Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke A tech executive is on stage giving a product announcement. He declares: "Science and technology have reached their limit! We can no longer keep releasing slightly improved phones year af

## The Joke The comic riffs on the famous essay by Isaiah Berlin, "The Hedgehog and the Fox," which classifies thinkers into two categories: foxes, who know many things, and hedgehogs, who know one b

## The Joke A character explains that empathy is what makes us human. Another character points out that empathy is highly selective — we feel deep empathy for one photogenic child but almost none for

## The Joke A woman is reading the Bible and exclaims "Dear Lord!" after encountering the story in which Jael (from the Book of Judges) drives a tent peg through the head of the Canaanite general Sis

## The Joke The comic opens with the narrator musing about what the scariest thing a manager could say to a programmer would be. The manager then announces: "Wait a minute -- all numbers can be speci

## The Joke The comic begins with a philosopher explaining the concept of "p-zombies" (philosophical zombies) -- hypothetical beings that are physically identical to normal humans and behave identica

## The Joke A grandmother tells her grandchild that the secret ingredient that makes her cookies sweet is love. The grandchild asks what she is talking about, noting that the secret ingredient is sug

## The Joke A man catches a leprechaun and is granted one wish. He wishes for his mommy and daddy to be back together. The leprechaun, visibly annoyed, says "No" and threatens that if the man does no

## The Joke A parent walks in on their child Bobby and asks, "Bobby! Are you getting high in here?" Bobby responds with the classic deflection: "The only thing I am high on is life." The final panel

## The Joke The comic is set in the Garden of Eden. God is telling the humans that they are letting them out into the rest of Earth, but warns that they are not native to the rest of the planet. God

## The Joke Two people are discussing whether to watch the candidates "touch the butt" tonight, which is described as a new debate format. The premise is that people do not watch traditional debates

## The Joke The comic presents a series of panels styled as a generic motivational poster or self-help comic. Each panel contains deliberately bland, stripped-down motivational platitudes: "A person

## The Joke The comic is titled "Rough Sex Requests, Sorted by Academic Discipline" and presents a series of panels where couples from different academic fields make suggestive requests to each other

## The Joke A parent enthusiastically declares that kids are "natural scientists" because they are curious. The other parent agrees, saying "Of course!" Then the first parent begins listing behaviors

## The Joke The comic shows God in the Garden of Eden, proudly announcing: "There! I've created humans. Brand new ones with no ideas or opinions or anything. Now to leave them in the company of that

## The Joke A bearded professor-like figure wearing sunglasses poses what appears to be a serious philosophical dilemma: "If you take the trolley down one track, you kill five people. If you take it

## The Joke The comic shows a scientist presenting updated knowledge about what dinosaurs actually looked like. She explains that many dinosaurs were covered with feathers, looked more like giant tur

## The Joke The comic opens with a scene of a building collapse or fire, with rubble and flames visible. A firefighter solemnly tells a woman, "I'm afraid your husband is under there." The woman, tea

## The Joke A woman confronts a man wearing an augmented reality helmet, telling him to "stop staring at my chest." The man explains that his AR helmet shows him data about whatever direction he look

## The Joke The comic shows what a scientific paper actually says versus what the media reports about it. The paper's actual conclusion is something narrow and hedged ("We observed a statistically si

## The Joke In the first panel, a red-haired man tells another man at what appears to be a bar: "The thing with women is you gotta convince them that you're strong. That you're an alpha." In the seco

## The Joke A host proudly presents a Halloween feast to guests, showing off themed dishes: "Stuffed pumpkin candy! And they're Jack-o-lanterns! Ooooooh!" followed by "Pink lemonade with candy eyebal

## The Joke The comic is titled "Pet Peeve: People who refuse to take credit for their own good work." It shows a well-dressed man with a smug expression saying: "I don't think of myself as a genius.

## The Joke A man announces that he is wearing a suit that converts pain into pleasure. Superman approaches and punches him, expecting a normal fight, but the man explains that the kinetic energy fro

## The Joke A woman says "Hey! My eyes are up here!" to a man, which is the classic line women use when they catch someone staring at their chest. The man responds "But... I was looking at your eyes.

