Oh, wait, you're listening to Radiolab from WNYC. Can I just tell you a story? I don't have a choice, do I? This takes me back to when I was 14.
Jack Kennedy, John Kennedy was the president, and he's very glamorous. He was on television. He was fun to watch. And he would go to mass in my neighborhood in New York.
When he comes to New York, he'd go to a particular church all the time and just have enthusiasm. Some of my friends and I would go and stand there and watch him just walk up the steps. You could see the president of the United States and his wife. You did this multiple times?
Yes, because we were big fans. And then one day we went to do that, and I can't remember whether he zipped by or zipped in, but anyway, we missed it. And my friend John said, damn, but he was a New York kid, so he thought that would be interesting. He knew the place where President Kennedy was staying, which was a famous hotel on Madison Avenue.
And he came up with this crazy plan that he was going to ask for his aunt as we walk in the lobby so the Secret Service wouldn't have to worry about us. So we go to the hotel. He does the thing. We're in the lobby.
And then crazily, the elevator door opens, and there is President Kennedy steps out of the elevator with Jackie. She's immediately grabbed by these reporters, and they're asking her something, and he's got nothing to do, so he's a politician. He glances around, and I am standing behind a piled plant staring at him. And so he steps towards the bush, and he reaches over the bush, and he goes, hello, young man, or something like that.
And I couldn't speak, because there was so much phlegm coming flooding into my throat that I thought I might drown standing up. But I took his hand, and I shook him. And then he released, and he went off to do something else, and I was just staring at my hand. Later that day, I said to my sister, I shook President Kennedy's hand, and I guess I'm not going to wash it for like two days, two weeks, maybe.
What did she say to you? I don't remember what she said, but that's a funny thing to say when 50 years later, you're a science reporter. It was just like, huh. Because at the moment, I thought, oh, Kennedy on Harvard.
Oh, I didn't know that was true. It was kind of like a dream thing. Everybody has to think with celebrities as I do. But now, it turns out, we can examine the question scientifically.
There's now science that can do that. What do you mean? Well, first of all, we all know this. We're covered with germs, with bacteria.
But what I didn't realize is that there are scientists who say, the bacteria, honestly, they cling to us almost like for life, so you can be identified by your microbes. And these scientists are now making the bold claim that they can check those microbes to solve crimes, to detect diseases, to do public health kind of things. I thought, well, really? Why not put them to the test?
Here he is. These are the people. I go after this small little bit of personal history I got. So I decided to reproduce the John F.
Kennedy, Robert Kowalski handshakes. What? I thought we could just, we could have, I could find somebody who would be President Kennedy, who would shake my hand, and we would measure and calculate and see. So I got a team of producers on our WNYC show, Only Human, to help me doing this.
And we found a scientist. Oh, hey, your name again? Jack Gilbert. Jack, hey, Jack.
Jack Gilbert is director of the Microbiome Center at the University of Chicago. And then, I don't have President Kennedy around anymore, so I got myself, you can be President Kennedy for these purposes, substitute President Kennedy. Okay, sure. Can you do a JFK, by the way?
Our nation, we'll put a man on the moon, and return him safely to... No, no, sure. This is Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History here in New York. Have you ever had your handshaken by a person that you feel like you'd like to have his or her stuff sustained?
Yeah, I'm not that weird or creepy. No, there's no part of anyone else that I just want to... What about if you got Carl Sagan's underwear? Would you keep Carl Sagan's underwear?
No. But I have come to love and embrace all bacteria that want a part of my body. You are, you are, Paulson. So am I your man for this?
You are absolutely the man for this. And, and, and, and, I will so pick up food that fell on the floor and I'll do that, me too. I don't even wait five seconds. We knew it was bullshit, anyway.
Let me explain what it is I want to do. I don't think no one exactly knows the answer to this question. But if a person shakes another person's hand for a ordinary interval, then the question is how much a person A lands on person B and how much a person A stays on person B, but most crucially, for how long? Presumably, there's an exchange.
Yes. So we're nicking off back and forth. You do enormous hands, though, now that I'm looking at them. Yeah, I know when I try to find gloves.
