Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Temple Grandin. Temple is a renowned American author, animal behavior expert, and advocate for autistic people. Her inventions of a hug machine to pacify people with autism and curved corrals to reduce panic in animals during slaughter have brought her considerable popularity across the world. She’s written numerous books on autism and animal welfare, including Animals in Translation, The Autistic Brain, and Thinking in Pictures. Her life has been transformed into an inspiring film, Temple Grandin, starring Claire Danes—and has won several Emmy awards and a Golden Globe. Temple is currently a professor of animal science at Colorado State University.
Today, Temple and I spoke about the differences between verbal and visual thinkers, and how to build a bridge of understanding between the two. We talked about the importance of helping people on the autistic spectrum invest time and energy in what they can do, not in what they’re lacking. We also talked about Temple’s observations working with animals and how, as a nonverbal thinker, she feels a special kinship with the animal world. Finally, Temple and I spoke about her view of spirituality and how she sees the Hubble Deep Space Field when people ask her questions about her spiritual experience. Here’s my conversation with Temple Grandin:
Temple, you begin your TED Talk, “The World Needs All Kinds of Minds,” talking about how autism is a spectrum—and then you go further, and you say that Einstein, Tesla, and Mozart would all perhaps have been considered to be on the autism spectrum. I’d never heard anyone say that before, and I found that quite provocative. I thought we could just start there. Really? Einstein, Tesla, and Mozart? Would they all have been considered on the autism spectrum?
Temple Grandin: Well, Einstein had no speech until age three. Lots of tantrums, liked to line things up.
See, autism is a behavioral profile. There’s no lab test for autism. And yet, [there are] a lot of engineers and scientists out in Silicon Valley that have got mild autistic traits. In fact, when you put two computer scientists together, sometimes you get a kid who that’s got very severe, low-functioning autism.
See, as a visual thinker, I see the person—I don’t see the word. Verbal thinkers—I think—tend to more categorize it. But, I see one little geeky kind of kid who’s in a gifted and talented class, and then I see another kid just like him and he’s in an autism class. But, many schools would have placed Einstein as a child on the mild end of the autism spectrum.
TS: So, help me understand this view of autism as a spectrum. How would you illustrate that or describe one side of the spectrum and the other side of the spectrum—what might be in-between.
TG: Well, basically, on the mild end of the spectrum, there’s no speech delay. But, the person is socially awkward. Oftentimes really bright in an area such as art or mathematics. And at the other end of the spectrum, you’re going to have a very, very severely handicapped person with no speech and maybe has difficulty dressing themselves.
So, how did this all get called the same thing? Because when the kids are three, the ones that have speech delay look the same. If you do a lot of very early, intensive therapy—which is really important—you can kind of pull some of them out of it. Then there’s others and they don’t progress so well.
But, there’s kind of three levels of severity. There’s the Aspergers type, and they’ve removed that now from the diagnostic classification—but no speech delay, socially awkward. Then you have autism where there’s speech delay—one like me, with no speech until four to five years old. And then you’ve got a person—they have speech delay plus other problems. They don’t learn to talk, and they may have some other really severe handicaps.
TS: Now, one of the things that seems so amazing to me about you is that here you are, someone who’s on the autism spectrum—someplace in the middle, as you’re describing—but you’ve been able to have—if you will—a “meta” view—a view from above—of the entire process [and] the scientific understanding of what it might mean to be on the autistic spectrum. How is it that, from the inside, you can look at the experience almost as if from the outside?
TG: Because I have my own experiences, but then I also read a lot. I had trouble learning to read. I had to learn to read with phonics. Other kids are going to learn to read with whole words.
But, I read a lot. I read a lot of scientific papers. I read a tremendous amount of stuff.
TS: Now, you mentioned your own experience from the inside. I know you wrote a book called Thinking in Pictures, where you described a little bit about what it’s like on the inside. I wonder if you can explain that for our listeners—what it feels like on the inside.
TG: Well, [in] the first chapter of Thinking in Pictures, I discuss how my brain is like a VCR—and now I’m really dating myself. I should have said “videos.” But, all my thoughts are in pictures. They’re like videos in my head. I didn’t know that most other people tend to think more in words.
I describe how I think. I also describe some of the sensory problems I have [and] I still have somewhat with scratchy clothes against my skin, which really bothers me a whole lot. I have problems with sound sensitivity, high anxiety when puberty hit—that’s now controlled with a low dose of antidepressant drugs. And I describe these experiences in my book, Thinking in Pictures.
I also have a chapter in there called “Einstein’s Cousin,” where I talk about some of the people that I think might have been on the spectrum undiagnosed. I went through their biographies and looked for descriptions of childhood behavior. There are some other books out—it isn’t just me that’s saying this—about other people, some scientists and musicians being on the spectrum.
I’ve worked with people in skilled trades when I was out working on construction that I know were mildly on the spectrum. The reason why they’re doing well is because they got to take a skilled trade like welding or auto mechanics.
TS: Now, let’s talk a little bit more about this “thinking in pictures,” because I’ve met really great storytellers and I’ve even noticed in my own experience—you know, I can shut my eyes and sometimes, if I’m telling a story, I can see a whole movie. [I] can describe slide by slide the movie that’s going on inside my brain.
So, it seems like thinking in pictures is not just something that people who are on the autism spectrum experience—
TG: Oh, no! Thinking in pictures is a continuum. I tend to a real extreme version of it, because I can test-run equipment in my head.
