Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from

Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Goff and I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about how you can

improve your sense of direction, why the Pied Piper isn't just a fairy tale, and where our planets got their names.

We originally ran these stories on May 1st, 2018, and they're so good we remastered them just for you.

Plus stick around for a brand new recap segment at the end of today's episode

to hear our fresh takes on all of today's stories.

Let's satisfy some curiosity.

Cody, do you have a good sense of direction?

Depends on who you ask.

Well, a lot of times people think that your sense of direction is just innate,

but we wanted to know if you can actually improve your sense of direction.

What a sense of direction.

What a sense of direction really is, is just a relationship between lots of different factors,

including spatial awareness and accuracy of your mental map,

and your ability to connect the things you see around you with their location in the world.

According to spatial thinking experts, there are a few ways to improve your sense of direction.

First, try intentionally registering a visible

landmark as an indication of direction. So if you live in Santa Barbara, the

mountains are always to the north and the Pacific Ocean is always to the west.

Just taking a minute to think about the landmarks that you can use to navigate and then using

them will help a lot.

But if you can't see landmarks, then remember, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

...