Unnatural Selection

Grab a hotdog and hit the stands because James and Emma are about to wax poetic about baseball for an hour and a half through the lens of Bernard Malamud’s novel  The Natural  and its 1984 film adaptation. They talk about what makes good writing versus good baseball, how shockingly horny this book is, and that Robert Redford should be allowed to fail despite being the world’s oldest 19-year-old. P...

Mount your horse and begin your journey to Canterbury with Emma and Ria as they dig into an excellent movie and extremely loosey-goosey adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s  The Canterbury Tales —2001 cult classic A Knight’s Tale! Must an adaptation of a 14 century book be accurate or can it not simply operate on vibes alone? Why is the fact Chaucer is one of the movie protagonists accurate to the boo...

Don’t get Sicilian Defensive as Camilla and Emma break down the very first limited series in Unnatural Selection History—The Queen’s Gambit! They get into the details of chess history, compelling orphan origins, and how hard it is to find good adaptation interviews from high lockdown in 2020.  Content warnings for  The Queen’s Gambit  by Walter Tevis include: death of a parent, alcohol abuse, medi...

Life finds a way and so do film adaptations. Join Emma and Greg to celebrate Valentine’s Day and Unnatural Selection’s third anniversary with the adaptation that both started their relationship and made Emma want to start this podcast—welcome, to the  Jurassic Park  episode! Emma and Greg get into the nitty gritty details of dinosaur development, blending lawyers and PR guys, and how sometimes mak...

Become a very technical boy with Emma and CJ as they break down how on Earth a $1.5 million pitch for a film of William Gibson’s short story  Johnny Mnemonic  became a $30 million Hollywood flick starring Keanu Reeves. They get into Gibson and director Robert Longo’s friendship, the fact a director’s cut does not really exist, and how sometimes editing is everything. Content warnings for  Johnny M...

Journey forward to the year 2035 and take a trip to Chicago with Emma and Dominique to figure out just what all the robots are up to these days. These two read the quintessential robot sci-text  I, Robot  by Isaac Asimov and do a bit of their own puzzle solving to figure out just how this series of short conundrums with the three laws of robotics became a Will Smith cop action movie in 2004. Get r...

Time to turn on the radio and cruise down the highway with Marn and Emma as they get into Stephen King’s  Christine  and its 1983 John Carpenter adaptation. They get into how much interiority can really be kept when making a killer car movie for a paycheck, where that old man’s ghost went, and what is so compelling about Pittsburgh’s suburbs.   Content warnings for _Christine _include: sexism, 50’...

Travel back to Medieval times with Emma and Juliet this month and see if you can pull the sword from the stone (well, anvil, actually) and assume your place as the true king of England! They dive into T.H. White’s  The Sword in the Stone  from  The Once and Future King , usually regarded as the correct version of the novel to read, without realizing until it’s too late that the 1963 film is NOT ba...

It’s June so you know what that means! Kat and Emma return to the woods for their annual trek through the  Twilight  series. Listen along as Emma has an existential crisis realizing that  Eclipse  might actually be good, Kat gets into the lore of it all, and we realize that everyone, even Stephanie Meyer, might agree that polyamory could be the answer to this love triangle.   Content warnings for ...

It’s that time of year when our good friend Jonathan Harker takes a trip to Transylvania, and in honor of such it’s time for Jeff and Emma to break down what surely has to be the most accurate  Dracula  adaptation— Bram Stoker’s Dracula  (1992). It’s even got the author’s name! The cowboy is there! Wait, what? What do you mean they make Dracula a brooding antihero? What do you mean Mina wants to f...

The first rule of  Fight Club  by Chuck Palahniuk is don’t talk about it. The second rule of Fight Club (1999 dir. David Fincher) is don’t talk about it. The fourth rule is two men (gender neutral) to a podcast. Emma and August dissect this cult classic, how gay it is, and how the actors actually learned to make soap! With a special appearance from the Alexandrite System to dig into the notorious...

Take a hot air balloon ride up to Svalbard with Emma and Izze as they look into Philip Pullman’s  The Golden _Compass and its 2007 adaptation of the same name. These two try to figure out the mysteries of Dust, what on Earth makes film crews completely rearrange a book’s plot beats, and the weird no-man’s-land between middle grade books and the era of YA.   Content warnings for _The Golden Compass...

Take a stroll down the yellow brick road with MK and Emma to ask the wizard about one of the most famous film adaptations of all time. How did the 1900 children’s fairy tale turned populism allegory become one of the most well-known movies from 1939? What’s the true number of witches? What’s with all the slavery in Oz? Why do people think this is the first technicolor film? All these questions dis...

Get to the underground bunkers, put on those military issue nylons and lipstick, and brace for impact as Jeff and Emma get into the tonal whiplash between Kubrick’s nightmare comedy  Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb  and its Cold War serious counterpart  Red Alert  by Peter George. How do we go from a countdown to the end in a quest for world peace to protecting...

A month ago, Katharine and Emma hit the mattresses, but now that things are calming down between the Mafia families of New York they’re here to talk about cinematic masterpiece  The Godfather  and the extremely trashy novel that inspired it. They get into all of it, from the ten thousand story lines, to the mid-century Italian-American gender essentialism, to just how many synonyms there are for p...

Happy Halloween from Unnatural Selection! This month Audrey and Emma face one of the spookiest things known to podcaster: historical fiction from the early 2010’s. Listen along as Emma’s brain full of facts short circuits as the pair tear apart  Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter  by Seth Grahame-Smith and its 2012 adaptation. We ask questions everyone else is too afraid to, like “Did this even need...

This month on a special episode of Unnatural Selection, join Emma and their partner Greg on a journey along the train tracks to find the adaptation process of Stephen King’s  The Body . How did they get the film title  Stand By Me ? Why is this Emma’s favorite movie? Would Pokémon be the same as we know it today if the adaptation had kept more of the classic Kingian gross-outs?   Content warnings...

Gear up for a romp through unincorporated Arkansas territory to talk about the 2010 adaptation of Charles Portis’ 1968 novel  True Grit . Listen to Emma and Keifer recount their days as U.S. Marshalls and Texas Rangers to break down what makes Mattie such a good character, Matt Damon’s nincompoop era, the Coen brother’s special little bear man, and much more.   Content warnings for  True Grit  inc...

It’s finally time to cover the adaptation that inspired this show! Set sail on the Orca with Emma and Marn for a nearly two-hour discussion about the beast known as  Jaws . Bridge the brief gap between Benchley’s 1974 hit novel and Spielberg’s inaugural summer blockbuster in 1975 with these two podcasters as Marn lets Emma gush about real-life shark footage, Hooper’s affair with Brody’s wife, and...

Kat and Emma return to the woods for their annual trek through the  Twilight  series. This year, listen along to their thoughts on Stephanie Meyer’s  New Moon  as they muse about terrible CGI, laugh at ridiculous teen behaviors, and restart Team Jacob discourse in the year 2024.   Content warnings for  New Moon  include: depressive episodes, suicidal behavior, abandonment, the murder of a tour gro...

Travel to Arrakis and venture out into the desert for spice with Emma and Tom as they discuss the two-part 2021 and 2024 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s  Dune  (1965). Neither Emma nor Tom have mastered the voice, so no need to worry about any Bene Gesserit tricks. Just listen along for their takes on adapting a behemoth of a book, Jessica’s evil arc, and a firsthand account of the limited-edition ...

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...