 | Mental Floss (1-year)
Availability: Your first issue should arrive in 8-10 weeks. Average customer review: (143 customer reviews) |
Product Description
For the record: Mental Floss magazine is an intelligent read, but not too intelligent. We're the sort of intelligent that you hang out with for a while, enjoy our company, laugh a little, smile a lot and then we part ways. Great times. And you only realize how much you learned from us after a little while. Like a couple days later when you're impressing your friends with all these intriguing facts and things you picked up from us, and they ask you how you know so much, and you think back on that great afternoon you spent with us and you smile.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #43 in Magazine Subscriptions
- Formats: Magazine Subscription, Print
Amazon.com Review
Who Reads mental_floss?
mental_floss readers are busy, intelligent people who like to learn but don't want to waste time on tedious articles. Its readers want to feel smart fast. They value a magazine that respects their intelligence but never takes itself too seriously. They are knowledge junkies who love bad puns, quirky humor and meaty trivia served up in bite-sized portions. The magazine is popular with people of all ages – high school students, busy professionals, and senior citizens who want to stay intellectually engaged. Nearly 2.5 million readers/visitors read mental_floss magazine and visit its web site.
What You Can Expect in Each Issue:
- Feature Stories to Make You Smile: Whether it's "The 15 Greatest Moments in Olympics History," an expose on Shel Silverstein's darker side, a collection of the "25 Most Important Questions in the Universe" (like whether a pregnant woman can drive in a carpool lane), or a frank discussion on the looming social security crisis, mental_floss features never fail to deliver. With stories that surprise, sometimes shock and always engage, mental_floss won't just leave you grinning, it will leave your friends wondering how you got so interesting all of a sudden.
- scatter_brained sets the tone for the magazine with its quirky facts, quick tidbits and juicy history. Cheeky, clever and fun, this front-of-book section is consistently rated a subscriber favorite. Recent content includes wit and wisdom from famous insomniacs, secret flops from big-name musicians and the tallest tales in your American history book.
- right_brain eases readers into humanities by making art and literature accessible without dumbing it down. Why isn't Jackson Pollock an overrated paint thrower? What makes "The Thinker" worth thinking about? It's all right here: mental_floss experts spill the beans on why the classics are classic, and they're happy to dish out all the naughty back-stories while they're at it.
- left_brain tackles the mysteries of science and technology – from paradigm-shifting discoveries to the new generation of military robots. mental_floss takes the most exciting ideas and fascinating theories and delivers them in plain English.
- spinning the_globe opens a window to the world by serving up religion, history and world culture in a way only mental_floss can. Want to escape to the South Pacific without leaving your chair? Want to peek across North Korea's borders without risking your life? Ever wonder how an entire island's cuisine became so focused around Spam or how a coffee shop poet drove the Czech nation to vanquish communism without spilling a single drop of blood? mental_floss has got the answers right here.
What other magazine would put Albert Einstein – in a swimsuit – on its cover? Like its content, the style and design of the magazine is fresh, compelling, and often irreverent. .
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Contributors:
As a rapidly growing publication with a lot of buzz, mental_floss is able to draw from a diverse talent pool of high-profile journalists, academics and subject experts including Ken Jennings (of Jeopardy! fame), A.J. Jacobs, Ben Stein, Ethan Trex, John Green, Michael Stusser, and Eric Sass.
Past Issues:
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Comparisons to Other Magazines:
"mental_floss is an original. It isn't easy to match it with an existing magazine, although some readers have suggested that its quick hits of information and shorter features bring to mind the approach of another highly successful magazine." – The Week.
Newsweek called it "a smart-alecky read," another reviewer called it "a liberal arts education in installments," and a third suggested "Got a big cocktail party coming up? Read mental_floss first," but no one's been able to find another magazine quite like it.
Advertisers:
Unlike most magazines, mental_floss is committed to maintaining a high editorial-to-content ratio in the belief that readers are buying the publication for its content. Approximately 80% of its pages are dedicated to editorial, with no more than 20% for ads. Advertisers include Angie's List, Books-A-Million, Borders, Merriam-Webster, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, The Teaching Company, Volkswagen, Target, and Newseum.
