Mental floss

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The title of this article should be mental_floss. The initial letter is capitalized and an underscore is substituted or omitted because of technical restrictions.

A mental_floss cover

mental_floss is a bi-monthly American magazine, launched in 2001^[1], that presents facts and trivia in a humorous way. It includes columns by A.J. Jacobs and Ken Jennings and it frequently features Albert Einstein on the cover. The magazine frequently publishes compilation books, including Forbidden Knowledge and Scatterbrained, as well as T-shirts with humorous sayings, such as "There's no right way to eat a Rhesus".

1 Origin
2 Writers
3 Sections
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Origin

The magazine was co-founded by William E. Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur while they were students at Duke University. According to the mental_floss website, the idea came from conversations at the Duke cafeteria about the need for an educational magazine that was funny and entertaining [2].

[edit] Writers

A.J. Jacobs writes a piece in mental_floss based on what he has learned after reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, as described in his book The Know it All. The piece is called Know it All, an obvious allusion to his book. Each issue, he shares a few pieces of information that he learned during that time. Every new edition features facts about articles that begin with a certain letter of the alphabet; the letter changes each issue, in alphabetical order (A, B, C, D, etc.).

Ken Jennings, of Jeopardy fame, does a piece each issue called Six Degrees of Ken Jennings, in which he plays the game Six degrees of separation with two things unrelated except by the way they sound (Benedict XVI and Benedict Arnold, e.g.), or by a very general association (Isaac Newton and Apple Computer, e.g.). They are usually "related" by sound, however.

[edit] Sections

Each issue of mental_floss is divided up into the following sections:

scatter_brained. In this section, a number of trivia items (all connected to an encompassing topic through puns) are written about in short paragraphs.
right_brain. Articles about "right brain" topics (e.g. art and literature), such as Six Degrees of Ken Jennings, can be found here.
left_brain. This section deals with topics that would befit the "left brain" areas (math, logic, etc.).
spinning the_globe. A different part of the world is explored each issue. spinning the_globe always begins with a section describing a "50 cent tour" of whatever region that issue is focusing on.
The Quiz. In each issue, there is a quiz in the back of the magazine. There is also a mini quiz consisting of five questions on the mental_floss website^[2] every day.