Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke Two aliens are observing a warm, wet planet that appears to be an ideal candidate for developing human life. One alien suggests they should inoculate it with a "small, weak band of humans

## The Joke A man encounters Mother Nature — depicted as a green-skinned woman with leaves in her hair — and expresses surprise, saying he didn't know she was real. She confirms her identity as "the

## The Joke The comic shows Noah — the biblical figure famous for saving two of every animal on his ark — lamenting that "another baby animal didn't make it" and wondering how this can be, since "the

## The Joke A speaker at a podium presents neural imaging evidence showing that being rejected from a group causes "literal, physical pain." An audience member then asks, "So are you really certain y

## The Joke The comic presents a fake educational chart titled "KNOW THE DIFFERENCE" that attempts to explain the distinctions between "affect" and "effect" — one of the most commonly confused word p

## The Joke The comic presents a philosophical thought experiment about whether we should care about the distant future of humanity. Two people discuss it in stages. First, they consider a nice futur

## The Joke A man prays to God, asking the classic theological question: "Lord, why do bad things happen to good people?" God responds in an exasperated, defensive tone: "Come on, man. I do like thre

## The Joke A person is eating chips and watching TV while someone else tells them, "You could be anything!" The chip-eater responds that they do nothing all day, they're not special, and they're not

## The Joke Two men are bowling. One asks, "Why do you lean to one side when bowling? It can't affect the outcome." The other responds: "Read your Bible. Exodus 17:10-11." The comic then shows the re

## The Joke A man complains that he is tired of "crappy knockoffs of real food" and wants "authentic food made the way it was when first created." His companion proposes a thought experiment: suppose

## The Joke The comic plays on the classic job interview question "What is your greatest weakness?" -- but twists it by asking "What is your weakest greatness?" instead. The interviewee responds with

## The Joke The comic presents a fake statistical graph titled "Social Desirability vs. Toothpaste Tube Squeezing Location," which maps where a person squeezes their toothpaste tube onto a bell curve

## The Joke The comic begins with a scientist marveling at the human brain's capabilities: the ability to use language, build tools, create mathematics, and manipulate symbols in ways that far outstr

## The Joke The comic explores the science of fecal microbiota transplants (FMT) in typically irreverent SMBC fashion. It begins with a factual premise: there is evidence that eating more diverse foo

## The Joke The comic begins with a classic childhood scene: a child tells his father there is a monster under the bed, and the father dismisses it, telling him monsters don't exist and to go to slee

## The Joke The comic features a woodpecker asking "Dear Evolution, why are we like this?" Evolution responds with a beautiful, poetic explanation about how nature is filled with "endless forms most

## The Joke The comic shows two people walking together. One announces "I'm giving up for Lent." When the other asks "Giving up what?" the first person clarifies: "Just giving up. Just giving up in g

## The Joke The comic depicts a conversation with God about time travel. Someone asks God why time travel isn't possible, and God explains they tried it once but it "breaks stuff." The person then as

## The Joke A child asks an adult why humans are called "Homo sapiens sapiens" (the full trinomial name for modern humans). The adult explains that when he was a kid, it was just "Homo sapiens," whic

## The Joke The comic shows a large, muppet-like bird character (resembling Big Bird from Sesame Street) on a stage with red curtains, cheerfully announcing: "Today's letter is A. Remember A because

## The Joke The comic presents a robot teacher giving a class of robot students the classic "trolley problem" -- a famous ethical dilemma in moral philosophy. The setup seems standard: "You're drivin

## The Joke The comic presents a taxonomy of theological positions, each represented by a different character (depicted as colored circles with faces). It runs through several well-known stances: The

## The Joke The comic begins with a woman noting a linguistic oddity: the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah gave us the word "sodomy," but there is no corresponding word "gomorry." A man then off

## The Joke The comic presents three interpretations of quantum mechanics, each in its own panel. The first is the Copenhagen Interpretation, stated relatively faithfully: "There is only one reality.

