Applications are now open for the 2025 Roots of Progress Blog-Building Intensive Fellowship

Improve your writing skills, learn from leading progress builders and intellectuals, and publish essays about progress

Applications are now open for the 2025 cohort of The Roots of Progress Blog-Building Intensive, a 10-week program for aspiring progress writers.

Last year, 24 fellows, selected from well over 300 applicants, completed the program. They have sung the program’s praises:

• "It took me to another level as a writer" — Rob L'Heureux

• "I felt a sense of belonging and community I didn’t have before” — Grant Mulligan

• “It gave me the tools and confidence to actually start publishing'—Rosie Campbell

Last year’s fellows are now leading the AI policy debate, earning recognition for their writing on biotechnology, being cited in the Financial Times on China’s penetration of Western markets, and earning the top spot on the Hacker News forum. They published 81 essays in total during the program, on topics like techno urbanism, how China hacked comparative advantage, the pace of progress in medicine, the case for positive-sum environmentalism, why air conditioning is a survival technology, progress in metascience, why we should take AI welfare seriously, marine carbon dioxide removal, how EVs could change the grid, and so much more.

Now, you 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.

You will also meet and learn from progress studies leaders, authors, and industry experts. You’ll participate in a structured 10-week writing course designed to specifically 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. At the end of the program, you’ll meet your peers in person in San Francisco and get to attend the 2025 Progress Conference, where you’ll join 300 authors, technologists, policy experts, academics, nonprofit leaders, and storytellers.

Themes

In addition to a general focus on progress studies, this year’s fellowship features two themes: (1) agriculture and (2) health, biotech & longevity. We welcome fellows writing on any progress-related topic, but for a handful of spots, we will give preference to applicants focusing on these themes, for which there will be dedicated programming.

Advisors

We have a fantastic group of advisors for you to meet and learn from:

• Progress thinkers, writers, and media leaders, including Tyler Cowen (Mercatus Center), Virginia Postrel (author, The Future and Its Enemies), Noah Smith (Noahpinion), Tomas Pueyo (Uncharted Territories), Saloni Dattani (Our World in Data and Works in Progress), Eli Dourado (Astera Institute) and Brian Potter (Institute for Progress).

• Industry experts, including Sam Rodriques (FutureHouse), Alison Van Eenennaam (U.C. Davis), Brad Zamft (Heritable), Meri Beckwith (Lindus Health), Robert Yaman (Innovate Animal Ag), John Wilbanks (Astera Institute), Tim Hammerich (Future of Agriculture Podcast), Niko McCarty (Asimov Press), Ruxandra Tesloianu (Wellcome Sanger Institute), and Sledge Taylor (Como Consolidated Gin Co).

Who is this for?

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.

If you have a background in and are passionate about agriculture and health, longevity and biotech, 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. There is also a lighter week-long onboarding program that precedes the main program. 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.

There is no cost to you.

When

The program online runs July 28th–October 10. You’ll then participate in the 2025 Progress Conference in San Francisco October 17–19; with a dedicated day of in-person fellow activities on October 16th, right before the conference.

Applications are now open, with rolling admissions; the final deadline is June 1st.

Special thanks to program sponsor, Alpha School, for helping to make this program possible!