The Voices for Voices Podcast Episode 37 with Guest, Autism Activist and Animal Scientist, Dr. Temple Grandin
Justin Alan Hayes:
Welcome to the Voices for Voices podcast, sponsored by Redwood Living. Thank you for joining us today. I am Justin Alan Hayes, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, host and humanitarian. You can learn more about Voices for Voices on our Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube channel at Voices for Voices and our website, voicesforvoices.org. Voices for Voices is a 501c3 nonprofit charity organization that survives solely on donations. So, if you're able to, please consider heading over to voicesforvoices.org to help us continue our mission, and the goal and dream of mine to help 3 billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond. Or you can also send a donation to the mailing address of Voices for Voices at 2388 Becket Circle, Stow, Ohio, 44224. We're also available on the Cash App at Voices for Voices. Are you or somebody you know looking for a volunteer opportunity? If so, please reach out to us today via email at President@voicesforvoices.org.
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Please welcome and join me today in welcoming our guest. She has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; has earned the Dole Leadership Prize; appeared on-screen in A Mother's Courage Talking Back to Autism, a documentary narrated by actress Kate Winslet; and the inspiration behind the 2010 biography/drama titled Temple Grandin, to which actress Clare Danes won a Screen Actors Guild Award and Golden Globe Award, playing Dr. Temple Grandin. Dr. Grandin has also written many award-winning books, including Navigating Autism; Visual Thinking; and her latest release, Autism and Education: The Way I See It, where Dr. Grandin discusses the real issues that parents, teachers, and kids face every day. And Dr. Grandin has also been honored with a sculpture housed within the JBS Global Food Innovation Center, on the campus of Colorado State University, where she joins us from today. She's also listed as one of the top 10 college professors in the United States, and is acknowledged as the preeminent authority on animal behavior. It is an honor and pleasure to introduce our guest, Dr. Temple Grandin. Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Grandin.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
It's, uh, great to be here today.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Absolutely. Uh, and- and for our viewers and listeners, uh, you'll- you'll see, uh, another individual that's, uh, Heidi Larew, uh, she is on the Voices for Voices board. She is a supervising counselor, art therapist, and chemical dependency counselor. So she'll be jumping in, uh, from time to time, asking questions. Uh, so Dr. Grandin, just wanna, uh, start out by, uh, getting your feedback on, uh, the, I understand that art, for you, came, the interest came at- at an early age. Uh, how did that manifest itself? And then, throughout your career, how did you see maybe the changes, and the ebbs and flows to that?
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, when I was a little kid, probably third grade or so, became obvious I was good at art. But I would tend to just draw the same horse head over and over again. So, my mother always encouraged me to draw the whole horse, draw the stable, draw the saddle. What you wanna do with something a kid gets fixated on is broaden it and expand it. Okay, let's say it was cars, well, read about them, do math with them, take that interests and expand 'em. I was just talking to a mother the other day, her kid loves excavating machines.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Ah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, he can learn about how those work. You know, how do hydraulic systems work? I mean, there's a lot of things you could do to ex, expand that interest. And then, in my career, I've designed, uh, livestock handling facilities. That certainly used my art, uh, interest. Uh, now everything that I was doing beforehand was, uh, you know, just done freehand.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh, okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And there was one assignment that I had in college that was really good, and we had to spend an hour and a half art class drawing a picture of our own shoe. Each student had- had to take one of their shoes off.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Put it out just in front of 'em while they're sitting in a chair, in about the three quarters position, you know, like this, and- and draw it very slowly with pencil, without erasing, to make you see the shoe.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Ah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And that was a really useful, um, assignment. I had a really ratty, old sneaker that I drew, and I wish I still had that drawing. And then, when I got involved with the design of cattle handling facilities, I had no idea how to do drafting. And- and I worked for a while at [inaudible 00:06:20] construction company, and there's a draftsman there named Davy Jones, and he was a absolutely wonderful draftsman. And I saw, well, how does he do it? Also, I found that using a ruler forced my mind to really slow down.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
So that I can see the thing that I'm drawing. And I'd draw mostly steel and concrete construction, and I saw how Davy would make a pipe round, how he would draw concrete part, the dirt part. And- and then, I used the same instruments that he used.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Wow.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
On, but uh, you have to develop talent.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I can't emphasize that enough. The other thing I had to learn how to do is how to relate a flat blueprint to a building. Like for example, on a drawing of a building, there might be little squares in the building.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And those little squares are columns.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And the way I learned how to, um, understand the squares was to take the drawing for the Swift Meat Packing Plant, this would be back in early '70s, walk around the plant with the floor plans. And they included even the parking lot stripes in this floor plan, to where I could relate everything on that drawing to the actual equipment and structure in the plant. I had to learn how to take that flat drawing and relate that to things that I could see. I'm a visual thinker.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
But I had to learn how to take a square on a drawing and make it become a concrete column in my mind.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Wow. That, that's fascinating that it came to you at- at such a, an early age. I know it, myself, I was, uh, 35 when I kinda went through my- my mental health crisis, five-day inpatient stay. And part of the program was, was art therapy. And up until that time, I didn't- I didn't believe I was a- a- a good artist. And so, that was in my mind of, well, if I'm not good at something, I can't do it. But what I found through, uh, through the program was, it didn't matter how good I was as- as an artist, that, like you mentioned, the process, the detail that goes into it, how important that was. And I- I think that once I realized that, uh, I found myself, uh, being more interested in- in art for- for myself, not- not just, uh, for- for other purposes. Um, and- and that's how I actually, I met Heidi, is uh, through my, uh, one of my group therapies coming- coming out- out- out of the- the hospital. Um, how has been, uh, I don't wanna say like, not [inaudible 00:08:59] expanded career, but how's been the- the feedback on the- the art side, when you would share others? When, you- you mentioned that-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, I had to learn to [inaudible 00:09:10] doing the drawings professionally, so the way I sold jobs was to simply show off my drawings.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Here's one of my drawings, right here, in one of my [inaudible 00:09:21]...
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay, yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Yeah. Yep, there's one of my drawings. Uh, and what I learned to do was to show off my work, I hope that's clear.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Heidi Larew:
Oh yeah, it is.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I designed the front end of every Cargill Beef Plant in North America, back in the late '80s, early '90s. And the way I sold those jobs was showing off the work.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I had to do work that other people wanted. So I'd show off the drawings, and I'd show off the pictures of other completed projects.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I learned to sell my work.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Rather than myself. And the thing that I see with a lot of parents...
