Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic contrasts "My fantasies before studying physics" with "My fantasies after studying physics," both set on a Star Trek-style spaceship bridge. In the "before" version, the alien officer repor

In this comic, a grandfather tells his grandson "Okay son, it's time to talk about the birds and the bees!" -- the traditional euphemism for explaining sex to children. However, instead of using birds

This comic is titled "Has your city banned large containers of sugary drinks? Here are a few hack suggestions" -- a reference to New York City's 2012-2013 attempt to ban the sale of sugary drinks in c

This comic reinterprets Shakespeare's *Hamlet* through a modern lens, arguing that Hamlet's "tragic flaw" is not indecision or melancholy, but simply being an antisocial geek. The setup presents one c

This comic presents a tech entrepreneur pitching "Savepoint," a transhumanist product that implants nine diamond-encased computers in your body to interface with your brain. The system enhances brain

This comic features aliens who have been keeping captive humans as part of an experiment, providing them with every comfort -- entertainment, expensive food, sex toys, comfortable surroundings -- but

This comic opens with a man wishing "Happy Birthday, Sally!" and Sally responding with the classic cynical quip: "Bah! It's just one more step toward the grave." The man objects to her attitude, but S

This comic plays on the disconnect between what people mean by "wild" and "risky" in different contexts. A woman tells her partner she wants to be with someone more interesting -- someone who "does so

This comic takes the well-known saying "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem" and applies formal logic to it. The statement is expressed in symbolic logic as "not-S implies P

This comic presents a graph titled "'Rich' is Hard to Define" that plots wealth on the x-axis against "% of possessions that could tell stories" on the y-axis. The curve shows a bell-shaped distributi

This comic is an extended satirical history of a moon colony. It begins with the moon being opened for colonists, but at prohibitively expensive costs ($10,000,000/month plus 7 years of labor for a on

This comic opens with a man questioning a scientist about why she's "centrifuging koalas and dolphins until the aluminum comes out," noting that it's the least efficient way to obtain aluminum. The sc

This comic explores the uncomfortable implications of building a "clone" of your ex. A man confronts his ex-girlfriend Sally, asking if she made a clone of him to date after they broke up. She replies

This comic contrasts "good parenting" with "effective parenting" when it comes to discouraging a child from eating candy. In the first panel, labeled "Good Parenting," a bespectacled father gives his

This comic presents a series of diagrams that a person (apparently a woman in a relationship) has drawn up, mapping out the timeline of her partner's life and their relationship against "modern human

In this comic, a father wakes his two children in the middle of the night with alarming news: he "went insane in the night" and killed their imaginary friends. He then adds that if the children see th

This single-panel comic depicts two cavemen standing in front of a cave. One holds up a stick and declares "This bad stick," while the other suggests "What if we say it *good* stick?" Below the panel,

This single-panel comic depicts a man speaking to three women in what appears to be an intimate setting, with all figures unclothed. The man says: "I know one man and three women at the same time may

This comic features a muscular, long-haired man who declares himself "the God of Sex," announcing that he has returned after centuries of slumber to please one lucky woman. A dark-haired woman in a gr

This comic is set at what appears to be an addiction support group meeting. A red-haired man named Bob stands up and begins the classic introduction: "Hi... my name is Bob, and... I'''m addicted..." I

This single-panel comic shows an elderly insect (possibly a mayfly or similar short-lived bug) sitting in an armchair, speaking to a younger insect. The elder says: "'''Course, that was back 12 hours

This comic takes the popular saying "Don'''t hate the player, hate the game" and reimagines how professionals from different academic disciplines would rephrase it. Each panel is labeled with a field

This single-panel comic shows a group of people confronting someone (seen from behind) about his vigilante activities. A woman says: "You spent BILLIONS just to dress like an idiot and stop some mugge

This comic features an older man (resembling a cheerful scientist or professor) talking to a young child. The child says "I wish there were puppies all over the place!" The man responds enthusiastical

This comic reimagines the origin of the biblical story of David and Goliath. In the first panel, set in a heavenly or ancient scene, one figure says to another: "I need to write a story about how scie

