ANNOUNCER: NPR's Robert Krulwich saw some strange markings on the back of a five dollar bill and he investigated.

ROBERT: As soon as she came into the room I smelled trouble. This dame had a nose like a toothpick on a face like an olive. She was tough, she was smart, and she had a problem. I could tell. I'm a private eye. I told her I had nothing but time.

ROBERT: Lady, I got nothing but time.

ROBERT: She took out a $5 bill, laid it on my desktop, smoothed it out real flat, and then she spoke.

RK FALSETTO: This here's a $5 bill.

ROBERT: I could see it was and I said so.

ROBERT: Lady, I can see that.

ROBERT: She took a long drag on her Silverthin and I got a whiff of her Chanel.

RK FALSETTO: Look, Chuck.

ROBERT: She called me Chuck, though my name isn't Chuck. But I like that in a woman.

RK FALSETTO: Chuck, I like privacy.

ROBERT: Yeah?

RK FALSETTO: I got an unpublished number.

ROBERT: Yeah?

RK FALSETTO: I got an unpublished address.

ROBERT: Yeah?

RK FALSETTO: I got blank plates for my Bentley.

ROBERT: Yeah?

JAD: I'm like, what the fuck is going on?

ROBERT: This is a—this is what those film noir things sounded like to me.

JAD: I know, but it's like what—okay, so only does one discover ...

ROBERT: I haven't heard that in a really long time.

JAD: ... about three-quarters of the way through this, that the whole piece is about some mysterious secret message in a bush?

ROBERT: Shadows in a bush. Yes.

JAD: On the back of a five dollar ...

ROBERT: Some 92, something something 92. Yes.

JAD: There was numbers written on the bush ...

ROBERT: Yes.

JAD: ... next to the Lincoln Memorial.

ROBERT: There was a theory that the artist, you know, the Bureau of Engraving hires humans, artists to design it. And so I was tipped or must have read in a collectors magazine, who knows, that the five dollar bill contained a secret number and all I had to do was look for it. And when I was shown where it was, I couldn't not see it. It was always there. So that's a perfect radio story. You get—make everybody listening to you take out their five dollar bill and see the thing that they will see. Because I saw it and ...

JAD: But it wasn't actually numbers on the back of the five dollar bill.

ROBERT: Yes, it was. If you choose to see the shadows that way.

JAD: No, because you use one piece in a—in a five and a half minute story, you use one six-second bit of tape of some actual person.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: Who's looking at the—at the five dollar bill, not seeing the number.

ROBERT: Oh, not seeing it.

JAD: Not seeing the number. He sees a different set of numbers than you see.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: And you argue about what numbers are there. Which leads me as a listener to believe that actually it wasn't ...

ROBERT: It wasn't as obvious as I remember.

JAD: No. That it was maybe ...

ROBERT: Well, you have me at a disadvantage because that was, like, 40, 35 years ago. But ...

JAD: But what's amazing about this is that it's—it's so entire—like, the whole point of it seems to be for you ...

ROBERT: To play all those characters.

JAD: To play all those characters. It doesn't seem ...

ROBERT: Well also, it was a chance I guess for me to make a film noir, like, of my own. I could just make one of the Humphrey Bogart movies for myself.

JAD: I just think that's amazing that you're—you're—you go—that I don't even know what the story's about until three quarters of the way through but I'm still riveted.

ROBERT: Yeah. Well, I think it's a little magical to me, when you listen to NPR these days, to remember that when National Public Radio started it A) wasn't much listened to; wasn't highly-esteemed, that's very important; and didn't have any money. Those three things, put them together and they had a 90-minute show to do every single day. And there were things that we used to do on All Things Considered that, you know, I don't think would—I think they would make people's—people poop in their pants if they heard them now.

LULU MILLER: Today on Radiolab, in honor of the great Robert Krulwich, a founding father of this here show and creator of some of the weirdest stuff public radio has ever aired.

LATIF NASSER: True poop in your pants audio.

