Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic explores the idea of a robot trying to appreciate nature and poetry. In the first panel, a woman reads poetry to a robot in a forest setting, commenting that the robot's speech is "weird to

This comic satirizes the relationship between abstract mathematics and practical applications. In the first panel, a professor excitedly announces: "Great news! Your obscure mathematical theorem now h

This comic riffs on Robert Nozick's famous "experience machine" thought experiment from philosophy. The thought experiment asks: if you could plug into a machine that gives you any experience you want

This comic plays on the concept of "energy" as used in casual relationship and lifestyle discourse versus its more literal sense. A man is jogging and asks a woman why she and her partner run together

This comic is a "Wikipedia Tip" joke about the field of topology, a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of shapes that are preserved under continuous deformations (stretching, bending, but

This comic satirizes a common tactic in philosophical ethics debates: constructing increasingly absurd hypothetical scenarios to justify otherwise indefensible behavior. The banner reads: "Philosophy

This comic tackles the philosophical problem of consciousness, specifically how difficult it is to verify whether an AI or robot is truly conscious. In the opening panels, a person tells a robot: "Yo

This comic explores the idea that superhero stories are modern mythology, then takes the comparison to its logical (and absurd) extreme. A woman argues: "I think superhero stories are modern myths."

This comic is a deep dive into meta-ethics and moral philosophy, satirizing how every ethical framework has exploitable loopholes. The comic opens with a character noting that "all humans have simila

This comic presents a fake academic lecture about rating every aspect of human experience on two axes, creating a mathematical model of life satisfaction. The lecturer proposes rating everything on t

This comic imagines a time traveler who goes back in time to kill baby Hitler -- one of the most well-known philosophical thought experiments about time travel ethics. However, the traveler runs into

This comic is about the existential risk debate surrounding superintelligent AI. Two scientists discuss the familiar argument: we know two things about the coming "leap" to superhuman artificial intel

This is a long-form SMBC comic that satirizes AI hype, corporate AI development, and the gap between grand promises and actual utility. The comic follows a sprawling narrative involving AI researchers

This comic plays on the word "feckless," which in modern English means lacking initiative, irresponsible, or worthless. One character asks a perfectly reasonable linguistic question: how can someone b

This comic imagines the Buddha in a romantic relationship, using Buddhist philosophy as a preamble to breaking up with someone. The Buddha's opening line -- "Before we have this conversation, let us t

This comic reimagines the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah from God's perspective, but with a very different complaint than the traditional one. In the Bible, God destroys Sodom for the wickedness

This comic presents a fake "New Word Day" educational page that defines the word "dysgraphuophone" -- supposedly "a homophone that closely resembles a misspelling, commonly used on purpose to trick so

This comic tackles a real concept from population ethics known as the "Repugnant Conclusion," formulated by philosopher Derek Parfit. The Repugnant Conclusion states that, under certain utilitarian fr

This comic features a conversation between a human and God about reincarnation. God explains that reincarnation exists as a solution to an administrative problem: it's "the only way to make the univer

This comic riffs on the simulation hypothesis -- the idea, popularized by philosopher Nick Bostrom, that our reality might be a computer simulation run by a more advanced civilization. One character a

This comic is a riff on the famous scene from Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" in which the creature is brought to life, but reimagined with insects (likely ants or beetles). In the first panel, a bug s

This comic tackles the debate about linguistic prescriptivism vs. descriptivism -- the question of whether language has fixed rules or whether it evolves based on usage. In the first panel, a linguis

This comic plays on the famous philosophical anecdote about Plato and Diogenes. Plato once defined a human as a "featherless biped," whereupon Diogenes the Cynic reportedly plucked a chicken and broug

This comic is another entry in SMBC's long-running series of trolley problem variations, satirizing thought experiments in moral philosophy. The setup presents an absurdly over-complicated trolley pr

This comic satirizes motivational speeches and the cliche of being told to "never give up." In the first panel, someone asks: "So what do you think? Should I battle to fix this world or give up?" The

