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It can seem like a privilege to have hope these days. Playwright Lynn Nottage and songwriter David Byrne say maybe we're not tapping the right sources. On the next Notes from America, finding optimism in unexpected places. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Happy Friday. This is Lulu. We have hit you with some harder stuff the last couple weeks, so we thought we'd just lighten things up with a lower stakes thing, a lighter thing, a classic Krolwich episode. Today, Robert Krolwich is going to do the thing he does, which is take a very small question, run it through the scientific process, and come out with something that, um,
you know, changes how you see yourself in relation to the world. So, enjoy. Funky hand jive. Wait, you're listening? Okay. Alright. Okay. Alright. You're listening to Radiolab. Radiolab. From WNYC. See? Rewind.
Can I just tell you a story? I don't have a choice, do I? You don't really have a choice. What's the story? This takes me back to when I was 14. Jack Kennedy, John F. Kennedy was the president, and he's very glamorous. I mean, 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 out of enthusiasm, some of my friends and I would go and stand there and watch him just walk up the steps. You can even see the president of the United States and his wife. You did this multiple times? Many 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 it 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 when we walk into 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. Wow. 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 potted plant staring at him.
And so he steps towards the bush and he reaches over the bush and 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 it. 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's just like a – you think, huh. Yeah.
Because at the moment, I thought, oh, Kennedy on Robert. Oh, I didn't know that was true. It was kind of like a dream thing. Everybody has things with celebrities, at least I do. But now, it turns out, we can examine the question scientifically. There's now a science that can do that.
What do you mean? Well, first of all, we all know this. We're covered with germs, with bacteria. Yes. But what I didn't realize is that there are scientists who say the bacteria on us, 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. And go after this small little bit of personal history I got. So I decided to reproduce the John F. Kennedy, Robert Krolowicz handshake as an experiment. What? That's insane. 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 from WNYC's 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're going to 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 Earth. No, no, just... This is Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History here in New York. Have you ever been shook... Have you ever had your hand shaken by a person who you... that you feel like you'd like to have his or her stuff sustained? Yeah, I'm not that...
Weird or creepy. Okay, fair enough. 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. Sorry. But I have come to love and embrace all bacteria that want a part of my body. All right, you are awesome. So am I your man for this? You are absolutely the man for this. And...
And I will so pick up food that fell on the floor and eat it. Oh, me too. I'll do that. Me too. I don't even wait five seconds. Me too. Which we knew was bullshit anyway. Exactly. All right, so 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 hands for an ordinary interval...
then the question is how much of person A lands on person B and how much of 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 have 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 we can begin, the fact that you are carrying all these microbes on you, first of all, where are they predominantly? They're all over. 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, think pig 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 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. But just so I understand this, 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 a fine patina of service. Colonic is a multi-syllabic word, but I think we understand what you mean. Yeah, yeah, they are poop bacteria. Why would that be? It's the largest resource. But he's not really good out of me. And he does all the time. All the time, so that means... Even though this is not a bathroom?
Even though he's not a boss. The surfaces of chairs would have the most. Yes. All right, so now... Let me just... Time question real quick. So Jack needs about 20 minutes to do... For us to do this handshake experiment. That's, by the way, producer Kenny Malone. Why don't we start the experiment now? That's a good idea. And then we have time to talk in between. Okay.
All right, what are you gonna do? So what we're gonna do is we have little test tubes here. By the way, I'm not offering you my butthole for this experiment. It doesn't mean I am offering you my butt microbes. Just stand up. So in each one of these-- We're gonna do hands. Absolutely. So we have these little sterile tubes. So each tube, little green cap tube, has a sterile swab in it with a completely sterile tip. We're gonna 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 then put it as quickly as possible back into the sterile chamber. So this is your control sample? This is the starter. The starter, okay. 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? Yes. 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, I mean, 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 difference. 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? 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 a clinical geneticist as well. And we brought her in because she knows more than most when it comes to moms and babies. During my training years...
Probably 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 another couple hundred. And I have three kids myself, so I was on the other side as well. Okay. And she says, as a fetus, before you're born? You're, you know, exposed to what's in the amniotic fluid, but it's a pretty clean setup 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.
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 the skin-to-skin relationship.
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 hug. And bacteria go pew!
They leap from the mom skin onto the baby. I did this for both my children. I took both of them onto my bare chest at birth. 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 then 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, that the dog comes by. You ready? Yeah. Those strains of bacteria stick with us... Ready, set... ...forever. Go! So we're going to swab it as much as possible. Even the bacteria the jack will find... It tickles. ...tickles.