LULU: We, your hosts, Lulu Miller ...

LATIF: And Latif Nasser.

LULU: We have prepared a little treat for you today. It is a triple decker Robert Krulwich sandwich. It's like a club sandwich. It's a club Krulwich. We've got three stories.

LATIF: A Krulwich sandwich.

LULU: A Krulwich sandwich. And it is full of tangents, it's full of joy and full of surprising depth. So to kick us off, first up, first layer is a story you did with him, Latif.

LATIF: Yeah. A quest we went on together.

LULU: About ...

JAD ABUMRAD: How did you even get onto—I feel like buttons has just become a fixture.

LULU: ... buttons.

JAD: How did this happen?

LATIF NASSER: Okay. Well, can I ...?

JAD: Who's to blame for this?

LATIF: Let me—let me start. I'm gonna start.

ROBERT KRULWICH: This is reporter Latif Nasser. And today on Radiolab, Latif and I are bringing Jad and you three wildly different stories about buttons—that are really about power and freedom and destruction. So ...

LATIF: So this all started because I could not convince any of my friends to go to the elevator history museum with me.

JAD: [laughs]

LATIF: There was not a single person out of the eight and a half million people living in New York who wanted to go to the button museum with me.

ROBERT: But you found one.

LATIF: Except Robert Krulwich.

ROBERT: I'll go to anything!

LATIF: Exactly.

LATIF: Jamie told me never to stop recording, but I think ...

ROBERT: So we go to Long Island City.

LATIF: We'll walk around. You think it's that door right there?

ROBERT: First of all, we can't find it.

LATIF: We got lost. [laughs]

ROBERT: This street is entirely taxi yellow.

ROBERT: The only thing we saw was a big old boring building covered with—with taxi signs. And we had no interest in taxis.

ROBERT: Do you know if there's a museum in here?

ROBERT: We—we found some guy on the street.

MAN: Yes, there is. You gotta go up the stairs, right?

ROBERT: Yeah. Yeah.

MAN: Actually, I'll take you there.

LATIF: Ah, thank you!

MAN: I'll show you the way, anyway.

ROBERT: All right.

MAN: You go all the way down, make a left. Make a right, go all the way down to the end.

LATIF: Thank you very much!

MAN: You're welcome.

LATIF: Ah-ha! Wow, that's quite a sign!

ROBERT: Elevator Museum. Founded 2011 by Patrick Carr.

ROBERT: So we open up the door.

LATIF: Wow!

ROBERT: We have no idea what's gonna be on the other side of this. Not a thing.

LATIF: Hello?

ROBERT: Whoa, this is different from what, like—like ...

ROBERT: And it's a large room.

LATIF: It's a world.

JAD: You're building up to something, I hope.

ROBERT: It's filled with ...

LATIF: What—what is it? What ...

ROBERT: ... stuff.

LATIF: Elevator matchbook here.

ROBERT: Pens or ...

LATIF: Switches and locks.

LATIF: Just random stuff.

ROBERT: These are things you give at sales meetings, yeah. The Rosenburg lubricant?

ROBERT: Small brass objects of one kind or another.

LATIF: And there are these giant paintings of escalators and moving sidewalks.

JAD: [laughs]

LATIF: And sitting in a corner ...

PATRICK CARR: Yeah?

LATIF: Hi, I'm Latif.

LATIF: ... across the room ...

PATRICK CARR: Latif, how are you?

LATIF: ... we see a guy, sitting. He's an older guy.

PATRICK CARR: Patrick Carr.

LATIF: He has his glasses down on his nose. And he's in charge of the place.

PATRICK CARR: They can call me if they want to come visit: (718) XXX-XXXX.

LATIF: Apparently, you're supposed to make an appointment.

PATRICK CARR: And if I'm in the mood, they'll get a song.

LATIF: Patrick has been the lead singer in a number of bands, and he even studied Constitutional law.

ROBERT: This is a man for all seasons. He's—like, he's got so much elevator stuff.

