Mental Floss | Will Pearson & Mangesh Hattikudur | Talks at Google

Hi everyone, and thank you for coming. We have two very special guests today as part of the Authors at Google program. Will Pearson and Mangesh Hatikudur. Is that right? Mangesh awesome are the founders of Mental Floss. Mental Floss is a critically acclaimed magazine, book series and blog, mentalfloss.com for anyone that's interested. And their mission is to enable people to feel smart again, while also blurring the lines between education and entertainment. Very briefly, I'm going to give my 2 cents on why I think Mental Floss is such a good fit for Google and why they're here today and what Will and Mangesh are trying to do through Mental Floss. There's an underlying threat of disseminating information, of spreading information that's not so entirely dissimilar from what we do here at Google. And also like Larry and Sergey, Will and Manguest started their. They launched their company while basically in their dorm room together as college students. So since then, Mental Floss, the magazine has led to books website. The blog itself was named by PCWorld.com, as one of the hundred top blogs that we love. Roland Mangesh have also been named two of America's coolest entrepreneurs under 30, among many other impressive sounding titles. And they're particularly proud that one critic has called Mental Floss quote, weirdly addictive. So on that note, we're very happy to have them here today. So please do welcome me in joining. Excuse me, joining me in welcoming Will and Mangesh to Google today.

