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. Plus, some actual statistics and info about the season taking place in this book and real players similar to our fictional protagonist!
Content warnings for The Natural (1952) include: assault with a firearm, death by baseball, ambiguous consent, misogyny, so much horniness, and some really visceral overeating.
Content warnings for The Natural (1984) include: assault with a firearm, death by baseball, and misogyny but in a different way from the book.
The articles Emma references in this episode can be found here:
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/06/movies/an-all-star-team-puts-the-natural-on-film.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/11/movies/film-redford-and-duvall-in-malamud-s-natural.html
https://variety.com/2025/film/features/barry-levinson-interview-alto-knights-rain-man-1236343241/
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/23/arts/bernard-malamud-talks-of-writing.html
You can find Emma on bluesky @crabmoney.bsky.social and James @rememberthatguy.bsky.social. More information about their show Remember That Guy? can be found at https://linktr.ee/rememberthatguy. Unnatural Selection is a part of the Moonshot Network. If you like what you’ve hear and want to support, you can become a patron at patreon.com/moonshotnetwork.
The music for this show was composed by Jake Loranger. You can check out more of his work at https://amaranthine.bandcamp.com