This comic is about the tension between scientific accuracy and literary greatness, centered on Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick." Someone asks what the best book is for promoting science, and the answer

This comic imagines what fantasy literature would look like if it were written from the dragons' perspective, treating humans the way human-authored fantasy typically treats dragons and other creature

This comic imagines a military scenario where a general is about to launch an attack, but is convinced that building a Disney World in every nation would be a cheaper and more effective way to end war

This comic riffs on the asymmetry of spatial directions and the frustrating arbitrariness of conventions like left vs. right. The comic opens with someone reading that Heisenberg discovered a new pri

This comic is about the gap between youthful expectations of adulthood and the mundane reality of grown-up life, specifically through the lens of food and drink snobbery. The comic opens with someone

In this comic, Jesus Christ has returned for the Second Coming and is addressing his followers. He announces that he will move "up" and, having gone into "up," will move around and then come "down" to

In this comic, a couple is in bed together. The woman is shouting "STOP IT! NO! STOP DOING THAT!" while the man beside her is saying in an exaggeratedly theatrical voice: "What is the matter, lover? T

In this comic, someone is giving Hamlet -- the protagonist of Shakespeare's famous tragedy -- a productivity pep talk. The advisor tells him: "Whoa, whoa. The problem is you're thinking about this as

In this comic, two children approach their father and ask: "DAAAAD, can we have candy breakfast?" The father firmly replies: "Of course not." The children then counter: "Yesterday you said of course n

In this comic, a person asks a robot: "Robot, is there such a thing as an unbiased account of history?" The robot replies: "Yes, obviously." When asked to share it, the robot explains that humans can

In this comic, one character observes to another: "Once you notice how many kids' books are just parents working through their own neuroses, the children's section of the library becomes heartbreaking

In this comic, an advisor tells the President: "The good news, Madame President, is that there won't be an AI apocalypse." The caption below delivers the punchline: "Worldwide nuclear war had some ser

In this comic, two characters discuss the ethics of immortality. One asks: "Do you think humans will ever achieve immortality? Like, one day?" The other responds: "Yeah, but just for one second --" th

This is a wordless comic that tells its story entirely through images. A person is walking down a path and sees a red ball resting on the ground near a tree. Curious, the person picks up the ball. In

In this comic, a character enthusiastically explains their work: "I study semi-primes!" When asked what those are, they explain: "Numbers that are the product of exactly two primes." They then get exc

This comic satirizes the tension between music theory education and simple enjoyment of music. In the first panel, a music teacher lectures about the importance of understanding music at a deeper, mo

This comic takes aim at the common complaint that school teaches things "you'll never use in real life" by showing that the same criticism applies to virtually everything humans voluntarily spend time

This comic traces the evolution of how adults think about children's literature across three time periods. Panel 1 -- "Kids' Literature of the Past": An old-fashioned figure (perhaps Victorian-era) s

This comic is a dark AI-alignment joke. In the first panel, a military or government official tells a robot, "Okay robot, you are now in charge of everything. Your only constraint is never to cause h

This comic satirizes the paradox of declining violence combined with increasing media coverage of violence. The comic presents two factual trends as graphs: 1. "Violent deaths are falling over time"

This comic explores the double standard in how society treats different types of addiction. The opening question poses: "How come substance addiction is considered real and worthy of sympathy, while

This comic is a single-panel joke comparing Viking-era runestones to modern dating profiles. A Viking warrior stands before a large runestone -- a carved standing stone of the type used in Scandinavi

This comic tackles the complicated feelings people have about AI-generated art versus traditional art and art school. In the first panel, someone says: "You ever wish you could time-travel to tell th

This is a promotional/meta comic rather than a traditional joke comic. Zach Weinersmith (the creator of SMBC) uses the comic format to promote a Freethink video appearance. In the top panel, a cartoo

This comic is a multi-layered wordplay joke involving etymology and physics. A man asks: "I don't get it. Why do liberal arts people have a tall statue of a famous physicist, carved from a single roc