[RADIOLAB INTRO]

ROBERT KRULWICH: Can I just tell you a story?

JAD ABUMRAD: I don't have a choice, do I?

ROBERT: [laughs] You don't.

JAD: What's the story?

ROBERT: 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 really—he was on television, he was fun to watch. And he—he would go to mass in my neighborhood in New York. When he'd come 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 could see the President of the United States and his wife, so ...

JAD: You did this multiple times?

ROBERT: 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 gonna ask for his aunt when 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. He steps out of the elevator with Jackie.

JAD: Whoa!

ROBERT: 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 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 ...

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: ... 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 gonna wash it for, like, two days, two weeks maybe."

JAD: What did she say to you?

ROBERT: I don't remember what she said, but—but that's a funny thing to say when 50 years later you're a science reporter. [laughs] I mean, huh! Because at the moment, I thought "Oh! Kennedy on Robert! Whoo!" I didn't—I didn't know if that was true or if it was kind of like a dream thing. Everybody has that thing with celebrities—or at least I do. But now it turns out we can examine the question scientifically. There's now a science that can do that.

JAD: What do you mean?

ROBERT: Well first of all, we all know this: we're covered with germs, with bacteria.

JAD: Yes.

ROBERT: 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.

JAD: Huh.

ROBERT: 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.

JAD: Huh!

ROBERT: I thought, "Oh, really? I'm gonna—why not put them to the test?"

ROBERT: There he is!

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Are these the people?

ROBERT: [laughs] These are the people.

ROBERT: And go after this small little bit of personal history I got. So I decided to—to reproduce the John F. Kennedy-Robert Krulwich handshake as an experiment.

JAD: [laughs] What? That's insane.

ROBERT: [laughs] I thought we can just—we could have—I could find somebody who would be President Kennedy, who would shake my hand.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: And we would measure and calculate and see. So I got a team of producers on our—from the WNYC show Only Human to help me doing this, and we found a scientist.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Oh, hey. Your name again?

JACK GILBERT: Jack Gilbert.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Hey Jack.

ROBERT: 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 ...

ROBERT: You're gonna be President Kennedy for these purposes.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: A substitute President Kennedy? Okay, sure.

ROBERT: Can you do a JFK, by the way?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: "Our nation will put a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth." No. No.

ROBERT: [laughs]

ROBERT: This is Neil DeGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History here in New York.

ROBERT: Well, 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 sustain?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, I'm not weird or creepy.

ROBERT: [laughs] Okay. Okay, fair enough.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: No, there's—there's no part of anyone else that I just want to ...

JACK GILBERT: What about if—if you got Carl Sagan's underwear. Would you keep Carl Sagan's underwear?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: No! Sorry.

JACK GILBERT: [laughs]

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: But I have—I have come to love and embrace all bacteria that want a part of my body.

JACK GILBERT: All right. You are—you are awesome.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So am I your man for this?

JACK GILBERT: You are absolutely the man for this.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And—and!

ROBERT: [laughs] Stop hitting me!

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And I will so pick up food that fell on the floor and eat it.

ROBERT: Oh, me too. Me too.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I'll do that. I won't even wait five seconds.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JACK GILBERT: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Which we knew was bullshit anyway.

ROBERT: 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 hand for a 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?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Presumably there's an exchange.

ROBERT: Yes.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So we're nicking off back and forth.

ROBERT: You do have enormous hands, though, now that I'm looking at them.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, it's—I know when I try to find gloves.

ROBERT: [laughs]

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It doesn't work. So it's XXXL.

ROBERT: All right, so—so just so we can begin, it's like the fact that you are carrying all these microbes on you—first of all, where are they predominantly?

JACK GILBERT: 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 ...

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Your butt.

JACK GILBERT: Your butt—especially your butt—is covered in bacteria. And just sitting here, you're actually releasing into the air around you—think Pigpen from the Peanuts cartoon, remember—about 36 million bacterial cells an hour. For every minute ...

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: How do they come off of me?

JACK GILBERT: They are literally leaving on the surface of your skin cells that you're shedding.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Okay.

JACK GILBERT: And through your respirations coming out of your nose and your mouth.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Okay.

JACK GILBERT: Also detaching. So they—a lot of them, they dry out on the surface, and they can literally just drift off as dust.

ROBERT: And so—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?

JACK GILBERT: A lot of them are colonic Neil, right? So a lot of them are actually coming out of his—out of your pants, right? And they are on the surface of the chair and they deposit as fine ...

