Modern cosmological tensions are fundamentally tensions in distance measurements. The Hubble discrepancy and recent BAO+SN hints of evolving dark energy both arise from how the distance-redshift relationship is inferred and compared across different probes. In this talk, I argue for a distance-first approach by treating calibrated distances as the primary data product and using internal distance consistency tests before adding new dark-sector physics. Using two recent case studies (2112.11567 and 2507.17969), I show how this perspective can rapidly rule out published cosmological models or remove the need for exotic ones.