Finding intellectual and cultural community post college can be incredibly difficult. How can you continue to recapture some of those great late night chats you used to have with like-minded friends? How can you continue to learn in a way that is still fun? How do you avoid the pseudo-intellectual salons where the wrong person speaks the whole time?

There is a new generation of organizations whose mission is to stoke intellectual engagement and are doing it in the right way. 

Here are some of what we recommend and advise against.

Intellectual Dinner Parties & Intimate Gatherings: YES

Interintellect throws regular salon series online and increasingly in person at Maxwell. 

Maxwell’s philosophy is to host as many book clubs, idea dinners, debate nights as possible so that our members can talk to each other and learn from each other.

The more participatory the event, the more likely you are to actually learn, because after all, if you wanted to be talked at you could watch the lecture on youtube.

Up and Coming Publications & Media Properties: YES

Reason has a supper club. So does The Free Press now as well. Both Airmail and Puck have experimented with throwing more events. Maxwell has hosted both The Free Press and Reason for their events and regularly partners with magazines to throw interesting lectures.

Lectures on Tap hosts interesting deep dives into subjects and pops up in bars all around NYC and mostly spreads the word through Instagram.

Maxwell hosts a regular Ideas dinner with the Random Walk substack where members have to present an investment idea they’ve come up with.

Maxwell has also hosted notable podcasters like Scott Galloway for his Raging Moderates podcast for intimate podcast recordings that include audience participation.

These types of lectures that are put on by these new publications, podcasts and media brands tend to be smaller, give you an opportunity to meet people before and after, and are not held at a lecture hall, allowing for more opportunities for participation.

Career Organizations: YES

There are a ton of new organizations forming around career interests – Maxwell regularly hosts Monday Girl lectures with notable women entrepreneurs and execs. 

South Park Commons has a presence in both SF and NYC and cultivates a community of entrepreneurs and VCs looking for the next big thing.

Hampton, YPO and EO are all geared towards Entrepreneurs and have regular monthly meetups with the same group of people.

Benjamin Franklin famously had a group of contemporaries he gathered regularly for intellectual discussion and advancement that he called The Junto, and many of these organizations follow similar formats, and some are even named after Franklin’s famous group.

If your career is one that has a clear intellectual throughline, like politics or tech, these are a good place to start for intellectual engagement.

Fellowships: YES

Many non-profit organizations have fellowships for young professionals to engage with their industry – I’m Jewish, in tech and into geopolitics so and I’ve been a fellow at Birthright, Maimonides and The Atlantic Council. I know of programs at Council on Foreign Relations (CfR), The French American Foundation and many more. General membership in these organizations is nowhere near as valuable as going through one of the programs as joining a fellowship tends to throw you into the same room repeatedly with likeminded people.

Maxwell throws a regular dinner with The Atlantic Council, half their Millennium Fellows and half Maxwell Members.

Most of them include trips where a lot of bonding happens.

They are basically mini-business schools.

There are a lot of organizations that are not worth your time though . . .

Cultural Supporter Organizations: NO

You can try to join associations like The Met’s Apollo Circle, the supporters circles that surround ABT and NYC Ballet, but what you’ll find is that many of these organizations are wannabe Blair Waldorfs who don’t have any serious interest in culture and are just interested in living out some sort of NYC scene-y fantasy.

Big Hall Lectures: NO

There are plenty of lectures at places like the 92 Street Y, Carnegie Hall and more. But the spaces are so large there isn’t any real chance of meeting like minded individuals – it dates a daring socialite to strike up conversation in a concert hall.

“Modern Universities” and Social Clubs Without A Campus: NO

Ivy Connect and Parlor come to mind. 

These clubs are under the impression that they can create a membership base completely out of events, but it leads to them having intellectual programming that is a mile wide and inch deep. 

The speakers are often lightweight intellectuals and artists who aren’t very good.