The Simpsons Showrunner Explains How the Show Predicts the Future

The Simpsons has made headlines over the years for the many times it has ended up “predicting” the future for how its jokes coincidentally lined up with real life events, and one of the minds behind it all explained how that ends up happening! With The Simpsons recently wrapping up Season 35 of its run this past week, and looks ahead to Season 36 of the series releasing next year, fans have been celebrating how far it’s all come in this time. One of the things that fans always like to bring up, however, is how the animated series ends up corresponding with future events. 

Speaking with Cartoon Base, The Simpsons‘ current co-showrunner Matt Selman was asked about how the series ends up predicting the future and he based the answer down to “a basic understanding of two subjects: history and math.” Noting that with as many jokes as they have told over the years across 800 or so episodes of the series, there would eventually be things that end up lining up with real life. It’s far from a glamorous answer for such a subject, but Selman noted how this is likely going to change in the future as well. 

Debunking How The Simpsons Predicts the Future

“So many people in our society have become obsessed with the notion that The Simpsons can predict the future using ‘magic,’” Selman stated. “I personally do not believe in magic. Yet the one place where magic most certainly is real is in the minds of our fellow human beings. The reality is that the Simpsons’ predictions can be attributed to a basic understanding of two subjects: history and math. If you study history, you will be able to ‘predict’ the future because the foolishness of humanity repeats itself. If you study math, you know that if the show makes literally 1000s of jokes over almost 800 episodes, it would be statistically impossible not to create material that overlaps with what would later happen in real life.  But people prefer the simpler answer: ‘magic.’”

As Selman continued, the co-showrunner noted how this predicting the future could likely be warped in the future thanks to advances in A.I. technology, “I feel that in the current era of digital misinformation that we live, The Simpsons predictions (or, more accurately, ‘coincidences’) have become meaningless. Any goofball can whip up an AI image based on a current event and say ‘The Simpsons predicted it!’— and good but easily-mislead folks will believe it because they so very want it to be true.”

If you wanted to check out The Simpsons Season 35, you can watch the episodes now on Hulu and the previous 34 seasons with Disney+.

via Cartoon Base