PATRICK CARR: I've been collecting since I was 11 years old.

ROBERT: Because when you were seven years old you walked into an elevator and had a—a meltdown?

PATRICK CARR: No, when I was 11 years old I started working with my dad. I went to college, got a couple degrees and stayed in the elevator business. Never left. I—actually, my first item is over on one of the walls here. Let me show you something. I'll bring you over here.

ROBERT: And as we're walking along ...

LATIF: Oh, that's like a hall of buttons!

ROBERT: ... we come inevitably to a series of elevator button panels.

PATRICK CARR: Here's a golden up and down. Here's a bronze up and down.

LATIF: Ooh, that's really classy.

PATRICK CARR: Here's a silver up and down.

LATIF: He has all kinds of antique buttons that—I mean, from just different eras, some ...

PATRICK CARR: Here's one where you go boomp boomp boomp boomp boomp boomp.

JAD: So this is the genesis.

LATIF: Right there.

ROBERT: Right here is where the insult begins. And it is an insult, because what is about to happen is he's about to tell us that we are fools and have no power in the world in which he inhabits. And he does that by pointing to the 'Close Door' button, you know, where you push and the door's supposed to close. He says—just says matter-of-factly, he says ...

PATRICK CARR: About 80 percent of them are non-functional.

LATIF: Wow!

ROBERT: What? Because they're broken and no one fixed them? Or because they ...

PATRICK CARR: Because they were never wired up.

ROBERT: They were never wired up?

PATRICK CARR: Never wired up. Never. Most of the time we don't do it. About 80 percent of them don't work.

JAD: I just assume they don't work.

LATIF: You assume they don't work?

JAD: I assume they don't work.

ROBERT: All the time?

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: I thought no, no, no, no.

JAD: Of course it doesn't work.

ROBERT: No, this cannot be right.

JAD: What do you mean 'cannot be right?' Have you ever pushed a 'Close' button that—that has had any effect on the door?

ROBERT: Yes, I believe I have.

JAD: It's a psychological tool for you.

ROBERT: You need a button to go bang bang bang bang bang.

JAD: You gotta push something.

LATIF: But, like, you don't ...

ROBERT: But that's not—but he said also—he had also a very fancy reason.

JAD: What was his fancy reason?

PATRICK CARR: They're extremely intelligent, elevators. The elevators actually remember what happens every day. So the elevator system knows that between 8:55 and 9:00 we get 373 people on an average morning coming in. So we're gonna return two cars to the main floor as soon as we possibly can. We're not gonna park anything upstairs. But it knows that at 4:45, it gets 650 people leaving the building.

ROBERT: You get three wheelchairs, you get two old people, da da da, and so we program the timing of the elevator to accommodate the whole.

PATRICK CARR: So all you're doing is screwing up our timing by touching that thing.

ROBERT: I mean, you have thousands and thousands of people anxiously trying to urge the machine to do their will.

PATRICK CARR: [laughs] We like watching people just keep pressing this stupid button and not knowing.

ROBERT: That's cruel, I have to tell you.

ROBERT: His idea that we would somehow have the authority or the power to close the door was offensive to him.

PATRICK CARR: Yeah. Now in my building they work.

JAD: I'm sympathetic to that viewpoint.

ROBERT: How can you be sympathetic? You are a customer.

JAD: Think of what a building is: it's a crazy-ass vertical stack of humanity. How is that gonna work if not for beautifully-designed systems like the elevator?

ROBERT: This is about freedom!

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: This is about freedom. And this is about ...

JAD: You're insane. You're insane.

ROBERT: So we then began looking around for some little soupçon of hope to give the Radiolab listeners.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: Some tiny bit of power that they could have back in this utterly fascistic system. And you know what, Jad? We found it.

JAD: You did?

ROBERT: We did.

JAD: What did you find?

ROBERT: We have hacked the 'Close' button.

JAD: Really? Wait, now I'm suddenly—for the first time I'm interested. What—what did you discover?