But, it’s a continuum. People who are artists tend to think more in pictures. In my latest book, The Autistic Brain, Richard Panek and I go over all the research that shows that there are the artist kind of thinking—who thinks in photorealistic pictures or object visualization—and there’s another kind of person that’s a more spatial, pattern, mathematical kind of visualization. There are actually two different types of visual-spatial thought: photographic-object and pattern thinking.
In The Autistic Brain book, we’ve got all the scientific studies that show that that’s actually true. They were looking at artists and engineers. They were not looking at autism in this study—in the papers.
TS: Yes. Yes. So then, if thinking in pictures is one of the aspects that potentially puts you on the autistic spectrum, you were describing the other qualities as well. You said severe anxiety and also difficulty in social—
TG: The main, core deficit in autism is problems with social interactions—being socially awkward. I definitely had that problem. That’s described in Thinking in Pictures and other things that I’ve written.
TS: What have you found has helped you the most in terms of social awkwardness?
TG: Just [an] old-fashioned ’50s upbringing. Table manners were taught. Shaking hands. I had bosses at work—I had some good bosses that explained to me that criticizing some welding that looked like pigeon doo-doo was not the right way to do it and I needed to apologize.
Just telling me—sort of like coaching somebody in a foreign country on how to interact with people better. You cannot be vague. Like when I went to China, I learned that if I point with one finger, that’s rude. In China, when you point, you use your whole hand.
TS: Yes. But, Temple, I think a lot of people maybe have had training in how to be gracious socially, but they still find themselves panicked, sweating, and not really capable of doing it.
TG: Well, a lot of these things are continual. Now, brain scans have shown that my fear center is three times larger than normal. Now, I want to emphasize [that] that’s not true for everybody with autism, and that’s spelled out in my book The Autistic Brain.
But, autism is a continuum. See, the other thing is, it’s not a hard diagnosis like tuberculosis. You do a lab test and you definitely have tuberculosis. It’s a behavioral profile. Over the years, doctors have been changing the criteria for the behavioral profile, and nobody’s doing that with tuberculosis.
What’s happened now that they’ve taken out the Aspergers is that you have kids that [in] my generation were just called geeks and nerds [who] are now getting labeled with autism. Some of the kids are doing really well and others—real smart, verbal kids—are kind of getting a handicap mentality.
Mother was always pushing me to do stuff. I had to learn how to shop. I had to learn how to order food in restaurants. You’ve got to just learn that stuff.
TS: Now, forgive me for my ignorance, but when you say Aspergers has now been taken out of the diagnostic approach, can you help me understand that? I’m not aware of that.
TG: Well, Aspergers was the social awkwardness with no speech delay.
TS: Yes.
TG: And what they’ve done now is merged it all into the autism continuum, where [in] autism you previously had to have speech delay along with a lack of social relatedness and other symptoms like repetitive behavior.
TS: Yes, yes. OK. I understand. And do you feel that it served people on the autism spectrum better when Aspergers was delineated as its own category?
TG: Well, there are certainly people who have had that diagnosis that feel that way about it. The thing I want to see is I want to see kids go out and be successful.
OK, a kid comes up to me and he’s a little socially awkward. He can talk. He’s really good at art. Then work on building up his ability in art!
When I was in elementary school, my ability in art was always encouraged and I was encouraged to do lots of different kinds of art,—not just the same thing.
It [might be] that little kid’s good at math. Well, don’t make him do the baby math book. Give him the more difficult math book. I’m getting concerned that too often there’s too much emphasis on the deficit and not enough emphasis on building up the area of strength.
You see, being a visual thinker, I go watch some show on TV or something about a prodigy playing the piano. Then I go to an autism meeting and I see a kid exactly like them, and instead of working on improving his musical ability, they want to stomp it out because they say it’s abnormal. And they’re the same kid! You see, I don’t get hung up on the word.
TS: Yes, yes. Now, help me understand why somebody [would] want to stamp out someone playing the piano gorgeously.
TG: Well, because they get into what’s normal and abnormal behavior.
TS: So, it’s abnormal because it’s unbelievably gifted?
TG: Or it’s abnormal because that’s all he wants to do. But, people get hung up on the labels.
Now, I want to find out what kind of thinker you are. I’m going to give you my visual thinking test. Access your memory on church steeples. How do they come into your mind?
TS: I would say I see a generic steeple.
TG: OK. You are a verbal person. A person who’s very verbal sees a generic steeple—a generalized pointy thing.
The person that’s more visual will start naming off specific ones—“Oh, the one down the street. The one by the grocery store.” They’ll start naming off locations.
Now, there’s a reason why I picked “church steeple” to ask you, and not “house” or “car.” Most people can visualize their own home or their own car, because they’re so familiar with it. But, when I ask you something you don’t own . . .
TS: Yes.
TG: . . . that’s when I separate out the generic images from the more specific ones. I see specific steeples.
TS: Yes, yes. And is that more unusual?
TG: Well, there’s—a lot of artists would do the same thing. In fact, [there are] studies that show that show there’s different kinds of visual and mathematical thinking. They were not done on people with autism. They were done on engineers and artists.
TS: Yes. Yes. Now, you said something, Temple, that I thought was really interesting. You said that the fear center in the brain—
TG: The amygdala.
TS: The amygdala. That your amygdala is three times larger.
TG: That’s right.
TS: That’s quite remarkable. I know I myself experience quite a bit of fear in my life. I’m just curious to know how you’ve learned to work with your fear, since you have this extra dose—and you’ve done so many things! So many things people would be terrified to do.
