In the autumn of 1901, a self-taught anarchist named Leon Czolgosz stepped up to President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo and fired two shots into his abdomen. Czolgosz and Emma Goldman had never met. They exchanged no letters, plotted no conspiracy, and shared no secret handshake. Yet Goldman’s fiery lectures and essays—denouncing government, capitalism, and the “rulers” who oppressed the working class—had lodged in Czolgosz’s mind like shrapnel. He attended one of her speeches, absorbed the anarchist literature she championed, and later told interrogators her words helped convince him that McKinley represented the enemy. Goldman, arrested and questioned, refused to condemn the assassin outright. In her essay “The Tragedy at Buffalo,” she framed Czolgosz not as a monster but as a symptom of a diseased society.

Neither knew the other personally. Together, they helped inspire a generation of radicals to view political violence as a legitimate reply to perceived injustice. The Haymarket Affair of 1886—where four anarchists were hanged after a bombing at a labor rally Goldman saw as a travesty—had already radicalized her. Her rhetoric, in turn, radicalized others. The result was not revolution but a backlash: stricter immigration laws, expanded secret policing, and a cultural association of anarchism with terror. Rational policy—gradual reform, democratic debate, constitutional order—became the enemy.

More than a century later, the pattern repeats with eerie familiarity. We now live amid “batteries” of activist journalists and commentators whose output functions less as reporting than as ideological accelerant. Their work does not directly order violence, any more than Goldman ordered Czolgosz to shoot. Yet it cultivates a worldview in which political opponents are not mistaken but evil, not wrong but existential threats deserving whatever fate befalls them. The targets today are different, but the mechanism is the same: lone actors, marinated in grievance, acting on a steady drip of dehumanizing rhetoric.

Consider the recent record. Donald Trump survived two assassination attempts during his 2024 campaign—one in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a bullet grazed his ear, and another weeks later in Florida. Then, in September 2025, Charlie Kirk—co-founder of Turning Point USA and a vocal conservative voice—was assassinated by sniper fire while speaking at Utah Valley University. The shooter, 22-year-old Tyler James Robinson, left a note expressing his intent and acted alone. Investigators found no grand conspiracy, just a young man steeped in the online and media ecosystem that had framed Kirk and Trump as avatars of oppression, fascism, or whatever the current vocabulary of outrage demands. These were not spontaneous crimes. They were downstream of a cultural current that treats conservative figures as legitimate prey.

Who today plays Emma Goldman’s role? The archetype is no longer a single immigrant orator lecturing in union halls. It is the networked activist-journalist—podcasters, Substackers, cable commentators, and social-media influencers—who command far larger audiences than Goldman ever dreamed of. They do not call themselves anarchists; many cloak their work in the language of “social justice,” “accountability,” or “resistance.” Their output is slicker, algorithmic, and endlessly amplified. The common thread is the same moral certainty Goldman possessed: the system is irredeemable, the other side is irredeemable, and therefore any blow struck against it is, if not praiseworthy, at least understandable. They do not pull triggers, but they load the cultural magazine.

The more uncomfortable question is whether intelligence agencies—particularly the CIA and its successors—have had any hand in “mass producing” such figures. History offers precedents for skepticism. Operation Mockingbird, the Cold War-era program in which the Agency cultivated relationships with journalists to shape domestic and foreign narratives, is well-documented. The CIA has admitted to using media assets for propaganda and has never fully foresworn the practice. Yet the leap from “the Agency influenced reporters to push anti-communist stories in the 1950s” to “the Agency today engineers radical left-wing journalists to provoke right-wing assassinations” is enormous and unsupported by credible evidence. Conspiracy theorists have long filled that gap with claims of MKUltra-style mind control or “deep state” social engineering, but those narratives collapse under scrutiny. Lone actors have always existed; the internet simply supercharges their grievances faster than any government handler could. Blaming a shadowy cabal risks the same intellectual shortcut the anarchists once took: if the world is too complex and ugly to explain through ordinary human folly, malice, and ideology, then there must be a hidden director pulling strings.

Still, the lesson from Goldman and Czolgosz endures. Ideas have consequences. When journalism abandons the pursuit of truth for the manufacture of righteous fury, it does not merely “oppose rational policy”—it corrodes the very possibility of rational policy. It tells impressionable minds that debate is futile and violence is expressive. The proper response is not censorship or conspiracy-mongering. It is relentless insistence on evidence, proportion, and the distinction between disagreement and demonization. Until journalists—on every side—relearn that distinction, we should expect more Czolgoszes: isolated, radicalized, and convinced that the next shot will finally make the oppressors listen.

The tragedy is not that Goldman and Czolgosz never met. It is that their example still meets new disciples every day.

More than 3,000 years ago, a seafaring people on the eastern Mediterranean coast did something revolutionary. The Phoenicians—traders and innovators from what is now Lebanon—did not invent writing. But around 1200 BCE, they perfected a system that changed human history: the first true phonetic alphabet.

