mental_floss is a bi-monthly American magazine, launched in 2001 in Birmingham, Alabama, that presents facts and trivia in a humorous way. MentalFloss.com is also host to a popular blog, which contains additional trivia, features, and interesting news articles.
The company now has additional offices in Brooklyn, New York and Chesterland, Ohio, and the magazine has a circulation of more than 100,000 subscribers in over 17 countries. The publication also has been included in Inc. magazine's list of the 5,000 fastest growing private companies.
The magazine frequently publishes books and sells T-shirts with humorous sayings, such as "There's no right way to eat a Rhesus". In addition, there is a licensed trivia board game similar to Trivial Pursuit. The magazine also produces the "In a Box" series, which is a tin containing a book, flash cards, exam, and diploma for a law school, med school, or MBA student.
The mental_floss blog includes original articles and lists, daily quizzes, and links to interesting finds across the internet.
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. According to Hattikudur, they wanted to emulate the lectures from some of their favorite professors while maintaining their enthusiasm on a regular basis.
Later Will Pearson met with the president of Duke University, who loved the idea, but disliked the name. The first published issue was known as the "Campus Edition" published in spring of 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.
A.J. Jacobs contributed articles based on what he has learned after reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, as described in his book The Know-It-All.
Ken Jennings, of Jeopardy fame, writes a feature each issue called Six Degrees of Ken Jennings, in which he plays the game Six degrees of separation with two people or things that are unrelated except by the way they sound, like Benedict XVI and Benedict Arnold or Isaac Newton and Apple Computer.
Each issue of mental_floss magazine is divided up into the following sections:
Features: Some examples of featured articles include an expose on Shel Silverstein's darker side and a collection of the 25 Most Important Questions in the Universe.
right_brain: Contains articles about "right brain" topics, like art and literature. Some examples of right_brain articles have included The Thinker, James Joyce, and Ming vases.
left_brain: Contains articles about "left brain" topics, like science and logic. Some examples of left_brain articles have included string theory, the Human Genome Project, and black holes.
scatter_brained: Contains 10 pages of trivia, facts, and anecdotes from all different categories of knowledge.
spinning the_globe Contains articles about religion, history, and world culture.
The Quiz Each issue contains a brief quiz in the back of the magazine.
Recurring themes
Every year, one issue of mental_floss is known as the "Ten Issue". It will usually feature lists of ten things focusing on one subject such as: "Ten Most Forgettable Presidents", or "Ten Famous Monkeys in Science". mental_floss has currently put out nine "ten issues" to date.
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, and the Washington Post. Other media coverage includes:
Listed as one of the Chicago Tribune's 50 favorite magazines in June, 2007
Listed as one of PC World's 100 favorite blogs in June, 2007
Will Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur among Inc. magazine's 30 "coolest young entrepreneurs