American online magazine and media company
Mental Floss (stylized as mental_floss) is an online magazine and its related American digital, print, and e-commerce media company focused on millennials. It is owned by Minute Media and based in New York City, United States. mentalfloss.com, which presents facts, puzzles, and trivia with a humorous tone, draws 20.5 million unique users a month. Its YouTube channel produces three weekly series and has 1.3 million subscribers. In October 2015, Mental Floss teamed with the National Geographic Channel for its first televised special, Brain Surgery Live with mental_floss, the first brain surgery ever broadcast live.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Launched in Birmingham, Alabama in 2001,[7][8] the company has additional offices in Midtown Manhattan. The publication was included in Inc. magazine's list of the 5,000 fastest growing private companies.[9] Before it became a web-only publication in 2017, the magazine mental_floss had a circulation of 160,000 and published six issues a year. The magazine had more than 100,000 subscribers in over 17 countries.[10] The November/December 2016 issue was the last issue of the print edition of the magazine.[11] Instead of getting a refund, subscribers were sent copies of The Week.[12]
The company 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 Mental Floss in 2011.
Mental Floss was acquired by Minute Media from the Felix Dennis estate in September 2018.[13]
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.[14] According to Hattikudur, they wanted to "distill some of the best lectures from our favorite college professors. We thought if we could bottle their enthusiasm and deliver it in monthly installments, it'd be great."[10]
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.[15] Pearson and Hattikidur were named two of thirty promising 2007 entrepreneurs in business magazine Inc.[16]
Mental Floss was sold to magazine mogul Felix Dennis in 2011[17] and again to Minute Media in late 2018.[18]
Beginning in June 2017, Will and Mangesh have been producing the podcast Part Time Genius,[19] a variety style knowledge show, created in partner with HowStuffWorks. In addition to the magazine, a board game, a weekly CNN Headline News segment and a daily updated website, the two have collaborated on seven mental_floss books.
Mangesh Hattikudur
Mangesh Hattikudur is an American businessman who is the co-founder of Mental Floss, which he started with Pearson when both were students at Duke University.[20] Hattikudur graduated from Duke in 2001, with a Bachelor of Arts degree. The Huffington Post in 2010 wrote that Hattikudur and Pearson have created a knowledge empire complete with board games, T-shirts, and a website called mentalfloss.com which has monthly visitors tallying into the millions.[21] They have collaborated on books such as The Mental Floss History of the United States along with writer Erik Sass.[20]
Will Pearson
William E. Pearson (born 1979) co-founder of mental_floss, with Hattikudur. Pearson graduated from Duke in 2001, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history.[22][verification needed] Will Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur met as freshmen at Duke University and in their senior year parlayed their cafeteria conversations into the first issue of mental_floss magazine.[23]
Magazine sections
Each issue of Mental Floss magazine was 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: articles about "left brain" topics, like science and logic, and "right brain" topics, like art and literature.
- Features: Some examples were an exposé of Shel Silverstein's darker side and a collection of the 25 Most Important Questions in the Universe.
- Go Mental: articles about religion, art, history and world culture.
- The Quiz: a brief quiz at the back of the magazine.[30]
Recurring themes
Every year, Mental Floss published a "Ten Issue". It usually featured lists of ten things focusing on subjects like: "Ten Most Forgettable Presidents" or "Ten Famous Monkeys in Science".[31]
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.[32]