ROBERT: The next time, Jad, that you walk into an elevator, the door closes and mysteriously, although you're going to the eighth floor it stops on five. The door opens, you peer out, there's nobody there.

JAD: Yeah?

ROBERT: Six endless seconds will roll by, leaving you powerless and hapless. But not anymore. Now here's what you can do—and we checked this and it's true—you can put your arm through the door, breaking the beam with your arm, and then yank your arm back very suddenly. That will convince the stupid, stupid supine elevator that you have just—someone has just entered the elevator, and now it will close.

JAD: Whoa, really?

ROBERT: That will shave an amazing three, four even five seconds off your waiting time.

JAD: All right!

ROBERT: And it will give you that sense of being Superman.

LATIF: Yeah. That's 45 minutes of your life back. You're welcome.

LATIF: We are sad to say that due to rising rents, Patrick's elevator museum closed its doors back in 2016. Fittingly, no buttons were pushed for those doors to close.

ROBERT: So the next story, this is maybe the most valuable button in the world.

JAD: Hmm.

ROBERT: It's not a button exactly, it's—it's—he was a guy.

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: And his name was Button Gwinnett.

ROBERT: What is it?

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: Button Gwinnett.

ROBERT: B-U-T-T-O-N?

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: Yup.

LATIF: Is that his real name?

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: That's his real name.

ROBERT: That's Bobby Livingston from R&R Auction House in Boston.

ROBERT: Who is Button Gwinnett?

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: Button Gwinnett is one of two signers of the Declaration of Independence that were born in England and moved to the United Sta—or moved to the colonies.

JAD: He is a Founding Father?

ROBERT: He is a Founding Father.

LATIF: You've seen his signature thousands of times without realizing it.

ROBERT: And—and the thing about that signature gets interesting in a minute.

LATIF: But just to start at the beginning, Button Gwinnett was born in England in the early 1700s, and then he moved to Georgia in 1765.

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: And he bought an island, and I believe he began an import-export ...

ROBERT: He bought an island? [laughs]

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: Yep. St. Catherines Island.

ROBERT: Truth is he leased it, but whatever.

LATIF: Like, he's just like a wealthy guy?

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: No, Button Gwinnett was a serial debtor, actually, and he owed everybody—he owed everybody money. So he failed in his business, and he became a radicalized revolutionary, and he joined Georgia politics late in the 1760s.

ROBERT: And when it got to be 1776 in Philadelphia, he was in Independence Hall and he signed the Declaration of Independence.

JAD: Really?

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: To the left and below of John Hancock. But then he goes home to Georgia and gets in a duel with his political rival and is killed in 1777. And then I believe in 1780, his wife passes away, leaving only his daughter. And then by 1800, his daughter passes away and his lineage is disappeared. So ...

ROBERT: So the Gwinnetts pass into history.

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: Yes. Yes, and in 1780 the British burn Savannah to the ground. So any government documents that would've existed in the state archives are destroyed.

JAD: But his signature is on that very important piece of paper.

LATIF: True. True.

ROBERT: Which becomes important because ...

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: Around the 1820s, the last of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were dying. So there was a nostalgia for the Founding Fathers, and that's when people began collecting the signatures that were placed on that document.

ROBERT: So people collected Jefferson and then Adams and a Hancock, and they started thinking ...

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: Okay. I want a whole set of the 56 men that signed that document.

LATIF: People want the set.

ROBERT: They want the set.

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: For an American, I don't think there was any more important signature than the signatures that were placed on that document.

ROBERT: Get 'em all!

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: And a problem arose: Button Gwinnett's signatures, they were almost impossible to find.

ROBERT: And even now, like, a hundred and some odd years later ...

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: One guy, I went to see his collection, and he had a beautiful house in Florida overlooking the bay—I won't tell you which bay, but he showed me some great stuff. And I said, "What else you got?" And he goes, I swear he pushes a button and a wall begins to rise.