It doesn't work. So it's 3XL. All right, so just so you can give, like, the fact that you are carrying all these microbes on you, first of all, where are they predominantly? They're all like, so every mucosal surface in your body.
So your mouth, your gastrointestinal tract, all the way down, your skin, your fingernails, your urogenital tract, your ears, every part of you that's... Your butt. Your butt, especially your butt, is covered in bacteria. And just sitting here, you're actually releasing into the air around you, like, pick a pen from the Peanuts cartoon, remember?
About 36 million bacterial cells an hour. So every minute... How do they come off of me? They are literally leaving off on the surface of your skin cells that you're shedding and through your respirations coming out of your nose and your mouth, also detaching.
So a lot of them, they dry out on the surface, and they can literally just drift off as dust. So just so I understand the anatomy of the room, all over this room, on the doorknob, on the table surface, on his pants, on the desk, and on the chairs, there's neil everywhere? A lot of them are colonic neil, right? So a lot of them are actually coming out of your pants, right?
And they are on the surface of the chair, and they deposit... Colonic is a multi-syllabic word. But I think we understand what you mean. Yeah, yeah, they are pooped.
Why would that be? It's the largest resource. It's the best resource. And it does come out of me.
And it does come out all the time. Even though it's not a bathroom? The surfaces of chairs would have them most. Yes.
All right, so now... Please, time question real quick. So Jackie, it's about 20 minutes to do for us to do this handshake experiment. That's why the way, producer Kenny Malone.
Why don't we start the experiment now, and then we have time to talk about it. Okay. All right, what are you going to do? So what we're going to do is we have little...
Wait, I'm not offering you my butthole. Just stand up. It doesn't mean I'm offering you my butthole. Just stand up.
So we're going to do hands. Absolutely. So we have these little sterile tubes. Each tube, the little green cat tube, has a sterile swab in it with a completely sterile tip.
We're going to open that up and very quickly rub, very vigorously, each of your hands. So your palm, the inside of your fingers. And we're going to do that very vigorously and put it as quickly as possible back into the sterile. So this is your control sample.
This is the starter. And then you are going to shake hands with the young man over there, right, with Robert. And we're going to definitely try and see how many you have received from Neil and how many Neil has received from Robert. Wait, he is swabbing your hands before you handshake so that he can figure out what's the baseline that you've got on both your hands, pre-handshake.
Right. And he's sure you're going to have different bacteria on your hands, you and Neil? Yeah. So this is where it gets very interesting.
So you have very specific types of bacteria, and he has very specific types of bacteria, but they're unique to you. I mean, I guess, like, if I just think about it for a second, like, the two of you had different days. You arrive in this office, you've probably touched different places, you've eaten different things. So, okay, maybe you have a little bit of differences.
But in general, you are both men living in New York City, breathing the same air, riding the same subways. Yes, exactly. So why would you be that different from one another? Well, because there's one very important difference between us.
Okay. We have different mothers. So have you been told anything about what this is? I heard a little bit about the microbiome, but I'm happy to hear more.
This is Dr. Siobhan Dolan. I'm an obstetrician gynecologist, and I'm actually clinical geneticists as well. And we brought her in because she knows more than most when it comes to moms and babies.
During my training years, I was delivered 100 babies a year, so that was about 500 babies. Then I was in private practice at Yale New Haven Hospital for a bunch of years, and I probably delivered in utero. But then you go through the vagina, and the vagina is just a host of bacteria and, you know, yeast and amniotic fluid. There's blood.
And this moment is, in essence, your bacterial baptism. Right, exactly. Because at this point, you're this pristine, unadulterated hunk of biomass, the bacteria. They're like, give me a ride.
I'm going to jump on. Yeah, the bacteria colonize that surface, because that's what bacteria do. And so finally, when the baby's born, the doctors, they take it. You make sure there's stable breathing, and then right up onto mom to start to immediately promote the bonding and skin to skin.
