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[DESCRIPTION] Touro Talks intro displaying photos of students and faculty across the university, fading into the Touro University logo.

[TEXT] Exploring Challenging Talmudic Narratives, October 18, 2021, Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish speaks to the camera with a Touro Zoom Background. A Touro University logo is on the bottom right of the screen.

[ALAN KADISH] It's an absolute pleasure to be here, and I want to welcome Dr. Temple Grandin joining us tonight. We're very excited to hear from her about her life story, about some of the work she's done. And she and I will have a chance to speak after her formal presentation, talk a little bit about autism and what our approach should be to it.

Dr. Temple Grandin is a world famous author and speaker, renowned for her trailblazing work as a spokesperson for people with autism and for her expertise in animal science. Her life's work has been to understand her own autistic mind and to share that knowledge with others to aid in the treatment of individuals with the condition. Her first book, Emergence Labeled Autistic, was hailed as an unprecedented inside narrative of autism.

Dr. Grandin has been featured on TV shows and magazines around the world, and her life is a subject of an Emmy award-winning movie by HBO. Dr. Grandin, through her work in animal science, is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University. Half the cattle in the United States are handled in facilities which she has designed, and I guess the other half are disadvantaged. So, welcome, Dr. Grandin. Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

[DESCRIPTION] Temple Grandin joins and speaks to the camera from her home. A Touro University logo is on the bottom right of the screen.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, it's great to be here tonight, and I'll start out talking a little bit about autism first, and then I'll talk about some of the work that I've done on slaughter. And it's my understanding especially interested in kosher slaughter. Einstein had autism. Autism ranges from Einstein, who had no speech until age three, to somebody who can never learn to dress themselves-- a very, very broad spectrum. I think that makes a really big problem.

Another person that has come out recently that is autistic is Elon Musk of SpaceX. And when I read this book a number of years ago when it first came out, I put these post-it notes in here and I marked it where I thought Elon Musk had autism. Now I can say it because he came out on a comedy show and said that he was autistic. So now it's public knowledge.

But we have some great innovators that probably had a lot of autistic traits, and Einstein with no speech until age three, he would be in an autism class today. But you have a huge range.

Well, when I was four years old, I had no speech. I had all the symptoms of severe autism. Today, I am a professor of animal science at Colorado State University, and I was very lucky to get very good early education.

By the time I was 2 and 1/2, I was in an excellent speech therapy program. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of getting little kids that are not talking into therapy immediately. And if you're in a situation where you're not able to get a diagnosis or you have to wait too long-- two years, that's way too long to wait-- you got to start working with that kid right now.

The worst thing you could do with a two-year-old is not talking-- is let them zone out on electronics all day. That's exactly what you don't want to do. Now, my speech teacher would slow down when she talked to me because if she talked too fast, it went into gibberish.

Slow down, always giving me a chance to use words, also teaching me turn taking. It's really important to teach these kids how to wait and take turns. That was taught with a lot of little games, another really important thing.

And my mother always was encouraging me to do new things. Turned out I was good at art. She always encouraged that.

You want to take the thing the child is good at and encourage it. This will often show up around seven or eight years of age. They might be good at math.

They might be good at music, art. They might be really clever with mechanical things. And there's research now that shows that there is different kinds of thinking.

I'm what's called an object visualizer. Everything I think about is a picture. That helped me in my work with cattle, and it helped me on my work with equipment design because I could visualize how it worked.

Another kind of thinker is visual spatial mathematical thinker. They think in patterns. These people are often really good at music. And then you have people that are completely verbal. Everything they think about is in words.

And there's science that supports that these different kinds of thinking actually do exist. In fact, I discussed that in my book, The Autistic Brain. I discussed the science that the object visualizer, the picture thinker like me, is a totally different kind of thinker than the person who thinks more in mathematics and patterns. And a lot of people are mixtures of the different kinds of thinking. And the different kinds of thinking have skills that can complement each other.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of good teachers-- excellent speech teacher, excellent elementary school teacher in third grade. A lot of kids with autism are bullied, and she explained to the other children that I had a disability that wasn't visible like a wheelchair, and they needed to be helping me and not bullying me. I had a fabulous science teacher, Mr. Carlock, my science teacher.

I was a bored student. I was not interested in studying until Mr. Carlock gave me interesting projects. And he showed me that education was a pathway to a goal. And one thing I really liked in the HBO movie Temple Grandin is it showed all my projects. All the projects that I did, I actually did, was shown in the movie.

