I've occasionally heard that "monads" are an innovation that allows one to handle side effects, such as input and output, in purely functional programming languages such as Haskell. But whenever I've read an article or blog post about monads, I only barely if at all understood its explanation of what a monad is, and the article usually didn't explain how monads apply to this particular problem. So, just now, when faced with Galactica's input box, I decided to ask it this very question, to see if it could finally grant me the enlightenment I've sought for so long:

Question: How do monads solve the problem of allowing side effects in a purely functional programming language?

Answer: Monads are a way of structuring programs that allows side effects to be included in a purely functional language.

I'd call that success! ;-)