The Four Questions-Will Pearson, Mental Floss

August 26, 2004

The idea for Mental Floss (www.mentalfloss.com) was hatched in a dorm room at Duke during the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" craze while Pearson and cofounder Mangesh Hattikudur (listed on its Website as “VP of stuff”) were students at the university. Their pilot issue came out in 2001, but Mental Floss has been publishing as a bimonthly since January 2003 fulfilling its goal of helping time-starved people feel smart. The magazine reaches an audience wider than its 60,000 paid circulation with a column in Reader’s Digest and a regular segment on "CNN Headline News." Mental Floss, based in Birmingham, AL., became an MPA member earlier this year

Q1. What’s the best idea you’ve ever gotten from a reader?
To do a “worst” issue. Every magazine always does its “best this or that.” In spring 2004 we did worst commercial, worst idea that made someone a millionaire, worst pregnancy and a spin through history.

Q2. What story in your magazine has had the greatest impact?
Probably our swimsuit issue about a year ago, which took jabs at our pop-culture obsession, depicting Albert Einstein, Louis Armstrong, Chairman Mao and others in their skivvies. That showed we’re very different from other magazines out there.

Q3. What magazines do you take along on a coast-to-coast flight?
I enjoy reading The Economist, Vanity Fair, The Week – all for people with small pockets of time to catch up.

Q4. What’s your favorite thing about being an independent magazine?
There’s no one we’re answering to. We can go in very different directions. That’s what’s fun for us. We can get into book publishing, which we just did, and study a board game concept. The book, “Mental Floss Presents Condensed Knowledge,” features a replica of the famous Campbell’s condensed-soup can.