In your own case, if you can remember. I can. Like, what happened? What I remember is just grabbing for him, like, you're mine, and I've been waiting nine months to meet you, and here you are, and, like, just kind of embracing him and looking in his eyes.
And so there's a sort of bonding there that I will never forget. And in the same moment, you're going to get some micro-bonding, too. It's a very dynamic heart. And bacteria go, pew, leap from the mom's skin onto the baby.
I did this for both my children. I took both of them onto my bare chest at birth. But you wanted to compete against your wife, huh? Absolutely.
Maybe a little bit of daddy was a helpful thing. You know, who knows? So, yeah, that was the reason I did it. And the thing is...
We'll start. So, I'll do your first one. The strains of bacteria that we get in those first few hours... Okay, so, give me your right hand.
...and to a lesser degree the bacteria that we meet later in the first year of our life when we stick weird things in our mouth if the dog comes by. Ready? Yeah. Those strains of bacteria stick with us.
Ready, set, go. So, let's swap it as much as possible. Even the bacteria that Jack will find... It tickles.
Now, in Neil's hand... Now, in my hand... All over the fingers. Okay, okay.
...are descendants of those first moments of contact. There we are. And, uh, okay. And crazily enough, even if you try to get rid of your bacterial inheritance, you know, put a salve on, get rid of all your skin bacteria, take lots of antibiotics, get rid of all your tummy bacteria, and then move to some completely different part of the world where the food is different and the temperature is different.
Still, the bacteria you got from your mom will come creeping back. Why? Why would that be? Well, there's something in ecology called the founder effect, whereby the first organisms to get there and to be successful in an environment, they alter the trajectory of the rest of the ecosystem and change how it develops, right?
So, you know, if a tree species, a certain type of tree lands on an island and becomes dominant, then it will support the types of birds and the types of monkeys and the types of insects that love that type of tree. And so the same is true in the microbiome. So, you know, you have a lifelong partnership with the bacteria you interacted with. So, we know that Neil and I each have a unique mix of microbes, almost to the point where they're like a fingerprint.
But if we shake hands, just a mere handshake, how much of his is going to get on me, how much of mine is going to get on him, and most important of all, is how long will he exchange microbially last? So, you guys got to shake hands, and we shake hands, just as if you were me and you were like, hey, Neil, or hey, Robert, nice to meet you, and just shake hands. Okay. Yeah, ready?
Now I have to, like, think about how to actually shake hands. One, two, three. Robert, how are you? Nice to see you again.
Nice to see you again. All right. Okay, now, right hand. Can you feel it?
I feel it. And so, every five minutes for the next 20 minutes. And then we're going to swap your hand again. Jack swad both Neil's hand and my hand.
I'm actually pulling off a slight patina of bacteria, but... Just checking to see if any bacteria moved, and for how long. So, wait, what happened? Did you, wait, what happened?
Well, why would I tell you now, when we have the advantage of a short break? We'll be right back. This is Nicole from Corning, New York. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Each story of your online money starts with a question. What happens if we refund tariffs?
Why are groceries so expensive? At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious, because the forces shaping our world can be hard to seek. Follow NPR's kind of money wherever you get your podcasts, and start seeing how the economy really works. Jack, Robert, Radio Lab.
By the way, do you have a sense of the outcome of this thing we've just done, like... Okay, just for a minute break, Robert Neal had just shaken hands, and Jack Gilbert was going to swab those hands, right? One minute after the handshake, and then around every five minutes for about 25 minutes. What does that do you do after he swabs them?
Well, he takes our bacteria back to the lab, and he identifies our bacteria by their DNA. Yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, this is a whole new science, isn't it? I mean, there are a thousand things you could wonder about.
Well, yes, it's a whole new science. It's a science that's on the cutting edge. We're still researching and developing it, and it will take many years before we're ready for prime time. But Jack says they are now at the phase where they can look into all kinds of different applications for this new microbiome detecting ability.
Take, for example, forensics. Imagine if somebody comes into a room and does an evil deed. Right now, we know that when somebody interacts with that space for 15 minutes, they leave behind enough of a signature for us to be able to detect 30 minutes later. If I had to pick between three people or four people that would break into a room, there's a good possibility that I could detect which one of them had broken into that room.