TG: Well, by the time I got into my early thirties, I went on antidepressant medication. I have a chapter in Thinking in Pictures where I explain all the experiences with that.
Heavy exercise would help. I built my squeezing machine. But then, as I went through my twenties, the anxieties and panic attacks got worse and worse and worse and worse.
I read an article about a low dose of antidepressants. You have to make sure you use a low dose. When it works, it really, really works. The mistake that gets made when you’re using antidepressants for treating fear is giving too high a dose. The high doses used for depression can cause agitation and insomnia—a very common mistake. And I fully explain that in my book.
TS: Do you feel afraid now when you do things like public speaking or other things that many people are quite afraid of?
TG: When I did my first public speaking in graduate school, I panicked and walked out. Then I gradually got better at it.
One of the things that helped me to get better was to have really good slides when I gave some of my first talks on cattle handling. So, then when I panicked, I could always go back on the slides have those [help] me.
TS: Yes. But now, here, at this point in your life, you’re talking to me and you have no idea what I’m going to ask you, and you don’t seem particularly afraid. You seem pretty relaxed. So, I’m curious how you—
TG: Well, I’ve been on antidepressants since my early thirties and I’m still taking them.
TS: Yes. So, you really credit them with helping you work with this oversized amygdala.
TG: Yes—and a lot of visual thinkers tend to be kind of panic monsters. I’ve worked with other visual thinkers in design work, when we were working on designing stuff for a meatpacking plant. I know quite a few designers that are taking Prozac and it’s keeping them off the drugs and alcohol. Otherwise, they’d be using drugs and alcohol to treat their anxiety.
TS: Now, [Temple], one of the things that I’m really interested in understanding is—I’m going to quote now from a recent conversation I had with somebody on the topic of collaborative intelligence. It’s how to think with people who think differently than you do—how do we do that and how important [is it]?
TG: I think it’s very important. The first step is that you realize that people think differently. I did not fully realize that until I did my book, Thinking in Pictures. Then I got further insights later on.
Let’s take something like the iPad. I mean, Steve Jobs was an artist who made the interface and then engineers have to make it work. You see, that’s the different kinds of minds working together.
I’ve talked in many of my talks about the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. That was a visual thinking mistake. What I’ve learned about the mathematician mind is they didn’t see the folly of putting all the emergency cooling equipment in a non-waterproof basement with no water-tight doors.
That’s a mistake I would never make. I can’t design a nuclear reactor, but I do know if that emergency pump doesn’t run, I’m in so much trouble it isn’t funny. And if I’m living next to the sea, I’m not putting it in a basement with no waterproof doors. Waterproof doors would have prevented that.
TS: So, how would someone think best with you—with the kind of thinking that you engage with? If I want to think well with you and dialogue well with you, what do I need to know?
TG: Well, I think the best thing to do is—OK, I realize that you think in words.
TS: Right.
TG: And I’ve had to work harder to get better at communicating with people that think strictly in words, because when I talk about things like different types of autistic kids, I’m seeing them—specific examples.
See, another thing is [that] concepts for me are bottom-up. All concepts are made of specific examples sorted into categories. Where when you think in words, there’s a big tendency to over-generalize. Like, people say, “What do you do about autistic behavior in a classroom?” Well, that’s not enough information to answer that question. I mean, how old is the kid? What’s he doing? I’m going to handle a three-year-old differently than handling some kid in high school.
TS: Yes. Yes. Well, first of all, it sounds like you’ve made a lot of effort and taken a lot of strides to meet verbal thinkers where they live. What I’m trying to understand is, as a verbal thinker, I want to meet you where you live. It sounds like if I was specific and I ask specific things and talk about specific things, that that’s helpful.
TG: Well, yes. It’s specific examples. I’m finding when I’m troubleshooting animal behavior problems, people say things like, “My dog’s crazy.” Well, is the dog crazy-happy or crazy biting somebody? That’s not enough information to solve their dog behavior problem based on “crazy dog.”
I find that highly verbal thinkers tend to over-generalize. Now, my kind of thinking—to make it work well—I have to fill up the Internet of my mind with a lot of web pages so that the Google I’ve got inside my head can surf through them and sort things into different categories.
TS: Right. So—
TG: I think the best way to understand how my mind works is give me some key words—I’m in my office, so don’t give me something that I can see in an office. And don’t make it something common like “house,” “car,” or “pen,” or something like that.
TS: OK. So, you want me to give you—?
TG: I want you to sort of ask me to explain something. You give me some words—something you might want me to explain—and I’ll tell you exactly how my mind accesses this information.
TS: OK. What makes a midget?
TG: “What makes a midget?” I’m now seeing some pictures in my mind a person I saw at a convention that was really small and another one that I saw at a grocery store.
“What makes a midget?” OK. Now I’m seeing diagrams of pituitary system and the systems in the brain—lack of growth hormones. I’m starting to recall stuff—physiology books—bringing up some pictures of the endocrinology chart that was in the physiology book.
But, I tend to see the diagrams in the book first before I go for the words. Or, if it’s something I’ve read, it’s something I’ve read and I’ve turned it into an image.
Then you have two kinds of midgets. You have dwarfism, where they are not properly proportioned; and a midget, where they’re small but they’re proportioned correctly.
TS: Yes. Now, how is it, Temple, that they way that you think in pictures has been such a doorway for you to understand animal behavior? I mean, here you are—
TG: Animals don’t think in words.
TS: OK.