Thanks, Tyler. We've been looking forward to this. So I'm definitely excited to be here. I think Mangesh is. I'll let him speak for himself later, but I wanted to start off with a challenge. We'll be challenging you with a few things. Being Mental Floss, we like to do quizzes, we like to have various challenges. I don't know if you guys did some of the worksheets that we had earlier, but I want to start out with the toughest one that we have faced to this point. We're going to start out with something really hard and it actually gets to what Tyler was talking about, about there being a lot in common between Google and Mental Floss, something that you may not have thought about before. And it has to do with the way the outside world is looking at both of us. Everyone wants to know the algorithm now. I know you guys have faced this. You know this. You may not know this about Mental Floss, but there's a secret behind selling a magazine. On the newsstands. Everybody wants to know, what is it that I can do with my magazine to make it fly off the shelves? And so when we were starting the magazine six years ago, we spent countless hours looking at all the magazines that were on the news stands, trying to crack the code to decide what is it that makes a magazine sell. Because obviously something has to get their attention. So that's my first challenge for you guys. I'm going to go through 10 covers that were on the newsstands when we started in 2001. Your job is to look at those covers and try to help me figure out what they all have in common. It's not easy. Okay. We went to a Mensa convention to speak there, challenged them with this. Completely stumped them. So I want to see if you guys can crack this. I'm going to go through them pretty quickly. First one, some of you have seen before. Some of them maybe not. Cosmopolitan, Cosmo, You've seen this on every newsstand across America. Has done very well. There's the first one, Next one launched around that time called Stuff magazine. Another magazine launched around that time called Razor Magazine. Shape magazine. Now, we were looking at the lines on here, too. Get your summer ready abs. We see that. The next one, whittle your abs, thighs and butt. We thought maybe abs something there, but no, it turns out summer ready abs and whittling your abs. Two completely different things. You'd have to buy both magazines. That's not it. Next Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, Next Magazine, fhm. I'm seeing puzzled looks on these faces. I know that it's confusing. Finally, Maxim. Now, I went through those quickly, so let me put them all together. I can remember sitting in the floor at a bookstore with all of these out in front of us and Mangesh, who has a horrible temper, was sitting there with his latte and finally threw it down and said, what is it that all of these magazines have in common? And after being kicked out of the store for that, we sat and pondered it for a little while. And finally, a year later, we cracked the code. The Mental Floss Swimsuit issue. The Mental Floss Swimsuit issue with other beauties. Chairman Mao, Pablo Picasso, Eleanor Roosevelt, you know, others of this kind. I can't tell you the number of letters that we got from people asking whose body that was. It actually is Einstein's body. This was not a Photoshop job. This was Einstein's body. So I know you're still puzzled as to what it is. So I'm going to walk through it with you that this is the first time I've ever shared this outside of the Mental Floss office. It goes a little like this. Scan the universe to collect all photographs of human beings, isolate all photographs of humans, exposing significant amounts of skin you may have noticed. We'll go back, we can look, select one photograph of a human that others have described as sexy. Place that photograph on the COVID We followed all of that. It was one of our best selling covers to that point. It was amazing for us. So I hope you understand that we're going to stick around a little bit after the talk if you guys want to come up and do the opposite. Share with us, you know, some of the secrets behind the Google algorithm. So that would be great for us. So just as a matter of information sharing, the nerds of Google Cover. The nerds of Google Cover is coming soon. Pretty soon. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll see. So obviously there was something very different to this. It was the spring of 2001. Mangesh and I and a few of our friends would get together in the evenings and we would start these conversations, conversations that many of you guys have been involved in, those dorm room conversations where you're talking about anything from politics to religion to something you were learning in a class many times ending up in these heated, sometimes pointless debates. And in one of these conversations, we started talking about education. And the question came up, what's the point? Why are we here at this university trying to learn all of these things, making our parents bankrupt in the process? Why is this important? And we didn't ever really come to an agreement on that one question, but we all came to an agreement on one thing, and that was the fact that people like to feel smart, people like to feel well educated. But there's a block to that. The block is that most educational material, most textbooks, many classes that you go to, the information is presented in a pretty dry format. And so even though there is all of this information that you'd love access to and all of this information that you'd like to learn, it's not always the easiest path to getting that information. And so we decided at that point we wanted to start a little campus publication that would blur the lines between education and entertainment. It would be quick, it would be quirky, it would be fun, you'd laugh in the process, but you'd walk away feeling a little bit smarter. And the name Mental Floss was our attempt to communicate that. Because we wanted to communicate two things with the name. One, that it was smart, but two, that it didn't take itself too seriously. And that name for us communicated that. So when we started the magazine, we realized we had to do something like this on the COVID as well to communicate to people what this magazine was all about. We searched through thousands of images out there and tried to find the perfect image to. To kind of communicate this. And we stumbled across an image that most of you have seen before. It's of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out. Here is one of history's greatest geniuses in a moment where he's not taking himself so seriously. And for us, that communicated the message. And so we realized it worked with readers the first time. Fortunately, this magazine, we got a test run in many bookstores across the country, and the sell through was terrific. And so we felt like, you know what? We're onto something. We need to keep this up. This idea of really telling the idea of the magazine on the COVID With the next cover, we were doing a story on geniuses. We did a spoof of the Abbey Road album cover where we have Einstein, Bob Dylan, Mark Twain, Stephen Hawking strolling across Abbey Road. Here. You may have actually noticed something in common from the first two covers. Does anybody notice anything in common between the first two covers? Einstein was on there. That actually wasn't something we intended to do from the very beginning. It happened. A reader wrote in and said, does this mean you're going to make Einstein kind of your Playboy bunny or something like this? And we said, of course, yeah. It was definitely our goal from the beginning. So sometimes you'll see Einstein kind of more hidden in the background. Other times you'll see him more prominently displayed. This was our what's the Difference Issue. How to tell the difference between Bach and Beethoven, Monet from Manet, Woodchucks from Groundhogs, and Einstein and Einstein in a toupee. Another one that generated quite a bit of reader mail asking who's hair that was? Was it Marv Albert's hair? Was it Ted Koppel's hair? Whose hair was this? Was Ted Koppel's, wasn't it? Yeah. So now you know. So we try to do this with covers. As you see Einstein here, History's Greatest Mistakes, our 10 issue. Every year we do an issue with all the articles based around the number 10 eye on the Future. He's very hidden in there on the eyeball. And then our newest issue that's not even on newsstands yet. The Golden Loeb Awards that we've had a lot of fun with. So once you get into the magazine, we feel like, we have to do this as well. Whether we're teaching science through something like the Grim Sleeper. If somebody had told me when we started this magazine that we would do a story about glands of the human body, and yet this was supposed to be entertaining, we would have laughed them out of the room. But this writer pitched this idea to us, and it was terrific. It was really fun the way he put this together. And so we try to find ways graphically, obviously, to communicate, you know, that this is a fun article. Obviously, we have history articles. Why the long face? The story of Easter island here, Beethoven was a peeping Tom, telling stories about, you know, some of classical music's greatest geniuses. As you see, this illustration of Tchaikovsky actually had this fear that his head was going to fly off when he was conducting wildly. So many times he would conduct with his hand holding his head. So that's why you see that illustration. There's 13 photographs that changed the world. Obviously, you know, more of a history piece. Obviously crossing over into the arts. Something we started with Ken Jennings, that won, you know, so much money on Jeopardy, and one of his friends is here today. We started this piece with him called Six Degrees of Ken Jennings, where we throw him two seemingly unrelated topics. We had to do it one time to throw in Canadian Kevin Bacon because of the six degree connection. And he does a terrific job with it. It's a very fun piece that we have in every issue and fun to see our readers contributing and ideas for what the next one should be. Two various quirky bits going over into pop culture. This article called White Noise Music in the Key of Caucasian. It was about some of the worst music that had come through American pop culture. Two other things, 10 TV shows that changed the world. We also do these fun worksheets online where we have. This came out at St. Patrick's Day, where we have facts about individuals. They would either be about St Patrick or they would be about Samuel L. Jackson. If it was about St. Patrick, you'd circle, obviously, the clover. If it was about Samuel L. Jackson, you'd circle the Royale with Cheese. So it's a very fun quiz here. We did this. This is what's scary about our researchers. Our researchers realized that in more than 10 movies, Tom Hanks either urinates or makes a reference to urinating. Only in mental floss would you be learning about very serious history and science and then have a quiz on something like this. We did this online as well. This obviously from A League of Their Own. This one is the one that got passed around. I Don't know how well you can see it. The world's geekiest crossword puzzle, where every answer was in some constructed language, whether it be Klingon or Elvish Esperanto. Any of these others, very fun. Frightening to us how many of our readers were able to solve it. This worksheet where we had a quiz about you had to decide whether these names were either discontinued Ben and Jerry's flavors or a band we found on MySpace that was a lot of fun for us to do. So we try to carry that personality through everything we have. Condensed knowledge that many of you have received here today. That was our first book. We followed it up with Forbidden Knowledge. So if condensed knowledge was everything you should have learned in school but may have forgotten, forbidden knowledge was everything you weren't supposed to know or maybe your history teacher wasn't allowed to tell you followed that up with a book called Cocktail Party. Cheat sheets was how to sound smart at a cocktail party. Various other things. These are our T shirts. Frightening to me once again, how much our readers enjoy these and buy these. There's no right way to eat a Reese's. Pluto, revolve in peace. When life gives you scurvy, make lemonade. I love that. I know. I'm at Google when I say pluto, revolve in peace. And I hear aw. So med school in a box. We decided why stop at high school and college education? Let's let people cheat their way through med school here too. So why spend $200,000 at one of the most prestigious colleges around the country when you can spend 1495 for med school in a box? And it was actually recently, was it number one? Yeah, yeah. Number one boxed law school in all of America. So it was definitely an honor to get that from our mothers. So law school in a box. We followed up. We'll be working on MBA in a box and a few others in the future. But here to follow up on this and with another quiz for you guys is actually the dean of the law school in a box. Mangesh. So we'll let him chat with you a bit.