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
They always say, "Oh, my kid's a really good artist." But then they don't think to put some of that artwork on their phone.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh, yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Maybe they could show, sell some commissions for their kid.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
That doesn't even cross their mind, because there's some autistic artists, um, uh, like Grant Maniér, the eco-artist, makes beautiful, uh, artwork of horses and other animals with ripped paper. I mean, he's sold some, you know, $5,000.00, $10,000.00 pieces of art, on commission.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Wow, great. Heidi, do you wanna, uh, you wanna jump in with- with...
Heidi Larew:
Yeah, there was, the first thing I was thinking about was your shoe. I have so many ideas that I'm thinking about right now. But I was thinking about the shoe drawing and how that, I don't know whether they would've called it contour line drawing at the time, where you're looking at the item and don't really look at the paper very much, and you're thinking-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, that's kind of what we did, and we- we had to take the entire class period to draw it. They recommended just drawing really, really light, uh, you know, and drew the shoe in three dimensions. They had us put it at the three quarter position so that it wasn't really sideways, it wasn't straight on. And- and to try to like, almost trace the shoe onto the paper.
Heidi Larew:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And one of the things they did was to make you really slow down. Yeah, and that's another thing, when I start doing drafting, the slowing down and using the ruler, then I could see exactly how a fence might be set in the concrete curb, and then draw that.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah, I'm thinking about it in terms of like, mindful awareness, like really being present and thinking, not like, I'm drawing a shoe, but like, I'm drawing where this line connects to this one, and how these two compare with each other, that sort of thing. And then-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, here's another one of my drawings, right here.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah, they're just so beautiful.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Heidi Larew:
I'm just really drawn into them.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, there's lots of detail. And I drew, well, I would draw a drawing so the people working in the field could see exactly how to build it.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Right.
Heidi Larew:
And that ties in so much with what you've been talking about, about career. I mean, in the book Visual Thinking, and in some of your presentations, um, taking people's interests and helping them use it in a way that's very productive.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
That's right. That's right. You know, and ending up in a career. I, um, just the other, recently, heard about a lady with autism that, um, went into cake decorating.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Ah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And an interview for her was showing off pictures of the cakes, and the bakery instantly hired her. And that's a real recent example. The other thing that's good about doing things with something like drawing is it's not multitasking. She'd be working on one cake at a time, and then you'd go onto the next cake. But that's an example of something where you're selling the work.
Justin Alan Hayes:
So, for our, uh, listeners and- and viewers, uh, autism, uh, the, I- I myself am on the- on the, lower in the spectrum, the- the sounds, the lights. When you mentioned on the- on the phone earlier today about, you know, work, working the McDonald's drive-through and having to do all these, the different things, like all- all that is just so complex to- to myself. At what point in- in your life were, uh, you made aware of autism in yourself?
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, I- I had speech delay.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Til I was four, so it was obvious that I had a problem. But there's a lot of other people where there's no speech delay, oftentimes it shows up when the kid's seven or eight years old and they have no friends. There's also adults that get, um, uh, diagnosed later on in life. And that diagnosis can often give 'em a lot of insight, because it will explain why they've been socially awkward. You know, and it's almost a relief to find out. But on the other hand, I'm saying, um, situations where a teenager has got an autism label or maybe some other label, and they're getting so pampered and overprotected, they're not learning skills like shopping.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yes.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
You know, and everything's getting done for them. You know, and these are things that I learned in elementary school.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And- and I think that's an issue, not learning, not learning basic skills.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Right.
Heidi Larew:
You said, um, you've said your concerns about the trades that, um-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Oh, that, this is what I've talked about in my book, Visual Thinking. We have a huge shortage, high-end skill trades. Lemme just give you some examples.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Please.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
The US no longer makes the state of the art, electronic, chip-making machine, food processing equipment. Poultry processing plant for example, all the equipment is coming in from Holland.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And it goes back to our educational system. You see in Holland and other countries like Germany and Denmark and Italy, kids choose in ninth grade to go vo-tech route or university route. And there's a lot of good jobs in high-end skill trades [inaudible 00:15:00] that artificial intelligence will not replace. I can see-
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:15:04]
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... that artificial intelligence will not replace. I can see some web deign, low-level programing, stuff like that, just going right out, uh, with AI. But that's not gonna make the heating and air conditioning work, or the water system work, or the electrical system work. And there's a tendency to look at those... In, in Europe, they don't look down on that, where here, just the other day, I was on a Zoom call, like less than a week ago, with a local high school animal science class, you know, and I had a girl come up... You know, they had to come up to the mic to answer the questions and say, "My guidance counselor told me not to take any VoTech stuff."
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, I think that's really bad because I can see, in the future, those are the jobs that are not gonna go away.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah. Great.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I'm watching AI really, really carefully. I can see a lot of low-level coding stuff, um, getting taken over by AI.
Heidi Larew:
Something that really stood out to me was the part about the, um... some of the things you've been saying recently about there being so much emphasis on verbal skills, and then also what you had to say about algebra (laughs), totally get that.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, and see, in algebra, see, a lot of the people I've worked with, people that owned large metal working shops, they couldn't do algebra either because...
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... it's too abstract.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And, uh, uh, you have to be able to do arithmetic, but I'm seeing students that wanna become a veterinary nurse, or even a regular nurse for people on, on their second and third algebra class, and that's gonna keep them from becoming a nurse or a veterinary nurse.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
So arithmetic... Drug dosing... Drug dosing, they gotta do in their sleep. That's non-negotiable.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
But that, that, uh, math can be memorized. And there's other things you need algebra for. Quantum computing? You'll need it for that. You'll need it for a little mechanics. I mean, a whole bunch of engineering stuff. But there's a whole lot of other stuff that you don't need it.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And the thing is gonna be ironic watching AI, uh, stuff, uh, coming in, is, uh, hands-on skilled trades, not gonna get replaced by AI.
Justin Alan Hayes:
No.
Heidi Larew:
Right. Yep.
Justin Alan Hayes:
When...