TG: They think sensory. OK, the dog’s out there sniffing a bush or something. What would he be smelling? What’s the animal seeing? What’s it hearing? High-pitched sounds often tend to be distress calls. Lower-pitched sounds sometimes are threatening. Sometimes they are associated with something nice. It’s sensory.
OK. Start thinking about some food you really like. What does it smell like? What does it look like? What does it feel like when you chew it?
OK—when you think about your favorite food—OK, mine’s chocolate ice cream with raspberry sauce on it and maybe some crushed raspberries on it. I really like that. But, now I’m like, “It’s cold. I can smell the chocolate. I can taste it. I feel it in my mouth.”
I think a good way to think about sensory-based thinking is [to] try to get away from words when you’re thinking about eating some of your favorite foods.
TS: OK. Once again, not to be too ignorant here, but I am really trying to understand—I get that animals don’t work on the verbal channel. But, help me understand the connection between the pictures that are the way you think and the sensory channel here.
TG: When I first started working with cattle, I noticed that [when] you tried to get them to go down a chute to get vaccinated and they’d balk at a shadow, or they would refused to walk over a hose. Or, there’s a coat hanging on the fence [and] they’d stop to sniff that.
That’s something I noticed very early on. Other people didn’t notice it. Now, at the time that I was doing that, I didn’t know that other people didn’t think visually. I wrote some very early articles when I was working for the Farm & Ranch magazine in the ‘70s. When I was in my twenties, some cattle going up and sniffing a coat on a fence—it seemed obvious to me to look at what the animals were looking at.
I have a slide that I show in my talks that I use to test people with. I’ll talk in my talk and show them a bunch of things that cattle might stop at: seeing people outside the chute, a shadow, a chain hanging down. I’ll show them that and I’ll talk about getting these distractions out of the chutes.
Then, at the end of my talk, I’ll show a slide of an animal coming out of a chute staring at a sunbeam on the floor. The caption says, “Non-Slip Flooring.” But, that’s not really what I wanted to talk about. That’s kind of a distracter.
Then, after I say, “Yes, non-slip flooring’s important,” I say, “Now, you notice anything else about this picture?” A few hands will go up. They’ll say that they’ve seen the animal looking at the sunbeam.
Now, when I show that picture to children, half the hands go up in the room. And when I showed that picture to mathematicians at Fermilab, almost no hands went up. They don’t see that the animal is staring at the sunbeam.
Now, when I point it out, it’s real obvious to most people—once I point it out.
TS: So, your ability to get inside the mind of animals—if you will—once again, I get that you’re thinking visually. How has that helped you really get into this sensory knowing of animals?
TG: Well, because I’m thinking about what the animal is seeing. Cattle [are animals] that get scared really easily, and it’s often based on something that they were seeing. It’s sensory-based.
I think in images when I think about stuff. When I was telling you about the Fukushima nuclear power plant, I don’t exactly what the basement looks like, but I do know it was painted baby blue. When I went to Japan years ago, I actually drove by it.
So, I’m seeing baby blue steel doors being smashed in with water. Now I’m seeing some guy in a Japanese hard hat up on a baby blue catwalk looking at a big generator that’s now underwater. He’s saying a lot of bad words in Japanese. Whatever he’d be saying. He knows that he’s in a lot of trouble.
So, in that situation, I’m kind of imagining a picture because I don’t know exactly what the basement looked like.
TS: Yes, yes. Do you yourself have extreme sensitivity to lights and sounds things like that?
TG: I’m somewhat sound sensitive, I startle easily. When I was a little kid and the school bell went off, it was like a dentist’s drill hitting a nerve. Sometimes, that can be desensitized—especially if the child can initiate the sound.
It’s now just a nuisance, now.
TS: I guess what I’m curious about is you wrote about this book, Animals Make Us Human, and you write about many different kinds of animals. I’m curious if somebody in their own experience wants to have more insight into, “I wonder what it’s like—really—to be the dog that lives in my house with me—or the cat or the bird that lives with me—”
TG: A dog’s world is smell. I think the closest that humans can get to that is—I read about a wine steward that could identify a few thousand wines by smell.
TS: Wow.
TG: That might be a person sort of [smelling] like a dog. There’s also an Oliver Sacks piece about a guy that took some drugs and he noticed as he walked through town—he’d smell all of the shops and he got to thinking, “Maybe that’s how a dog experiences things.”
But, a dog can differentiate so many different smells better than we can.
TS: And if somebody wanted to get into the inner experience of a cat?
TG: Well, they can see better at night than we can. A cat’s a hunter. I’m thinking about [how] they also know how to beg for food, so they’ll wake you up at six o’clock on the morning to feed them, too. They know just how to do that—jump on you while you’re in bed.
TS: Yes, yes. Is there something that you do in your work—I mean, I know you’re a professor of animal science at Colorado State University—is there something that you do in addition to reading and understanding the literature—a way that you’re able to get inside the animals’ experience? I mean, how are you—
TG: Oh, I’ve done a lot of observation of animals too. One of the things that I talk [about] when I give talks to veterinary students and animal science students is I say that, “One of the things I want to teach you in my animal behavior class is to be a good observer.”
What position are the ears in? What’s the animal’s posture? What’s it doing with its tail?
Be a really good observer. I really emphasize, “Get away from verbal language if you want to understand animals.”
TS: Yes, yes. What I’m getting from this interview, Temple—so far—is that as a verbal thinker, I think I’m so hooked into the verbal channel that I’ve over-emphasized that and I’ve missed a lot. I’m missing a lot.
