Write about agriculture or health, longevity and biotech
Applications are now open for the third Blog-Building Intensive fellowship!
This year we have two new tracks available for applicants to our Blog Building Intensive Fellowship: agriculture and health, longevity or biotech.
For each of these tracks, we’re looking for 5-7 fellows who are passionate about the topic and who bring relevant expertise. If you join a themed track, you’ll be attending all the advisor sessions for that track, and you’re committing to focus your writing in the program on how agriculture or health, longevity & biotech are related to and enable progress.
We will also accept fellows writing on any progress or abundance-related topic, but will give preference for a handful of spots to applicants focusing on these areas, and we will have dedicated programming for these tracks.
If you are thinking of applying for one of our themed tracks, here are some example topics you might explore or write about.
These examples are meant to give you a sense of what we’re thinking about when we think about progress and agriculture or progress and health, longevity and biotech. They are not meant to constrain you. If you have an angel not articulated here, we’d still love to hear from you.
The progress movement needs more people writing intelligently about (1) agriculture and (2) health, longevity, and biotech.* Maybe you’re one of those people?
Find out by applying to the third cohort of the Roots of Progress blog-building intensive!
Who you are:
- Someone who is deeply fascinated by how we feed the world (agriculture track) and how humans can live healthier, longer lives (health, biotech, longevity track)
- You are immersed or deeply knowledgeable in these fields. Maybe you’re a university-based researcher, or you work for a start-up and are passionate about an ag or health/bio mission. Or maybe you work for a think tank going deep about these fields, and want to reach a broader audience. Or maybe a specific topic in these areas is a long-held hobby interest that you’re ready to go deeper on.
- You like to write, or at least have dabbled seriously enough in writing to want to get better at it–in the pursuit of your passion for agriculture or biotech/health/longevity
- You’re excited about building a better, techno-humanist future; you’re on board with progress being good and with solutions being possible and desirable to improve human flourishing
What you’ll get if admitted to the program:
- Access to expert advisors in the field to learn from & grow your network
- A structured writing course and a chance to write four essays on topics in agriculture or health/biotech/longevity
- A community of progress-minded peers who also love to write and support each other
Not sure what writing about agriculture or health/longevity/bio could look like? Here are some example topic areas. They are just examples; if admitted, you decide what to write about.
Agriculture Track
- Adapting to climate change. Agriculture both contributes to and is affected by climate change. What does adapting to climate change look like? Which strategies seem promising, which seem less promising? What should farmers be doing to mitigate their farm’s contribution to agriculture?
- On-farm Data, prediction models and precision agriculture. One of the biggest frontiers in agriculture relates to the collection and use of data. More data than ever before is available from the ground (sensors), air (drones) and sky (satellites). What are the barriers to adoption? What is the current state of adoption?
- Lab grown, climate change and animal welfare. Lab grown meats are improving quickly. Proponents are excited about lab grown meats because they could reduce the carbon footprint of animal agriculture, and reduce animal suffering. What technological challenges need to be overcome to get there? What about regulatory and cultural challenges?
- “Sparing” the land vs “Sharing” the land. Some environmentalists and agriculture thinkers believe we should “spare” as much land as possible from farming. Others believe we should “share” land, that is: use land for multiple purposes including agriculture. How much should we value “wild” places? What are the benefits to be derived from preserving “wild” land? How do we define “wild” land? What does optimal land “sharing” look like? How much land should be “spared” versus “shared?”
- Safety-ism and Regulation. From successful anti-GMO lobbying to onerous and non-meaningful “Organic” food regulations, food “safety” advocates have done a lot to hamper progress. What do smart/effective safety standards/regulations look like? How can pseudoscientific safety claims be eliminated from the conversation?
Given the broad list of topics, we’d love to see fellows with a range of backgrounds—from people with deep expertise in agronomy, to those who research new ways to develop fertilizers, from animal welfare advocates to agriculture journalists.
Agriculture fellows will learn from an all-star case of advisors including: Brad Zamft, Sledge Taylor, Tim Hammerich, Robert Yaman and Alison Van Eenennaman.
Health, longevity & biotech track
- Longevity. Why should pro-progress people care about longevity? Why should people want to live longer themselves and want other people to live longer? What is the current state of longevity research?
- Biotech innovation and AI. AI scientists? AI-driven drug discovery? There is a lot of excitement about how AI could accelerate improvements in healthcare, medicine and drug development. What are the most promising applications of AI? What kinds of transformations should we expect to see? What is still unknown?
- Regulation and policy reform. Getting promising drugs and therapies to patients quickly would have obvious benefits. Delays cost lives. But safety concerns are real. What kinds of regulatory reforms will help get effective drugs to patients faster?
- History of medicine. Human lifespan and healthspan has radically increased in the last two hundred years. But unnecessary delays cost lives, too. What can we learn from the history of medicine about how to accelerate progress in the future?
- Prevention vs. treatment. While the US spends more than most other countries on medical care, our life expectancy lags behind. How should we think about preventing chronic diseases vs. treating them? Does our healthcare system provide the right incentives for prevention vs. treatment? How could new wearable tech and other data-based innovations help guide healthier lifestyles?
With the focus on health, longevity and biotech, an ideal fellow may be someone who has worked in one of these fields! You might also be a great candidate if you’ve spent some time researching these fields, whether at a think tank, as a personal passion project, or in academia.
Health fellows will learn from an all-star cast of advisors include: Ruxandra Teslo, Sam Rodrigues, Niko McCarty, Saloni Dattani, Meri Beckwith, John Willbanks.
* We also accept people writing about broader topics of progress and of abundance. This particular post is just going deeper into our themed tracks as we’ve been getting questions about those.