Hey, guys. So as will point out, we are the number one boxed law school in America right now. It's a standing. We're very proud of our graduates leave prepared for the bar, but we also made sure that our graduates leave prepared for the mini bar. So we've decided to do a little mini bar exam here. And no using your computers, but we're going to give you a few recipes and try to find out who knows about Alcohol. So the first one is actually a California drink, and it's vodka, Galliano and orange juice. Does anyone have an idea? So it's really, really tricky. It's Harvey Wallbanger is the name of it. And the story behind it is that there was this surfer named Harvey who was totally, totally upset, came into a bar, and drank what's kind of a lightweight drink and then just started stumbling into things all over the place. And it's interesting because Galliano wasn't selling anywhere in the US they were having an awful lot of awful time. And suddenly there was a spike of sales in California. So they spread the drink, the recipe for this around the states. And then people fell so in love with it that they started writing in the name into presidential ballots. So in the Nixon election in 1972, Harvey Goldbanger got thousands of votes. And this is another one. These are all kind of difficult. So it's whiskey, vermouth, bitters. You know it?

Manhattan.

Yeah, Manhattan. Right. So we're going to T shirt you. So, yeah, it's in Manhattan. And the story about this is basically that. I mean, it's all over the Internet that Winston Churchill's mom created the drink, but it's totally, totally fabricated. I mean, she was this New York socialite. But the truth is that the drink was supposedly created right around the time Samuel Tilden won an election, but that's actually the same month that Winston Churchill was being born in England. So it's pretty unlikely, but you'll find that fact all over the place, and it's wrong. And one more. This is a drink you probably don't get often, but it did exist for a little while, and it's gin and ddt. So if you have just sprinkle a little DDT in your drink. Anyone know what it is?

Mickey Slim.

Yeah, it is. Nicely done. So, yeah, it's a Mickey Slim. That's amazing. I thought people would get the Harvey Wall banger before that, but. Yeah. And apparently the DDT had sort of a hallucinogenic effect on people, but it also curbed your appetite. So I guess the Slim.