TG: Let’s talk about some of the deficits of being a visual thinker. Visual thinkers tend to ramble. When I do writing, I have to put myself on a really tight outline so I don’t ramble. I use slides or notes to keep me on the—see, a verbal thinker tends to be much more linear in how they think. [Whereas] visual thinkers [are] much more associative.
OK, so let’s go back to—give me another key word and I’ll show you how my mind kind of associates. And it has a type of logic. So, give me another key word or something to think about.
TS: OK: A giant.
TG: “A giant?” OK. I’m seeing cartoons of ”Jack and the Beanstalk.” There’s a grocery store that’s called The Giant that I went to a long time ago. I’m seeing some giant chocolate bars. I mean, there’s a lot of products that get advertised as “giant.” Now I’m seeing Shrek—the ogre in that cartoon movie. I know he wasn’t a giant, but some of the giants in fairy tales are kind of ugly ogres.
So, now I’m starting to see some of those kinds of characters. I’m now seeing some of the aliens now in the latest Star Wars movie. And now, how did I get to 3-D glasses?
OK, the reason I’m not getting from ogre-type things is that I wish I had not seen the movie in 3-D because there’s so much fascinating detail in the aliens that’s blurred in the 3-D version and I wish I’d seen it in 2-D.
So, that’s how I’m getting from giants and ogres to 3-D glasses.
TS: Yes.
TG: OK. See how that association works? It has a logic to it.
TS: Yes. Yes. Do you think people are just born with different predilections—different strengths in how they think? Some are verbal, some are visual—that’s just how we are?
TG: Yes. Now, [that] gets into all about brain plasticity. Where I think the innate would make the biggest difference—in other words, what you’re born with—is where you have an extreme ability or an extreme disability.
Then a lot of other people are somewhere in the middle. You can work on developing some verbal stuff. Going back to those church steeples, if I force you to close your eyes, you can probably start to see a steeple that’s more specific. Can you do that?
TS: Yes, I can. Yes.
TG: That’s right. See, now you’re going down deeper into the graphics files in your brain—getting out of the association cortex.
TS: Yes. Yes.
TG: But, it’s possible to do it—but you have to kind of force it.
TS: Yes.
TG: Where for me there is no generic one except for the one I carefully found on the Internet [laughs] to use in my slides.
TS: Yes, yes.
TG: And then now I’m seeing a particular PowerPoint slide with an illustration on it that I had to hunt for a lot to find something that looked generic.
TS: Now, Temple, we talked about the extreme sensitivity that animals can experience—whether it’s being frightened by another person or a shadow or a loud sound or something like that—and you mentioned that, for you when you were little, you also would occasionally get freaked out by super-loud sounds and things like that.
TG: That’s right. It was bad.
Now, the thing I want to mention also because there’s been some misunderstandings about how I relate autism to animal behavior. Where the autism is most like animal behavior is in the sensory-based thinking [and] also in the extreme memory—things like bird migration, for example. Where autism is probably not similar would be in the emotions. In the animal, I think emotions are real similar to our emotions. Most animals are not socially awkward.
But, in the extreme memory and animals when it comes to sound are very much into the tone of voice. In my book Animals in Translation, Catherine Johnson and I reviewed research on prairie dogs, [which] have a kind of noun-like function, adjective-like function, and a verb-like function in their calls by both the tone of the call and the rapidity in the call.
TS: Interesting! So, they’re saying different things and you can hear that?
TG: Well, maybe there’s like a coyote that is—they have a coyote call. Then they have a coyote call to describe the coyote, like, “The one that lurks by the hole and waits for the prairie dog to come out,” or, “The one that just jumps from hole to hole.” Then there’s an urgency call—how much danger there is [and] how rapid they do it.
So, the adjective would be the urgency part of it. Then, if they make—I’m trying to remember the experiment. [Inaudible] they make a cardboard cutout. It also reacts to that with a call.
TS: Now, I wanted to understand what you meant by “extreme memory” and how that functions in animals.
TG: Well, in a squirrel for example, it can hide nuts in a thousand places and remember where they’re all hidden. There’s a bird—I think it’s called the Clark’s nutcracker—that can hide all kinds of food all over the place and remember where it is. Bird migration would be another example.
TS: So, animals have this ability. In terms of people on the autistic spectrum, they also—?
TG: People on the autism spectrum usually have really, really good memory. That tends to be in most cases.
TS: Is that true for you?
TG: For visual things, yes. If somebody said to me, “Oh, that’s the secret thing. You’re not supposed to see that,” I can guarantee you it will be remembered.
Other things I don’t have a photographic memory. I don’t have a photographic memory for hotel rooms because I could care less about hotel rooms.
TS: Right. But if you saw a diagram or something like that, or—?
TG: If I saw a diagram and somebody told me it’s top secret, then I’m motivated to remember that.
TS: Yes.
TG: But, I don’t remember every flight I’ve been on—unless something out of the ordinary happened on that flight.
TS: Why do you think that you were so drawn to working with animal science? Why did that become your profession?
TG: Well, the first thing is, I was exposed to cattle when I was 15 years old. This brings up a really important thing about careers—students get interested in things they get exposed to. If my mother hadn’t gotten remarried [when I was] at age 14, it wouldn’t have brought a ranch into the family and I probably wouldn’t be in the beef cattle industry.
One big concern I have today about education is I don’t think a lot of young kids—just regular kids, even—are getting exposed to enough different careers. So many schools have taken out hands-on things. So, you don’t get to try on a lot of careers.
