As cognitive trainers, we love to get our students thinking about what and how they are thinking. The fancy term for this is metacognition. So naturally, when we saw the latest issue of National Geographic displaying a shiny, colorful photo of a human brain, and promising to provide 100 things we never knew about it, we were sold. The issue includes a lot of really interesting information, which it packs into reader-friendly tidbits. For instance, perhaps you’ve seen something floating around on social media claiming that the human mind reads words as a whole and that the only thing that matters is the placement of the first and last letter. Well, as we suspected, this is not quite the whole truth. As the brief article explains (with research to back it up), the order of letters, the shape of words, and contextual clues all play a role in decoding. If you’re interested in learning more about what’s going on in your marvelous mind, you may wish to pick up a copy of the latest National Geographic, or peruse our copy during your next visit to Pathfinders.