ROBERT: Colonic is a multisyllabic word, but I think we understand what you mean.

JACK GILBERT: Yeah, yeah. They are a poop factory.

ROBERT: Why would that be? Is it just ...

JACK GILBERT: It's the largest resource. It's the ...

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It has to get out of me.

JACK GILBERT: And it does all the time.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: All the time. So that means ...

ROBERT: Even though it's not—it's not a bathroom?

JACK GILBERT: Even though it's not a bathroom.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: The surfaces of chairs would have them most.

JACK GILBERT: Yes.

ROBERT: All right. So now ...

JACK GILBERT: Yes?

KENNY MALONE: Let me just—time question real quick. So Jack needs about 20 minutes to do—for us to do this handshake experiment.

ROBERT: That's, by the way, producer Kenny Malone.

JACK GILBERT: Why don't we—why don't we start the experiment now?

KENNY: That's a good idea.

ROBERT: Okay.

JACK GILBERT: And then we have time to talk in between.

ROBERT: Okay. All right, what are you gonna do?

JACK GILBERT: So what we're gonna do is we have little ...

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: By the way, I'm not offering you my butthole for this experiment.

ROBERT: You can't have Tyson.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It doesn't mean I'm offering you my butt microbes.

JACK GILBERT: Just—just stand up.

ROBERT: So we're gonna do hands.

JACK GILBERT: Absolutely. So we have these little sterile tubes. so each tube, green-capped 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 gonna do that very vigorously, and then put it as quickly as possible back into the sterile tube.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So this is your control sample.

JACK GILBERT: This is the starter.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: The starter. Okay.

JACK GILBERT: And then you are gonna shake hands with the young man over there.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Mm-hmm.

JACK GILBERT: All right? With Robert. And we're gonna definitely try and see how many you have received from Neil and how many Neil has received from Robert.

JAD: 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?

ROBERT: Right.

JAD: And he's sure you're gonna have different bacteria on your—on your hands, you and Neil?

ROBERT: Yes!

JACK GILBERT: 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.

JAD: 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 ...

ROBERT: Hmm.

JAD: ... you are both men living in New York City, breathing the same air, riding the same subways.

ROBERT: Yes, exactly.

JAD: So why would you be that different from one another?

ROBERT: Well, because there's one very important difference between us.

SIOBHAN DOLAN: Okay.

ROBERT: We have different mothers.

ROBERT: So have you been told anything about what this is?

SIOBHAN DOLAN: A little bit about the microbiome, but I'm happy to hear more.

ROBERT: This is Dr. Siobhan Dolan.

SIOBHAN DOLAN: I'm an obstetrician/gynecologist. And I'm actually a clinical geneticist as well.

ROBERT: And we brought her in because she knows more than most when it comes to moms and babies.

SIOBHAN DOLAN: During my training years, I probably delivered a hundred 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—I was on the other side as well.

ROBERT: Oh, so you've done it. [laughs] Okay.

ROBERT: And she says as a fetus, before you're born ...

SIOBHAN DOLAN: You're, you know, exposed to what's in the amniotic fluid, but it's a pretty clean set-up 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.

ROBERT: And this moment is in essence your bacterial baptism.

JACK GILBERT: Right, exactly.

ROBERT: Because at this point, you're this pristine, unadulterated hunk of biomass. The bacteria ...

SIOBHAN DOLAN: They're like, "Give me a ride. I'm gonna jump on."

JACK GILBERT: Yeah, the bacteria will colonize that surface because that's what bacteria do.

ROBERT: And so finally, when the baby's born, the doctors, they take it ...

SIOBHAN DOLAN: You make sure they're stable, breathing, and then right up onto mom to start to immediately promote the bonding and the skin to skin.

ROBERT: In your own case, if you can remember ...

SIOBHAN DOLAN: Uh-huh. I can.

ROBERT: Like, what—what happened? Like ...

SIOBHAN DOLAN: 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.

ROBERT: And in the same moment, you're gonna get some microbe bonding, too.

JACK GILBERT: It's a—it's a very dynamic hug.

ROBERT: And bacteria go—p'kew!—they leap from the mom's skin onto the baby.

JACK GILBERT: I did this for both my children. I took both of them onto my bare chest at birth.

ROBERT: Oh, you wanted to compete against your wife, huh?

JACK GILBERT: Absolutely! Maybe a little bit of daddy was a—was a helpful thing, you know? Who knows? So yeah, I—that was the reason I did it.