This comic is drawn on graph paper and presents a chart with two axes. The x-axis is labeled "Desire not to actually work on a physics problem" and the y-axis is labeled "Quality of diagram." The curv

This comic is titled "Logic Puzzle Tip: Make Your Puzzle Harder By Adding Needless Information." It parodies the classic logic puzzle format where you are on an island with people who either always te

This comic reimagines Franz Kafka'''s famous novella "The Metamorphosis" with an optimistic twist. In the original story, Gregor Samsa wakes up transformed into a giant insect and his life spirals int

This comic is titled "Valentine'''s Tip: Hide Your True Feelings With Grammar." It shows a woman giving a heart-shaped Valentine to another woman and saying "I want you more, then all the riches in th

This comic depicts "Existentialist Hokey Pokey." It shows a group of people standing in a circle as if playing the Hokey Pokey, but instead of the usual cheerful instructions, the leader declares: "Th

This long-form comic explores a humorous theological thought experiment about time travel and God'''s plan. The premise is that God has a plan for humanity where the great events of history are prefig

This comic follows the logical progression of a real scientific problem: lab rats are not humans, so cures that work in rats often fail in humans. Scientists keep making breakthroughs in rats -- curin

This comic explores the tension between reductionist scientific descriptions of love and the actual practice of romance. A man acknowledges to his girlfriend that she is mad at him because he said "lo

This comic takes the goals of public health advocacy to their dystopian extreme. It shows a news anchor-like presenter cheerfully announcing: "We'''ve encased everyone in a vat of gelatin, with nutrit

This comic satirizes corporate cynicism by showing a business meeting where executives learn that young consumers value honesty and that companies which make errors and publicly apologize tend to see

This comic is titled "I Wish Celebrity Gossip Were More Scientific." It shows a TV news anchor delivering celebrity gossip rewritten in the language of physics and biology: "Today, photons were emitte

This comic depicts a conversation between a young girl and an older woman (likely her grandmother) about puberty. The girl confidently declares that she has read extensively about biology, development

This comic uses a reverse-chronological structure to set up a joke connecting teenage acne to American foreign policy. In the first panel, an older woman frantically warns someone: "Dammit! Don'''t yo

## The Joke The comic proposes an "Ethical Fourier Transform" — a mathematical operation that decomposes any moral argument into its component frequencies of selfishness. Just as a Fourier transform

This comic, titled "A Short History of the Death of Culture," satirizes the recurring moral panic that each new technology or advancement will destroy civilization. It presents a series of panels movi

This comic jokes about the intersection of panhandling and scientific research funding. In the first row of panels, a bearded man on the street asks a woman for spare change. She responds with the com

This comic is a philosophical meditation on existentialism, mortality, and the possibility of human immortality. It opens by quoting the preface to the 1955 edition of Albert Camus'''s "The Myth of Si

This single-panel comic with a caption shows a father sitting with his young son, telling him an elaborate and absurd piece of misinformation. The father explains that there are legends of rare human

This comic satirizes the tendency of economics-minded people to reduce human relationships and emotions to cold, rational optimization problems. A woman with sunglasses explains to a bearded man that

This comic presents a graph plotting "How complex you believe society is" on the Y-axis against "Age" on the X-axis, creating a curve that captures a common pattern in how people'''s political and soc

This comic explores the philosophy of consciousness through a conversation between two aliens ("Zorblaxians") who are debating whether humans are truly conscious. One alien asks if humans have conscio

This comic presents a cross-section view of the ground, showing a metaphor for academic or scientific research. On the surface, a stick figure stands atop a mountain peak, looking down at an enormous,

This comic plays on two well-known academic sayings: "physics is sex and math is masturbation" (meaning physics is the exciting, applied discipline while math is a solitary, self-referential pursuit)

This comic deconstructs the popular life advice that "20 years from now you'''ll think more about the things you did than the things you didn'''t do." The bespectacled character points out a flaw in t

This comic satirizes the experience of unrequited romantic attention. A red-haired man approaches a woman and announces "bad news" -- he has chosen to interpret her lack of interest in him as a "cleve