Now on Neil's hand. Now we'll do Robert. All right. And on my hand. All over the fingers. Okay, in between. Okay. Our descendants of those first moments of contact. There we are. And we'll pop that back in there. 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 and 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 are
they alter the trajectory of the rest of the ecosystem and change how it develops, right? So, you know, if a tree species, 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 and
But if we shake hands, just a mere, hello, hello, 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 the exchange microbially last? So next step, you guys got to shake hands. I want you to shake hands like just as if you were meeting in a hall and you were like, hey, Neil, or hey, Robert, nice to meet you, and just shake hands. Okay. You ready? Yeah.
Now I have to think about how to actually shake hands. It's like, wait, wait, how does that work? Ready? One, two, three. Robert! Hi, how are you? Good to see you again. Good to see you again. All right. Okay, now, right hand. Go.
And so every five minutes for the next 20 minutes, Jack swabbed both Neil's hand and my hand, just checking to see if any bacteria moved and for how long. So wait, what happened? Well, why would I tell you now when we have the advantage of a short break? Ha!
We'll be right back. Hi, Rebecca Murray here from Mount Vernon, Washington. I'm a member of Radio Lab's exclusive membership program, The
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On this week's On the Media, tales from the trenches of the digital news business. A failure, a success, and a couple of hopefuls. As the editor-in-chief of Defector told me, when you aren't determined to grow at a rapid pace and you aren't beholden to corporate bosses, running a media company really isn't that complicated. Don't miss this week's On the Media from WNYC. Find On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. ♪
Jad, Robert, Radiolab. By the way, do you have a hint as to the outcome of this thing that we've just done? Okay, just before we went to 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 exactly does he 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. It strikes me. This is a whole new science, isn't it? I mean, like, there are a thousand things you could wonder about. Well, yes, it is a whole new science. It's a science that's on the cutting edge.
We know we're still researching and developing it, and it will take many years before we're ready for primetime. 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. Huh.
If I had to pick between three people or four people that were to 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 like outside moving around?
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 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 sewage so you can go to town. And before anyone begins to show symptoms, you could say something like, 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... So come on, yeah, so come on in. Back to this absolutely crucial and breathtaking experiment.
So let me just quickly remind you of the situation where 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 pretty fast the bacteria would die and be gone.
However, I am very happy to say that is not what happened. 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.
Zero? Well, it can't be zero. It'd be below their, whatever their capacity to measure. Below the detectable rate, yes. 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, it's just, 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, you know, one person picks up 10 bacteria, the other person picks up, you know, 10, 12 bacteria at a time.
Do you think you might have washed your hand immediately previous? I don't think so. No, no, there was no sabotage or anything. Did he use an alcohol wipe or warm water? No, I never, I hate antibacterial. I don't use, what do you call the Purell? Yeah. 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 percentage-wise? 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. Ha!
Here's what happened. He definitely picked up bacteria from you. Yes! And that led to quite a substantial disruption. It turns out I swamped your hand. You tell me you were skank nasty. I ruled you. I don't know what happened.
They don't understand what happened. You are skank. I came on to you. Skank, funky. The percentage before the handshake was that you and I were 60% the same, 40% different. Post-shake, you were more than 75% correlated. Well, I see you. You made him more you by 15%, at least. I was swarming.
Swerving all over him. I'm slightly proud and kind of troubled at the same time. Not only did you get my microbes, but mine kept staying and staying and staying. Every time they swamped, I was still there. Six minutes later, 12 minutes later. That's nasty. Could it have been an hour later? Mine might 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 in that moment. It looks like there is a possibility that some of them could have gone on ad infinitum. Ad infinitum? What do you mean? 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, 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 at all out competed. Jack says to understand just how strange this result is, why don't you 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, you know, adapt and become prolific in that environment. Oh, so the invaders don't really have a huge shot here then? No. You're
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. Well, 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 we 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 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 some of 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. I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a
Yeah, maybe you're the anomaly. Yeah. You're the creepy, sweaty man with wet palms. That's what you come here for. 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. The man is smelling his armpits for the moment, but we'll just have an overlooked moment. I just don't smell. Let me smell your armpit. I don't want you to smell my armpit. What if it smells terrible? It's on the way to smelling bad. Oh, yes. But it's not repulsive. I'm never coming back. This story was produced by Simon Adler.
Big thanks to Jared and myself who did a lot of the technical work and 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 thinking, 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, Julian Weinberger. These are the ones who were, who
who were with me all the way and stuck with this whole crazy thing with the swabs and whatever. 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 are the microbes? I believe your house figures into that. Yes, there's an actual robbery in my home. Yes, onlyhuman.org. And also, go to our website. Radiolab.org. Because along with Only Human, we are putting up a very short animation of the handshake situation done by Nate Milton.
which is, it's just gloriously weird. Oh, and quick reminder, you can listen to Radiolab on Spotify. Okay, Jed, I would shake your hand, but I... I'm not touching you anymore. Keep your distance.
Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Aketi Foster-Keys, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyanasambadam.
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