And I built that optical illusion room just like the movie showed it. But all along the way, I had a lot of people that helped me. There was Ann out at the ranch. That's where I got introduced to the cattle industry.

Also, on the equipment design, there was a contractor named Jim Uhl, and he was starting a very small construction company for steel and concrete work. And he seeked me out. He'd seen my drawings.

I'll show you some of my drawings. He had seen my drawings, and he could see that I did some really, really good drawings. So he seeked me out, and there was a picture of one of my facilities in my book, Thinking in Pictures. So he was another person that helped mentor me.

Another thing I found as I worked on a lot of these big meat packing plants. I worked with people that had big metal fabrication shops. They built equipment.

I'm going to estimate that about 20% of the very skilled machinery designers I've worked with, people that laid out whole entire factories, were either autistic, dyslexic, or ADHD. In fact, there's a lot of crossover with ADHD. A lot of the symptoms are very similar to autism.

And the thing is, you need these people. You wouldn't even have any factories if you didn't have these people. And one of the things that helped some of these people get into these careers is took a welding class in high school. One of the worst things that schools have done is taken out the hands-on classes-- art, sewing, woodworking, cooking, theater, welding, auto shop. I think taking those classes out of the schools is the worst things that's ever happened because a lot of kids that are different, they need to try a lot of different things to find out what they might like to do.

So my very first work with cattle started in the Arizona feedlots. And since I'm a visual thinker, it was obvious to me to get down in the chutes and see what the cattle were actually seeing I didn't know it at the time that other people were verbal thinkers.

I didn't discover that other people were verbal thinkers until I was in my late 30s. And that was a real shock to me when I found out that other people did not think in pictures the same way I did. But it was obvious to me to look at what cattle were seeing.

And I noticed that there was a shadow. There was a piece of chain hanging down. There was a coat hung on a fence.

There was maybe a coffee cup, a paper cup on the ground. These things would stop the cattle movement through the chute system. And other people had not noticed these things. And I found that if you remove these distractions, the cattle went through the system. If you did things like lighting up the entrance of a chute, the cattle would go through the systems.

So I started visiting the local Swift meat packing plant. There was another person there that helped me named Norb. He was the plant superintendent. And I think the thing that's really interesting is both Norb and Jim, the contractor, we're both former military officers.

The thing about military officers, you got to get things done. And they recognized my ability, and they were extremely supportive. But one of the things I wanted to learn was the cattle know they're going to get slaughtered.

So I go back and forth between the Swift plant and the feed yards, and I noticed that their behavior was the same in both places. I also worked for a while at a feedlot construction company, and one of the biggest barriers I had was being a woman, and that was a gigantic barrier. There's a scene in the movie where I got kicked out of Scottsdale feed yard, and they really did put bull testicles on my vehicle. That actually happened, and it was totally disgusting.

Now, the way that I compensated for being weird was to show off my portfolio of work. When people saw my drawings, they were impressed. And there's a very important scene in the movie where I go up to the editor of The farmer Ranchman Magazine, and I get his card, because I realized that if I wrote for our state farm magazine, that would really help my career. And then I produced an article on the different kinds of squeeze shoots and how cattle behaved in those shoots at the feed yards.

Writing was also an important part of my career because I would design a project, and then I wrote about it. And one of the things I'm seeing today in some of the students I have now is their writing skills are just terrible. I have one student.

She took all these math and science classes, but the writing is really bad. I'm talking just about clear, not being able to write just really clear, good writing. This problem has gotten really bad in the last six or seven years, and I'm not the only professor that's complained about this.

Now, most of my work with the Swift plant, of course, that was not a kosher slaughter plant. But my very first introduction to kosher slaughter was at Spencer Foods in Spencer, Iowa. This was in 1980, and it's legal in the US to just hang cattle up by their ankle for kosher slaughter. That's not legal in Canada.

And they were bellowing their heads off. They tripped these poor cattle down and hang them up by their ankles. And it was just absolutely horrible.

And I worked on removing that system and replacing it with a much better system. And I wrote about it in the Judaism journal. I think it's kind of hard to find that online. It's like way, way, way pre-internet.

But basically, on the controversy about slaughter without stunning, you've got two issues. It's the throat cut hurt. The other issue is how you restrain it.

Now, if you restrain an animal in a really stressful way, like hanging it up by the ankle, you're not going to be able to tell how it reacted to the throat cut. And then I went back to help tear that system out and put in new system. And that system that I did at that time, it was better than hanging them up by the ankle, but it wasn't all that great compared to some of the things I worked on later on.

