How does ‘The Simpsons’ predict the future? Producer reveals

One of the questions that echoes in the minds of fans of ‘The Simpsons’ is: how does the animation manage to get so many predictions for the future of humanity right? Although many theories try to explain how this is possible, the official answer was given by the cartoon’s producer, Matt Selmanin conversation with Cartoon Base profile, from X (formerly Twitter).

In the chat, Selman said that a part of the public prefers to believe that the production can magically anticipate events. “Many people in our society have become obsessed with the notion that The Simpsons can predict the future using ‘magic.’ Personally, I don’t believe in magic. However, the only place where magic is certainly real is in the minds of our fellow humans.”

Still, he guarantees that there is nothing magical about this process, and that two areas of knowledge made possible the existence of parallels between the events seen in the series and in real life, namely history and mathematics.

The reality is that The Simpsons’ predictions can be attributed to a basic understanding of two subjects: history and mathematics. If you study history, you will be able to ‘predict’ the future because humanity’s foolishness repeats itself. If you study math, you know that if the show makes literally thousands of jokes in nearly 800 episodes, it would be statistically impossible not to create material that overlaps with what would later happen in real life.”

Finally, he commented on how much the current reality, where it is becoming increasingly easier to create and propagate fake news, affects the impact that these connections between reality and fiction have.

I feel that in the current age of digital misinformation we live in, The Simpsons’ predictions (or, more accurately, ‘coincidences’) have become meaningless. Any fool can create an AI image based on a current event and say ‘The Simpsons predicted that!’. — and good but easily deceived people will believe it because they really want it to be true.

It’s worth remembering that ‘The Simpsons’ was launched in 1989 and continues to receive new episodes. In total, the series has 35 seasons and more than 750 episodes, to present the daily life of the lazy father Homer, the dedicated mother Marge Simpson, and their children: the rebellious teenager called Bart, the prodigy Lisa and the cute youngest of the family , baby Maggie. In Brazil, the production is available in the catalog of the Star+ streaming service.