Now that he's done ranting about the self-imposed Simpsons controversy about Homer choking Bart, showrunner Matt Selman has revealed the secret to the show's ability to predict the future (spoiler alert: there isn't one).
"The sourpuss answer I always give that no one likes is that if you study history and math, it would be literally impossible for us not to predict things," Selman told People when asked how the show has become an oracle. "If you say enough things, some of them are going to overlap with reality, and then that's the math element."
Satirizing past political blunders also makes it easy to capitalize on history repeating itself: "If you make a show that is based on studying the past foolishness of humanity, you are surely going to anticipate the future foolishness of humanity as it sinks further into foolishness fair. So we don't really think about it," he continued.
Selman went on to say that the show's writers don't have a regulated list of predictions, and that people fake out instances of it regularly. "It was nicer when the predictions were just predicting real horrible events, not people pretending we predicted horrible events," he clarified, saying it's "very depressing and dispiriting that people want the magic to be true so bad" that they begin making up false predictions.
Though The Simpsons may keep waning in relevancy, its crystal ball does not. Just this year alone, some have claimed that the show foretold Kamala Harris's presidential bid, three-eyed fish and Cypress Hill performing with the London Symphony Orchestra.