Long Shot

Long Shot

Driven by a pandemic unprecedented in our lifetimes —a virus that has killed our neighbors, our friends, our families—we are witnesses to the massive international effort to create COVID-19 vaccines and get shots in arms. The vaccines were developed in record time, but they evolved from centuries of experimentation and science. “LONG SHOT: THE 250-YEAR JOURNEY TO THE COVID-19 VACCINES” travels back in time to the long-forgotten first inoculators and connects them to the research, methods, and people behind today's vaccines.

Episodes

October 6, 2021 37 mins

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. 

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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. 

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September 22, 2021 29 mins

Marina wanted companionship during the loneliness of quarantine, so she got a COVID pet. But nothing went as planned.  


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September 15, 2021 32 mins

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. 

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September 8, 2021 33 mins

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.  

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September 1, 2021 31 mins

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.  

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August 25, 2021 30 mins

How did scientists figure out how to make a coronavirus vaccine two years before coronavirus struck? And what the hell is a spike protein?  

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August 18, 2021 26 mins

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.  

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August 11, 2021 34 mins

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. 

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August 4, 2021 42 mins

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. 

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July 23, 2021 2 mins

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