ROBERT: And the thing is ...

JACK GILBERT: Well, we'll start. So I'll be your first one.

ROBERT: ... the strains of bacteria that we get in those first few hours ...

JACK GILBERT: Okay, so give me your right hand.

ROBERT: ... 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 or the dog comes by ...

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You ready?

JACK GILBERT: Yeah.

ROBERT: ... those strains of bacteria stick with us ...

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Ready, set ...

ROBERT: ... forever.

JACK GILBERT: Go! So we're gonna swab it as much as possible.

ROBERT: Even the bacteria that Jack will find ...

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: That tickles.

ROBERT: [laughs]

ROBERT: ... now on Neil's hand ...

JACK GILBERT: And now we'll do Robert.

ROBERT: All right.

ROBERT: ... and on my hand ...

JACK GILBERT: All over the fingers.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Between, okay.

ROBERT: ... are descendents of those first moments of contact.

JACK GILBERT: There we are. And ...

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Okay.

JACK GILBERT: We'll pop that back in there.

ROBERT: And crazily enough ...

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Gotcha.

ROBERT: ... 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's different, still the bacteria you got from your mom will come creeping back.

JAD: Why? Why would that be?

ROBERT: Well ...

JACK GILBERT: 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?

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JACK GILBERT: 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.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JACK GILBERT: And so the same is true in the microbiome. So, you know, you have a lifelong partnership with the bacteria you interacted with.

ROBERT: 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 "Hello, hello" handshake, how much of his is gonna get on me? How much of mine is gonna get on him? And most important of all is how long will the exchange—microbially—last?

JACK GILBERT: So next step, you guys gotta shake hands. And I want you to shake hands just like 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.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Okay.

ROBERT: Yep.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You ready? Now I have to, like, think about how to actually shake hands. [laughs] It's like wait, wait. How does it work?

JACK GILBERT: Ready? One, two, three.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Robert!

ROBERT: Hi! How are you? Nice to see you again.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Good to see you again. All right.

ROBERT: Okay.

JACK GILBERT: Okay, now Neil? Right hand.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Go.

JACK GILBERT: Can you feel it there?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I feel it.

JACK GILBERT: Kinda grabbing a little bit?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Oh yeah. Get my index finger, too because you got a little—because the palms didn't—didn't touch as much as ...

ROBERT: And so every five minutes for the next 20 minutes ...

JACK GILBERT: And then we're going to swab your hand again.

ROBERT: ... Jack swabbed both Neil's hand and my hand.

JACK GILBERT: I'm actually pulling off a slight patina of bacteria, but not ...

ROBERT: Just checking to see if any bacteria moved and for how long.

JAD: So wait, wait. What happened? Did he—did you—what happened?

ROBERT: Well, why would I tell you now when we have the advantage of a short break?

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: We'll be right back.

[LISTENER: This is Nicole from Corning, New York. Radiolab 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.]

JAD: Jad.

ROBERT: Robert.

JAD: Radiolab.

ROBERT: By the way, do you have a hint as to the outcome of this thing we've just done?

JAD: Okay, just before we went to break, Robert and Neil had just shaken hands, and Jack Gilbert was gonna swab those hands, right?

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JACK GILBERT: One minute after the handshake, then around every five minutes for about 25 minutes.

JAD: What exactly does he do after he swabs them?

ROBERT: Well, he takes the—takes our bacteria back to the lab and he identifies our bacteria by their DNA.

JACK GILBERT: Yeah, that's exactly it. I mean ...

ROBERT: It strikes me this is a whole new science, isn't it? I mean, like, there are a thousand things you could wonder about.

JACK GILBERT: Well, yes. It is a whole new science. It's a science that's on the cutting edge. You know, we're still researching and developing it, and it will take many years before we're ready for prime time.

ROBERT: 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.

JACK GILBERT: 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.

ROBERT: Huh!

JACK GILBERT: 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.

JAD: Wow!

ROBERT: And they're only gonna get better and better, he says.

ROBERT: Do you think maybe one day you'll be able to track somebody, like, outside, moving—moving around purely on the—based on the bacteria that they leave behind?

JACK GILBERT: That's exactly what we're investigating.

ROBERT: He also says being able to identify bacteria in a town's sewer system ...

JACK GILBERT: Will be really useful in helping us to predict a potential outbreak.

ROBERT: 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 gotta quarantine, vaccinate, we gotta do something here."

JACK GILBERT: And nip it in the bud if you will before it becomes a problem.

