A fellowship for the restless. Read about how the world was changed, and meet others who want to change it.

Late applications accepted until January 22nd 23:59.

Oxford Cambridge London

Few things matter more than what the world’s most talented individuals do with their lives.

Unfortunately, discovering the path which will lead them to the right life’s work is seldom straightforward, and the process is too often hampered by institutions which promise clarity and direction only to deliver a narrow list of sanitised options within which work is primarily justified as preparation for eventual real, impactful work, to be taken on later, elsewhere.

Even for those individuals who resist the dampening pressures the world throws on the ambitious and the weird, transforming fuzzy aspirations into concrete action on one’s own is a painful process prone to failure because the expression of talent is fundamentally social.

The right peers hold you accountable, egg you on, raise your aspirations, and ultimately enable you to progress. But forming such a peer group is rare and difficult, even when embedded within institutions which gather the world’s smartest and most ambitious people.

History is proof of the fact that these peer groups matter immensely. The most interesting and impactful work rarely starts within the brightly illuminated and fully legible spaces curated by universities and other institutions of becoming.

Instead, it happens in Café Guerbois, after hours in room 20E-214, or late into the night at the Eagle and Child pub.

These are spaces where bad ideas, incomplete thoughts, and cringe obsessions are taken seriously, allowed to be explored and played with. They are also spaces of high expectations and competition. They are, in other words, spaces of radicalisation, where individuals and groups shape and concretise an idea until they feel impelled to action.

Odyssey is a part-time programme which rewards serious and committed participation. We are here to help you find your life's work, whatever it turns out to look like.

You want to pursue world-changing work. You have been searching for the right environment and field in which to apply this ambition, but you still find yourself uncertain about whether you're on the right path, or are considering switching paths.

You don't shy away from taking on challenging ideas and problems, and are eager to find ways to use this ability in service of meaningful goals.

You aren't interested in pursuing someone else's dream. You frequently find yourself excited about topics which most people (including a plurality of your peers) don't seem to fully understand, and you find it occasionally difficult to explain your interests.

You have high expectations for yourself and the people around you. You want to confront your ideas and ideals to reality. You want to be surrounded by likeminded peers.

The Odyssey curriculum is a deep dive into the very early days of some of the groups and movements which have come to define our present.

From our privileged position, their visions for the future seem obvious; we regularly fail to remember that the edifices they built over decades or millennia started as messy projects pursued by marginal people, seen by their contemporaries as unserious, cringe-worthy, radical, and dangerous.

Over the first 11 weeks of the fellowship, we will be meeting once a week over a free dinner to discuss the ways our distance from the past might mislead us about our ability to impact the future. Our exploration of the early days of Christianity, the Enlightenment, and other influential cultural and intellectual movements will give us anecdotes, and frames with which to interpret the present, and give you more context and better judgement with which to think about your future.

The rest of the program is your opportunity to pursue work that wouldn't have otherwise existed. After so much talking during the first phase, the goal is to put the ideas, reflections, and energy you've come away with into concrete action. The focus is on building something tangible, perhaps inspired by the stories of world-historic changes that the first part examined. This can take the form of a personal project, a research project, an internship, founding a startup, launching a new social initiative, writing a book, going on a stringer trip to Mauritania for the NYT - whatever the most ambitious way for you to spend your time is. There will be no strict obligation, but we hope that you will be inspired to work on something meaningful you otherwise wouldn't have.

Odyssey is a 9 month programme running from January 2025 to September 2025. You will join a cohort of 24 ambitious, earnest, and (often) unconventional people from varied backgrounds.

The first 3 months: you will read about a hundred pages per week, and then have a weekly (free!) dinner during which we meet to discuss the readings and get to know your peers.

After the first 3 months: there will be more get-togethers and dinners, and you can expect your peers to be a source of accountability and inspiration, but your time and your priorities are your own.

The Odyssey team consists of

Oxford:

  • Sebastian Ohlig
  • Eduard Baroyan
  • Eric Huang

Cambridge:

  • Jenny Zhan
  • Duncan McClements

London:

  • Luke Drago
  • Rudolf Laine

Every cohort has a former Polaris fellow, and all have experience hosting discussions and dinners.