to-be-or-not-to-be
Explanation
The Joke
The comic shows a scientist standing in front of a chalkboard, reciting a modified version of Hamlet's famous soliloquy: "To be or not to be, that is an irrelevant question. The goal is REPRODUCTION." The word "reproduction" is emphasized in bold red text. On the chalkboard behind him are biological diagrams. The caption below reads: "Bringing together the arts and sciences didn't go as well as hoped."
The premise imagines a world where the humanities and the sciences have been merged, and a biologist has been tasked with interpreting Shakespeare. Instead of engaging with Hamlet's existential meditation on the meaning of life and death, the scientist dismisses the philosophical question entirely and reduces everything to evolutionary biology -- the only thing that matters, from a strict Darwinian perspective, is passing on your genes.
The Humor
The comedy lies in the absurd reductionism of applying strict scientific thinking to art and philosophy. Hamlet's soliloquy is one of the most celebrated passages in Western literature, a profound exploration of human consciousness and mortality. The scientist's response -- that existence itself is beside the point compared to reproduction -- is hilariously tone-deaf yet technically defensible from a narrow evolutionary standpoint. It satirizes the idea that interdisciplinary collaboration automatically produces better outcomes, when in fact some frameworks are fundamentally incompatible in their approach to the big questions.
References
The comic references the "To be or not to be" soliloquy from William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1), one of the most famous speeches in English literature.