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Neither will... And neither will things like, you figure, counselor.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh, r-... Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
People are always gonna want the human connection. Look what happened to Peloton. They had all this fancy exercise equipment for use at home. They're about going broke (laughter). People wanna go back and exercise with other people.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Another person (laughter).
Heidi Larew:
Right. Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Yeah. With other people, like have their exercise buddies they see every, every, every...
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... time that they...
Heidi Larew:
Yeah.
Justin Alan Hayes:
You, you have multiple works and multiple media platforms. When, when did you feel like sharing your experience was really taking hold where you wanted to share that, you know, through, through books and, and let people know a- about it? Because some, some people are, are introverted and they don't wanna... They don't feel comfortable sharing. But you're sharing.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, I, I...
Justin Alan Hayes:
And it's awesome.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I first got asked to share [inaudible 00:18:06]. When I was in Arizona, uh, was, was a, a occupational therapist named Lorna G. King. And she had me, you know, start out with some very, very small meetings. But in terms of a, you know... For the... All through the '80s and '90s, I never told customers about it.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I just, um... I let my work sell itself. I made myself very good at my work just like the lady with the cake deco- decorators.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
She's on the spectrum, but her work decorating cakes is really good. And, and it's making yourself good at a skill that other people want and appreciate. Now, I could see AI laying out cattle [inaudible 00:18:45].
Justin Alan Hayes:
Hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
But the thing that, uh, it's not gonna do is when you've got some real mess in a plant with equipment, it's not gonna fix that.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh, it's not.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
It's not gonna fix that. I... And I had a chance to go visit, um, a big, uh, uh, biomedical laboratory they call a biosecurity level 4 lab. You know, you've got the people in the space suits.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
You know what I learned about that building?
Justin Alan Hayes:
What's that?
Dr. Temple Grandin:
There are four floors on that building.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
The second floor is the labs. The other three floors are support equipment.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Ah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Three floors of support equipment. One floor of labs, and it's all high-end skilled-trade stuff, a bunch of it. HVAC on steroids, a bunch of other stuff. Without high-end skilled trades, that lab would not operate [inaudible 00:19:37]. They wouldn't be able to run it.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh.
Heidi Larew:
You said something a min-...
Dr. Temple Grandin:
[inaudible 00:19:40] operate it.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Heidi, did...
Heidi Larew:
You said something a minute ago...
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Example, I just was there just a week ago.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Wow. Yeah. That's recent. I mean...
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Yeah. That's real recent. That's now.
Justin Alan Hayes:
That's now. It's not... Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And the thing about the girl asked me the question about the guidance counselor said she shouldn't take a VoTech class, that was less than a week ago.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh, wow. That's, that's terrible. That's a shame. But...
Heidi Larew:
It is. Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Because these are the jobs I'm looking really, really carefully at. It reminds me of that Old West World movie, uh, where they... All... They have all the robots there, and this one maintenance man fixing the fountain (laughter), and he said, "I have to have a fu-... People like me because the robots don't... and water don't mix very well."
Justin Alan Hayes:
No. They don't. Yeah. Heidi, uh, you can jump in.
Heidi Larew:
I was ni-... Yeah. I just... I'm excited because I have like a million questions that I was thinking about. Um, this is a statement too, but the idea that some people would think that people with autism lack empathy and how that seems really absurd to me depending on the person. And it...
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, I have a lot of empathy for physical hardship. Well, I [inaudible 00:20:49] looked at awful pictures after a storm, or after a war, or something like that...
Heidi Larew:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
[inaudible 00:20:54] person standing in the ruins of their house, standing in a broken apartment building in a broken apartment.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I, I have...
Heidi Larew:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... had a lot of empathy for physical hardship. Would...
Heidi Larew:
Well, and then...
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... really, really be... It'd really suck to go back and your house is just a pile of splinters.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah. But even in some of your writings when you talk about like getting inside of, um... I don't remember what it was called, but you got inside of a space to look at what the perspective would be [inaudible 00:21:27].
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, that was [inaudible 00:21:28] cabin were seeing.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
So [inaudible 00:21:30] first work I ever did, I got down into cattle shoots to see what cattle were seeing.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And there were plenty of stuff like shadows.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Ah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Things we tend to not pay attention to, shadows, and, and reflections, and, and the suns shining in their eyes, stuff we don't tend to notice. Well, I, I didn't realize at the time that other... many other people think verbally, but I think visually. And my book on visual thinking...
Heidi Larew:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... I discuss the three kinds of thinking. I'm an object visualizer, so we're good at animals, photography, skilled trades, and, uh (laughter), and art.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And then you have your mathematical mind, music and math. And then you have verbal thinkers, and then you have mixtures of different kinds of thinkers. And so for a visual thinker, it was obvious to look at what cattle were looking at. And I didn't...
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... find out until I was in my late 30s that a lot of other... a lot of other people thought in words.
Heidi Larew:
I feel like... I don't know if this is what it was like for you, but I could imagine being inside that shoot, thinking, "I'm gonna get in there and see what it looks like to them," and then thinking, "Oh, my gosh, no wonder," like, "No wonder this is upsetting to them." That, to me, whether I'm not... I might not be saying it exactly the way that would've felt to you, but that, to me, feels like empathy.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, yeah. And I'm imagining, you know, the cattle don't know what it is. I get asked all the time if cattle know they're gonna get slaughtered. Well, they're more afraid of a shadow that looked like a spider...
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... that appeared for about an hour every afternoon when the sun was out, and they wouldn't walk over the spider monster shadow.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Wow. Yeah. This is, uh... This is fascinating. What... I- I-... So we talked, uh, a little bit about, you know, the, the, the algebra, uh, you know, screening out potentially.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, you see, the problem is the algebra is too abstract.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I need to convert things to a picture. The other problem I have, and this caused some people to lose some good skilled trade jobs, like an electrician apprentice and building fencing, is the boss would yak, "boom, boom, boom, boom, boom," to the ceiling lamp. "Blah, blah, blah, la, la, la, light switch. Blah, blah, blah, blah..."
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... yelling, "Function. Function," you know, something else. And I cannot remember long strings of verbal information.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And what needs to be done in that situation is let the person just make a pilot's checklist of the things they're supposed to install. Or if it's, um, "Close out the Walmart cash register at the... at the end of the shift," I would adjust the bullet of what are the closing out the cash register steps. Just they...