ROBERT: [laughs]

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: And on the wall he's got, like, you know, incredible, Wilbur Wright, George Washington, but I could see in the middle—my eye goes right to it—the unmistakable signature of Button Gwinnett is like the centerpiece of this secret wall that raises up. And I go, "My goodness, you've got a Button Gwinnett!" It was pretty amazing.

ROBERT: So this is the autographic equivalent of some really famous diamond, you know, or something like that.

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: That's right. You know, it's the holy grail.

JAD: And how many signatures still exist?

ROBERT: There are 50.

LATIF: 51.

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: 51 known examples in the world. And most of the things that exist are IOUs. [laughs]

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: If you have one of these things, what's—what are they worth?

LATIF: Well, I'll tell you this: it is more valuable than Lincoln ...

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: Much more. A hundred times more than Abe Lincoln.

JAD: What?

ROBERT: Really? What about George Washington?

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: Yup.

ROBERT: Ben Franklin?

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: Yes. Yes.

ROBERT: Button Gwinnett outsells—outsells Ben—Ben Franklin was a world-famous person.

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: But Ben Franklin was a man of letters. He wrote tons of letters. He was president of Pennsylvania. He was the ambassador to France. He wrote and wrote and wrote and signed and signed and signed, so ...

LATIF: Bobby Livingston told us with the—with the exception, possible exception of William Shakespeare, this guy, Button Gwinnett, ran up a bunch of debt and did basically nothing else with his life, he is the most valuable signature in the world.

BOBBY LIVINGSTON: Today what makes it extremely hard to complete a set of signers of the Declaration of Independence is because of the 51, 41 are in libraries or institutions and we'll never be able to get it. So there's only 10 examples in public hands.

LATIF: Hello, sir.

ROBERT: Hello, sir.

THOMAS LANNON: How are you doing?

LATIF: Good. Okay, you checked your—your bags and everything?

LATIF: So it turns out that there are four Button Gwinnetts at the—at the New York Public Library.

ROBERT: Which is right in our neighborhood.

LATIF: I believe the reading room is still closed, but we're going to a kind of super secret place where you need to ring a bell to get in.

ROBERT: Really!

LATIF: So I—so I emailed them up. I emailed a guy named Thomas Lannon.

THOMAS LANNON: And I work in the manuscripts and archives division at the New York Public Library.

LATIF: He took us into a special room on the top—on the top floor.

LATIF: Ooh, wow! This is awesome!

ROBERT: All by ourselves.

THOMAS LANNON: I guess we'll put them on the wood.

LATIF: We're standing at a wooden—like a kind of beautiful, old wooden table. And we have ...

ROBERT: On the table ...

LATIF: ... four Button Gwinnetts. Four.

JAD: Wait. Hold on, just so I can appreciate. Tell me what one of these is worth.

LATIF: Well, you don't know until they're sold because they're different quality, but the last one that we know of that was sold here in New York was sold for ...

ROBERT: $722,500.

THOMAS LANNON: I don't—I'm not in the business of estimating value of things, but I can say that Button Gwinnett autographs at the New York Public Library are classified as 'splendid.'

ROBERT: Is that the highest ranking? Splendid?

THOMAS LANNON: They're not—they're not simply cut autographs, they're documents signed.

ROBERT: Look at this! Look at this!

THOMAS LANNON: This is the most extravagant one.

LATIF: Oh wow! But it has, like, seals on it. Like, red wax seals.

ROBERT: There might have been like $4 million sitting on that table.

ROBERT: We got $4 million.

LATIF: So for me, the impulse—the impulse that I'm having right here is not just putting these in my pocket and running away. Like, the impulse I'm having—and I'm being totally frank here—is the same impulse I have, like, you know, when you want to pull the fire alarm? Like I want to just tear these all up right now.

ROBERT: Really?

LATIF: Kind of.

LATIF: I just wanted to take all of these papers that were on this table and just tear them all to shreds.

