Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The comic is titled "Sometimes I worry I'll be a bad father" and shows a father reading from a book of fables to his young daughter. He is telling her the story of the tortoise and the hare, but inste

This comic satirizes quantum mechanics by drawing a parallel to political doublespeak. In the first panel, a physics professor explains quantum superposition to a class: something can exist not just a

## The Joke The comic presents capsule reviews of books, movies, or ideas — but instead of conventional criticism, each review applies the lens of a different academic discipline. An economist review

The comic shows two men having coffee together. One says "Ugh. This is terrible. I want another," referring to his bad coffee. The other man gleefully responds with the classic joke "That's what she s

A nun poses a writing prompt to her class: "If you could talk to Baby Jesus, what would you say to him?" The comic then contrasts two responses. The "Good Kid" writes a sweet, pious answer: "Dear Baby

This comic depicts the anxiety spiral of a hypochondriac lying in bed at night. The man feels some abdominal pain and immediately jumps to the worst-case conclusion: appendicitis. He begins poking the

This comic plays on the idea that success in computer science requires meticulous attention to detail. A professor at a lectern declares that being good with "details" is what separates the great comp

This single-panel comic imagines what religion would look like from the perspective of sperm cells. A sperm cell stands at a podium preaching to a congregation of fellow sperm, declaring that if they

The comic opens with the premise that "any joke that ends with a pun can be converted to an action movie scene." It then takes the classic "frayed knot" joke -- in which a piece of string walks into a

This comic shows a man enthusiastically brandishing a knife while declaring, "Math is gender neutral! And if you disagree, you will be too!" The woman next to him recoils in alarm. The caption below r

This comic depicts the Second Coming of Jesus, but with a twist. Jesus descends from the sky and announces he has returned to take "all the strongest, richest, sexiest humans to Heaven." Someone in th

This comic compares Shakespeare's *Hamlet* with its source material, the medieval Danish legend of Amleth from the *Gesta Danorum*. It lays out a checklist of plot points shared by both stories: the u

Titled "The Human Irony," this comic shows a man at his desk having a philosophical epiphany. He reasons that if Heisenberg uncertainty is true, the universe may not be deterministic, which means free

This comic addresses the well-known parenting dilemma: if you bribe kids into reading, they will not learn to appreciate reading for its intrinsic value. It then presents three different approaches to

This comic proposes reclaiming the word "gay" by giving it a new, hyper-positive definition: "As awesome as two people who are experts on penises having sex without fear of pregnancy." The joke redefi

The comic poses the question "Can pi be expressed as a fraction?" and contrasts the responses of an "A+ Math Student" versus a "Future Mathematician." The A+ student gives a textbook-perfect answer, e

This comic personifies Charles Darwin as a ghostly figure who represents the evolutionary drive to survive and reproduce, constantly urging a cat to "Eat, F*ck, Fight!" -- the primal biological impera

The comic presents two versions of the same scenario: a child comes home and tells their mother that friends at school called them ugly. In the first panel, labeled "What Usually Happens," the mother

The comic takes place during an in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure. A doctor is narrating the egg retrieval process, explaining that they are inserting an aspiration needle to extract the ova. But

This comic is a graph joke plotting "Difficulty of Proving a Mathematical Fact" on the y-axis against "Obviousness of That Fact" on the x-axis. The curve shows that as a mathematical fact becomes more

The comic riffs on the simulation argument, popularized by philosopher Nick Bostrom. A scientist reasons that since humanity is capable of simulating reality, it is statistically likely that we oursel

A man passionately argues that the common saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is wrong. He insists on a distinction: the enemy of your enemy is not your *friend* but merely your *ally*. When a

The comic presents a formula at the top: "Normal Sentence - Euphemism = Creepy." It then demonstrates this principle with a single example: a man on a date says, "I'm sorry, I can't... I'm saving my p

The comic shows a stand-up comedian performing on stage, delivering the line: "And for the rest of the night, you'll wonder if she actually enjoyed sex or was just trying to avoid relationship conflic

## The Joke A person dies and arrives in the afterlife, where they discover that the afterlife is just another life — with all the same problems, tedium, and existential dread. There's still work to