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
They need an external working memory.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And I would need that to, you know, to do these jobs. And even on my design jobs, we'd have a meeting, and I'd, I'd very clearly, "What is the outcome of this project?" I'd know exactly which land I could put it on, you know, what the real world right away is, what the chain speed or the plant was, you know, all things. All parameters of the, uh, great big, uh, water pump, yep, I had to design around that. You could to take that out.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
You see, I would have all this stuff, uh, written down beforehand.
Heidi Larew:
So you would have something like a list with bullet points.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Yeah.
Heidi Larew:
Something like that.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Yeah. [inaudible 00:24:44].
Heidi Larew:
And you could even... Say you had like, something like an index card with bullet points and then just, you know, put a plastic sheet over it or something, that is so [inaudible 00:24:54].
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Now, now, what's like... A- another kind of thing, because I have to have an external working memory, here's a job [inaudible 00:24:59] hard... I'd have a lot of trouble with. Let's say I get a job at the airport as a gate agent.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh, yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Yeah. Okay. Now that's not as complicated as a ticket agent. There's like 12 things you gotta do on that computer, you know, print boarding passes, plane seats, print boarding passes.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Uh, gate check bags. Now, if somebody just goes, "Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom," quick like that, showing me, I can't remember that sequence.
Justin Alan Hayes:
I can't either.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Cannot remember that sequence. So if I had to do that job, let's say today, I'd have to go somewhere it's not busy. Okay. Let me just... Now, show me the, the, the key sequence for gate-checking a bag. And I'd write them down. Printing a boarding pass, and I'd write them down. Then I would go home and practice.
Heidi Larew:
Mm-hmm.
Justin Alan Hayes:
You have to.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I need to make a jingle up.
Heidi Larew:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Uh, now the kind of stuff I'd be good at were frozen jet bridges, I want to make that pump go away. I have sat on a plane for an hour.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Frozen jet bridge. You see, that's the kind of stuff I understand how can we prevent that from happening. I'd find out exactly what was freezing on them and try to figure out a way to prevent that. You see, that's something I'd be good at, getting rid of frozen jet bridges that don't move. Uh...
Heidi Larew:
It's meaningful to you.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And the person that's g-... where you can just sh- show once how to do the keystrokes, that person wouldn't know what to do with a frozen jet bridge. This is...
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... where we need all the different kinds of minds.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Need them all. Because the thing with the frozen jet bridge, we've got to prevent it from getting frozen.
Justin Alan Hayes:
That's right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
That's the thing because you get any... You got to find out what's happening. Is the wheel just spinning on the ground? Or is the thing telescopes? Is it... What's getting ice in there where it won't telescope? You see, I see it.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And that's my new example, so I'm not giving yucky meat product examples (laughter).
Justin Alan Hayes:
No. I mean you- you- you- you're starting with the end in mind, and that makes g-... It so-... To me, being on the the spectrum and, and, and Heidi, to be able to, uh, to see an end, not just a part of the process. And I think some jobs, that's all you do. You just do a piece of the process.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, you see [inaudible 00:27:01] be able to do a freeze good skilled trade job's loss because they... This is recent. These are recent... This is, uh, where they didn't write down a checklist, okay. What they're supposed to... These were electrical things.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
What things they were supposed to install, order they were installed. And if they had just spent two minutes jotting them down, they wouldn't have lost the job.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And how can this... And this, uh, problems with working memory, this comes up all the time. And then, rapid multitasking jobs like a McDonalds takeout window, I wanna avoid those.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah. I am thinking that sounds [inaudible 00:27:44].
Heidi Larew:
I'm just so, uh, well... He... The sound, the overwhelming social aspect of it, the light, and then, like you're saying, the working memory. Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Working memory right now with the light, one of the biggest problems in indoor environment when there's no windows or limited windows, is flicker on LEDs and fluorescent lights.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah (laughs).
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Being down to one problem.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And then to diagnose that is to, um, take your high-end fancy new phone, go in the room in slow motion. Now, I'd wave, because I'm gonna play it back. I gotta make sure it was moving slow.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Got it.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
If it was in slow motion, then you can find those lights that flicker. And it not only bothers autistic people, but it also bothers people with head injuries, like veterans, for example, sometimes are bothered by that. And so what I do if I'm stuck in an office where, uh, the lights are terrible, you need to get a lamp from home.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Find a really bright LED or some other thing that doesn't flicker, and put it next to your desk.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Ah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
That's the thing you would need to do. Or get over by a window.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And I, I always like to try to figure out simple accommodations.
Heidi Larew:
Mm-hmm... And those light [inaudible 00:28:58]...
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And then, then things that people can do and not lose jobs.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
They can write down the things you were supposed to do. And then... And the way I would explain it to the boss is, if pilots need a checklist, I need one too.
Heidi Larew:
Mm-hmm.
Justin Alan Hayes:
That's right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
FAA requires it for every single flight.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah. And you want that as a... as a passenger, right? I mean (laughs)...
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, of course.
Justin Alan Hayes:
You don't want somebody to be like, "I'm gonna wing it." No.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
No. [inaudible 00:29:23] try to do pilot's checklists in medicine now for surgery, make sure they don't leave anything inside of a person.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Right.
Heidi Larew:
So something that motivates you and helps you, um, use your gifts is knowing that it's, um, meaningful, the work is meaningful, but...
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Oh, yeah. You're doing that... You see, like you take a nonverbal person with autism, and they make them put tags in a board, and then take them out and put them back in again, they know that's fake work. No. They need to be doing something that's real work.
Heidi Larew:
And...
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Not make busy work.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Right.
Heidi Larew:
The examples that you've given, some of them have been safe-...
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:30:04]
Heidi Larew:
The examples that you've given, some of them have been safety related, that's stands out to me. When you mentioned the bridge, and some of the things with the cattle, sounds like things that have to do with-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, I have a whole chapter in Visual Thinking on disasters.
Heidi Larew:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Okay, mathematicians, you need the visual thinkers like me to-
Heidi Larew:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... tell you they should've ut watertight doors on the Fukushima nuclear power plant to protect the electrically driven emergency cooling pump. That's not gonna run under water.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I can't design a nuclear reactor, but all I know is that that pump doesn't run when I need it, the results are horrible.