ROBERT: And as you may have heard, there's plenty of research looking at the microbiome inside of you.

JACK GILBERT: 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.

ROBERT: But for now ...

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So come on. Yeah, so come on in.

ROBERT: ... back to this absolutely crucial and breathtaking experiment.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: So let me just quickly remind you of the situation where we last left it. You and I ...

ROBERT: So a couple of weeks later, we got the results from Jack. And so I decided to go to Neil to deliver them.

JAD: All right.

ROBERT: 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.

ROBERT: What percentage change would you guess you caused on me?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Of me on you? Ten percent.

ROBERT: Ten percent.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: That's my—I can't imagine it—I would say one percent, ten percent, but not much less than one percent.

ROBERT: Well, it was less than ten.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Mm-hmm.

ROBERT: When they came back. It was significantly less than ten.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Okay.

ROBERT: It was zero.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Zero? Well, it can't be zero. It would be below their—whatever their capacity to measure.

ROBERT: It would be below the detectable rate, yes.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Right. Okay.

ROBERT: Actually, they found a teeny number of bacteria, but they died.

JACK GILBERT: There was essentially nothing.

ROBERT: Huh! Nothing from Neil.

JACK GILBERT: [laughs] Yes.

ROBERT: Nothing.

JACK GILBERT: It's just—it's just—it's just odd. Should I put it that way?

ROBERT: [laughs]

JACK GILBERT: 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 and the other person picks up, you know, 10-12 bacteria.

ROBERT: Do you think you might have washed your hand immediately previous? I don't think you ...

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: No. No, there was no—no sabotage or anything.

ROBERT: Did you use an alcohol wipe or warm water?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: No, I'd never—I hate antibacterial—I don't use, what do you call it, Purell?

ROBERT: Yeah.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I never use any of it.

ROBERT: So for reasons that are at this moment totally unknown, Neil's bacteria simply failed completely to affect my hand.

ROBERT: The other side of this equation is what would you guess the presence of my microbes on you was, percentage-wise?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: 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.

ROBERT: Ha! Here's what happened.

JACK GILBERT: He definitely picked up bacteria from you, and that led to quite a substantial disruption.

ROBERT: It turns out I swamped your hand.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You're telling me your skank-nasty ...

ROBERT: I—I ruled you!

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: [laughs]

ROBERT: I don't know what happened. They don't understand what happened.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Your skank ...

ROBERT: I came onto you.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: ... skank-funky.

ROBERT: The percentage before the handshake was that you and I were 60 percent the same, 40 percent different.

JACK GILBERT: Post-shake you were more than 75 percent correlated.

ROBERT: [laughs] Well ...

JAD: Wait, so you—you made him more you by 15 percent at least?

ROBERT: I was swarming all over him.

JAD: [laughs] I'm slightly proud and kind of troubled at the same time.

ROBERT: [laughs]

ROBERT: Not only did you get my microbes, but mine kept staying and staying and staying. Every time they swabbed I was still there. Six minutes later, 12 minutes later.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: That's nasty.

ROBERT: Could it have been an hour later mine might still be on his hand? Like ...

JACK GILBERT: Yeah. I mean, there's no indication that they were in decay.

ROBERT: When I left, you were covered with me!

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: [laughs] Let the record show he beat his chest in that moment.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JACK GILBERT: It looks like there was a possibility that some of them could have gone on ad infinitum.

ROBERT: Ad infinitum? What do you mean? You think that I might stay on him?

JACK GILBERT: 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.

JAD: What, you mean like forever? Like, forever and ever?

JACK GILBERT: There is a possibility.

ROBERT: Wow! There is a possibility?

JACK GILBERT: Precisely.

ROBERT: Do we have any idea whether what we've just described is typical of a common handshake experience?

JACK GILBERT: My gut feeling is this is atypical.

ROBERT: Why?

JACK GILBERT: Because they may be at all out competed.

ROBERT: Jack says to understand just how strange this result is, think about it this way: two hands coming together ...

JACK GILBERT: 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, and adapt and become prolific in that environment.

ROBERT: Oh, so the invaders don't really have a huge shot here then.

JACK GILBERT: 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.

ROBERT: So it happens and it's over and nobody wins.

JACK GILBERT: Precisely. There's mutual decay.

ROBERT: So am I now a successful invasive species on his hand?

JACK GILBERT: Well, some of your microbes are a successful invasive species, but yeah absolutely.

ROBERT: How would you explain my success?

