Unnatural Selection

What is this, a crossover episode? Unnatural Selection host Emma joins forces with PB and CJ of the Ga’Hoolingans Podcast to talk about, you guessed it, Zach Snyder’s  Legend of the Guardians: the Owls of Ga’Hoole  (2010), an adaptation of the first three books in Kathryn Lasky’s  Guardians of Ga’Hoole  series! Join these three hosts as they go into the hollow of the Ga’Hoole tree to talk about eg...

Get ready to inhale some spores, step through the shimmer into Area X, and explore a ~~tunnel~~ tower with Emma and Jacqueline as they take a look at Jeff Vandermeer’s  Annihilation  and the 2018 film adaptation of the same name. Listen along as they dive into the creative use of repurposed visuals, the differences between a biologist and Natalie Portman, and overlooking scientific curiosity in fa...

Put on your VR headset and load up a CGI courtroom as Jory and Emma discuss the 1992 “adaptation” of Stephen King’s 1975 short story The Lawnmower Man . Join them as they discuss how loose an adaptation can get before it’s just a different piece of media entirely, why Stephen King sued, and how sometimes a director is wrong even if they’ve put a quality monkey into a movie. Content warnings for Th...

This month on Unnatural Selection, Andrew has volunteered as tribute to dive straight into the second book in the Hunger Games series,  Catching Fire , without ever reading the first one! Listen along as they compare it to the 2013 film adaptation of the same name and talk about cut characters, the YA love triangle craze, why Katniss is stripped of her interiority, and what makes Hollywood think t...

Travel through Christmas past, present, and future with Emma and Juliet as they take on one of the many, MANY, adaptations of Charles Dickens’ holiday classic  A Christmas Carol . This December they focus on 1992’s The Muppets Christmas Carol, which might genuinely be the most faithful adaptation even if Bob Cratchit is a loveable frog. Join them to gripe about dancing penguins, wax poetic about D...

This episode was originally recorded on August 8, 2023.   Follow Blink and Emma through the Wall and into Faerie as they break down the differences between Neil Gaiman’s 1999 novel adaptation of his own 1997 comic series  Stardust  and the 2007 film adaptation of the same name! Join them as they talk about painfully 2007 treatment of female characters, a lack of little hairy men, and how sometimes...

Emma and Oak become unstuck in time, hopping through the pages of Kurt Vonnegut’s anti-war sci-fi classic  Slaughterhouse-Five  and its 1972 film adaptation of the same name. Join them as they discuss how powerful a match cut can be, the sheer joy of watching a car being driven wildly by a panicked wife, and how it was a coward’s choice to not show the Tralfamadorians on-screen.    Content warning...

Emma and Kat disappear into the woods in order to read Stephanie Meyer’s  Twilight  and watch the hit film adaptation of the same name. When they return to society, they debate whether the book was actually enjoyable, discuss why teenagers need to have friends, and applaud one of the best movie soundtracks of all time.   Content warnings for  Twilight  include: grooming, bloodsucking, creeping on...

Jay and Emma ride around the beautiful landscapes of Hiroshima to talk about 38-page Murakami short story  Drive My Car  and its 3 hour long film adaptation of the same name. Listen along as they dive into multilingual storytelling, realize they missed some of the assigned readings, and accept that sometimes adding things in an adaptation rules.    Content warnings for  Drive My Car  include: sexu...

Ariella introduces Emma to Torah studies in this episode’s dive into academy award-winning animated feature The Prince of Egypt and the many-times-translated Book of Exodus that inspired it. Spoiler alert: it’s good! Join them as they talk about animation as a medium, big frogs, how brutal the story is while staying PG, and why Hollywood needed to make Moses hot. Content warnings for The Book of E...

Emma and Cole take a look at the 1925 novella  Gentlemen Prefer Blondes  and its 1953 film counterpart while completely ignoring the 3 adaptations that came in-between. Tune in to find out if diamonds really are a girl’s best friend, why Marilyn Monroe should be allowed to commit murder, and what led to leading man and future husband Henry Spoffard being remade into a 10-year-old boy (hint: it’s p...

Episode Description Emma and Marn dive into the recent Amazon film adaptation of My Best Friend’s Exorcism , analyzing how the movie doesn’t understand female horror the same way cis man Grady Hendrix does, why Glee’s allergic to peanuts now, how Brother Lemon is the most AND least accurate depiction, and how much better the adaptation would be if it were just half an hour longer. Content warnings...

Coming soon to the Moonshot Network: A podcast about adapting works to the screen and all of the things that go right and wrong in the process!