Heidi Larew:
Something else that stands out to me about your process is the idea of trying to back things up in, in sequence, and then prevent it.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, yeah, and, and you see, seeing stuff, okay, that bridge that feel down, I put in the afterword, uh, they probably hadn't painted it. It was a pretty flimsy bridge, where, um, you can't have too much rust eating it, and if they'd painted it, it probably wouldn't have fallen down, you know. You know, you can't lose half the steel wall fitness on that type of bridge. See, I just see it. Yeah.
Justin Alan Hayes:
I mean, I even think of what, it, s- when I was growing up, I would see my mom making a list to go, go to get groceries at the grocery store, but then I would see her making lists to, like you said, just maybe smaller tasks. Uh, and I, you know, being naive, growing up, I was just like, "Oh, that's just what old people do (laughs). Like, when I get older, that's just what they they do." But now, seeing myself, it really, uh, bridges that, uh, to use the bridge, uh to, to you're thinking in, in your work, uh, to be able to just have a, a, a checklist, to make sure you're doing what you're, you're set out to do. So, if you wanna do thing A, you need to know the three steps, like you said, to do thing A. You don't need to know what to do, to do thing B, or C, and when it's written down, it, it helps, and it helps free the, free the mind a, a little bit, and-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, I worked with a lot of people that I know are autistic, in s- in the high end, the metal working, uh, skill trades that owned shops, had multiple patents, were selling stuff around the world, they were, most had barely graduated from high school, taken a welding class. And if they hadn't taken a wel- hadn't taken that welding class, they wouldn't have been making the stuff.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And then on the mathematical side, also I've seen a lot of un- people on the autism spectrum, computer programmers, people in physics, and so, you know, the thing about autism, it's a true continuous trait-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... going from Einstein, who had no speech till age three, to somebody who's non-verbal that cannot dress themselves. I think it was a big mistake when they took the Asperger's out, which was basically socially awkward with no speech delay, merged it in with autism where there is speech delay.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Heidi Larew:
Wait, could you clarify, I, I just missed a part of your sentence.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, you [inaudible 00:33:07], you gotta remember the diagnostic protocols are not, you know, verified in a lab test like if they would do a test on you and tell you you got tuberculosis.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
You know, that's a very, very definitive test. Uh, it's based on a behavioral profile, you see, and for years, it used to be, to be autistic, you had to have speech delay.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Then-
Heidi Larew:
So-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... Asperger's, which is autistic traits but no speech delay.
Heidi Larew:
Okay. So, I know that the-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
So the Asperger type are not gonna get diagnosed when they're three.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I, they knew something was drastically wrong with me when I was two and a half.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Right.
Heidi Larew:
So, it would help if we had clarity on that, and there are words that are upsetting to people like high functioning and low functioning-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, that, I've, I, I, I've taken that out of my [inaudible 00:33:57], I... My old publications say that, you know, I-
Heidi Larew:
Oh.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... [inaudible 00:34:00] for almost, uh, thir- over 30 years.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I don't use that term any more.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah. And that-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
All my new, newer stuff, that's been removed. Old stuff, it's there, but I can't-
Heidi Larew:
Yeah, yeah, and that, um, I understand where people are coming from. So, I'm just speaking gently, you know.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I'd rather just say fully verbal or nonver- nonverbal.
Heidi Larew:
So, I'm-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah, say what it is.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
[inaudible 00:34:22] non-verbals, there's some good books written by people who type independently, that are non-verbal.
Heidi Larew:
Right. And then I know that there's a lot of debate around the term Asperger's because of, um, the, the man named doctor Asperger, I believe.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Yeah, he, he did some bad things.
Heidi Larew:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Like they, they, they... Another thing to call it is simply autism with no speech delay.
Heidi Larew:
Right, okay. So-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
That's basically what it is.
Heidi Larew:
So, again, what you're talking about is not adding layers of judgment, or using words ina way that, like, just adds so much, but it's just very functional, like-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, I just found that for me, the way I sold jobs, I worked freelance on this for many years, was simply showing off the drawings, showing off the, uh, the, the pictures of jobs, and then I was writing in the trade press. I mean, every, every field has its trade press, even car washes, they had some magazine called Auto Laundry News.
Justin Alan Hayes:
(laughs).
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And you, I wrote in the trade press about how to handle cattle, and how to design facilities in magazines like Beef.
Heidi Larew:
(laughs) So, there's just a, I mean, I like what you're saying, I like this theme that I hear over and over again that is about being effective. Like, thinking about what works.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, that's right. And the other thing is, I've written extensively about problems with anxiety.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Uh, I had terrible, terrible problems with anxiety, and I wrote about that in my book, Thinking in Pictures, my autobiography that came out over 25 years ago. It's got a new updated afterword. I've been on antidepressant medication for 40 years.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And I'm still on it. And what it did is it stopped the horrible panic attacks, the absolutely horrible panic attacks that were pure biology. When I was in my late 20s, I had non-stop colitis that wouldn't stop, I went on antidepressants, and the colitis cleared up because my nervous system was no longer in a constant state of fright-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... over nothing. And the mistake that's made with drugs like Prozac for example is too high a dose.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
The label doses for depression are too high. For anxiety, you might only need a starter does, or less than a starter dose.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah, and I-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I can't emphasize that enough. Too much, you get agitation, and then you cannot sleep.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah, and that, that, that's where I'm at with, with the anxiety medication I'm on. I'm at the starter dose, and I've been on it for five fe-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Which one are you on?
Justin Alan Hayes:
Uh, Ativan.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Okay.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Uh, Lorazepam is the, like, the, an- Both of those names. But I've been on that starter dose since I was kinda started to deal with, uh, my life, uh, and, and so the, the, uh, depression meda- meda- medicine, uh, as well as, uh, the anxiety, I'm at that starter dose. And my therapist, he even, uh, my th- former therapist, he was even surprised at, at so many years past that he's like, "Oh, you're only t- you know, you're only taking, you know, 0.5, versus people are taking multiple times a day."