Have you had a Mickey Slim before? Have you had a Mickey Slim?

I just googled the ingredients. Rough. Well, at least you didn't use Yahoo. I guess that's the Right. So now that I've got you guys all liquored up, we figured that after six years of doing this magazine, we figured we'd take some of the most interesting facts and these are some of my favorite stories, and you can take them to make yourself sound more interesting to anyone who wasn't here. So it's a little thing. We call it water cooler ammo. And one of my favorite parts about mental floss is that, is that I get to learn all sorts of stories about inventions like that the can opener came out 50 years after the first can came out, or that the dishwasher was made by a socialite because she couldn't find good help, which is kind of incredible. But this is my favorite because there's a blind man called, named Ralph Teeter who was being driven around by his lawyer. And the lawyer was like starting and stopping, starting and stopping. We've all driven in cars with like bad drivers and he was just getting sick from it. I mean, he was blind. He couldn't even tell what was ahead of him. So he felt around the engine stuff and designed cruise control. And it's a real fact. And this guy actually became the president of the auto, I think it's the society of honor auto engineers in America. And he designed other things too. He made innovations to like navy ships and submarines. And it's pretty astounding. So that's one of my favorite facts. Mr. Rogers was a hero of mine from I'd say age three to five. And then after that I thought he was kind of a joke. And then recently I did a post on him for the blog and I saw what an incredible life this guy's to led. It's just amazing. He'd wake up and write letters to just people he'd met and like asking all these incredible details about their lives and stuff. When Coco the gorilla used to watch Mr. Rogers, that's kind of insane to me. And When Coco met Mr. Rogers, Coco first hugged him and then took off his shoes like he does on the show, which is sort of insane. But my absolute favorite thing was he used to drive around this beat up Impala for a long time. But just because he was like a simple guy and he parked it outside of his TV station, went in, came back out, it was stolen. So immediately, like he reported it to police and it was all over the news, like, what sort of a neighborhood do we live in? And you know, like how beautiful are it is or whatever. And the thieves felt so guilty about taking Mr. Rogers car that they returned it the next day and left it with a note on the dash that said if we'd known it was yours, we never would have taken it. It's sort of stunning to me. So that's. And then this is the most underhanded, awful Fact that I love telling, because there's this. I'm sure you've heard the phrase the real McCoy. And there's this boxer named Kid McCoy, Charles Kid McCoy. He used to feign injuries. He used to act like he was sick before the match, and then he'd limp up to the thing, and then in the ring, he'd just be totally fine, you know? So people would ask, you know, I wonder if I'm going to see the real McCoy. Well, one time he was fighting a deaf guy, and the guy was huge and ripped and just, like, pummeling him and being kind of, like, clever and crafty, he started thinking about it, and he dropped his gloves and then turned around and went to his corner of the ring because he was acting like the bell had rung. The bell hadn't rung. So this guy who was deaf, thought the bell had rung, turned around, started walking to his corner. McCoy runs after him, punches him in the head, knocks him out. Craziest story I've ever heard. Most underhanded tactic in sports, but kind of ingenious, I guess. So that's one. And the last fact I'm going to give you is about lemmings. And in fourth grade, I did a report on lemmings for Ms. Boyer's Class A minus, I'll have you know. Well, lemmings aren't suicidal. They're just insanely stupid. And the reason this myth has gone around is that Disney did a documentary about lemmings, and he brought him in from Scandinavia and into Alberta, actually, and then they just herded the creatures off a cliff in the name of nature, and that sort of spread after that. And it's just kind of astounding to me. And the reason that people do think that is that there are these population surges of lemmings, but you probably won't have to talk one off a ledge. They're not suicidal. So. And with that, that's one of the, I guess, biggest lies I know in history. And I'm going to hand you back to my favorite liar in history.

All right, so I'm actually going to need a volunteer to come up for our next quiz. Somebody's got to be ready. Somebody's got to be smart back there. Come on up. Thank you for volunteering. Maybe we should give him a hand for volunteering. So. Oh, it looks like we may have a mic over there. Actually, would you mind grabbing that mic? We might use that mic, if that's live, for him to. So we're going to play a game that we call Spot the Big Fat Lie. I'm going to give you five questions. What's involved in each of these? What's your name, by the way?

Jake.

Jake Will. Nice to meet you. And Jake, what do you do here at Google?

I'm a project manager.