Then in the mid-80s, I was approached by the Council for Livestock Protection, and they were a consortium of Humane Societies. Humane Society of the US was in it. John Hoyt, the president, was really behind it. In fact, it's in his obituary.

The American Humane Association, the ASPCA, Fund for the Animals, they formed this consortium to develop a better way to restrain animals than hanging them up by the ankle. And this was especially a problem for the sheep. They were-- a stand up box was already available, called the ASPCA pen for big cattle, but there wasn't anything available for sheep and for calves.

So the University of Connecticut in the '70s had come up with a system where animals would ride on a conveyor that they straddled. And they showed very clearly in their scientific papers that this was a low stress way to handle animals. And they made a plywood model that actually ran.

But it was way far away from anything that would work in a real plant. So my job was to take an idea that was a plywood model, and I had to invent some things for it. I had to invent a way to adjust the sides, invent a better entrance design.

And in the mid-80s, we got that into Utica Veal and Utica, New York. Well, thank Frankie Broccoli for making that project possible. And we had now had a nice way to restrain veal calves and sheep.

And then I learned some more things about the kosher slaughter. We had some problems with the calves that did not lose consciousness quickly. And what I learned in that is that the way the rabbi did the cut made a big difference. And if you change the way they did the cut but still making it according to Jewish rules, then the animal would collapse very quickly.

Now, there's been a lot of controversy. Sheep will go unconscious quicker than cattle. And the reason for that is all the arteries in the sheep are in the front, where in cattle, they have some arteries going up the back of the neck. And then that center track restrainer system, I then made a system for big cattle that's in all the regular plants.

You want to see that working in the regular plants, you can look up beef plant video tour with Temple Grandin. Then in the early '90s, I was hired to one tear down another really dreadful shackling and hoisting system. But this time, they had really nice upright boxes that I had custom designed with really good pneumatic controls where I could very precisely control the pressure, not squeeze cattle too hard with it.

And we had a really good rabbi named Moshe, absolutely the best rabbi in the industry. And I was operating the box. And all the handling, I got all the handling problems fixed. The cattle were coming up there really quietly.

And I put them in the box and held them really gently with it. And when Moshe cut them, they didn't appear to react to it. In fact, if I did this in their face, I got a bigger reaction.

So what that showed when you use a special knife, if you do it absolutely right, I think the welfare was acceptable. But I want to emphasize that that was under perfect conditions. And I wrote about that in the 1994 Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association on an article on euthanasia and slaughter. And I still stand by those observations.

But if you get the least bit sloppy in your procedure, it can get bad really quickly. Requires very close attention to process control. Doing the cut exactly right, box has to be operated exactly right.

And I developed a scoring system for evaluating handling. If you've got cattle bellowing really loud in a restraint box, you've got a problem. You're pinching them, maybe with a sharp edge.

You're holding them in there too long. You're squeezing them not too tight. And if you work the box correctly and if it's designed correctly, the percentage of cattle that will move should be 5% or less.

That's definitely possible to do that. You have some kind of problem, you might have 20% or 30% of the cattle mooing, and it's going to be just an absolute mess. Now let's just look at some of the other research there was a study done by Gibson, and he used an EEG method that can detect pain, and he said the throat cut hurts.

But he did not use the special kosher knife. And then there was another study that was done by Saba with no description of the knife. And it's now been a study that was done for halal slaughter. Yes, sharp knife definitely makes a big difference.

But sloppy procedure, the welfare would go from acceptable to completely atrocious when procedure gets sloppy. Now, when I first started my career, I thought I could fix everything with equipment. I thought I could build self-managing systems. You cannot. You can build good equipment, but you have to have the management to go along with it.

And what I found is I train the employees. But then in a lot of cases-- and this applies to regular slaughter also. I did most of this with regular slaughter.

And you can train employees, but if the manager is not behind it, then the manager untrains the employees for me. So I got to train the manager. I've got to show the manager how it really matters.

But the thing that really made the change was when I trained buyers. And in 1999, I worked with implementing the McDonald's audits, and then Wendy's and Burger King also did the same audits. I developed a very simple way to evaluate the meat plants and for regular slaughter, it was effective first shot with stunner.

If they couldn't make 95% on the first shot, they failed the McDonald's audit. I also measured vocalization. Vocalization or moving and bellowing is a really good measure for when you got a bunch of problems going on.

And slipping and falling, we measured that. Really good places-- that might be 1 out of 500. But these are outcome measures, and I've got a bunch of papers published on this.

