Happy holidays, everyone. It's Mary. Over the next few days, we're going to be

re-broadcasting episodes that stuck with us this year. And we'll check back in with a few of our

guests and see how their saga's ended. We wanted to start by considering the biggest story of the

year, the pandemic, which reshaped the way most of us live and caused so many people to die.

The very first interview we did about COVID, it was at the beginning of March,

one of the last conversations I had with anyone in person. At the time, we knew a little bit about

the coronavirus, but not how it would upend our world. But Peter Doshock, this episode's guest,

he did.

Yeah, when did you first hear about what was happening in Wuhan with this outbreak?

Oh, I know exactly when it was near as if it was during the day.

This is Peter Doshock, he's a zoologist, lives in New York, works in China.

We were following rumors on the internet in China about this outbreak.

And I got these translated internet sites that were saying not only is it a new virus,

it's a coronavirus. I think people knew back then.

Coronavirus is one of Peter's areas of expertise. He's been studying how infections,

like this new one, COVID-19, move. They start out in an animal, like say a bat.

Then they jump the way this one did.

You know, the minute we got the sequence that was released, we quickly matched that up and

showed that it was a bat virus. And not only that, it's very close to the group we've been working on.

So, you know, your emotion then is excitement in a way, because this is exactly what you've

been saying is going to happen. And then fear that our lives are going to be, you know,

turned upside down and people are going to die, which is exactly what's happening right now.

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