On 15 September, the first of some 180 screenings of The PhD Movie, a spin-off of popular online comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper, launched at universities around the world (see http://go.nature.com/fixuqb). The film is about the high-pressure world of academia. Comic-strip creator Jorge Cham, who holds a PhD in robotics from Stanford University in California, wrote the script; graduate students at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena produced and acted in the film. Cham hopes that it will help to break down stereotypes about PhD scientists (see interview with Cham at http://go.nature.com/yxlb9q).