Hattikudur came up with the idea of putting the title in lower case and adding the underscore, as a way of getting people's attention and reminding them of the Internet. "Our entire mission statement is in those two words," Harris says.

On the eve of their graduation in 2001, the five friends published the first, full-fledged mental_floss, using $20,000 from savings and summer jobs. Besides topics ranging from Alexander the Great to sumo wrestling, the first issue featured a cover photograph of Albert Einstein. "He was being a big dork, sticking his tongue out, not taking himself too seriously," Hattikudur explains of the photo selection. "That seemed perfect for us." The late, great physicist has appeared on the cover ever since.

In addition to selling about 6,500 copies, Pearson and Hattikudur showed the magazine to potential investors--including former corporate executives Toby Maloney and Melanie Maloney. Initially tapped for a modest outlay, the married couple from Russell, Ohio, later sank significantly more into mental_floss--and joined the magazine's staff. Both are now vice presidents, of business development and planning and operations, respectively.

"What was appealing to me was the freshness of the idea and the product," says Toby Maloney, a self-described "media junkie." "You're really talking about an educational self-help magazine that is original, irreverent, and humorous. And there's a real desire in this country for self-improvement."

Mental_floss could hardly have chosen a less propitious time to be unveiled: the middle of the biggest magazine-industry slump since World War II. What was worse, they had little advertising income and no budget for marketing and could hardly afford to pay their own staff, let alone freelance writers. But the magazine persevered, garnering positive reviews, including a spot on Library Journal's list of the ten best magazines of 2001--and kept adding readers.

One factor working in their favor was the wide demographic appeal of the magazine. "We've been completely fooled since the outset by the diverse ages of our readers," says Harris. "We have high-school classes reading us, as well as residents of nursing homes."

More important, instead of following the herd and relying on advertising revenue to support the magazine, mental_floss zagged and relied on subscriptions and circulation. And it worked. The sell-through rate (number of newsstand copies that sold) for those early issues topped 60 to 65 percent--nearly tripling the industry average. Subscription and circulation numbers climbed steadily. Mental_floss moved from publishing quarterly to bimonthly.

Some industry analysts say it's too early to tell whether mental_floss is a success. But for others, the very fact that they're still in business is reason enough to break out the champagne. "My definition of success is, if you're still in business, you're a success," says Husni. Nearly two out of three magazines fail within the first year; only one in five magazine start-ups makes it to the fourth year. About one in ten magazines lasts long enough to publish a tenth-anniversary issue. "They've managed to stay in business and to get a lot of good coverage."

Advisory board member Footlick was initially skeptical about mental_floss' chances without significant increases in advertising. But the magazine's continued growth is making him a believer. "It shows me there are a lot of ways to skin a cat," he says. "You can burn tens of millions of dollars, like Talk did. Or you can do it this way by not throwing money around."

Money is still tight and the hours can be long, but staffers aren't complaining. "It's a testament to how all the main players at mental_floss are committed to the growth of the magazine and the company and the brand," Harris says. "Everyone here has said, 'I will take only as much as I need to live.' Everything else is put back into the company. We wouldn't want it any other way."

Not that Harris or the others are averse to living a more comfortable life someday. "I think we are very confident that day will come," she says. "We're just not anxious to get there."

Pearson garners much of the credit not only for building, but also for maintaining the buzz around mental_floss. He serves as "Mr. Outside" for the magazine, doing the bulk of interviews and eschewing fancy public-relations firms and press releases for personalized pitches, contacts, and relationships. "We try to tailor any material we send to specific journalists and their publications or stations," he explains. "So it is a win for both them and mental_floss."

"And Will does it without being noticeably pushy," notes Footlick. "It's really Southern style at its best. It doesn't come across as a hard sell."

Newsweek's Adler had originally planned to do a story about the trend toward books on miscellaneous facts--such as the best-selling Schott's Original Miscellany--but that plan fizzled when an interview with Ben Schott fell through. Pearson, meanwhile, cleared his schedule, quickly agreeing to the interview and welcoming a team of photographers into his cramped Durham apartment. It didn't hurt that one of Adler's colleagues on the magazine, Mary Carmichael, is a 2001 Duke graduate or that mental_floss adviser Footlick was Adler's first editor at Newsweek almost twenty-five years ago.

"We have had quite a few Duke alums work for us in the past few years," Adler says, and they do bring Duke-related ideas to people's attention. Although, he quickly adds, "that doesn't mean something with a Duke connection will automatically get into print."

Duke connection or not, mental_floss--the magazine and its evolving manifestations--will continue to grow as long as people hanker after the answers to questions such as why Hiram Ulysses Grant, our eighteenth president, has an "S" as a middle initial, or how many mosquitoes it would take to drink all your blood.

"We thought the magazine would be doing well after three years," says Pearson. "We're all optimists. But if somebody had said that at age twenty-four we'd have a book published, a board game in the works, regular appearances on CNN, partnerships with Reader's Digest and the Discovery Channel, and so on? No way. We've just been so lucky."

Luck is how you define it, Footlick says. "As the former Dodgers owner Branch Rickey once said, 'Luck is the residue of design.' Sometimes you have to work hard to be lucky. Will and Mangesh have certainly done that."

--Dickinson '87 is a senior writer for Duke's Office of News and Communications.