And this very simple scoring system now forms the North American Meat institute Animal Handling Guidelines. And you can look at that on animalhandling.org, animalhandling.org. You can look at that.

So the older I've been getting, I put in more and more emphasis on management. There's still a lot of badly designed equipment out there. I've been corresponding with the rabbi down in Brazil, and he gets very frustrated with some of the management not taking good cattle handling seriously.

You've got to have management behind doing things right. Otherwise, things are just not going to get done right. It's just that simple. And I think right now, we might just do some questions.

[ALAN KADISH] Thank you so much for that introduction presentation. That was fantastic. Just wanted to mention that Touro is thrilled to have you on.

I'm not sure if Professor Levine told you, but Touro has an Autism Institute in Henderson, Nevada, takes care of patients with autism. Right now, we go up to age 12, and we're looking to try to expand that to adolescence.

We also collaborate in Westchester with the Westchester Institute for Human Development that, among other things, takes care of autism patients. And finally, as you know, Professor Levine has an initiative to try to look at some new collaborative approaches to help people with autism. So we're thrilled for that reason to have you on.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] I want to make another comment. Where we're really falling down in autism is a transition from high school to working. This is where we really have got problems.

I had my first job at 13 hemming dresses for a seamstress that worked out of her home. When I was in high school. I was running a horse barn. When I was in college, I did internships.

I see too many parents getting way too protective of their kid. They're not learning shopping. They're not learning just basic, basic, basic skills.

[ALAN KADISH] Let me follow up--

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] --problem.

[ALAN KADISH] Let me follow up with a couple of questions about what you've just said, which is fascinating. So the first question is, I read somewhere in one of your bios that your diagnosis was not made when you were very young. So when was the diagnosis made and what was going on before then that you got all this attention that helped you accomplish the amazing things you've done?

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, my mother took me to a neurologist, Bronson Crothers, is now a Bronson Crothers endowed chair at the Boston Children's Hospital. A neurologist checked me out for deafness and for epilepsy. Negative on those.

And Bronson Crothers knew a little speech therapy school that two teachers ran out of their home. It was about six kids in it. A couple of Down syndrome kids were in it, some other kids.

And these were just these really good teachers. They knew how to work with the kids. A lot of one on one speech therapy, a lot of turn taking games.

And that would have been in 1949. I was born in '47. That would have been in '49 when I would have been taken in. Nobody knew what autism was.

[ALAN KADISH] Right.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] And so they call me brain damaged. The autism diagnosis, that came in around like at age five. That came in a little bit later. But I had all the classic symptoms, and I'd been doing a lot of brain scans and stuff.

I mean, it's obvious that I was autistic. I was the kind of kid that in the '50s, they would just put in an institution. And it was very fortunate that my mother went to this neurologist-- not a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, a neurologist. And I think Bronson Crothers was really ahead of his time. And it was really lucky that there was this little tiny school that they just did it out of their home, two older teachers.

[ALAN KADISH] Did they know, even though the name wasn't there, did they kind of know what you had and how to approach you?

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] They knew how to approach it. They did a lot of the same stuff teachers did today. Like, my teacher would hold up a cup like this, and she'd say, say cup. And then she'd say cup regular, and then she'd go cup-puh.

She'd say it both fast and slow. And then when I said it, she praised me. That's discrete trial today. She was doing it.

[ALAN KADISH] Right.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] She was definitely doing it. And then she'd take each child out one at a time for one on one speech therapy, and then the other teacher would have the other kids involved in a turn taking game. Yeah, a lot of the same stuff we do today, that she was doing it.

[ALAN KADISH] So let's talk a little bit. Kind of first, since you just began to speak about therapy, let's talk about treatment. You've talked about a couple of the things you think help. Do you think that there's a particular kind of treatment that helps everyone with autism, or does it have to be individualized?

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Little kids, this is where it doesn't have to be quite so individualized. The main thing is you got to be careful about sensory overload. Mrs. Reynolds would grab my chin like this, made me pay attention.

Now, there's other kids with much more severe sensory problems that if you did that, you'd throw them into sensory overload. That would not work with them. Some kids, you got to be more gentle.

But a good teacher knows how to be gently insistent. A good teacher knows just how hard to push. You push the kid too hard, they're going to tantrum and go into sensory overload.

And yeah, that would be-- you have to be careful about that. But the most important thing is getting in there with lots of one to one with an effective teacher. We can argue over the method.