THOMAS LANNON: I can't—I can't speak to your desire to destroy history.

ROBERT: And then the guy really looked alarmed.

THOMAS LANNON: But you don't really want to tear these up, you have to admit.

LATIF: It's just so valu—like, it's so arbitrarily valuable. Like—like, I could just—I could just rip it up! Like, how could it be that valuable if I could just rip it up?

ROBERT: [laughs]

ROBERT: But it is. Okay, so taking a cue from Latif, when we come back we're gonna take a decidedly anti-button turn.

LATIF: We'll be right back.

JAD: This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad. Today on the podcast, Latif Nasser and Robert Krulwich are talking buttons.

ROBERT: So we have one more button tale.

LATIF: In a way, this sort of—once we were onto buttons, this sort of presented itself because it is the most high stakes button ...
ROBERT: Ever.

LATIF: Yeah!

[ARCHIVE CLIP, film: Mr. President, we have a crisis situation at one of our missile centers, sir.]

ROBERT: A thermonuclear button.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, film: You mean to tell me a renegade general's got his finger on the button of a Titan missile?]

JAD: Is it a button? I mean, I ...

ROBERT: Well, that's what we wanted—we wondered.

JAD: It's depicted in Hollywood as a big red button.

LATIF: Big red button.
ROBERT: Exactly. So we just figured okay, let's go find the button that destroys the world.
LATIF: So we brought in a friend of mine, Alex Wellerstein. He's a historian of all things nuclear weapon related.

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: Yeah.

LATIF: He sat down, and the first thing he told us was that ...

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: There's no button.

ROBERT: No button.

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: No. There has never been a single button.

ROBERT: But wait a second, like, don't—when you get to, like, 1952, 1953, in ordinary parlance people say, "Well, the President has his finger on the button." I mean, I don't know—do you have any idea where that phrase comes from? "The button?"

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: It's older. It's much older than the bomb.

ROBERT: Oh.

LATIF: Really!

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: So 1910s is when all of this stuff, H.G. Wells is sort of famous, but there's—there's all this literature about the crazy scientist who invents a new form of gas that can, like, kill everybody. And he has a button.

LATIF: And is it a red button?

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: I don't know if they say red, but it's definitely a button.

LATIF: And according to Alex, by the time we developed nuclear weapons ...

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: This existing imagery about the scientist can blow up the world using their button transfers to the President can blow up the world using his button.

LATIF: Hmm.

ROBERT: And then Alex told us something that we—that really surprised us. He said when the US government dropped those first bombs on Japan ...

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: So the bomb that they dropped on Hiroshima, they didn't take off with the bomb armed. They took off with the bomb missing a piece.

ROBERT: And the missing piece is ...

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: It's a—it's a chunk of uranium.

ROBERT: Oh!

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: And then one of the scientists who was also a military guy crawled into the back of this plane while it was en route, opened up the bomb, put the missing piece back into it and then closed it back up again and turned on all the electrical switches that said if we drop you out of a plane you're gonna have to detonate.

ROBERT: It will explode when it's a certain number of feet off the ground. So pressure will trigger it. And as for "Finger on the button," the finger, which belonged to Harry Truman, President of the United States, was 11 time zones removed and frankly unaware of the act.

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: Truman, he didn't issue an order himself. He sort of approved an order that was already being issued from the Secretary of War to the commanders out there. And it said, "You have two of these special bombs—" that's what they called them, special bombs. "And here are your four targets you can drop them on." You could drop them on Hiroshima, you could drop them on Nagasaki, you could drop them on Kokura and you could drop them on Niigata.

LATIF: Basically he says any day after August 3 ...
ALEX WELLERSTEIN: Feel free to drop the bomb.
JAD: What? He said here's a couple of different options. Choose?

ROBERT: Choose.

LATIF: Here's some bombs, here's some cities, here's some days.

ROBERT: Here's some days.

LATIF: Go for it.

JAD: No [bleep] way!

