Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic imagines a scenario in which scientists have discovered how to use sperm as a nano-medicine delivery mechanism. The first panel shows a newspaper headline: "Society of Women Engineers Rejec

This comic shows a former student encountering his old professor, Professor Murphy, who is now homeless and begging on the street. The student recognizes him and pauses awkwardly. In the second panel,

This comic presents a humorous take on the Fermi Paradox -- the question of why, if extraterrestrial intelligence exists, we have never received communication from aliens. A scientist (identified in t

This comic tackles the common cultural trope of mocking men who drive sports cars as compensating for having a small penis. In the first panel, two women see a man with a sports car and snicker that h

This comic imagines a domestic scene in the life of John Venn, the 19th-century logician who invented the Venn diagram. His wife catches him drawing on a chalkboard and accuses him of making inappropr

This comic explores the dark social consequences of discovering immortality. A scientist announces at a press conference: "Today, we announce the discovery of immortality!" A reporter immediately asks

This comic imagines a far-future scenario involving a time capsule and the philosophy of determinism. In the year ~2,000,000 A.D., evolved humanoid beings with elongated heads and flame-like features

This comic explores a math trick called "Polish Hand Magic" (attributed in a footnote to "The Puzzler's Elusion" by Dr. Dennis Shasha). The trick provides a method for multiplying single-digit numbers

This comic tells an epic revenge story from the perspective of dinosaurs. It opens in a dramatic scene where asteroids are raining down on a city while an aide tells a dinosaur president: "Mister Pres

This comic depicts a nun (identified in the caption as "Sister Claire") lecturing a young red-haired boy about sexuality using a creative theological argument. She tells him: "Ipso facto any time you

This comic exposes the cognitive dissonance people have about where their food comes from. A woman with glasses asks a red-haired woman: "Where do you think that fried chicken came from?" The red-hair

This comic is a genie-wish joke that explores the unintended consequences of a seemingly appealing wish. A man rubs a lamp and tells the genie: "I wish the penis was a muscle, so size would be proport

This comic reimagines Greek mythology as a workplace comedy. Ares, the god of war (depicted wearing a Spartan-style helmet), bursts in to complain to Zeus about losing a contest to Athena, goddess of

This comic is a single-panel satirical summary of television economics commentary. It shows a large sticky note or card that reads: "The future will be different from the present to some degree at som

This comic presents a mock logical proof about the impossibility of time travel. In the main panel, a woman confronts a man wearing goggles who appears to be harassing rabbits, asking "Why are you mol

This single-panel comic shows an older man with glasses speaking to a younger man, apparently his son, against a desert-like backdrop. The father says: "Well... when people get older, they sometimes t

This single-panel comic shows a biblical scene with men carrying large wooden crosses. Jesus, depicted with long hair and a beard, looks at the crosses with excitement and exclaims: "Oh COOL! Are we m

This comic addresses the historical persecution of Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician and computer scientist. In the first panel, a man at a podium lists Turing's accomplishments: he cracked Naz

This single-panel comic shows three people in conversation. A woman and an older man with glasses are telling a younger man that a text "is not meant to be taken literally" and that "you're supposed t

This comic is a wordless visual narrative depicting an alien civilization destroying Earth, only to have the consequences cascade in an unexpected direction. It begins with an asteroid or projectile h

This comic takes place at "Sunset Gardens Elder Care Center." A consultant is meeting with the facility's staff and tells them the reason they get no new enrollment is that their tenants look like the

This comic shows three panels of two angels watching a glowing golden orb with triangular shapes on it, growing progressively more excited and amused across the panels. Below the panels is the caption

This is a long-form educational comic that explains the Prisoner's Dilemma from game theory and connects it to moral philosophy. It begins by describing the classic setup: two prisoners who can either

This single-panel comic shows two men watching something on a screen. One says "I don't get it. It's just a guy staring at a computer for twenty seconds." The other replies, "That's a time-lapse video

This comic is a parody of Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick." It opens with a dramatic sailing scene, then shows a grizzled, Ahab-like captain asking a red-haired man if he has seen the white whale. The re