## The Joke A man confronts his friend Dave, pointing out that Dave only ever wears ratty old t-shirts and jeans. Dave responds that he has been slowly transitioning away from old clothes, replacing

## The Joke This is a lengthy multi-panel comic that follows the process of creating and approving a new law or policy, satirizing the absurd complexity of bureaucratic and legislative processes. The

## The Joke The comic presents a single-panel concept: "My Preferred Comma Method: The 'End-of-Sentence-Reservoir' Comma." A woman is shown typing at her computer, and her text reads: "The Oxford Com

## The Joke This comic is not a traditional SMBC joke strip. Instead, it is a single panel announcement informing readers that the day's comic is an explainer about how to interpret COVID-19 models,

## The Joke The comic opens with a classic phishing email scenario: a message claims to be from the World Health Organization saying it needs your name and credit card information to help fight COVID

## The Joke The comic depicts a grid resembling Conway's Game of Life -- a cellular automaton where cells (represented here as yellow/lit squares) live or die based on simple rules about their neighb

## The Joke A man asks the classic philosophical question: "Do you see this glass as half full or half empty?" The other person responds "Half full," which is typically the optimistic answer. The fir

## The Joke Two characters discuss whether humans are capable of thought. One explains the computational analogy: if you ask a computer for the best route between two points, it gives a precise answe

## The Joke A man looks at an inchworm and indignantly corrects the name: "Inch worm? Christ, are we in the dark ages? This is a 1.588*10^33 Planck-length worm." The caption below reads: "Physicists

## The Joke A scientist is asked how the mathematical model of their scientific plan is going. They respond enthusiastically: by quantifying everything with increasing precision, they have gone from

## The Joke An elderly woman is speaking to someone (possibly at a memorial or farewell setting) and says she hasn't got long now, and that "you were always there, always level-headed, always groundi

## The Joke The comic opens with an announcement: "On Monday the machines became self-aware" -- accompanied by a robot screaming "KILL KILL KILL!" in a classic Terminator-style robot uprising scenari

## The Joke A patient at the dentist asks, "Please let me know if this hurts." The dentist responds with the unexpected question, "Does emotional pain count?" Then the dentist announces he is going t

## The Joke The comic is set "30 million years from now." A group of birds -- who have apparently become the dominant intelligent species -- are visiting a natural history museum. A sign or guide exp

## The Joke The comic is titled "Nature Foragers: What They Mean vs. What They Say." It presents a series of contrasts between the enthusiastic claims foragers make and the much less appealing realit

## The Joke Two punctuation marks -- a comma and a period -- are arguing about how to raise their child, an exclamation point. The comma says, "I want him to be raised like I was -- pausing sentences

## The Joke The comic presents a fake product advertisement for the "PuCube," a tea-heating cube made from 15 cubic centimeters of "equitably-sourced" Plutonium-238. The joke is that someone has take

## The Joke An older man (a father figure) angrily tells a younger man that "Your grandfather would be rolling in his grave!" -- a common idiom meaning a deceased person would be deeply upset or outr

## The Joke A professor welcomes students to "Medieval Contemporary Media Studies for Non-Majors," cheerfully noting that there is "no such thing as an easy class." She acknowledges what all the stud

## The Joke An employee sits across from her boss for a quarterly performance review. The boss tells her she's doing a great job and that it's time for a raise. In the next panel, the employee says s

## The Joke A person encounters a genie-like figure who offers "three wishes, no restrictions." The wisher begins with what sounds like a standard clever wish: "None? Like I can't even wish for more

## The Joke The comic presents "The Strata of Clothing" -- a geological cross-section of a clothing pile (the kind that accumulates on a chair or floor), organized by depth like layers of rock in str

## The Joke The comic is titled "Retirement Home Pickup Lines." An elderly man sidles up to an elderly woman and delivers the line: "Are you a senior discount at a consignment store? Because I'd like

## The Joke A man dressed in elaborate ceremonial garb -- a horned helmet, robes, a staff, and holding what appears to be a decorative egg or orb -- solemnly declares: "Now that we have achieved a qu

## The Joke A person sits alone on a beautiful, desolate beach at night, gazing at the ocean under a starry sky. It is a scene of perfect natural tranquility. Then a pop-up notification appears in a

## The Joke The comic is styled as a public service announcement poster. In the first panel, an angry mob of people declares "Old Man Jenkins stole our toilet paper!" and threatens to "tear the walls