Frankenvirus

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.