This comic contrasts how a "Normal Person" and a "Doctor" would deliver the same piece of bad news. The normal person awkwardly says, "I... I think I ran over your cat in your driveway." The doctor, w

This comic features a political leader addressing citizens from a podium. He confesses: "Citizens... I have a confession to make... The spacebridge to Mars was not designed to serve any scientific or

This comic shows a shirtless man waking up in a bedroom, looking around confused but delighted, saying: "What the... where am... oh, hey, awesome! Who are you?" The caption below reads: "This is the w

This comic is titled "The Difference" and contrasts a "Wise Man" with an "Educated Man" in a side-by-side format. Both panels show the same scenario: a woman confronting a man about infidelity, demand

This comic retells the fairy tale of "The Ugly Duckling" with a cynical modern twist. It begins traditionally: "There once was an ugly duckling" (shown as a bizarre, chicken-like bird), and "All the o

This two-panel comic explores a humorous argument for the existence of God. In the top panel, two people are walking outdoors. One declares, "Of course God exists!" When asked how they know, they repl

This three-panel comic personifies abstract concepts as ghostly figures who interact with a couple sitting at a table. In the first panel, a translucent blue figure introduces itself to a red-haired m

This comic follows a narrative about Professor Thorne, who discovers that time travel is possible in this universe (shown with physics equations on a chalkboard). He then wonders where all the time tr

This comic is titled "Sanity Tips" and offers the tongue-in-cheek advice: "Try misremembering moments from high school as if they weren't horribly awkward." The single panel shows a young man in a sui

This comic presents a graph with "Brutality of Rite of Manhood Rituals" on the Y-axis and "Time" on the X-axis. The curve shows an exponential increase in brutality over time. Three data points are la

This comic contrasts two visions of literary dystopia. The first panel, labeled "Predicted Dystopia," depicts the classic Fahrenheit 451 or 1984-style nightmare: a dramatic figure in a dark room decla

This comic comments on the gender disparity in engineering by comparing the toys marketed to boys versus girls. The first panel, labeled "Boy Toys," shows a boy excitedly holding a construction toy ca

This comic imagines a darkly humorous scenario about generational shifts in where fathers hide their pornography. A young man sits at a computer where a video of his deceased father plays. The father'

This comic is structured in reverse chronological order to build to its punchline. The first panel shows a woman screaming at the top of her lungs ("EEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEE!") directly into a man'

This comic retells the biblical story of David and Goliath, but with David himself trying to downplay the achievement. After slaying Goliath, onlookers congratulate David enthusiastically: "David! You

This comic satirizes the divide between philosophy and engineering by staging a debate about personal identity. A philosopher poses the classic thought experiment: "If a perfect duplicate of you is ma

This comic contrasts two versions of the same scenario on an airplane. The top panel, labeled "Cool," shows a man proudly announcing to nearby passengers: "Booya! Just joined the mile high club!" The

This comic plays on the common parental euphemism used when explaining puberty and reproduction to children. In the first panel, a mother sits on a bed reading from a book titled "Your Body" to her yo

In this comic, an alien is boasting to a human woman about how Zorblaxian pornography is far more advanced than Earth's, claiming they have 19 orifices, "each more taboo than the last." When the woman

This comic is titled "Confession Tip: Use Statistics" and plays on the idea of using misleading statistical framing to soften the blow of delivering bad news. A teenage girl stands before her parents

This comic features a recurring SMBC setup: a child asking his grandfather an innocent question that leads to an inappropriately crude answer. The boy asks, "Grampa, what's the difference between love

This comic applies Fermi estimation to the question of what Superman would actually look like when he arrives to save someone. It defines several variables: B = 1/3 (bugs encountered per kilometer by

This comic imagines what would happen if different academic subjects adopted each other's answer styles. The top panel, "If Math Class Were Like English Class," shows a math test question: "What is th

This comic takes a scientific look at the biblical miracle of Jesus turning water into wine. It walks through the chemistry: to convert water (H2O) into wine (which contains ethanol and other organic

This comic explores what happens when a vampire has to deal with mundane family obligations. In the first panel, a young man in dark clothing complains, "Mom, family photos are stupid! I'm a vampire!