For example, in our department—in animal sciences—about 70 percent of the students both in our department and other universities want to be a veterinarian. And I think one of the reasons for that is it’s the only agricultural or animal career that the students are exposed to when they’re young.
But, by the time these students leave, about half of them [will say,] “Oh, I did some stuff in genetics,” or, “I did some stuff with ranch management. I found that interesting.” I always tell students, “Do summer internships that are career-relevant. Try on different careers. Find out what you like. Find out what you hate.”
TS: So, part of it was that you were exposed to cattle—
TG: I was exposed to it!
TS: Yes. But, it seems like there’s—
TG: And it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been exposed to it. I was an Easterner.
TS: It seems like there’s more to it though, in terms of your connection with animals. Don’t you think?
TG: Well, yes. And I saw cattle go in the squeeze chute and I got real infatuated with that because I noticed that it tended to calm them down. So, I built a squeeze chute-like device.
But, none of that would have happened if I hadn’t been exposed to it!
TS: Yes, yes.
TG: I mean, I’ve talked to parents where they find out that their kids go to computer programming. But, they have to be exposed to it.
TS: Yes. Yes. Well, you’re making a very, very strong case about exposing young adults and teenagers to different career possibilities. I mean, you’re making a very, very strong case.
But, I’m still trying to understand your personal emotional connection—if you will—with animals. Maybe I’m stretching here. Maybe that’s not like that for you.
TG: Well, the biggest thing is that my thinking process was more like them and I really related to cattle getting scared of different visual things. When I first started working on that, people thought that was kind of crazy.
Another thing that motivated me when I was in my twenties was that I wanted to prove to people that I wasn’t stupid. When I did those dip-vat projects that were shown in the movie—and that piece of metal that got taken out and it ended up working just fine—that proved to myself that I wasn’t stupid.
TS: Yes, well, I think you’ve clearly proven that beyond any shadow of a doubt, Temple.
TG: Yes, but when I was in my twenties—
TS: Sure. Of course.
TG: There was a big shadow of a doubt.
TS: Sure, sure. Now, I want to ask you another question that I’m sure you’ve been asked many times. But, I want to ask you myself here. Which is: you talked about how you worked with cattle and this squeeze chute, and that in the movie Temple Grandin, it shows very beautifully how you helped revolutionize the whole cattle industry—such that it’s a more humane, efficient, and peaceful way for cattle to go to their death, basically—to be killed.
TG: Well, one of the big things I’ve found—when I was really young, I thought I could fix everything with equipment. That fixes only half the problems. The other half is getting people to do things right.
One of the things that really made the difference is when we started the McDonalds lots in 1999 and I now had the power of a major retail chain that was buying a million dollars a year of beef trimmings from these different plants. We could make them—first of all—make them fix broken equipment. The major thing that made stunning bad was broken equipment and slippery floors. Then you’ve got to redo the floor surface so that animals aren’t going to be slipping and falling on it.
And then training people—and supervising people. In fact, Cargill and JBS—so, JBS is a Swift brand—now have video cameras monitored by outside auditors. This has really forced things to improve. What drives a lot of change is big retailers.
But, the system I developed for assessing and animal welfare is very simple, like traffic rules. You had to make five numbers. For example, if more than one percent of animals fell during handling, you’d fail the audit. If you had more than three cattle out of a hundred [fallen] over and mooing the stunning area, you’d fail the audit.
TS: But, here’s my question that I was driving to, which is: Did you think to yourself, “You know, I don’t want to do something that’s going to help cattle get killed and be part of the beef industry?” A lot of people would say, “I’m a vegetarian. I love animals. If you love animals, you wouldn’t help them—” even though you’re helping them die in a more humane and gentle way. Did that ever bother you emotionally in some way?
TG: Well, I got to thinking—yes, it has bothered me. When I did my big project for Center Track Restrainer System in 1990, I remember we got the system all built [and] had everything running just right, and I got kind of emotional about it.
Then I got to thinking: none of these cattle would have been born if we hadn’t bred them. The cattle would never have existed, and we owe these animals a decent life worth living. That’s something we owe them.
I’ve got other welfare concerns now that I’m concerned about—things like breeding animals to where they’re getting leg problems, which makes them lame. I have big concerns about that.
TS: What are the issues that you’re most passionate about bringing your tremendous talent to solving now?
TG: Well, the handling is the one issue that they actually have improved a lot. Now, I’ve been working on some handling issues in other countries where they have a lot of problems.
The packing plants now—it’s a matter of maintaining it. There’s still some bad videos showing up. Some of those are in really small places.
But, I’m concerned about things we’re doing with animals just genetically with regular breeding. I’m seeing problems of legs.
Let’s take an animal like the bulldog. I think it’s a deformed monstrosity. If you go online and you type in on Google Images “bulldog’s dilemma,” you will see a 1938 of a bulldog that’s functional. It has some snout length and it can breathe and it can walk.
I’m very concerned about those kinds of issues now, and those are some of the things students have been working on. One of my students—Ruth Woiwode—did a survey of 28 feed yards (cattle handling), and for the most part have gotten really good results on that. That has improved. It’s not perfect, but let me tell you: in the bad old days of the ‘90s and the ‘80s, it was awful. The bad old days were really, really bad.
And some of the stuff that’s on the activist videos now—compared to the bad old days—is training video compared to some of the stuff I witnessed in the ‘80s and the early ‘90s.