Wow. And they're only going to get better and better, he says. Do you think maybe one day you'll be able to track somebody outside, moving around, purely based on the bacteria that they leave behind? That's exactly what we're investigating.
He also says being able to identify bacteria in a town's sewer system will be really useful in helping us to predict a potential outbreak. By noticing that there's a disease-causing bacteria right in the sewer so you can go to town, and before anyone begins to show symptoms, you can say, wait a second, we've got to quarantine, vaccinate, we've got to do something here. And nip it in the bud, if you will, before it becomes a problem. And as you may have heard, there's plenty of research looking at the microbiome inside of you.
It's revolutionizing medicine. I mean, we already have evidence that we can determine whether somebody will have a bad response to a drug based on the bacteria that are present inside them. So we can screen them using their microbiome to determine if they have that likely outcome. But for now, back to this absolutely crucial and breathtaking experiment.
So let me just quickly remind you of the situation we last left you. So a couple of weeks later, we got the results from Jack, and so I decided to go to Neil to deliver them. And just to set up expectations here, Jack told us what he expected was immediately after our handshake, a little bit of me would be on Neil, a little bit of Neil would be on me, and that, you know, pretty fast, the bacteria would die and be gone. However, I'm very happy to say, that is not what happens.
What percentage change would you guess you caused on me? Of me on you? 10%. 10%.
I can't imagine it. I would say 1%, 10%, but not much less than 1%. Well, it was less than 10 when they came back. It was significantly less than 10.
Okay. It was zero. Zero? Well, it can't be zero.
It'd be below the... It'd be below the detectable rate. Right, okay. Actually, they found a teeny number of bacteria, but they died.
There was essentially nothing. Nothing from Neil. Yes. Nothing.
It's just odd. Should I put it that way? I mean, that was quite shocking. We were expecting there to be a lot more bacteria being transferred and to have an exchange of microbes.
So one person picks up 10 bacteria, the other person picks up 10, 12 bacteria. Do you think you might have washed your hand immediately previous? I don't think. No, no, there was no sabotage.
Did you use an alcohol wipe or warm water? I hate antibacterial. I don't use what you call the Purell. I never use any of it.
So for reasons that are at this moment totally unknown, Neil's bacteria simply failed completely to affect my hand. The other side of this equation is, what would you guess the presence of my microbes on you was percentual? Okay, what I know from physics of surfaces is if they have approximately the same coefficient of friction, then it's a complete two-way street. So if I gave you nothing, you would have given me nothing, is my guess.
Ah, here's what happened. He definitely picked up bacteria from you, and that led to quite a substantial disruption. It turns out I swamped your hand. You're telling me you're a skank nasty?
I, I ruled you. I don't know what happened. They don't understand what happened. You're a skank.
I came on to you. Skank funky. The percentage before the handshake was that you and I were 60% the same, 40% different. Oh, shake.
You were more than 75% correlated. Ah! I see you. You made him more you by 15% at least.
I was swerving all over him. I'm slightly proud and kind of troubled at the same time. Not only did you get my microbes, but my kept staying and staying and staying. Every time they swam, I was still there.
Six minutes later, 12 minutes later. That's nasty. Could it have been an hour later? Might it still be on his hand?
Yeah, I mean, there's no indication that they were in decay. When I left, you were covered with me. Let the record show he beat his chest. It looks like there was a possibility that some of them could have gone on ad infinitum.
Ad infinitum? Do you think that I might stay on him? What I think is that there's a high probability that some of those organisms, once they set up shop on his hand in those initial 20 minutes, could stay on his hand. What do you mean, like forever?
Like forever and ever? There is a possibility. Wow. There is a possibility?
Precisely. Do we have any idea whether what we've just described is typical of a common handshake experience? My gut feeling is this is atypical. Why?
Because they may be all out-competed. Do I ask us to understand just how strange this result is? Let me think about it this way. Two hands coming together.