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, the mistake that's made with antidepressants is that, you know, you're gonna get these little relapses-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And, um, the anxiety goes in, in cycles, and I talked out the relapses, it's sort of like, uh, before I went on the medication, let's just use a car speeding analogy-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... my nervous system was cycling up here, 200 miles an hour-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... to 100 miles an hour, then when I went on medication, this is back when they had the double-nickel, the 55 mile an hour speed limit-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
.... then it's going 55 to 100. Cycling, I, where before it was cycling up here. And I just stayed on the same dose, and I have seen disastrous messes when people were very stable on a medication, and they went off of it, complete disastrous messes. And then when they went back on, it's sometimes does not work.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
You fry that circuit boards upstairs.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh, right. Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Especially with bipolar, that's true.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah. What, uh, so looking at you're, your career, I'm just, I'm just wondering, uh, from, uh, some of our viewers, and, and, and, uh, listeners, what's, what do you think of at, you know, at the end of the day, Doctor Temple Grandin, what, what do you feel the bi- like one of the biggest accomplishments that you, you have, that somebody could look at and say, "I relate to that"?
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, I, I, um, you know, I'm, accomplishments I'm proud of, things I've improved in the cattle industry for example. I'm also, uh, proud of, um, when people, uh, write to me and say, uh, "My kid went to college because of one of your books," or, "One of your interviews really helped."
Justin Alan Hayes:
Uh-huh.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I wanna help the minds that, that think differently to be successful.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I also do a lot of talks on the different kinds of minds to business leaders like steel company, pharmaceutical company-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... banks-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh, wow.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... all kinds of companies, comp- uh, computer co- firms.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And I say, "You need the skills. You need the skills of the different kind of minds." Like, I went and I visited that lab. I can tell you, without high end skilled trades, that lab ain't gonna operate, period.
Justin Alan Hayes:
No (laughs).
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Somebody's got to maintain those three floors of equipment.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And it's not for the beginner stuff.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah. Thank you for that. Heidi it di-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
So, um, I, I, they, it, I knew it would have a support equipment, but it had twice as much support equipment than what I imagined.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Heidi Larew:
Well, I have a few more questions but, um, a- the one that really keeps coming to mind for me is to ask you a little bit more, I think, years ago I read something that you write about, it was, I think it was windows, but it might have been gateways.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, I've always had kind of door symbols. See, the thing is, when you think visually... I don't have abstract thinking, so when I was very young, and I had a much smaller database, see I'm a bottom-up thinker, just like ChatGPT, and when I got older, I could think better than when I was younger, 'cause I got more data in the database.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And I learned from an English teacher while I was up visiting his lab, went to a beautiful little autism, uh, community center, and we sat at the little kids art table in grown-up chairs, and I sat across from an English teacher, and she said she caught six of her students, uh, cheating with ChatGPT in English class.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Uh-huh.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And she said the papers that it wrote in November were worse than the papers it wrote four months later.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Ah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
In other words, ChatGPT's earned how to write better fake student papers.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Wow (laughs).
Dr. Temple Grandin:
You see, that's an example-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... of learning as more and more data is put in the database. So, if you don't have much data in the database, I have to have a visual image to think with.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
So, I look at things like my future as, you know, going through doors, and that was shown really nicely in the HBO movie Temple Grandin.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Heidi Larew:
Okay that true. Yeah I, I forgot about that, but wasn't it written about... Was that also in one of Oliver Sacks' books?
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Yeah, he would've you know, written about that. And-
Heidi Larew:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
But one thing that gave me a lot of insight is when I realized that, you know, other people think differently.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Ah.
Heidi Larew:
Uh-huh.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
But as being a total visual thinker, there are things like designing assessment systems for animal welfare, I just take a real practical approach that people can, you know, do out in the field.
Heidi Larew:
I've been using the, um, visual spatial identifier, I-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Oh yeah, little test that's in, that's in the visual, Visual Thinking?
Heidi Larew:
Yeah.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah, I've bene using that with some of my supervisees, um, and that is interesting for the scoring on it, but it's really interesting for the discussion of each question.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, yes, because it's different approaches to thinking. See, a verbal thinker tends to overgeneralize.
Heidi Larew:
Mm-hmm.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
A visual thinker gets down and gets a lot more detail. Now, the thing I've had to learn and we have a pr- principle in food safety called HACCP, hazard analysis critical control points, and I love this because you can't have all the details-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... you have to figure out which details are the critical control points, the ones that are really important. So, let's look at traffic rules, probably the three most important things to enforce would be drunk-driving, speeding, and running stop signs and red lights, and then four and five would be seatbelts and texting.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
You see, those would be the true critical control points. You know, turn signals are important, but that such lower priority than, uh, drunk driving is.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah. Yeah, I see the, everything that you, you're, you're works, uh, a- and speaking wi- with you today, it seems to be kinda at a, at a macro level, you wanna help people, so you wanna help bad things from happening, things to get better, people to not be laid off from work, and-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
No, [inaudible 00:43:37]-
Justin Alan Hayes:
... and that's, that's, I think, awesome, that, in today's day and age, that somebody like yourself has that in mind, that helping others, which, uh, some may look at as, like, "Oh, that, that's, that's too, too basic, or too simple," the, that's exactly how I feel, and so the-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, the thing is is that, the simple stuff [inaudible 00:43:57] people aren't doing it. I'm seeing-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... kids, a 16-year-old that's, uh, labeled autistic, and, uh, everything's being done for him, and this kid is never gone in a store and bought something by themselves. You know, ordering food by themselves at a restaurant.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Just basic things like that, they're not doing.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
They get so kind of, the parents get so locked into the label, they can't imagine that their kid's even capable of doing anything.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Right. Yeah. Heidi, did you, you have another question or two before we, uh, end our time with t- Dr. Grandin?
Heidi Larew:
Wondered if there was anything around the doors that you had ever done that had anything else to do with any art or de- depiction of that.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, not really. I tend, mainly I have photographs, and photographs of real doors, and, um, no, I hadn't really done any art with that.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah. Yeah, and I, all the, um, all the drawings in here are by you, right?
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Yes, they, yeah, they, yes, they are.
Heidi Larew:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
In fact, I wanted to put more pic-
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:45:04]
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Yes, they, uh, they, yes, they are.