TS: So, Temple, I want to change the subject a little bit and ask you what could be a little bit of a “coming from left field” question, which is: I’m wondering if you think of yourself as a spiritual person, and if so what that would mean to you.
TG: Well, when I look up at the stars at night, I think about it. I got this poster when I visited NASA called “The Hubble Deep Space Field.” On this poster is a hundred galaxies. Galaxies, not stars. I look at that poster and, you know, it’s a big unknown out there.
I read about some [things like] the supercollider and all the things that they’re doing at CERN—things in physics. Some of it I understand, some of it I don’t.
That’s the sort of stuff I think about—
TS: So, for you, spirituality takes you into the realm of mystery—the mystery of space.
TG: Well, I look at that Hubble Deep Space Field when I think about those things. I look up at the stars at night. There are lot of great unknowns out there.
TS: And what does it feel like for you when you look at that poster or you look at the stars?
TG: Well, there’s a lot of things we don’t understand.
I think one of the most important things—and I usually don’t do this much discussion on religion—but I think it’s very important that people follow the Golden Rule. Treat others the way you want to be treated. I’ll put it in modern English.
TS: Yes.
TG: Back when I was in my teens, I get sent a brochure from a cattle chute company. It had some little sayings on it. One of the sayings was, “Men will wrangle for religion—fight for it, die for it, do anything but live for it.” I think that’s a very good quote. I looked it up online and it was a preacher—I think it was in the Church of England—that wrote that. Of course, when I was a teenager, I had no way of looking up where it came from. I’ve written about that in Thinking in Pictures.
TS: So, you give a lot of presentations at conferences on autism—all kinds of conferences, but also to audiences of people who are interested in understanding autism. I’m curious if you’d be willing to summarize to our audience: what’s the core of the message that you give to parents who have discovered that they have a child that’s somewhere on the autistic spectrum?
TG: OK. If it’s three-year-olds without speech, I can give you a standard answer. Now, when the kids get older, things get a little more complicated.
But with three-year-olds, if you have a child that’s not talking—regardless of diagnosis—the worst thing you can do is to do nothing. You’ve got to start working [and] engaging that kid—teaching them words, teaching them turn-taking games. You’ve got to engage them. The worst thing you can do is just let this little kid just tune out and stim on electronics all day. You’ve got to keep electronics under control—unless it’s being done as an interactive activity with an adult.
Now, when the kid gets older—I think I’d just prefer right now to talk about more my type. He’s now fully verbal. He’s like in first or second grade, and is now fully verbal. I’d build on developing strengths. He’s good at math? Build on it. Good at art? Build on it.
Build on strengths. Lots of hands-on activities and lots of teaching basic skills—table manners, getting dressed, being on time.
I have a book that I’ve written just for teachers called The Way I See It. It’s a whole series of little, short chapters. The Way I See It—teaching social skills. When I was a little kid, I had to be party hostess to my mother’s parties.
Then, when a kid gets older, where I’m really seeing problems is that they’re not learning working skills. There’s a tendency to overprotect. I’m seeing things like an 18-year-old honors student that doesn’t know how to grocery shop. I didn’t think I was going to have to make grocery shopping a major part of my talks, but I’ve found out that I’ve had to.
And work skills—that needs to start in middle school. I know the paper routes are gone, but let’s make paper route substitutes—things like walking dogs for the neighbors, helping out with some office work somewhere, working in a farmers’ market. There’s a lot of different things. When I was 13, Mother got me a sewing job with a freelance seamstress and when I was 15 I was cleaning horse stalls every day. They’ve got to learn work skills.
TS: Now, Temple, I feel like I’ve gotten [at least] a little bit of insight in this conversation about how your mind works, if you will. But, I think that one thing that I’m not yet feeling I have a sense of is how your emotional life goes or how your heart flows, if you will. I’m wondering if you can give me some insight into that.
TG: Well, I get scared easily. That’s one of the things. And I feel very strongly that you have to do things to be a good person.
When I was a young kid, I had anger issues. I couldn’t control anger, and I had to learn how to switch that to crying—because if you cry, you keep a job. NASA space scientists cried when they shut down the shuttle. That was very sad. I watched that on 60 Minutes, and I was totally crying. If they’d been throwing things, they wouldn’t have been able to be NASA space scientists.
In a lot of situations, I have to learn to control emotions. I can get giggling about the stupidest things—some silly thing I just think is funny. Like—this will make me start laughing—I was behind a truck and he had a sign on the back of the semi trailer that says, “We ship anything anywhere.” And I said, “I bet I can give you a load that you’ll only ship once and never again!”
[Both laugh.]
TG: And now I’m thinking about all the gross things I can put in that truck. [Laughs.]
So, when I think of that, I start laughing. That’s just kind of silliness.
TS: Yes. What about love?
TG: Well, Mother one time wrote me a letter and said, “Love is making something grow.” I feel very strongly about helping my students to develop.
Now, the kind of emotion I’ve not really had is like—when I was in high school, I had a roommate that got totally infatuated with The Beatles. Girls would be ripping out the grass that Ringo Starr walked on. I just couldn’t relate to that. I’d go, “Yes, he’s cute, but I don’t want the grass he walked on.”
TS: Yes. Yes. And what would you say, Temple, has been one or two of the most glorious high points in your life?
TG: Well, it’s when I’ve had some jobs that have worked really successfully. That’s been a big high point in my life.
I really get a thrill out of figuring out how to make things work. Some of those things have been great high points.
I have to say that going to the Emmys and the movie—that was a major, big high point. That was so exciting and fun, because you don’t know who’s going to win until they rip open that piece of cardboard. That was a real high point.
