Mental Floss

As stated on their "About" page, Mental Floss's mission statement reads:

"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.

And then you lie and say you read a lot."

The magazine's friendly, light and conversational attitude makes it a target for writers to submit their works. The magazine requests fresh story ideas constantly, and ask that writers submit their "bestest" pitches to submissions@mentalfloss.com, and ask that the pitch be in the magazine's style, have a clear angle of the story, have length and structure, have sources to contact, and to follow up with information about the writers themselves.

The magazine receives thousands of article ideas and request that any submissions be new and unique. Mental Floss is all about providing new and interesting stories that people have not heard before.

Mental Floss publishes stories about anything and everything, including the "Most Important Questions of 2012", "The Explosive History of Food" and "10 Shocking Secrets of Flight Attendants." Their website features a wide array of quizzes and amazing facts, plus hundreds of interesting reads. In addition, their website features a blog section, where writers post their stories.

Most online stories are written as lists, like "11 Signs, Announcements, and Disclaimers That Are No Longer Necessary" or short, factual pieces about Harp seals, the founder of Mother's Day and computer games.

In "11 Problems Music Can Solve," by Jessica Hullinger, we learn about the "splendid" things that music can do for you. It covers a new documentary, "Alive Inside," which is about how dementia patients react when given mp3 players that is loaded with their favorite old music.
Hullinger also explains that music can promote weight-gain in babies, help plants grow, help heart attack patients and boost sport performance.

Mental Floss Magazine is dedicated to writing about cool facts that no one has heard of. If you would like to write for them, submit a story pitch to submissions@mentalfloss.com.