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: Other than that, the only considerations are operational. So the bombing order says you have to be able to see the target before you drop it. And that's it.

JAD: Wow!

LATIF: One of the interesting things that I found out later, there was a town called Kokura. And that was the plan B town—or city, rather—for Hiroshima, but the weather that day happened to be good in Hiroshima so they dropped it there. And then the next time, that was actually the plan A city for Nagasaki, but the weather was bad there, and so then they—they bombed Nagasaki. But so this—this city of Kokura got spared twice. Like, it was so close!

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: And so Truman doesn't even know.. He gets told, "Oh by the way, we dropped the bomb yesterday."

JAD: You mean when the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, he ...

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: He had no idea. Did not know.

JAD: ... he didn't know it would be Hiroshima?

LATIF: He didn't know.

ROBERT: He didn't know what day.

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: The second bomb, he seems to have been caught off guard, and he actually issues—this is his only way of getting involved, he issues an order which says, "Stop dropping atomic bombs until I tell you to."

JAD: I feel like if you're a president and you're gonna do that to that many people, you—I feel like you should be directly responsible. It should not be an arbitrary decision. Like, I kind of want a button in this case.

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: No. No no no. You wouldn't actually want there to be a button, right? You could bump a button, right? A button is too easy, right? You don't want it to be easy enough that you set your coffee down on the Oval Office table and, like, kill the world, right? Like, obviously nobody wants to do that.

ROBERT: No. Nobody wants to do that.

LATIF: Right.

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: And I think it's—you know, I have to admit when you first were pitching the button thing, I was thinking, "Where are they gonna go with this? How is this gonna work?"

LATIF: Hmm.

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: And the more I was thinking about it, it's sort of a deep concept, right? It's about the ease in which you could actually destroy all of civilization because of the technology, which you could not do in the 19th century, you could not do with Genghis Khan. He could do a lot of damage, but he could not kill, you know, all the people in the world. A button is the symbol of how easy that is.

ROBERT: And the reason this becomes kind of crucial is we now are moving through the '50s into the '60s.

[NEWS CLIP: For the first time, the cities of the United States and the people who live in them are vulnerable.]

ROBERT: In the early '60s, the United States is in a face to face with Khruschev over the Cuban missiles.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, John F. Kennedy: The Soviet military units are in a state of combat readiness.]

ROBERT: And the world gets really really really close to annihilation.

LATIF: The way that it works at this time is that the President has an assistant, a military guy, who has all the nuclear codes in a briefcase handcuffed ...

ROBERT: ... to the assistant. And the assistant, if the President is in the bathroom, the assistant is outside the door in the corridor.

JAD: At all times?

ROBERT: And if the President is at a football game—at all times.

LATIF: And so weirdly, the suitcase is called the football, and I believe the page with the nuclear launch codes on it is called the biscuit.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: [laughs] Why?

LATIF: I have no idea why.

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: I have no idea where it got the name.

ROBERT: So it's the '60s and things between the US and the Soviet Union are very tense. And there are generals on the Joint Chiefs, Curtis LeMay among them.

LATIF: Who they call Bombs Away LeMay.

ROBERT: Yeah. Who are very—who are not at all troubled by the possibility that this would be a weapon they would use. And they advocated very specifically in a very specific case.

LATIF: So even though there are no buttons and there are all these codes, people are still worried at the time about just how easy it would be for the President to launch a nuclear attack.

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: Right. So ...
LATIF: And one guy in particular ...

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: This guy Roger Fisher, who's this sort of academic policy guy.

LATIF: ... he's a Harvard Law School professor. He advised Secretaries of State on the Iran hostage crisis, on the Israel-Egypt peace accord. He—he definitely had the ear of the Pentagon.

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: And he was troubled by this idea that, you know, the President could very dispassionately start a nuclear war.

LATIF: And so he proposed this idea.

ELLIOTT FISHER: I'll jump in. The notion comes from his long interest in reducing the risk of war.

LATIF: Roger Fisher passed away, but we were able to talk to his two sons.