Project manager. All right, so here we go. This is yours. Alright, so this is the way it's going to work. I'm going to read you two statements with each of these questions. And in Spot the Big Fat Lie, one of these is true, one of these is a big fat lie. Your job is to tell me which one is the lie, not which one is true, but which one is the lie. Ready? First question. These two statements, the first statement is while they were. While they were later marked exclusively for women. Virginia Slim cigarettes started out as the brand for sleek urban males. That's the first statement. Or when the Stone Age family originally appeared on television, Fred and Barney were sponsored by and appeared in commercials for Winston cigarettes. Which of those would you say is the lie? I'm going to say the first one. The first one is a lie. Congratulations. There's the first one. You passed the first test. Going for the prize here. The next one. Grammar curmudgeons have identified 28 grammatical errors in the Bill of Rights. Or other than paragraph indentations, the Dead Sea Scrolls have no punctuation. Which of those would you say is a lie?

The first one.

The first one is a lie. Again, congratulations. All right, two more here. Let's see. The last state to use stoning as a method of capital punishment was Oklahoma, way back in 1965. Or the last time the French government used the guillotine to execute a convicted criminal wasn't in the 1700s or even the 1800s, but in 1977. Which one would you say is a lie? How about the second one? How about maybe the first one? How about the first one? Yeah, the first one.

First one.

The first one is a lie the guillotine actually used in 1977 for the very last time. So. All right, the very last question here. Any sports fans? This one is about Terrell Owens. Terrell Owens was voted NFL man of the Year in 1999. Or Terrell Owens wrote a children's book called Little T Learns to Share. Which of those would you say is a lie?

The first one.

A is the lie. Little T Learns to Share is a real book. If you guys need to learn some lessons about this, Terrell Owens is the one to do it from. It is the lie. Congratulations. Four for four. Let Me get you a prize here. Seems only appropriate you get a copy of Lost School of Box Master Liar here. Career change. That's right. Terrific, terrific, terrific. So let me see what we got here. Here you go back to Mangesh. Oh, you don't need this.

So we ate at the Google cafeteria today and it was a great experience. But we realized that while Google clearly loves you guys, they might be getting a little complacent about the food services here. So we figured that we'd recommend. We weren't allowed to put anything on the comment sheets, but we figured you can. So we did this article recently on the foods that people die for, and I thought it would be fun to include some of these for you. So the first is bird's nest soup, which is sort of insane. It's been a delicacy since the first century AD and it uses the nest of the white nest swiftlet rather. And people climb high on to these rickety bamboo ladders to reach for these things. And they're swarmed by birds and bats and insects. And even crazier than that, because it's such a delicacy, even though it supposedly tastes like paper, It's in areas that are machine gun patrolled. So people accidentally die as a result of going up to get the soup. But I think it would be worth it for you guys if you had it in the cafeteria. The second thing is more snapping turtles on the menu. Snapping turtles are another thing that used to be a delicacy. Grover Cleveland was a big fan of them. And they're generally like 180, 185 pounds. And the only way you can get them is to weigh neck deep into water and stick your foot into a turtle layer. And if you hit shell, then the next thing you go in are your hands. And people pull these sort of beasts out of these lairs. And the people are actually the noodlers for turtles are called nubbins because they lose so many fingers. But I think if you're not losing an arm and a leg for food, it's really not exotic enough. And the last thing is Iwatake. And this is another thing that's obviously really difficult to get your hands on. But people have to rappel down these cliffs to pry these. This. Sorry, it's a paper thin lichen and people have to prime off these rocks. But you can't do it in dry weather. You have to do it when it's raining because otherwise it doesn't come off in one strand, I guess. So just to let you Know, how dangerous is it? There's this old Japanese adage that goes, never give lodging to an Iwatake Henner because they'll never survive to pay the rent. But those are just our humble suggestions for what should be on the menu. I think they do a pretty good job otherwise.

So, speaking of what should happen here at Google and what's going on in the Bay Area, whenever we travel anywhere, we like to learn a lot about where we're going, whether it be a company, whether it be the city that we're going to. So I actually wanted to quiz somebody here. Is there anyone here who thinks they're actually an expert on Bay Area trivia? If not, we'll move. You seem like an expert.

Really?

Yeah. When you said no, I thought maybe you were. So. Yeah. You want to try it? All right, Come on up. You're from la.

I know.

Let's give her a hand as well. There you go. What's your name?

Rena.

And Reina. What do you do here at Google?

I am a sales engineer and pso and I just moved here, like two weeks ago, so.

But I know some trivia. Brave. Here we go. So we're going to give this a shot, you guys. Just if she needs a little help, help her out here. I'm going to go quickly through these. Shoreline Amphitheater, Mountain View's premier concert venue, and Google's neighbor was controversially built on top of A, a garbage dump, B, an air force base, or C, a sacred Miwok burial ground.

