Mental Floss

Mental Floss (stylized mental_floss) is an American magazine that presents facts and trivia in a humorous way. It is published nine times a year. MentalFloss.com hosts a popular blog, which presents additional trivia, features and interesting news articles. The magazine has a circulation of 160,000, while the website attracts nearly 10 million users a month.^[2][3]

Launched in Birmingham, Alabama in 2001,^[4] the company has additional offices in Midtown Manhattan and Chesterland, Ohio (in suburban Cleveland). The magazine has more than 100,000 subscribers in over 17 countries.^[5] The publication also has been included in Inc. magazine's list of the 5,000 fastest growing private companies.^[6]

The magazine frequently publishes books and sells humorous T-shirts. It also developed a licensed trivia board game called Split Decision, similar to Trivial Pursuit. Its online store sells quirky home and office supplies, games and toys.

Dennis Publishing bought the magazine in 2011.

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 in the Duke cafeteria about the need for an entertaining educational magazine.^[7] According to Hattikudur, they wanted to emulate the lectures of some of their favorite professors while maintaining their enthusiasm.^[8]

Later, Pearson met with president of Duke University, who loved the idea, but disliked the name. The first published issue, known as the "Campus Edition," was published in spring 2000, distributing 3,000 issues.

The founders spent much of their first year looking for investors and staff members while raising funds to publish the first issue, which was released in May 2001. Over the following summer, 8,000 copies were distributed, and 60% sold out on newsstands.^[9]

Notable contributors

• Author A.J. Jacobs contributed articles based on what he learned reading the Encyclopædia Britannica, as described in his book The Know-It-All. He currently writes a history column answering reader mail.

• Ken Jennings, of Jeopardy fame, wrote a feature called Six Degrees of Ken Jennings, in which he played the game six degrees of separation with two unrelated people or things, like Benedict XVI and Benedict Arnold or Isaac Newton and Apple Computer.
• Celebrity chef Alton Brown wrote a food column and appeared on the cover of the September 2012 issue.

• Novelist John Green worked for the magazine early in his career. Having later become an established YouTube personality, he began hosting its YouTube channel in March 2013. In 2014, the Mental Floss channel was listed on New Media Rockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at #71.^[10]

Magazine sections

Each issue of Mental Floss magazine is divided into the following sections:

• Scatterbrained: 10 pages of trivia, facts and anecdotes about an everyday topic or item.
• Be Amazing!: 10 pages of short articles and interviews, often by guest contributors.
• Left_Brain/Right_Brain: Contains articles about "left brain" topics, like science and logic, and "right brain" topics, like art and literature.
• Features: Some examples of featured articles include an exposé of Shel Silverstein's darker side and a collection of the 25 Most Important Questions in the Universe.
• Go Mental: Contains articles about religion, art, history and world culture.
• The Quiz: Each issue contains a brief quiz at the back of the magazine.^[11]

Recurring themes

Every year, Mental Floss publishes one "Ten Issue." It usually features lists of ten things focusing on subjects like: "Ten Most Forgettable Presidents," or "Ten Famous Monkeys in Science."^[12]

Initially, "Mental Floss" tried to feature self-proclaimed mascot Albert Einstein on the cover of each issue. The magazine even did a 'swimsuit issue,' which featured a topless Einstein.^[13]

Recurring blog categories

• Brain Game: Original logic and math puzzles
• Morning Cup of Links: Interesting links to news stories, videos and memes from across the Internet
• Questions: Daily sets of questions that ask trivia from several different subjects
• Lunchtime Quiz: Daily quizzes that ask trivia questions from one specific subject
• The Amazing Fact Generator: A page that generates random facts and trivia
• Big Questions: Articles that answer questions about history, origins, or science

Merchandise

Mental Floss sells merchandise through its online store and its retail store in Chesterland, Ohio.

Books

• Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp Through Civilization's Best Bits
• Genius Instruction Manual
• Scatterbrained
• What's the Difference?
• Cocktail Party Cheat Sheets
• Condensed Knowledge
• Forbidden Knowledge
• Instant Knowledge
• In the Beginning
• Be Amazing
• mental_floss: The Book: Only The Greatest Lists in the History of Listory
• The Mental Floss History of the United States: The (Almost) Complete and (Entirely) Entertaining Story of America

Media coverage and awards

Mental Floss has been covered by magazines and newspapers such as Reader's Digest, Los Angeles Times, CNN.com, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Dallas Morning News, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and the Washington Post.^[14] Other media coverage includes:

• Listed as one of the Chicago Tribune 's 50 favorite magazines in June 2007^[15]
• Listed as one of PC World 's 100 favorite blogs in June 2007^[16]
• Will Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur among Inc. magazine's 30 "coolest young entrepreneurs^[17]
• Listed as the seventh most engaged company on Twitter by Digiday^[18]
• Recognized by TIME for having one of the top 140 Twitter feeds in 2013.^[19]
• Won a Webby Award for "Best Cultural Blog" in May, 2013.^[20]
• Finalist for "General Excellence" at the National Magazine Awards in 2013.^[21]
• Voted one of the "100 Best Websites for Women" by Forbes in 2013.^[22]

References

External links

• Official website