Heidi Larew:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
In fact, I wanted to put more pictures in this-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... but they called and said that's too expensive. Yeah, those are, pe- yeah, those are my drawings. Yeah, those are my blinds that are in there, and we're going to be coming out with a children's edition-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh, good.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... uh, uh, that's going to have a lot more illustrations in it.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Yeah, I had somebody write a review on this saying, you know, "A book on visual thinking without pictures." I can tell you right now, the publisher didn't want to spend the money-
Justin Alan Hayes:
No (laughs), no.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... on putting pictures in- in there, because I would have put dr- more drawings in there.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And some photographs of jobs, uh, and, uh, you know, but they wouldn't let me.
Heidi Larew:
I do have one other-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And so [inaudible 00:45:39] she said, you know, they don't want to put those nice, glossy pa- pages in there that, you know, the-
Heidi Larew:
I like it just the way it is with the matte page and the drawings. It's just so [inaudible 00:45:49].
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, I mean I- I, we got those, they p- ... I got them to put in those, those dr- p- those drawings as sort of the beginnings of chapters.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And they can print that on the same regular paper.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And- and then I made sure they got them dark enough so you could see them (laughs).
Justin Alan Hayes:
Exactly, that-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
[inaudible 00:46:05] they did it, they were too light. I said, "We got ... I have it so you can see those."
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
But I guess part of the problem is, is that a lot of the book editors are verbal thinkers, and the pictures are, the drawings are less important to them.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Ah.
Heidi Larew:
Oh, they're beautiful.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Thank you.
Heidi Larew:
And the- they're-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And if you're a total verbal thinker, the drawings are- are- are a lot less important.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah. Yeah.
Heidi Larew:
I did want to ask one other thing that's, uh, it feels a little off topic, but it's come into mind. It's not really off topic. It's, I can't remember the exact name of the research study that had to do with the game telephone. Do you remember that?
Dr. Temple Grandin:
No, I don't. Uh.
Heidi Larew:
I think that-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Uh, we used to play that game as a kid and it's-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... a very, by the time you go on to like 10 kids, you just like blah blah blah blah blah.
Justin Alan Hayes:
R- (laughs), yeah.
Heidi Larew:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Uh.
Heidi Larew:
So here's how I understand it. There's, you've got three groups, and in each group, you have two groups. So, you would have, um, people who have like neuro diversity with people who have neuro diversity playing it, and then over here, you'd have typicals and- and typicals playing it. I'm not sure all the proper terms, you know. And then in the other group, you'd have people who were n- neuro typical with people who are typical, and that group had the worst trouble communicating with one another. This is my understanding.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, another thing, that once ... We'll tell you about some studies that, um, I did include in the book that I remember really well.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
There was a really cool study with, uh, students from different types of high schools, an art oriented high school, a science oriented high school, and a literature and humanities, uh, oriented high school. And teams of students had the job of creating a new planet.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
That's all they were told. Create a new planet, and there were teams of students.
Heidi Larew:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
So, our students come up with crystal planets, skyscraper planets, polar bears and palm trees.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And then you science students made round circle, described the atmosphere, kind of boring. And then the verbal students started writing stuff down. Then they realized that it was an art project, so they made splotches.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
But you know what really shocked me about this study?
Justin Alan Hayes:
What's that?
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Verbal students did absolutely no planning.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Where the visual students and the math students did planning, because this is the problem with a lot of verbal concepts, is over generalization.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
You want to talk about being more inclusive, well, okay, how do you actually do that? I'd rather look at specific examples that work, and I use specific examples where something did not work, you know, due to maybe the flickering of the lighting.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
You know, I'll want to get a lot more specific, and I've kind of figured out some of the critical control points at work. The flickering lighting-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... the, uh, rapid multi-tasking jobs, and then working memory problems with long strings of verbal instruction. And then with tasks that involve sequence presented rapidly where I can't write it down.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
They're working memory issues. And- and the accommodations are easy, but people will say, "Oh, they didn't give me accommodations."
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
So then I go, "Now, what accommodations do you need?"
Justin Alan Hayes:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And I'm finding over and over again, rapid multi-tasking, crazy takeout window, let's avoid it, and long strings of verbal instructions don't work. Pilots need a checklist. I need one too.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And there'd be a bunch of jobs that would not have been lost if a couple minutes had been made to jot down the checklist. You've got some jobs, like keystrokes on a computer, that you use the same thing every day, so you learn it once. But then let's say you're on a construction project. Every day, they're going to give me new stuff to install. I need to spend two minutes, just write them down, in the order they want them done. I would need to do that. That's a very simple accommodation, and I like to find simple, practical ways to make these things better, rather than just arguing, well, that's terrible. They didn't do accommodations. But again, that- that oftentimes, it's thought about in way too abstract a way.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah. I- I agree. As a, as an instructor at a university, that's sometimes how the- the accommodations are. They're- they're very broad, they're very general, and they don't get ... Uh, because I think they want to make it, I- I hope not, but I- I think they just want to make it easier for- for themselves and not really look-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, okay, look.
Justin Alan Hayes:
... at things specifically.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, a common accommodation at- at the university is extra time on tests.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Okay. That's a very, very common one. But I think, uh, you see, the thing is, I think in specific example.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Exactly.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
So, rapid multi-tasking jobs, that's come up over and over again. Now I found out about two electrician apprentice jobs lost, a fencing job lost-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Oh.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... because they couldn't write down what they were supposed to do. You see, then I'm starting to see a pattern here.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
You see, it's bottom up thinking.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And so the whole pilot's checklist idea. Okay, let's say I've got to, uh, close out the Walmart cash register.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Let me just write down the steps. That's a very simple accommodation.
Justin Alan Hayes:
It is.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Right? And then after I've done it two weeks, I probably won't need the checklist anymore. So, you've got two kinds of situations, a job let's say, computer keystroke stuff, only have to learn that once, and then jobs where your list of tasks you do changes every day. So, I'd need to jot down a new pilot's checklist every day. You see how I'm like, this is similar to the has a critical control points.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And these, and- and this- these patterns I'm finding as I talk to people, I keep learning, just like ChatGPT learns better and better to write fake student English papers.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Exactly. And- and instead of having more time, which that's fair, but why, to your point, why do they need this, the, why do they need that more time?
