Introducing: C.J. Adrien’s Critical Thinking Lab

My new project, C.J. Adrien’s Critical Thinking Lab, uses history as a gym for your brain.

C.J. Adrien’s Critical Thinking Lab

If you’ve been following my work for a while, you know that my passion has always been at the intersection of history and storytelling. But lately, I’ve felt a familiar itch that dates back to my days standing in front of a classroom.

During my years as a school teacher, I didn't just want my students to memorize dates and names. I taught them that the most important thing they could take out of my classroom was the ability to think critically. I used to emphasize (and still do today) that your mind is like a muscle: it’s ‘use it or lose it.’

Today, that mission feels more urgent than ever. That’s why I’ve decided to move the classroom online with my new channel: C.J. Adrien’s Critical Thinking Lab. In an era of deepfakes, “alternative facts,” and 24-hour news cycles designed to hijack your dopamine receptors, the most essential survival skill you can possess is critical thinking.

Why History?

History, in my view, is the ultimate training ground for the mind. It’s written by people with agendas, filtered through cultural biases, and often reconstructed from incomplete information. In the introductory video above, I liken the exercise to putting together a puzzle without all the pieces.

By examining “tricky” historical questions, we aren’t just learning about the past. We are learning how to peel back biases (both the author’s and our own), identify logical fallacies, and challenge misinformation by asking the right questions.

The Art of “Mental Masturbation”

In the intro video, I describe this practice as “mental masturbation.” (Thanks, Terri!) It’s a tongue-in-cheek term, but I use it for a reason: it is a self-contained, pleasurable exercise for the brain.

While it might seem like intellectual play, it serves a vital purpose. In a world saturated with fake news and incomplete information, your brain needs “gym time.” If you can learn to spot the logical errors in a 1,000-year-old political narrative, you will be much better equipped to spot the manipulation in a 15-second TikTok or a biased news headline today.

My goal for my audience is to learn how to question in a way that quickly identifies indefensible statements made online by influencers, experts, politicians, and anyone with a platform, including me!

What to Expect

The “Lab” will deliver bite-sized history lessons in which I will explore a “tricky” historical question, approach it from multiple angles, and demonstrate, through what we teachers call modeling, how to undertake the exercise of critical thinking. I won’t just be looking for “what happened” but how we came to believe what we think we know.

Ready to exercise your brain a little? I’ve got the second episode already out!

Next up in the series, I’ll be tackling some critical historical questions that have been circulating in today’s media landscape, including “Was Kievan Rus Russia?” and “How Old is France?”

If you have any historical questions you think would be fun for me to tackle, send them my way via email or in the comments. Thank you all!