Mental Floss (stylized as mental_floss) is an American online magazine and digital, print, and e-commerce media company focused on millennials.

According to the Mental Floss website, the idea came from conversations in the Duke cafeteria about the need for an entertaining educational magazine.

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.

[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 is an American businessman who is the co-founder of Mental Floss, which he started with Pearson when both were students at Duke University.

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.

[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.