Introducing: Long Shot

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ever since coronavirus became the biggest story in the world,
vaccines have been our greatest hope to stop it. It
just felt like everything was closed off, and so it's like,
what can I do to get everything to return back
to normal as soon as possible, because I felt just
so hopeless. The coronavirus vaccines were produced in record time,

(00:20):
but they're not slap dash overnight inventions. Their culmination of
centuries of research and advances. To figure out how they began,
you have to probe history, myths and legends. A thousands
of years ago, the son of a local governor got
very sick from smallpox. This sickness, as caused by inoculation,

(00:42):
is not unto death. Human history has been shaped by plagues, pandemics, viruses,
and diseases and the fight against them. Today, they're in
combat more than ever. My name is Shawn Revive. I'm
a journalist and I'm hosting a podcast called long Shot,
the two fifty year Journey to the COVID nineteen Vaccines.

(01:04):
We're gonna take you deep into the science and the
people behind the coronavirus vaccines and learn how the fight
against disease influences our daily lives. We'll learn about the incentives, experiments,
and accidents that drove vaccine development and the long shadow
of vaccine fears. And we'll talk with people who study viruses,
viruses that evolved along with our species. Much like a

(01:26):
transformer going from a car to a robot, parts of
the protein just start moving and refolding. Really just asking
the immune system to do what it does on a
regular basis. There are some sacrifices you wanna have to make,
and there are some trials you're gonna have to go through,
and failures that might have to happen, but failure is
always progress in a certain sense. And we'll meet some

(01:48):
of the great minds behind the global effort to get
us out of this pandemic. Yeah, I think it might
be the defining point of my of my career. I
think will always be remembered for this. But I mean
i'd rather I wish I wasn't. I honestly wish I wasn't.
I wish it never happened. I keep waiting for the
other shoe to drop on these vaccines, and it hasn't happened.

(02:09):
So join me as I explore the two fifty year
journey to the COVID nineteen vaccines from My Heart Radio
and School of Humans. This is long shot, launching August four,