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, medication abuse, childhood drug abuse, child sexual assault, shitty adoptive fathers, and 60’s-questionable depictions of the story’s sole Black character.

Content warnings for The Queen’s Gambit (2020) include: suicide, death of a parent, alcohol abuse, medication abuse, childhood drug abuse, shitty adoptive fathers, and questionable depictions of the story’s sole prominent Black character.

The interviews Emma references for this episode can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX6SvqjBedY

https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/interview-audio-scott-frank-d9e8489138cc

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/28/950010157/queens-gambit-co-creator-scott-frank-wanted-to-explore-the-cost-of-genius

https://ew.com/tv/the-queens-gambit-netflix-scott-frank-interview/

https://www.theringer.com/2020/11/17/tv/the-queens-gambit-netflix-scott-frank-limited-series-godless

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob9gjJhyCyw

You can find Emma on bluesky @crabmoney.bsky.social and Camilla @anteatermom.bsky.social. You can check out Camilla’s Twitch streams at WeAreAlexandra and the VODs at WeAreAlexandra on youtube. Emma and the Alexandrite System are both a part of the Moonshot Network. If you like what you’ve heard and want to support them, you can become a patron at patreon.com/moonshotnetwork

The music for this show was commissioned from and composed by Jake Loranger. You can check out more of his work at https://amaranthine.bandcamp.com/https://amaranthine.bandcamp.com