ELLIOTT FISHER: I'm Elliott Fisher. I'm a professor at Dartmouth.

PETER FISHER: And I'm Peter Fisher. I'm a senior fellow at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

ELLIOTT FISHER: So his solution to this ...

ROBERT: And by the way, this would be just in the case of a US surprise attack, it's what's called a "First strike."

ELLIOTT FISHER: ... was to instead of having all the codes be just in a suitcase ...

PETER FISHER: ... his idea was to get a volunteer who'd have the codes put under their heart ...

ELLIOTT FISHER: You embed the codes in some sort of capsule in the guy's heart.

PETER FISHER: ... surgically. And he'd carry around a briefcase with a knife in it—a butcher knife. And if the President ever felt the urge to fire off the missiles ...

ELLIOTT FISHER: ... he has to go to the guy and say, "Well, now's time. Give me the knife."

LATIF: And then he would have to take the knife and drive it into the guy's chest.

ELLIOTT FISHER: And the President has to chop out this code from this guy's heart.

PETER FISHER: The President would have to kill someone and pull the code out of their body. He would have to first kill one person in order to get at the codes that would let him kill millions of people.

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: He'd have to look at someone and realize what death is, Fisher writes. What an innocent death is. "Blood on the White House carpet. It's reality brought home." Fisher then says that he suggested this to friends in the Pentagon and their reply was, "My God, that's terrible! Having to kill someone would distort the President's judgment. He might never push the button."

LATIF: That's the whole point!

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: Yes. The strongest objection is it might work. And even now I think, you know, gosh, not a crazy idea at all to have the President be—if they're gonna pull the trigger and blow the world up, kill one person 'cause you're just about to kill tens of millions, mostly innocent people.

ROBERT: Huh. And the button is just too easy, so we'll just make it harder.

PETER FISHER: The button's too easy. Exactly. Yeah.

ALEX WELLERSTEIN: Yeah, the butcher knife is the ultimate anti-button.

JAD: But how are you gonna find a guy to put the codes inside his heart?

LATIF: I would—I would volunteer. I would volunteer to be that guy.

JAD: Really?

ROBERT: You would?

LATIF: Totally. In a second I would volunteer to be the guy.

ROBERT: You would volunteer to be stabbed in the heart by the President of the United States?

LATIF: And you know what I would do? I would make—like, I would be best friends with the President. We would take walks, we would go swimming together. It would be great! We would be best friends!

JAD: [laughs]

LATIF: I would—I would—that would be my mission would be to make it as hard as humanly possible for him to carve open my chest.

ROBERT: Okay, we have some thank yous to make here. Latif, you go ahead.

LATIF: All right. First thank you to Catherine Kilickowski of the Elevator Historical Society Museum in Long Island City, New York.

ROBERT: And the Slade Elevator Company and Pride & Service Elevator Company, both in New York for helping us learn things. And to our friend Steve who helped us understand what goes on among autograph collectors.

LATIF: Thank you to the very indulgent New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts Division.

ROBERT: And Alex Wellerstein has a nuclear history blog. He calls it Restricted Data. Check that out.

LATIF: Alex in turn wanted us to thank John Kuster-Mullen, Michael Gordon, Eric Schlosser and Spencer Weir.

ROBERT: And special thanks to actors Michael Cherniss and Noah Robbins.

JAD: And also let's not forget Damiano Marchetti for production support.

ROBERT: And we thought we would just go out with our final salute to buttons by the one—one mechanism man created that hates a button.

LATIF: And the music you are hearing was arranged by the composer Keith Harrison. It is a zipper rag.

ROBERT: Zippers being mortal enemies of the button.

JAD: On that note, you weirdos ...

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: ... we should go. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Go ahead, Latif.

LATIF: And I'm Latif Nasser.

JAD: Thanks for listening.

ROBERT: Can I just tell you a story?

JAD: 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 [bleep] 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?

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: 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!

-30-

 

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