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Mental Floss

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]

Founder

2001 (2001)

 2016 (2016-November/December) (print)
v. 15, no. 6

Minute Media

United States

New York City, New York, United States

English

www.mentalfloss.com

1543-4702

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]

Novelist 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. In 2015, Green won the Webby Award for mental_floss on YouTube.[24][25]

John Green

Author 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.

A. J. Jacobs

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. He now contributes a quiz called "Kennections" on mentalfloss.com.[26]

Ken Jennings

Kara Kovalchik and Sandy Wood served as research editors for the magazine from 2002 to 2015.

Celebrity chef wrote a food column and appeared on the cover of the September 2012 issue.

Alton Brown

writer Streeter Seidell has written for both mental_floss magazine and the website.

Saturday Night Live

Comedian writes a column called The Curious Comedian.

Amir Blumenfeld

Author was a longtime contributor to both the magazine and website.

Ransom Riggs

Linguist is the language editor for mental_floss. In 2015 she received the Linguistic Society of America's Linguistics Journalism Award.[27]

Arika Okrent

Science journalist was an assistant editor and co-authored the 2009 mental_floss book Be Amazing.

Maggie Koerth-Baker

has written for the magazine and is executive producer of the YouTube Channel. He also authored the mental_floss book Scatterbrained.

Hank Green

Comedian hosts the weekly series "Misconceptions" on mental_floss on YouTube.

Elliott Morgan

Comedian Max Silvestri has hosted two series on the mental_floss YouTube Channel.

[28]

hosts the weekly series "The Big Question" on mental_floss on YouTube.[29]

Craig Benzine

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 "" topics, like science and logic, and "right brain" topics, like art and literature.

left brain

Features: Some examples were an exposé of 's darker side and a collection of the 25 Most Important Questions in the Universe.

Shel Silverstein

Go Mental: articles about religion, art, history and world culture.

The Quiz: a brief quiz at the back of the magazine.

[30]

Morning Cup of Links: Interesting links to news stories, videos and memes from across the Internet

5 Questions Quiz: Daily quizzes with subject clues hidden inside trivia questions

The Amazing Fact Generator: A page that generates random facts and trivia

Big Questions: Articles that answer questions about history, origins, or science

Listed as one of the 50 favorite magazines in June 2007[34]

Chicago Tribune's

Listed as one of 100 favorite blogs in June 2007[35]

PC World 's

Will Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur among 30 "coolest young entrepreneurs[36]

Inc. magazine's

Listed as the seventh most engaged company on Twitter by Digiday

[37]

Recognized by for having one of the top 140 Twitter feeds in 2013.[38]

Time

Won a for "Best Cultural Blog" in May 2013.[39]

Webby Award

Finalist for "General Excellence" at the National Magazine Awards in 2013.

[40]

Voted one of the "100 Best Websites for Women" by in 2013.[41]

Forbes

Mental Floss won the in the category Web.[42]

2020 Webby People's Voice Award for Weird

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, The New York Times and the Washington Post.[33] Other media coverage includes:

Official website