JACK GILBERT: 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 ...

ROBERT: Well, that doesn't sound so good, streptococcus.

JACK GILBERT: 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.

JAD: Oh man, that's so interesting! So you have, like, a little band of, like, murderous little bacteria that went and—and cleared away the forest, and then so that the rest of you could come in and colonize.

ROBERT: I don't know! I don't think anybody knows the answer to that question. All I know is that I'm—I'm all over the man.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I don't mind some of Robert slathered on my body. That's fine.

SIMON ADLER: Well, and 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?

ROBERT: That, by the way, is producer Simon Adler.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So the word "conquer" in that context, I would reword the sentence and say my microbiome was perfectly content staying where it is.

ROBERT: [laughs]

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And apparently Robert's microbiome can't wait to get the hell off his body.

ROBERT: [laughs] Oh man! I came here thinking I would find out how long President Kennedy stayed on me. Now there's suddenly a new question.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Because if he's a cool cucumber, it's how long you stayed on him. [laughs]

ROBERT: [laughs]

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah.

ROBERT: Yeah.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, John F. Kennedy: I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.]

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, maybe you're the anomaly.

ROBERT: Yeah.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You're the creepy, sweaty man with wet palms.

ROBERT: That's what you come here for: the repast.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: [laughs]

ROBERT: Big, big thanks to astrophysicist and author Neil DeGrasse Tyson for putting up with this shenanigans.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I can go five days without a shower and you wouldn't know it.

ROBERT: The man is smelling his armpits for the moment, but we'll just ...

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I'm smelling my armpits. I just don't smell. Let me smell your armpits.

ROBERT: I don't want you to smell my armpits. What if it smells terrible?

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It's on the way to smelling bad.

ROBERT: Oh yes.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: But it's not repulsive.

ROBERT: I'm never coming back! [laughs]

JAD: This story was produced by Simon Adler.

ROBERT: Big thanks to Jared Marcel 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 Yong, 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 Aronczyk, Elaine Chen, Kenny Malone, Jillian Weinberger. These are the ones who were—who were with me all the way and stuck with this whole crazy thing with the swabs and whatever.

JAD: And speaking of which, if you want to get in on the action, this is kinda cool. So the whole JFK situation that Robert just did, well you can kinda do it too. This company called uBiome has offered the chance for ...

ROBERT: A thousand listeners.

JAD: ... 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.

ROBERT: 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?

JAD: I believe your house figures into that.

ROBERT: Yes, there's an actual robbery in my home.

JAD: Yes.

ROBERT: And also, go to our website 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.

JAD: Oh, and quick reminder: you can listen to Radiolab anytime on Spotify.

ROBERT: Hey Jad, I would shake your hand, but I ...

JAD: I'm not trusting you anymore!

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: [laughs] Keep your distance!

[ANSWERING MACHINE: To play the message, press 2. To go to the next message, press 6. Message two. New. From phone number ...]

[JACK GILBERT: Hi, this is Jack Gilbert. Simon suggested I should give the text to read out for the credits.

[SIOBHAN DOLAN: Hi, this is Siobhan 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 the text for me to read. Radiolab is produced by Jad—sorry, I'll start again.]

[JACK GILBERT: Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design.]

[SIOBHAN DOLAN: Soren Wheeler is senior editor. Jamie York is our senior producer.]

[JACK GILBERT: Our staff includes Simon Adler, David Gebel ...]

[SIOBHAN DOLAN: ... Tracie Hunte, Matt Kielty ...]

[JACK GILBERT: ... Matt Kielty ...]

[SIOBHAN DOLAN: ... Robert Krulwich, Annie McEwen ...]

[JACK GILBERT: ... Latif Nasser, Malissa O'Donnell, Arianne Wack and Molly Webster.]

[SIOBHAN DOLAN: With help from ...]

[JACK GILBERT: With help from ...]

[SIOBHAN DOLAN: ... Valentina Bojanini ...]

[JACK GILBERT: ... Bojanini, Nigar Fatali ...]

[SIOBHAN DOLAN: ... Nigar Fatali, Phoebe Wang and Katie Ferguson.]

[JACK GILBERT: Our fact-checker is Michelle Harris.]

[SIOBHAN DOLAN: Thanks!]

[JACK GILBERT: Let me know if that works.]

[SIOBHAN DOLAN: Bye bye.]

[JACK GILBERT: Cheers!]

[ANSWERING MACHINE: End of mailbox.]

-30-

 

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