Maren McKenna

Fleming, finally, back from vacation.

He needs to use those lab plates again, and he and his assistant go to clean them off.

I mean, you'd imagine that he would see some real lush, nice, furry lawn of staff just overflowing right out of the plate.

Because it's been sitting there for so long.

It's been a staff party.

But on one of the plates that they pick up, they realize that it's almost polka dot.

It's got little dead zones all over it.

Little patches where the staff is dead.

Dead patches.

Yeah, and so when Fleming looks down at his plate, he sees that at the center of these, you know, staff dead zones, there's a tiny speck of natural mold.

A mold.

And they realize that that mold is expressing a compound that is killing the staff around it.

It's like emanating rays of death.

What was the compound?

That compound was called...

penicillin.

The first true antibiotic.

Infectious diseases that had been killing people for as long as we had been people suddenly could be stopped.

And it just blew in through the window?

That is the story that's always been told.