TS: Now, I wanted to talk to you just a little bit more about something that we briefly touched on, which was this phenomenon of sensory overload. Here you invented some type of hugging machine to help people—
TG: But only because I did that to help my anxiety. But, sensory overload—the way I explain it at autism meetings [is], “Imagine if you were inside the speaker at the rock and roll concert.”
TS: Wow.
TG: You’re inside one of those big speaker boxes. That would be sensory overload. Just so loud you can’t stand it—and all kinds of flashing lights going on, and strobe lights are going on. Can you imagine what it would be like to be inside one of those big box speakers?
TS: Yes. It sounds actually overwhelming and terrifying.
TG: It would be terrible.
TS: Yes.
TG: OK. That’d be sensory overload.
TS: And, in your research, is that common for people on the autism spectrum or maybe on the more extreme end to experience it?
TG: It varies a lot. You can have some people that are fully verbal that have a lot of problems with sensory overload. Extreme effort is required to screen out background noise. They have to really, really expend a lot of effort.
My sensory problems now are nuisances. But, there are some people where the sensory issues are extremely debilitating. It makes it impossible for them to tolerate a noisy restaurant, for example. I don’t like noisy restaurants, but I can tolerate them.
TS: What do you think of things like weighted vests and weighted blankets, and things like that?
TG: [For] some people, they’re helpful. It doesn’t help everybody. For some people that’s helpful. That’s an inexpensive, easy thing to try. Some people like those tight athletic compression garments. These are easy things to try.
Then you always get asked about “evidence-based.” Well, I kind of have a rule—because I come from the practical world—if something is easy to try (like a weighted vest), well, go ahead and try it. It’s not very expensive. It’s not dangerous. And it’s not time-consuming to try it. It’s something [that], well, you’re going to try it and find out right away if you like it.
So, I have relatively low requirements for evidence-based. But, if it’s something dangerous—like a drug with a ton of side effects—or extremely time-consuming or expensive in order to try it, then I’ll want the journal articles and the proper scientific studies.
TS: I’ve been seeing these weighted vests and weighted blankets come into the culture at large—meaning people are using them who aren’t on the autism spectrum, but who just—whatever—find themselves feeling panicky and just want to lie under a weighted blanket.
TG: Deep pressure calms down the nervous system. I was on a plane yesterday reading Maclean’s, which is like the Canadian Time magazine, and they had an article on weighted blankets.
It’s a simple thing to try. It works on some people and others it doesn’t. You can just try it.
TS: Yes. OK, I just have two final questions for you, Temple. If you could wave your magic wand—your Temple Grandin magic wand—and the culture as a whole—people as a whole—would view people on the autism spectrum differently—they were to see it differently—what would that difference be?
TG: They’d want to look at what people can do, not what they cannot do. And I put a very big emphasis in all my talks—if the kid’s a good artist, get his pictures on your phone. That’s what I learned a long time ago—yes, they thought I was weird, but when I showed off my drawings they went, “Wow, you made that?” It needs to be emphasizing what the person can do rather than on the handicap.
[I think] that’s really important because if we didn’t have a little bit of autism, then we wouldn’t even have this telephone and the recording devices you’re using right now.
TS: So, you’re saying that the inventor of the technology—?
TG: That’s right! You see, there’s some scientific literature out there that shows that creativity and some intellectual giftedness definitely shows up in the family history of people with autism. A little bit of the genetics in it—it’s a complicated genetics. It’s not like you have it or you don’t. It’s more like a continuum.
It’s like several hundred little, tiny code variations in the genome. A little bit of a trait gives you a brilliant engineer who’s socially awkward. Too much of a trait and you might get a kid who’s nonverbal and has very, very severe problems. Sometimes you get a nonverbal person who has a good brain hidden inside [and] that looks really low-functioning—but can type independently.
TS: Yes, yes. OK, here’s my final question for you: This program’s called Insights at the Edge. One of the things I’m always curious about is what the leading edge is in someone’s life in terms of their own growth—what they’re working on personally at this point in time. I wonder what that is for you.
TG: Well, I find that I always keep learning. The other thing is I’m an older person now. Some places say I’m past retirement age. I’m in a department with two professors with very severe health problems that are my age.
So, what’s the most important thing for someone that’s in the late sixties [that they] should be doing? I think one of the most important things I can do is getting students turned on. So, I jump at the opportunity [for] situations where I can talk to students, I can talk to parents of kids, and help the next generation be everything it can be—get students turned on.
I’ve had a lot of students write to me that got a diagnosis like maybe autism or maybe dyslexia or maybe ADHD or some other problem. They’ve seen the movie and it’s inspired them that they can succeed. That’s important.
So, a lot of emphasis on passing on knowledge. I just heard on the radio—on NPR—this afternoon that Marvin Minsky, who worked on artificial intelligence at MIT, had passed away. He would spend hours talking to students. He was 88 when he passed away.
I just got to thinking about that and I thought, “Well, I think that’s the same thing that I want to do—getting students turned on.” And I’ve worked with a number of students that have been kind of different and helped them to be really successful.
TS: Temple, thank you so much. Thank you so much for all of the writing you’ve done, the inventions you’ve done—all the ways that you’re inspiring generations now and to come. Thank you so much. You’re such a courageous and successful figure. Thank you.
TG: Well, thank you very, very much and thank you so much for having me.
TS: Soundstrue.com. Many voices, one journey. Thanks for listening.