## The Joke A genie (depicted as a ghostly floating figure) tells a man to place a candle on his head to receive wishes. The man is immediately suspicious, citing the classic genie tropes: "There is

## The Joke A police chief tells a detective, "You are off of this case, Sanderson!" The detective protests: "If I am off this case, I am turning in my badge, chief." The chief asks "You can do that?

## The Joke The comic is a long-form piece showing a couple where the woman increasingly demands "citation needed" for every claim her partner makes during conversation. It starts with a seemingly re

## The Joke A woman tells someone "I suck at writing." Her companion responds with the socially expected reassurance: "Oh, come on. No you don't." But instead of accepting the compliment or continuin

## The Joke A man is looking in a bathroom mirror, but his reflection has grown long wild hair and has become a separate, sentient being. The reflection (or the hair itself) delivers a dramatic monol

## The Joke A person sitting at a computer excitedly says: "Oh my GOD. Now that we have thinking computers, instead of defeating software security vulnerabilities myself, I can just instruct the mach

## The Joke The comic is a mostly wordless sequence showing a rocket launching from Earth. The rocket travels through space, shedding its stages as real rockets do. The stages separate and the payloa

## The Joke The comic is set "1 Million Years Ago" and shows two aliens in a spaceship orbiting Earth. They are discussing how to prevent the planet from developing technologically advanced life befo

## The Joke A mathematician (who looks like an ancient Greek scholar) notes that some mathematicians have proposed using tau (equal to 2 times pi) instead of pi, because it makes many equations more

## The Joke The comic presents a scenario where extreme human longevity has been achieved, but rather than focusing on the usual concerns about such a development (overpopulation, boredom, resource d

## The Joke The comic depicts a coming-of-age ritual presented in the style of an ancient or fantasy ceremony. A father figure tells his child that he has "come of age" and it is no longer fitting to

## The Joke The comic uses the classic "Clockmaker" metaphor for God -- the idea from 18th-century deism that God created the universe like a watchmaker who builds a clock, sets it in motion, and the

## The Joke The comic depicts a family argument about a "purity ring." A father confronts his daughter, reminding her that when he put a purity ring on her, she made a promise. But the daughter prote

## The Joke The comic reimagines the classic Popeye cartoon scenario where the spinach-fueled sailor punches his rival Bluto to win Olive Oyl's affections. Popeye is shown in his classic pose, having

## The Joke The comic takes the classic proverb "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" and progressively extends it through increasingly c

## The Joke The comic features an older man (possibly a grandparent type) making the classic complaint: "I think parents these days need to let their kids run wild like we did in my day!" A woman res

## The Joke The comic is titled "Best Use of a Time Machine: Recording History's Most Awkward Moments." It depicts the scene at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865, shortly after President Abraham Linco

## The Joke The comic presents an alternate, cynically "realistic" version of Spider-Man's origin story. Instead of the familiar tale of a radioactive spider bite giving Peter Parker superpowers, thi

## The Joke The comic is a philosophical conversation between two people about the internet and modern connectivity. One person says he doesn't want to be one of those people who think everything got

## The Joke The comic portrays two Viking berserkers -- warriors known for fighting in a trance-like fury -- having a surprisingly rational and modern conversation about the downsides of their profes

## The Joke A scientist is enthusiastically describing her work, but the way she talks about it sounds exactly like how a six-year-old would describe their hobby. She says she likes rocks, she and he

## The Joke Two characters are debating ethical frameworks. One argues that ethics should always be consequentialist -- that we need to consider not just our actions but their potential consequences.

## The Joke The comic opens with the well-known saying "They say the best revenge is a life well-lived." A man at a bar tells his companion that instead of getting mad at someone, he quit his office

## The Joke A villainous-looking character proposes weaponizing chaos theory. He notes that according to chaos theory, the flap of a butterfly's wings may cause a hurricane, and calculates that if ea

## The Joke A job interviewer asks the classic interview question: "So what is your greatest weakness?" Instead of the usual humble-brag answer (like "I work too hard"), the candidate gives a series