently discovered the field: that’s ok; the immersion weeks will get you enough content to get started.
If you don’t know that much yet about progress studies, we’ve compiled a “getting started guide” here. We recommend that you invest a couple of hours a week for 4-6 weeks leading up to the start of the program becoming familiar with the core ideas in the field of progress studies.
The program is FREE. Our goal is to enable the best writers to build their blogs to help create and spread the foundational ideas of progress. We’re able to do this through the generous support of our donors and sponsors. (The list price for just Write of Passage alone is $5,000. We will also provide lodging and food at the final in-person event, and we will reimburse reasonable travel expenses.)
Sponsors
