Announcing the 2026 Roots of Progress Blog-Building Intensive
Apply to the 4th cohort of this highly-regarded program for progress writers and intellectuals
Applications are now open for the 2026 cohort of The Roots of Progress Blog-Building Intensive, a 10-week program for aspiring progress writers.
Our 74 alumni have published over 1,500 essays reaching over 150,000 subscribers, on topics like the boring part of Bell Labs, the science policy behind Brazil’s agricultural triumph, aesthetics of progress, why housing scarcity is bad for kids, nanotechnology, the magic phrase that kills AI regulation, how to win on immigration, the everyday magic of soil, how to design AI for science, clinical trial abundance, the state of the German research ecosystem, Beijing vibe-coders, how to fix clinical trials, the history of penicillin, how China still makes $1 lighters, the history of the color blue, and so much more.
They helped write the U.S. AI policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology (Dean Ball), they are co-authoring books on re-industrializing America (Madeline Hart) and helping to steer major U.S. cities towards housing abundance (Ryan Puzycki).
They have published opinion essays in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal on topics like fertility policy, AI safety and the challenges that go along with self-driving car adoption. They have written for magazines like The Atlantic, WIRED, Foreign Affairs, American Affairs, Works in Progress, Asimov Press, Asterisk, and Arena.
Past fellows have described the program as life-changing and impactful:
“If you’re on the fence, you should absolutely do this; your writing and thinking will get so much sharper” –Steven Adler
“The connections I have made through RPI are truly lifelong.” –Lesley Gao
“The greatest collection of people in the world” –Ibis Slade
Now, you too, can join this optimistic intellectual community. You will launch (or re-launch) a blog/Substack, get into a regular writing habit, improve your writing, and make progress on building your audience.
As a Blog-Building Intensive Fellow you will meet and learn from progress studies leaders, authors, and industry experts. You’ll participate in a structured 10-week writing course designed to support the type of writing our fellows want to excel at: long-form, informational essays that explain and persuade, often in technical topic areas or tricky policy topics.
You will learn how to write more, create writing habits, and develop a writing system. You’ll write and publish four essays, one every other week, and you’ll receive detailed feedback from an experienced professional editor, from the Roots of Progress team, and from your peers.
New this year: An in-person retreat — We will gather for a 3-day-long in-person retreat in Pennsylvania, August 20th - 23rd. We’ll play games, engage in enlivening discussion, and get to know one another in-person over the course of the weekend. We will host one or two workshops to talk about goals and career trajectories for public intellectuals, and there may even be a special guest or two.
This Year’s Themes: Security & Resilience and Human Talent & Potential
Themes: In addition to a general focus on progress studies, this year’s fellowship features two themes: (1) security & resilience and (2) human talent & potential We welcome fellows writing on any progress-related topic, but for 10-15 of spots, we will give preference to applicants focusing on these themes.
(1) Security & Resilience. Material progress brings extraordinary benefits, but it also introduces new risks. More powerful biotechnology means more potential for engineered pandemics. More powerful AI means more potential for misalignment, surveillance, and epistemic breakdown. Greater global interdependence means greater vulnerability to supply chain disruptions and geopolitical conflict. The question is not whether to pursue progress, but how to build the defenses and safeguards that allow progress to continue safely. We need more writers exploring what it looks like to proactively defend against the full range of threats the future might bring while simultaneously building resilience safeguards around the systems and institutions we value most.
(2) Human Talent & Potential. People are the engine of progress, but we are far from unlocking the full potential of human talent. Education systems remain stubbornly resistant to reform and aren’t optimally preparing young people for a quickly changing world. Immigration policy fails to get the right people to the right places. Falling birth rates are shrinking the pool of future talent. And the rise of AI raises questions about what humans will do when non-human intelligence is too-cheap-to-meter. These challenges are connected: they are all about how we develop, deploy, and sustain human capability in a rapidly changing world. Solving these challenges entails building a world where all people, not just exceptional outliers, can thrive and contribute.
This year’s speakers
Speakers: We have a fantastic group of speakers for you to meet and learn from, including:
Tyler Cowen (George Mason University / Marginal Revolution)
Greg Lukianoff (FIRE; free speech and political resilience)
Virginia Postrel (author, The Future and Its Enemies)
Brendan McCord (The Cosmos Institute; post-AI human flourishing).
Eli Dourado (Abundance Institute)
Brian Potter (Institute for Progress)
Kevin Esvelt (MIT Media Lab; biosecurity)
Alice Evans (Stanford; gender and demographics)
Alex Kustov (The University of Notre Dame; immigration)
Elle Griffin (The Elysian)
Who: This program may be for you if you’re excited about progress studies and you love to write. Maybe you’d like to explore a career in writing about progress, or maybe you’re already blogging 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. Successful participants in previous cohorts often brought deep expertise in a specific area, and we helped them develop the writing skills and habits to make their insights accessible to the intellectual public. You need to be excited about writing and have some writing samples you can share, but you don’t need to have a large portfolio of public writing to be eligible.
If you have a background in and are passionate about security and resilience topics — biosecurity, AI safety, defense technology, geopolitical risk, or democratic resilience — or about human talent and potential — education, immigration, fertility, demographics, or the future of work — please apply to those specific tracks: it will be great to have a community of people with similar focused interests to support each other.
Commitment: 10–15 hours a week, for 10 weeks. You’ll use the time to read, to write, to participate in discussions with experts, to provide editing and feedback to your peers, and to participate in group meetings.
Cost: Free! There is no cost to you. This is a free-tuition program, and we’ll also provide travel, lodging, and food for the in-person long weekend. Plus, you get free, guaranteed tickets to the 2026 Progress Conference in October.
When: The program runs online July 27th–October 2. Our in-person weekend takes place August 20th - 23rd. Optional and strongly encouraged: attend Progress Conference in Berkeley October 8th -11th; on a free, guaranteed ticket.
Applications are now open. We will review applications on a rolling basis; the final deadline is June 1st. Applicants will receive a decision from us no later than July 7th.
I love everything about this (minus not checking what socks I was wearing with my chukkas).
Let's go! Such a good opportunity