Garbage dump.

Those whispers got progressively louder. A garbage dump. A garbage dump. A garb. Okay. Located in Santa. Very well. That was it. That was it. On top of a garbage dump. In fact, I think. Isn't there a legend about a guy that was smoking a cigarette and apparently burst into flames or something like that.

Had methane fumes on it?

Because of the methane fumes. Yeah. That's terrible. But great trivia. Located in Santa Cruz. What is the Giant Dipper? Is it.

It's like a roller coaster?

It is a wooden roller coaster. Well done. All right, let's ask a couple more of these. I'm curious to know if you guys actually know this. Which of the following hamburgers is not on the In n Out secret menu? Animal style. Over under or Flying Dutchman? Which of those is not on the secret menu there at In n Out Flying out or over under? Maybe Over Under. Over under. She's brilliant for only being here two weeks. Well done. What is the Flying Dutchman? The Flying Dutchman. I actually have that Fact on here, I have to look that up again.

It's just two patties and two slices.

Of cheese and nothing else. That's what I thought it was. Yeah. I'm glad you're here. That's great. I haven't learned that much about the Bay Area. That's great. That sounds not. I don't want that. Okay, let's see. Who started their career as a ball boy or girl for the Oakland A's? Was it MC Hammer, Mrs. Fields of Cookie Fame, or both?

Both.

Both. It is both, in fact. Congratulations. All right, let's go with one more question here. True or false? San Francisco's cable car system is the only mobile national landmark in the United States.

True.

That is true. Congratulations. Let's see what she gets here. Let's see. For being here only two weeks, I think you deserve two prizes. One to give away to somebody. One is a Beethoven shirt that says the original Def Jam. This one is med school in a box. So congratulations. You did a great job. As for a couple of other things that are coming up with Mental Floss, as I mentioned, we're going to be working on MBA in a Box. We're actually starting a Children's Series, a 2012 title series that will be very similar to Mental Floss. I can't say the name of it just yet, but we can't wait to do that as well as many other things that we're looking forward to. So to wrap up here, we want to have an enlightening round and we've got big prizes. We've saved the biggest prizes for last. Anyone can scream out the answers to these. Although for the first one, I'm going to have to pick somebody out because it's an either or thing. So. You said you were great at trivia, so I have to ask you. Retired Ben and Jerry's flavor or band we found on MySpace. Ready? I guarantee you'll get this correctly. I guarantee it. Sweet potato pie. Retired Ben and Jerry's family. Yes. It is a band we found on MySpace. Congratulations. It's also a retired Ben and Jerry's flavor, so. And for that, you have the simplest pie T shirt. Congratulations. The next one. In 1970, Richard Nixon's daughter Trisha invited a band to come to the White House to play for her birthday party. It was actually the first real rock band to play at the White House. Does anybody know that? I've got a multiple choice, but does anybody know the name of this band off the top of their head? You guys are all Googling this. The Birds, the turtles or Three Dog Night Turtles. Somebody said turtles back there. You have got a big prize coming to you. Speaking of political music, we actually forgot this one. The simplest pie shirt. What you are winning is an autographed copy of the Singing Senators. We've got Trent Lott, John Ashcroft. I actually didn't know that Senator Craig was. It was autographed by us, but it's still autographed. If you can come up and get it, that would be great. There you go. We would try to get it autographed by them, but we couldn't, so. All right. In the popular Nintendo game, Mike Tyson's Punch out, one of the greatest games ever, Little Mac's Russian opponent is named Soda Popinsky. Does anybody know what Mr. Popinski's less politically correct name is from? Super Punch Out. Anybody know it's politically incorrect. Somebody say to me. Where is it? Somebody say to me. Vodka Drunkinski. You said it. Congratulations. Well done. Vodka Drinkinsky. Actually, the name was changed to avoid stereotyping Russians as alcoholics. Instead, they were stereotyped as crazy soda lovers. So for this, you win the world's largest shot glass. Congratulations. All right, two more questions to wrap up here. Which of the following sugary treats were invented, was invented in ancient Greece and served to athletes at the very first Olympics? You want to take a stab at this? You want to take a stab at this? It's multiple choice. Was it ice cream? It's too late. You said no ice cream. Candy apples cheesecake or cotton candy cheesecake? Cotton candy apples. It's not cotton candy ice cream. Candy apples cheesecake. Cheesecake or cotton candy cheesecake? You've already won something. You're gonna win the cheesecake. I think he said cheesecake. And for that you win. This was the origins. This is actually our next or our book that's coming out in November. In the beginning From Big Hair to the Big Bang, Mental philosopher presents a mouth watering guide to the origins of everything. Congratulations. All right. And finally, we all know Steven Spielberg's ET Made Reese's Pieces famous. And many of you may have heard but Reese's Pieces wasn't his first choice. Do you think it's going to be that one? There were actually two candies that he thought before. I just want to keep reading this question. That's fine. What was the candy he was going to. Yes, he was going to M&M's first. Congratulations. And for that, you win the Reese's shirt. There's no right way to eat a Reese's. Congratulations. So thank You. Congratulations to all the winners. Let's give them a hand. World's largest shot Glass taking her hotel room in the beginning. And the Reese's. So we're wrapped up with that. I didn't know if you guys had any questions for us about Mental Floss, about, you know, whatever. If you guys have any questions, not necessarily trivia questions, you don't want to expose us as actually not being that smart. But any other questions would be fine. So. Yes.

