Some animals don’t just react.

They anticipate.

In this episode of Think First, we explore a quiet idea most of us already sense but rarely say out loud: animals may notice shifts in the world before we do — emotional, social, and environmental — in ways that complicate how we think about consciousness.

From dogs that read the room before anything happens, to crows that plan, elephants that remember relationships, whales that communicate across vast distances, and octopuses that solve problems without a centralized brain, this episode looks at what animal behavior reveals — not about animals becoming human, but about humans reconsidering the frame.

No mysticism.

No metaphysics.

No forced conclusions.

Just observation, humor, and an open question that lingers:

What if consciousness isn’t rare — just unevenly distributed?

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Stay sharp. Stay skeptical. #SpotTheGaslight
Read and reflect at Gaslight360.com/clarity

The deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history didn’t fade because it was resolved.

It faded because asking questions became unwelcome.

In this episode of Think First, we revisit the 2017 Las Vegas shooting — not to advance a theory, but to examine what happens when explanations arrive quickly… and then stop evolving.

Drawing on a recent long-form interview between Tucker Carlson and researcher Ian Carroll, we explore how narratives stabilize, why timelines shift, and what it means when transparency pauses instead of progresses.

Along the way, we consider parallels to more recent events — including the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the murder of Charlie Kirk in Orem, Utah — where public clarity never fully arrived.

This episode isn’t about telling you what to believe.

It’s about modeling how to sit with unanswered questions — calmly, carefully, and without rushing to conclusions.

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Stay sharp. Stay skeptical. #SpotTheGaslight
Read and reflect at Gaslight360.com/clarity

After forty years at Harvard, historian James Hankins quietly walked away.

Not in protest. Not in anger. But with a diagnosis.

In this episode of Think First, we examine Hankins’ final essay and a recent interview to understand what changed inside elite universities — not ideologically, but institutionally. From the disappearance of Western civilization requirements to shifting hiring incentives and the loss of a shared cultural foundation, this isn’t a story about politics. It’s about drift.

We explore how poetic truth replaces standards, how reassurance substitutes for evidence, and why institutions can look unchanged while becoming something entirely different.

If this episode feels less like an argument and more like a diagnosis, that’s intentional.

Read my essay at detjen.substack.com

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Stay sharp. Stay skeptical. #SpotTheGaslight
Read and reflect at Gaslight360.com/clarity