It's like taking a rainforest from Bolivia and dumping it on top of a rainforest in Brazil and wondering whether any of the trees from the Bolivian rainforest will take root and adapt and become prolific in that environment. Oh, so the invaders don't really have a huge shot here then? No. Your bacteria have home field advantage.
They are abundant and they are dominant in that environment. So we would generally suspect that very quickly the invading microbes start to die, they're killed off, they starve, and they just become inactive. So it happens and it's over and nobody wins? Precisely.
There's mutual decay. So am I now a successful invasive species on his hand? Well, some of your microbes are successful invasive species, but yeah, absolutely. How would you explain my success?
What we think actually happened is that something disrupted Neil's ecosystem, right? And we think, based on the analysis, that there was a streptococcus, which is usually quite rare, but... That doesn't sound so good, streptococcus. Well, there are lots of species of streptococcus, but not all of them are pathogenic.
So there was a streptococcus that was very abundant on your hand at the beginning, that was transferred to Neil's hand, and you see that transfer occurring. And that streptococcus somehow disrupted Neil's ecosystem and allowed for a greater transfer of bacteria from your hand to his hand. Oh man, that's so interesting. So you have like a little band of like murderous little bacteria that went in and cleared away the forest and then looked so that the rest of you could come in and colonize.
I don't know. I don't think anybody knows the answer to that question. All I know is that I'm all over the man. I don't mind selling Robert slathered on my body.
That's fine. Do you feel any defensiveness towards the fact that he managed to conquer your microbiome and yet yours was unable to do the same to him? That, by the way, is producer Simon Adler. So the word conquer in that context, I would reword the sentence and say, my microbiome was perfectly content staying where it is.
And apparently Robert's microbiome can't wait to get the hell off his body. Oh man, I came here thinking I would find out how long President Kennedy stayed on me. Now there's suddenly a new question. Because if he's a cool cucumber, it's how long you stayed on him.
Yeah. Yeah, maybe you're the anomaly. Yeah. You're the creepy sweaty man with wet palms.
That's what you come to for. Like, the riposte. Big, big thanks to astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson for putting up with this shenanigans. I can go five days without a shower, and you wouldn't know it.
I just don't smell. It's on the way to smelling bad, but it's not repulsive. I'm never coming like that. This story was produced by Simon Adler.
Big thanks to Jared and myself who did a lot of the technical work, the lab work that gave us our microbial analysis, also to the Montefiore Medical Center, also to science writer and author Ed Young, whose book I Contain Multitudes is a primer on all things microbiomic, and it was talking to Ed, where I began to think, oh yeah, that Jack Kennedy handshake, so that's how this whole thing got started. And then, when things really got going, that's when the team at WNYC's Only Human kicked in. That's Amanda Aranchik, Elaine Chen, Kenny Malone, Julie Weinberger. These are the ones who were with me all the way and stuck with this whole crazy thing with the swabs and whatever.
And speaking of which, if you want to get in on the action, this is kind of cool, so the whole JFK situation that Robert just did, well, you can kind of do it too. This company called Ubiome has offered the chance for a thousand listeners to get sent some swabs, which you will swab on your hand, put it in an envelope, I assume, and then mail it back. They will sequence it and then tell you all the stuff that's on your hand. And you can start that whole process by going to our website, radiolab.org or onlyhuman.org.
And actually, next week, they are putting on their own show, which involves a microbial robbery. That is, can you catch the robber if all you can see is the microbes? I believe your house figures into that. Yes, there's a robbery in my home.
Yes. And also, go to our website, because along with onlyhuman, we are putting up a very short animation of the handshake situation done by Nick Milton, which is, uh, it's just gloriously weird. Oh, a quick reminder, you can listen to Radiolab anytime on Spotify. Hey, Dad, I would shake your hand like this.
I'm not. I'm not. Keep your distance. To play the message, press 2.
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Hi, this is Jack Gilbert. Simon's just bunched. Give the text to read out for the credit. Hi, I'm the physician on Dolan.
I got the message to call in and read the text. And I apologize if it's too late. I just got home. So anyway, here's a text for me to read.
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