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Let's get into the nuts and bolts of it.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... l- l- that's a common one.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Uh, the more time is extremely common. That's just one of the things sometimes you have to accommodate. But, uh, uh, but things like the pilot's checklist thing, if that was just done upfront, that would save a tremendous amount of jobs from being lost because people get mad and say, "Look, I already showed you how to work that fry machine at McDonald's. Are you stupid?" I need to write down the steps like for, especially for cleaning it-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... or setting it up with new oil. Let me just write down the steps.
Heidi Larew:
Mm-hmm.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And- and if the boss thinks that's stupid, remind him, the FFA, Federal Aviation Administration-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... requires pilots to use a checklist every single flight.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Exactly. And we're all human beings, so we do, we need checklists. Like the-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Yeah, but that's, um, uh, I like to try to figure out practical stuff that people can take home and do.
Heidi Larew:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And on the lighting issue-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Exactly.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... that, uh, uh, and- and it's not just autism. Head injuries, people with head injuries-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... often have problems with the light flickering.
Heidi Larew:
Mm-hmm.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Interesting, yeah.
Heidi Larew:
And you can't always see that, yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
So I'm kind of like, I take a very practical approach to this.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Absolutely.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
You know, it's a shame to lose two electrician apprenticeships because you didn't write down the different things you were supposed to install in the order you were supposed to install them, and that would've taken two minutes to write it down.
Heidi Larew:
You know, when you mentioned the lights flickering, it reminded me of something else. So, there are times when lights flicker, and it's so subtle that you don't realize it for a while.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Yeah.
Heidi Larew:
It's just very tiny, and if you're in that lighting and you have something like a head injury or symptoms of autism, it could be that it would take five hours before you'd end up with a migraine or feeling like you were gonna get sick.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Well, there are studies, people with migraines can get this ... I want in new construction, let's just not use lights that flicker. And- and I learned from a lighting contractor at a book table a couple of years ago about this trick with, uh, filming a room in slow motion on your phone and then playing it back in slow motion. So, I recommend waving.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
I just want to make sure when I play it back, it's-
Heidi Larew:
Yeah. Well, one of my thoughts about it is, um, when a person's having an issue, it seems like being patient for a long time might be needed to figure out what the issue is, and I would imagine with your like-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
So, and see, the thing I'm finding is there's certain issues that keep coming up over and over and over again.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
The lighting issue. When I have architects come to me, I say, "The single most important thing, make sure you get lights that don't flicker. Test them with a phone."
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And the, and then the multi-tasking, the crazy rapid multi-tasking-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... I want to avoid that.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
That's a setup for failure. And don't, and- and overloading them with blah blah blah blah, long strings of verbal instruction, I want to avoid that, because these are critical control points that have been coming up over and over again-
Heidi Larew:
Also-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... of very common accommodations that we need to do, and they're easy to do.
Heidi Larew:
Another problem with verbal instruction is when an individual is given two steps and then told a related story and then given two more steps and told some other anecdote. And it's like just stay on track.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah, stay.
Heidi Larew:
Give the bullet points. Maybe have to do it two or three times. Write it down. But not with like a whole bunch of-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Uh, I- I, the thing that I think is really important is write it down.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Because when these jobs were lost, they, like a guy built a, a guy worked for a fencing company for years, got a new boss. Lost his job because he didn't write down what fences he was supposed to build and built them wrong and lost the job. I talked to this person.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And if he had, if- if he had just written it down, he wouldn't-
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... have lost the job.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And this is recent. That's a year and a half ago.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
This is not something from 25 years ago.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
This stuff's ... An electrician's apprentice, that's a couple of months ago.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
This is, this is right now.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Right.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
You know, so what I want to, you know ... And I love that, uh, critical control point approach because as I like kind of pick up case histories, I'm- I'm all categorizing the, uh, places where I need the pilot's checklist, the places where, uh, jobs ought to be just avoided. Chaotic stores during the holidays.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
One McDonald's made a very nice accommodation. The, uh, autistic lady was running the cash register, and when the store got busy, they had her clean tables.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Ah, yes.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Just a nice, simple thing that just did in that store.
Heidi Larew:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
So she could handle the cash register if it wasn't too busy.
Heidi Larew:
Right.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah, exactly. Well, Dr. Grandin, I- I think we're at- at the end of our time, uh, together, uh, for- for the podcast. I want to give, uh, a huge thank you for you taking the time, giving such detailed, uh, stories, uh, over the span of your- your life and, uh, they're very practical and I- I know that our viewers and listeners are gonna find them extremely useful. And I want to invite our viewers and listeners also, uh, to check out TempleGrandin.com, which they can find more information, uh, about, uh, Dr. Grandin, all the works that she, her- her current, her past works. Uh, all her books are- are available. And her- her most, uh, most recent book, uh, Autism in Education: The Way I See It-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Now that's aimed more at little, at younger kids.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Uh, my stuff, the other ... I have another book called Different Not Less-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Ah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... which is ol- the 18 people later in life getting diagnosed and writing about it. And I think a lot of people would find that helpful.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And then my new visual thinking book, where I talk about the different kinds of thinking and why we need them.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Uh, my autobiography.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yep.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And I have a chapter in there on anxiety, and I'm one of these people where I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't discovered the medication-
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
... a long time ago, and I'm still on it. That's why I'm drinking so much water.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Because that's one of the side effects.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
But I don't even know if I'd be alive because, uh, the, if I hadn't taken it, because the colitis was ripping my guts out.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Ugh.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And two weeks after I went on the medication, it's almost completely cleared up. I still have a little tiny bit of it. I just, uh, almost, uh, finished it.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Fan- fantastic.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
And it, and- and it- it was like, uh, the old DuPont slogan, "Better living through chemistry."
Justin Alan Hayes:
(laughs) Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us. Well, uh-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Okay. It's been good to be here.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Y- absolutely. We're- we're gonna take a couple pictures, so don't sign out quite yet.
Dr. Temple Grandin:
Oh, okay. I won't sign off yet. Okay.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah. We'll just clo- close out-
Dr. Temple Grandin:
All right.
Justin Alan Hayes:
... for the- the TV por- and audio portion. Thank you for joining us, uh, on this episode of The Voices for Voices podcast. Uh, and a huge thank you to our guest, Dr. Temple Grandin, a wealth of information. Please check out TempleGrandin.com, seek out her works. Thank you for spending time with us today. And until next time, I hope you have a great day, and please be a voice for you or somebody in need.
PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [00:59:22]
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