Unlike the cumbersome hieroglyphs of Egypt or the wedge-shaped cuneiform of Mesopotamia—systems with hundreds or thousands of symbols representing whole words or ideas—the Phoenician script used just 22 letters. Each stood for a single sound (a consonant, with vowels inferred by the reader). One symbol, one sound. It was simple, portable, and learnable by ordinary merchants, not just elite scribes. This phonetic breakthrough spread rapidly through trade routes, laying the foundation for the Greek alphabet (which added vowels), and eventually Latin, Arabic, and nearly every modern writing system we use today.

The Phoenicians gave us more than letters. They handed humanity the alphabetic principle—the idea that written symbols can directly represent spoken sounds. That principle is the bedrock of phonics: the explicit, systematic teaching of how letters and letter combinations map to the sounds of language.

Fast-forward to the 21st century, and that ancient insight is proving its worth in the places where it is needed most: remote and disadvantaged communities. In Australia’s Northern Territory, Western Australia, and Queensland, in rural New Zealand, and in isolated pockets of Chile and beyond, evidence-based phonics programs are transforming outcomes for Indigenous, low-income, and geographically isolated students who have long been left behind.

The data are clear and compelling. In South Australia, the rollout of mandatory phonics screening checks for Year 1 students delivered dramatic gains: non-metropolitan students improved by 22 percentage points, Aboriginal students saw similar leaps, and children from the most disadvantaged communities jumped 20 points in meeting benchmarks. In New Zealand, a program pairing systematic phonics with authentic children’s literature lifted Year 2 Māori students in poor areas to age-appropriate levels in word reading, accuracy, comprehension, and spelling—gains that traditional “whole-word” or context-guessing approaches had failed to deliver.

Randomised trials tell the same story. In a remote Chilean community, a 27-week reading and language intervention built on phonics and explicit instruction produced substantial improvements in pre-literacy skills, word reading, and vocabulary—gains that held for months afterward and partially explained better reading comprehension. In Australia, Direct Instruction literacy programs rolled out in very remote primary schools showed stronger progress in reading, writing, and spelling compared with control schools, particularly benefiting disadvantaged and minority students.

Why does this ancient method work so powerfully for today’s most vulnerable learners? Because many children in remote communities arrive at school with thinner oral language exposure, fewer books in the home, and greater linguistic diversity. Phonics does not assume background knowledge; it builds the decoding skill that lets every child crack the code independently. It turns reading from a guessing game into a reliable, empowering tool. Once children can sound out words accurately and automatically, they can focus on meaning, stories, and ideas—the very things that make reading joyful and life-changing.

Critics sometimes dismiss phonics as “drill and kill” or culturally insensitive. Yet the evidence shows the opposite: when delivered with care, in culturally responsive ways, and alongside rich read-alouds and knowledge-building, it is one of the most equitable educational interventions we have. It levels the playing field for students who cannot afford to fall further behind.

The Phoenicians democratised writing for traders and sailors who needed to record deals across cultures and languages. Today, explicit phonics is doing the same for remote classrooms: giving every child, regardless of postcode, postcode, or family income, the power to read the world for themselves.

We owe it to those ancient innovators—and to the children who will inherit their legacy—to keep this revolution alive. Policymakers, school leaders, and teacher educators must double down on the Science of Reading, ensure every teacher is trained in systematic phonics, and prioritise these proven approaches in the communities that need them most. Literacy is not a luxury. In the hands of disadvantaged students, it is the ultimate tool for opportunity.

Three millennia after the Phoenicians simplified the written word, their gift continues to unlock futures. The question is no longer whether phonics works. It is whether we have the will to deliver it where it matters most.

The idea that agriculture emerged not primarily for bread or staples, but because hunter-gatherers stumbled upon fermentation and craved reliable booze is a provocative, well-supported hypothesis in archaeology and anthropology. It flips the usual narrative: alcohol wasn’t a happy accident of farming—it may have been the spark that made farming worthwhile. Different staple crops then produced signature drinks (grain beer, rice wine, grape wine), which in turn wove into rituals, social norms, and even psychological tendencies, subtly “colouring” the personalities and cultures of the peoples who built their worlds around them. Let’s unpack this step by step.

1. The Discovery of Drinking → The Birth of Agriculture

Hunter-gatherers didn’t need to settle down to eat more calories; early grains were labour-intensive and unreliable for daily bread. But fermentation turned surplus or wild grains/fruits into something far more valuable: a safe, storable, mind-altering social lubricant. Evidence shows intentional brewing predates full domestication.

• In the Near East (Natufian culture, ~13,000 years ago), hunter-gatherers at Raqefet Cave were already malting and brewing barley and wheat into beer for ritual feasts—centuries before agriculture took hold. These weren’t accidental sips; they were deliberate, multi-stage processes. Beer likely fuelled communal raves and ancestor-honouring events that rewarded cooperation and sedentism. Demand for reliable grain supplies pushed people to plant, weed, and select better varieties.
• Similar patterns appear elsewhere: alcohol as a “social technology” that made the risky shift to farming pay off through feasts that built alliances and status.