So once you guys came up with.

The idea, like, how did you go.

About actually making it happen? Once we came up with the idea. Once we came up with the idea, how did we go about making that happen? Because I have a lot of ideas, but I don't make any of them happen. Is that what, the end of your question? You want to take that at all? No, you don't want to take that. It was actually the first thing we did was we started, you know, Googling for whatever we could find to start a magazine like this. And we stumbled across the name of a guy named Samir Hasni at the University of Ole Miss. And he is known as Mr. Magazine. If you go to mrmagazine.com you will find Samir's website. And he kind of led us through the early process. Process of this is how you would get out there and start a magazine. But it, you know, it was spent. We spent so much time observing other magazines, thinking of ideas about how we were going to market this. We recruited an advisory board before we ever put a single issue out to really start getting the information and the people together that have done this before. So it was, you know, it was months and months of that before we ever started recruiting writers or, you know, anything like that. But it's. It's such a blur now to look back on. It was a very gradual, organic process.

That happened over time. We put out a campus edition and our friends kind of liked it, so we decided to try to stick with it. But, I mean, we got a lot of resistance, too. Some people didn't like the name Mental Floss, which was kind of funny to us.

The president of our university at Duke, we met with her to tell her the idea and the name of the magazine, Mental Floss. And she said, you know, the. The idea is there, but the name is way off. She said, I picture a magazine called Conversations. I don't know what happened. She much smarter than we could ever dream to be, but just goes to show you. So I think you had a question back there real quick, and then we'll come. Did you guys take any inspiration? There was a site called riddler.com and they had a game called mental plus.

And I thought you might be the.

Guys who had started that. Oh, yeah. She was asking the. Before us, there was a game on riddler.com called Mental Floss. Did we have anything to do with that or did that inspire us? It actually didn't. We found that later on when we were trademarking the name and obviously we're searching for everything and found that. And fortunately we're able to still, you know, move forward with this. But no, we had nothing to do with that game. So. Question.

Have you ever looked into a correlation between your subscribers and people who do.

Well on game shows like who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Yeah. Have we ever looked into a correlation between game show performance and people who read Mental Floss? Do you want to. Have you done that study? Although we do get that a lot about people that say, I'm going on the Millionaire and I'm, you know, can I have a T shirt? Or I'm going to be on Jeopardy. Can I have a T shirt?

I've heard a lot of people who go on Millionaire and just like bone up on all the. Because all the back issues are available online, so they'll go through and just buy all of them and then all their. Our books too, and read up before they go.

And it's how, you know, meeting Ken Jennings as well came through just this trivia community. So it's been, it's flattering to know that there are people preparing for it. We do hear that a lot. We've never really done a study of that.

But one of our researchers, who's brilliant, he actually was phone a friend for one of his friends. So that was. And he helped him win $8,000 or something. I don't know. But if you're getting stuck on the $8,000 question.

I think I saw a hand right in there somewhere. But we're going to go there. Yes. Have we ever had a story that we were about to publish in the magazine and decided to pull it for maybe issues of cultural sensitivity or something like that? Can you think of something like that where we pulled at the last point minute?

Yeah, there was this issue we were going to do on the 20 most annoying people on earth, you know, in history, and it was this really fun issue. And then something happened in the news like where like the terror threat went up or something, and there was just so much bad news out there at the time that we wanted to Keep our magazine positive and fun. It wasn't political, but it was. We just wanted to make sure that our magazine, I think it was people.

We hate or something.

