It's a Saturday morning and your to-do list is long. Grocery store, pick up dry cleaning, drop off some packages at the post office, and oh yeah, get a COVID vaccine.

At this point, the vaccine feels like just another errand, like picking up milk or grabbing a bag of dog food.

There's no sense of panic, no rush, just routine. There's no line at the pharmacy.

You just walk in, roll up your sleeve, and in no time, you're out the door with the little

bandaid on your arm. It's like we've got it figured out now. COVID, we got a handle on that,

but I can't help but wonder. Maybe there's another troublemaker, another virus lurking somewhere in some dusty museum

basement, patiently biting its time. It didn't make headlines, never turn into a pandemic,

but it's still there. And that's the real question. What makes a pandemic? Is it the virus itself

or something more? A combination of timing,

the world's readiness, and a little bit of bad luck? Because as much as we think we've got it under

control, the next one could be lurking around the corner, ready to change everything again.

And maybe, just maybe, the secrets to what makes a pandemic

aren't in the headlines, but in the forgotten genomes of viruses,

hidden away in places we've long since stopped looking.

If you manage to catch a pathogen red-handed

doing the jump into human populations,

most of the time this would be dead ends for the

pathogen. So actually catching a real successful pathogen red-handed, so the ones that will

cause a pandemic, it's extremely difficult. Dr. Sebastian Calvin X. Spencer is a scientist who's

literally resurrecting the genomes of long-gone pandemics.

Think the 1918 Spanish flu.

We'll talk with him to understand how these little troublemakers have shaped human history and still impact us.

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