Awards and Critical Acclaim:
- Chicago Tribune 2008 – "50 Favorite Magazines" List
- Chicago Tribune 2007 – "50 Favorite Magazines" List
- Library Journal – Best New Magazine Award
- "A sharp-looking glossy." – LA Times
- "mental_floss cleans out the cobwebs." – Chicago Tribune
- "A sort of sassy Cliffs Notes." – Reader's Digest
- "The magazine is hard to put down." – Guide to Consumer Magazines
Most helpful customer reviews
634 of 669 people found the following review helpful.
By William Irwin
In an age of books "for dummies" and "complete idiots," Mental Floss is a magazine that makes you "feel smart again." Let's face it, some of those "dummies" books are pretty good, but you wouldn't display them in your home or read them on the train. By contrast, I openly read Mental Floss in public and place the latest issue on my coffee table.
The magazine combines a cheeky sense of humor with a wealth of information. I loved the recent "Y Files issue." "Why is yawning contagious?" "Why do people yell `Geronimo' before jumping?" "Why does the United States print $2 bills?" Mental Floss delivers the answers. Trivial pursuit may leave you wondering "why" about an answer, but Mental Floss never does.
The current "swimsuit issue" is a blast. It's not exactly titillating, but it is stimulating. The sight of Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt in swimwear is enough to turn your attention to the articles.
There's no magazine I'd recommend more highly.
296 of 318 people found the following review helpful.
By Robert I. Hedges
I have subscribed to "Mental Floss" from the very beginning, and now look forward to each new issue anxiously. Founded just a couple of years ago by two former college roommates who wanted a fun, hip, urbane magazine to make them smarter with style, "Mental Floss" has become a huge success, and is one of the few new magazines that debut each year that is actually prospering.
Each issue is loaded with information on interesting topics, from how common (or very uncommon) things work, to odd and unknown histories and biographies that you will not find anywhere else (and if you did, certainly not in as condensed and succinct a form as you will find here.) Without exception, the writers are literate, knowledgeable, and good humored.
The things that you don't know will amaze you after reading this magazine. Try "Mental Floss", and I am willing to bet that you will be hooked. I know I am.
67 of 71 people found the following review helpful.
By Lisa Shea
There are magazines you read for specific how-to texts, like how to fix your kitchen sink. There are magazines you read to stay up to date with the latest news in the world, your field, or a given region. Then there are magazines like Mental_Floss, which is more like a "News of the Weird" magazine version release. These aren't brain puzzles to improve your memory a la Brain Age. They aren't research pieces that will test or challenge your mental ability. Instead, they are quirky factoids.
What is yelling "Geronimo" all about? Just what is a "Vegemite Sandwich"? There are all sorts of odd things covered here. Sometimes they touch on science, world politics or human relations - but often they're related to pop culture, the things you hear every day and never really thought about.
It's intriguing that how you react to this magazine is probably based a lot on what you have read until now. If what you've been reading has been mainstream newspapers aimed at the "lowest common denominator", or the Dummies series of books, you'll be greatly refreshed by this! This magazine doesn't assume you're a dummy with a dead brain. It assumes you want to learn, to grow, to find out the "why" behind the things in your world. It's aimed for people who pop onto Wikipedia when they hear about a new, interesting item on the news ... or people who jump onto IMDB to see what else an actor was in when they watch a movie. It's for people who are intrigued by those connections and backgrounds.
On the other hand, Mental_Floss generally provides a surface read. It's the perfect bathroom magazine - but for those who already get mentally challenging magazines, they might be let down by a magazine that is explicitly named Mental_Floss. This doesn't provide in depth or rigorous details on anything. If the academic magazines are at college level, Mental_Floss is more like the fun high school underground newsletter that tackles intriguing issues that might otherwise be ignored. Now, before you start to clamor that most newspapers write at a 5th grade level, that is in fact untrue! Here's a factoid for you :) The New York Times writes at a 12th grade level of vocabulary and comprehension, while most other newspapers fall between 9th and 10th grade. The 5th grade stat came from the 1700s and 1800s.
Still, every magazine has its target audience and its purpose in life. Mental_Floss isn't there to provide in depth education. There are other magazines for that. Instead, it gives you great tidbits on things that many people care about - things that are *super* to use at cocktail parties, networking events, dinners out with your boss or employees. Instead of getting into a discussion about religion or politics, and perhaps starting the third world war, you can give info on a topic that will intrigue most people there, and often impress them.
Definitely a magazine that just about every age group will enjoy - and that is very "useful"! If I have a real issue with this magazine, it's that it only comes out every other month. It'd be great if they could get this onto a monthly schedule, with more intriguing facts to keep us fresh and full of new information.
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