Actually, it was people we hate, and.

It was going to be playful still.

Yeah, but actually on the COVID was a warning, and it said, like, you know, really annoying. And it was like all the color codes kind of like that. So there's, like, no way we could do that to them. We reduced it.

Yeah. Yeah. I can't think of others. I mean, we always try to stay pretty positive, and we try to stay out of politics. We try to stay pretty clean, you know, with the. With the material that's in there. You know, we may cover things like, you know, the history, the origin of the electric chair, or. Or we may do a history of sex or something like that. But at the same time, we try to keep it very history focused and just something that could still be taught in a classroom, but maybe we would include information in there that is a little more cleverly presented or quirky. But we do try to stay appropriate for even a high school student.

And it was important to both of us to make sure that the tone is never pedantic. It's always fun, but never talking down to people. And it never really picks harshly on people, and that's kind of important as well.

Question.

How personally involved were you with the development of the board game and had sales reached your expectations?

How involved were we with the board game and have sales reached expectations? Were you planted there to ask that question? Yeah. No, I'm just kidding.

I evaluated it about a year ago.

Yeah. Yeah, we were involved in the board game. It was. Of all the projects we've been involved in, that's an industry where it's tough to be as involved as you want to. So of all of the projects we've done, that was the one that we were least involved in. Even though we were intimately involved in, you know, in various elements of it and the questions that were written, you know, our team wrote the questions, and the game has done pretty well for us. We still sell it, you know, online. We, you know, moved from a regular box to a 10 version of it. And, you know, board games are a little different in that they kind of run their course over time. So right now we're evaluating whether we want to do additional games and coming up with new ideas. So it's kind of at the end of its run for right now, but it was definitely a fun project. It's done pretty well for us. Yes. Have you Ever published information that was factually incorrect? Have we ever published information that was factually incorrect?

Yeah, we actually. Our magazine is 72, 76 pages of all facts. So every once in a while we get something wrong, but we're very conscientious about it. And we do this section in the magazine you can turn to. It's called Mental Flaws, where we admit what we got wrong. But we also make fun of it a little bit, too.

And with our readers. I mean, our readers love trivia addicts, love to find any tiny thing that you've gotten wrong in the magazine. It's fun for us. You know, we like for them to challenge us.

So, yeah, I mean, that's one of the best parts, is that we've got a readership that's smart, both online and for the magazine where they'll correct you when you're doing something.

Any other questions? Yes.

Like a favorite story or fact that you've learned over the last few years.

Favorite story or fact? I mean, for me, I know Mangesh actually shared some of his. For me, in every issue, there's always something that I read, and I just think that can't possibly, possibly be true. In this most recent issue, not the one that's coming out next, but the COVID story on presidents to learn about the personalities of these various politicians and the fact that, you know, Richard Nixon knew that he wanted to marry his future wife so early in their relationship, he asked her to marry him on their first date. And even though she didn't say yes, then he even agreed to drive her around on dates with other men for this, you know, for a long period of time until she finally.

A year and a half or something.

Yeah. I mean, it's just weird. It's those kinds of. It's the stories about people. It's the story of those quirky personalities that for one reason or another, your history teacher didn't tell you. And it's those kinds of things that in every issue, surprise me and, you know, make me smile, but it's there. I can't say that there's necessarily one fact ever that was just the one that blew me away. But that's part of the fun is that almost every day or every week, there's some new fact that surprises us. You had a question? I just wanted to know, are the.

Pluto shirts still available?

Are the Pluto shirts still available? They are still available.

Very much so.

And we're now selling some women's fits as well. We were just selling, you know, basic tees, and now we're selling women's fits on there as well. So any other questions? Yes. With all of the trivia television shows.

Have you guys thought about getting into television?

With all the trivia television shows that we thought about getting into television, it's definitely something we've explored and had a number of conversations about and still do. And we still, you know, have these conversations when people approach us. We've been approached by production companies. It's one of those we want to make sure we do it right. And so we're willing to be patient and continue growing the magazine and the website and everything else we're doing so that when it does come time for a TV show, that time will come, we believe. But we just don't want to jump into it before, you know, before it's too the right time. So, anything else? All right. Well, we enjoyed the visit with you guys. Thank you so much for having us. Oh, I meant to mention one other thing. If you guys have any favorite Google trivia for us, or if you have any favorite trivia period, or things you'd like to see in the magazine, our email addresses are simple. Willamentalfloss.com, mangeshmentalfloss.com, we'd love to hear your ideas or other things that we can share on our blog. So thanks again.