The comic shows a man approaching a woman at a bar with the line: "Hi. I'd like you to temporarily relax your standards in exchange for money." The woman, appalled, calls him a creep. He apologizes, s

This comic satirizes media fearmongering about China overtaking the United States in scientific output. The first panel shows a sensationalist news anchor warning about China's rising scientific produ

This comic follows a mugger through an unexpected character arc. In the first panel, a masked robber threatens a woman at knifepoint in a classic mugging scenario. However, the stolen purse happens to

This comic explores the stereotype that nerds and technically-minded people lack empathy, then systematically reframes it. The opening panel shows a nerd responding to someone's grief about their dead

This comic shows a history test question asking the student to "cite two causes of the first world war." The handwritten answers are: "1) The universal wavefunction" and "2) The boundary conditions of

This comic parodies the Superman trope of Clark Kent ducking into a telephone booth to change into his superhero costume, but with a capitalist twist. When aliens attack the Metropolis Stock Exchange,

This lengthy comic presents a satirical thought experiment about how to end war by exploiting the military-industrial complex. The premise is simple: start a company that manufactures roller skates an

This comic uses the metaphor of a black-and-white sphere to illustrate a shift in the author's understanding of why people argue. The title sets up the analogy: "Imagine truth is a sphere." In the fir

This comic is titled "The Wangularity Is Near," a portmanteau parodying Ray Kurzweil's concept of "The Singularity" -- the hypothetical point at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and i

This single-panel comic shows a shirtless man standing in front of multiple computer monitors, holding a mouse in one hand and gesturing grandly with the other. He announces, "And now... a tribute to

This comic, titled "How 'New Age' Philosophy Works," satirizes the way pseudoscientific and new-age spiritual movements use scientific-sounding language to lend credibility to unfounded claims. In the

This comic depicts a person visiting a dying relative on their deathbed. Instead of staying for the person's final moments, the visitor cheerfully explains that they've already "downloaded" the dying

This comic shows a man reading a book with a thought bubble that reads, "Religion seems so wonderful. I just don't believe God would want me to have it." The caption below reads, "Ever wonder why ther

This comic is an extended metaphor comparing booting up an old computer you haven't used in ten years to revisiting a past version of yourself. The comic walks through a series of observations: the co

This comic is titled "Economist Pickup Lines" and shows a nerdy-looking man with glasses attempting to flirt with a woman at what appears to be a bar. His line is: "Hey baby. If I told you you had a b

This comic explores the idea that someday a longevity or immortality treatment will be discovered, framing it as both a "good thing" and a "bad thing." The good thing is obvious: you get to live forev

This comic references the real-world controversy in which creationists pushed to have disclaimer stickers placed in biology textbooks stating that evolution is "just a theory." The comic imagines that

This comic illustrates the social anxiety of deciding whether to help a stranger in public. A man notices an old lady has dropped her purse, but she's in the "ambiguous zone" -- a distance where it's

This comic shows a group of disciples asking Jesus to "do that thing where you walk on water." Jesus enthusiastically agrees: "Oh! Okay, watch!" The caption below reveals the punchline: "We got Jesus

This comic personifies the frontal lobe of the brain as a small brain-shaped creature standing on what appears to be a barren landscape (representing the surface of the brain). The frontal lobe assert

This comic shows a student typing an impassioned essay arguing that students shouldn't be "bound by a ludicrous, arbitrary, insulting grading system, in which we're reduced to a single letter with a p

This comic, titled "Comedy Equation: Old Joke + Sadness = New Joke," takes three classic bar jokes and extends them past their punchlines into uncomfortable, depressing territory. The first joke is th

This comic presents a single graph titled "Everything Wrong with Political Discourse in One Graph." The x-axis represents knowledge and the y-axis represents confidence in one's own viewpoints. The cu

In this comic, a man suggests to his partner that the decision of whether to buy a new video game system shouldn't be restricted to just the two of them, and proposes they form a committee. His partne

This comic presents three vignettes under the headings "Don't Marry a Philosopher," "Don't Marry a Scientist," and "Don't Marry an Artist," each showing a deathbed confession scene. The philosopher te