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 discussed an more as Unnatural Selection unpacks The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Content warnings for The Wizard of Oz include: fairytale-typical violence, unsettling creatures, and the Tin Man’s backstory.

The sources Emma mentions in this episode can be found here:
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/12/15/musical-month-production-history-1903-oz
https://ahcwyo.org/2024/08/05/behind-the-curtain-a-look-at-the-wizard-of-ozs-difficult-production-85-years-later/
https://ahcwyo.org/2021/11/15/the-wizard-of-oz-the-story-behind-the-film/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxR3fFv3dBU

You can find Emma on twitter @ematsca and the podcast @UnselectPod. MK can be found on bluesky and tumblr at citadelofswords. Unnatural Selection is a part of the Moonshot Podcast Network. If you like what you’ve heard and want to support the network, 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