HOW-TO
WATCH THIS: Going Deep With David Rees
How to Fold a Fitted Sheet
How to Cross a River Without a Bridge
Need to cross a roaring river? It’s always best to find a bridge, but if you absolutely must make it to the other side on your own, a few easy steps can keep you high and relatively dry.
Let's Make Some Fall Decorations!
How to Send Smoke Signals
Not getting any bars on your phone? That doesn’t mean you can’t communicate with faraway friends.
How to Build a Wilderness Shelter
Trapped outside without a tent? Don’t worry. With a little ingenuity, you can build a shelter that will keep you safe while ensuring you have a fascinating survival tale to tell.
How to Survive Without Water
Stuck in the wilderness with nary a drop of water in your canteen? Don’t worry. You can survive this situation and live to tell an incredibly interesting tale.
How to Pick a Lock
Whether you’re a suave spy or simply a guy who keeps forgetting his keys, lock picking is a handy skill to have.
How to Grow African Violets from Leaf Cuttings
How to Get Past A Lock
Dan Lewis runs the popular daily newsletter Now I Know ("Learn Something New Every Day, By Email"). We've invited him to share some of his stories on mental_floss this week. To subscribe to his daily email, click
How to Build an Ice Hotel
Lapland’s storied IceHotel, the world’s largest and longest-running luxury hotel made entirely of frozen water, is a little more involved than those bootleg igloos you constructed as a kid!
How Are Shrunken Heads Made?
Head shrinking is rumored to have occurred all over the world, but documented only among a few indigenous South American tribes living in Peru and Ecuador. How do you take a flesh-and-bone head and shrink it?
Camera Fun - Making Crazy Art Using Christmas Lights
It's that time of year -- strings of tiny lights are everywhere, and families are wandering around, checking out those lights. If you're like me, you bring your camera along on these light-viewing jaunts. And if you're like me, you use your camera to ta
How to Train Your Goldfish
Col. Konrad Most, one of the pioneers of modern animal training, began training service dogs while serving in the Royal Prussian Police in 1906. His book on the subject, Training Dogs, described many of the basic elements of operant conditioning—including
How To Get Yourself on a Postage Stamp
If you're like me, you probably take postage stamps for granted. I'll slap one on an outgoing bill or letter, but I don't usually give them much thought. However, there's a rigorous process that one has to go through to get his mug on a stamp, so we tho
Put This On: Denim
Today I bring you a new "web series about dressing like a grownup" presented by Jesse Thorn of The Sound of Young America (a public radio show that's generally awesome) and Adam Lisagor of the hilarious podcast You Look Nice Today (A Journal of Emotional
Growing Tomatoes
For each of the last 15 years, I've grown between 50 and 100 tomato plants from seed, which gives me a year's supply of tomatoes, tomato juice, tomato sauce, and salsa. And plenty to give away,
How to Quit Smoking
Whether you're looking to start your own religion, swallow a sword, crack an unsolved murder, find Atlantis, buy the Moon, sink a battleship, perform your own surgeries, or become a ninja, our new book Be Amazing covers all the essential life skills! This
How to Become Invisible
Whether you're looking to start your own religion, swallow a sword, quit smoking, find Atlantis, buy the Moon, sink a battleship, perform your own surgeries, or become a ninja, our new book Be Amazing covers all the essential life skills! This week, we'll
10 iPhone Apps to Help You Survive the Holidays
As you settle down with family and friends this holiday season, be prepared: load up your iPhone (or iPod Touch) with applications to get through common holiday disasters. We've got a complete roundup here -- from fun photo moments to actual medical eme
Do-It-Yourself Molded Pumpkins
Those of you who have been around the mental_floss blog for a while know I grow pumpkins in my garden. Last spring I wrote about how gardeners are using molds to grow vegetables in odd shapes, and I said I was going to try that myself. Well, I