Blended Mouse Brains

The final episode of Long Shot travels millions of years into the past to when coronaviruses first appeared, and brings us back to the future of COVID vaccines. With a hell of a lot of vaccine milestones in between.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The future of coronavirus vaccines may be an engineered spike protein called HexaPro. And it's carried into the human body by a bird disease. We'll learn how it works, and ask why one of this vaccine's creators brought the 1918 flu back from the dead.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marina wanted companionship during the loneliness of quarantine, so she got a COVID pet. But nothing went as planned.   Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Meet Jacob Hopkins, one of the first people to contract COVID-19 on purpose. He's part of the first human challenge trial for coronavirus.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Some coronavirus patients have never recovered. They suffer vivid dreams, insomnia, and a host of other weird symptoms that are nothing like the respiratory illness we think of as COVID-19. They have long COVID, and they’ve had it since the beginning of the pandemic.   Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Moderna started with essentially zero employees before becoming one of the biggest names in COVID-19 vaccines. We'll speak with the company's founders. And we'll find out what role Jennifer Aniston played in that origin story.   Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How did scientists figure out how to make a coronavirus vaccine two years before coronavirus struck? And what the hell is a spike protein?   Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jeryl Lynn Hilleman has the rare distinction of having a vaccine named after her, because it’s made from her cells. And her father, Maurice Hilleman, was the world’s greatest vaccine maker.   Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nicola Pasquarelli is a human guinea pig, one of the first people on earth to get a COVID-19 vaccine. We'll also meet the Sutton family, the first big inoculation entrepreneurs—who made a killing preventing killing, 250 years ago.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A legend about ancient inoculators on a sacred mountain, and the remarkable story of how the genetic sequence for COVID-19 was first released to the public.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.