My #1 recommendation to anyone considering being a public intellectual is just don't do it lol. Seriously don't, you'll thank me later. My #2 recommendation is to begin with reading all of the Archdruid Report. There you will learn the most elusive skill: how to actually *think*.

Personally, I owe an almost infinite debt to John Michael Greer's work, not necessarily because of his ideas (though I find many of them convincing), but because of his approach to thinking as such.

To sum it up, if you want to think about history or human behavior, you will need to do so by inductive reasoning, by going from the specific to arrive at general conclusions. To be able to do this, you need to learn a lot - as much as you can - about humans and history.

That's more or less JMG's approach to history: if you want to play the odds when you make guesses, you need to figure out what happens 6 times out of 10 instead of 4 times out of 10. And to do that, you need to be familiar with all the previous times that thing has happened.