This “beer before bread” (or more broadly, “fermentation before farming”) idea has been debated since the 1950s but keeps gaining archaeological traction.

2. Three Crops, Three Drinks, Three Agricultural Worlds

Once farming locked in, the dominant crop dictated the dominant drink—and the drink fed back into culture.

• Grain beer (barley/wheat): Fertile Crescent and later northern Europe. Easy to malt, scalable, and suited to temperate climates and large communal gatherings. Beer became the everyday social glue of Mesopotamia, Egypt, medieval Europe, and Germanic/ Celtic societies. Taverns and halls fostered boisterous, relatively egalitarian (or at least horizontally bonded) drinking. Think Viking mead-halls or British pubs: rowdy camaraderie, storytelling, and group bonding after hard physical labour. The crop itself required less intensive coordination than rice, so wheat/barley cultures often trended more individualistic.
• Rice wine (huangjiu, sake, makgeolli, etc.): East and Southeast Asia, especially the Yangtze River region of China. Recent finds at Shangshan (~10,000 years ago) show rice was already being fermented into beer-like drinks using fungi (koji mould) almost as soon as wet-rice farming began. Rice wine production exploded with paddy agriculture. Unlike grape wine, it needs a two-step process (starch → sugar → alcohol), tying it intimately to the rhythms of rice cultivation. Rice farming demands massive coordination: shared irrigation canals, labour exchanges for transplanting/harvesting, and tight village interdependence. This forged highly collectivistic, “tight” cultures—strong in-group loyalty, harmony rituals, and hierarchical toasting. Rice wine became central to banquets, ancestor rites, and diplomacy: pouring for others first, never yourself. It’s ceremonial, often warmer and sweeter, drunk in rounds that reinforce social bonds rather than individual indulgence.
• Grape wine: Caucasus (Georgia ~8,000 years ago) and Mediterranean spread. Grapes ferment naturally on the vine; viticulture is climate-specific (sunny hillsides) and perennial. Wine production required settled estates, storage in amphorae or barrels, and later elite trade networks. It became tied to philosophy (Greek symposia), religion (Dionysus, later Christian Eucharist), and refined sociability. Mediterranean cultures—French, Italian, Greek—developed a reputation for expressive passion, individualism within social grace, and wine-as-civilisation (art, poetry, measured intoxication with meals). Wine drinking is often slower, more contemplative or sensual than beer chugging or rice-wine toasting rounds.

3. How the Drinks “Coloured the Personalities of Peoples”

This is the most speculative—and fun—part. The crops shaped the societies (labour demands → social norms), and the drinks became both symbol and reinforcer of those norms. Cultural psychology offers one rigorous lens: the “rice theory” shows that historical rice-farming regions (southern China, much of East Asia) remain more interdependent, holistic-thinking, and tight-knit than wheat-farming areas—even controlling for modern factors. Rice wine’s ritual role amplifies this: group harmony over individual flair.

• Beer cultures (northern/western Europe, ancient Near East): Practical, gregarious, sometimes rowdy. Beer’s accessibility and lower ritual formality suited mobile or frontier societies. Think German Gemütlichkeit, British pub banter, or American tailgates—direct, egalitarian bonding. Personalities stereotyped as hearty, straightforward, community-oriented but less rigidly hierarchical.
• Rice-wine cultures (China, Japan, Korea, SE Asia): Emphasis on face, reciprocity, and collective flow. Drinking is rarely solitary; it’s about pouring for others, matching rounds, and lubricating hierarchy or group cohesion. This aligns with broader rice-farming psychology: loyalty to in-groups, sensitivity to social cues, and a preference for harmony over confrontation. The drink itself (often higher ABV, sometimes warmed) encourages sustained social immersion rather than quick intoxication.
• Grape-wine cultures (Mediterranean and its cultural heirs): More individualistic within a cultured frame—romantic, artistic, philosophically inclined. Wine’s association with leisure, connoisseurship, and the “good life” fostered expressive individualism: debate, flirtation, poetry. French joie de vivre, Italian la dolce vita, Greek symposium wit. The crop’s prestige and trade value also supported elite refinement and export-oriented identities.

Of course, these are broad brushes—genes (e.g., East Asian alcohol flush reaction via ALDH2), religion, later colonialism, and industrialisation all layer on top. But the pattern holds: the agricultural base selected for certain social technologies, the signature drink ritualised them, and centuries of reinforcement etched them into cultural “personality.”

Final Thought

Agriculture didn’t just feed bodies—it fermented minds. Hunter-gatherers discovered drinking, domesticated the plants that made it reliable, and ended up with three great civilisational drinks that still echo in how we gather, toast, argue, and dream today. Rice wine binds tight collectives; beer fuels boisterous fellowship; grape wine sparks individual reflection amid shared pleasure. The concept isn’t deterministic, but it’s a delicious lens: we are, in part, what we ferment. Cheers to that ancient thirst.