What's an effective teacher? More speech, better turn taking, better waiting and taking turns. I'm talking little kid here, three years old, using toothbrush, using the bathroom, dressing, basic things.

[ALAN KADISH] And so how about the approach that you talked about before? You talked about how one of the challenges is getting adolescents into the workforce or young adults into the workforce. Is there a different set of approaches at that age that's needed? Is it more individualized? Is there a different kind of thing that--

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, let's just go with fully verbal. Let's just start with fully verbal.

[ALAN KADISH] OK.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Let's start-- you want to all of them-- for all of them, you want a gradual approach where you gradually transition. Let's start with replacements for the childhood paper routes because I've talked with a lot of granddads, and the granddads find out they're autistic when the kids get diagnosed, and granddaddy had a paper route at age 11.

So that means that let's start volunteer jobs where somebody outside the family is the boss at age 11, like maybe a church, farmer's market. They've got to start learning how to do a task on a schedule outside the home. I'm going to say that for everybody that's fully verbal. Everybody.

And we have to be careful about the multitasking. I'll tell you, in general, some jobs you don't put them on. Super crazy busy takeout window-- that's not where you put them. So don't put them on a heavy multitasking job.

Jobs with too much noise can be a problem. Some can tolerate noise better than others. Chaotic restaurant works for one kid. It will not work for another kid. A quiet office supply store was a real good choice.

But one thing that's going to be for everybody, I want to start young with chores for little kids, teaching work skills. That's for everybody. And then as soon as they're legal, I want them in real jobs. Soon as they're legal.

[ALAN KADISH] What about school?

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] --they need to get a real job.

[ALAN KADISH] What about schooling? What do you recommend? I'm not talking about the individualized attention that you recommended for young children. I'm talking about high school, college, vocational school, because you talked about getting the job market or--

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] First of all, they can just do jobs for job training-- the ice cream shop or something like that, just for job training.

[ALAN KADISH] Got it.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Now, I was a terrible student in high school. I didn't do any studying until I was a senior. And Mr. Carlock got me interested in studying.

But now, for some of the individuals that are fully verbal, skilled trades are where they need to go. Now, that's not for everybody. Another one needs to go into computer science.

This is where they need to be exposed to a variety of things. Then you can see what the kid's good at. You see, that's the thing.

You see, we're getting way too locked into the labels. I just did a book with Deborah Moore called Navigating Autism. She's a psychologist who's done a lot of work with autism.

And we get so locked into the label, you don't see the a kid. You see, and I'm also finding that the verbal thinkers overgeneralize because when I was out working in construction, I worked with people that were definitely autistic, and they were some of the smartest people there were. They had 20 patents for really clever engineering stuff.

But they've got to learn how to work. So let's just start out with something simple when they're 11. Usher at the church, OK?

Or it's at synagogue. Usher at the synagogue. I just-- where they do a little task where somebody else is the boss.

That needs to start at age 11, period. That's for everybody. And then gradually, if there's some little store they can help out in, then you start doing that. And the instant they're legal, real jobs.

I don't really-- training jobs. I don't care what they are. We got to make sure they don't have too much multitasking, not too chaotic. A totally chaotic store during the holidays, that does not work.

[ALAN KADISH] So let me ask you about that. You've mentioned this a couple of times. You've talked about sensory overload and multitasking. What is it about the chaotic, noisy environment that kids with autism or even adults with autism find challenging?

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] It's just sensory overload. When I was a little kid in the school, bell went off, it was like a dentist drill hitting a nerve. Now, one of the ways to help kids tolerate a noise like the school bell or a hairdryer is to let that child turn it on and off. It's too intense. It's just too intense.

[ALAN KADISH] So you actually-- you actually felt physical pain--

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Yes, I did.

[ALAN KADISH] --when you had sensory overload.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Yes, I did.

[ALAN KADISH] And so how did you overcome that? Was it familiarity? Was it--

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, some of it, you can overcome it by if the child controls the sound. I've been on antidepressant drugs for 40 years. That helped me to overcome it.

And I'd recommend reading Thinking in Pictures where I talk about a believer in biochemistry. That reduced it some. But I still have problems with scratchy clothes against my skin.

The sensory issues are very variable. One person's going to tolerate a noisy store better than another one will tolerate it. Yeah, it's very, very variable and very, very real.

But one thing it's a basic principle-- multitasking jobs are going to be bad. Another thing is I cannot remember long strings of verbal instruction. Give me a checklist. Step one, step two, step three-- a written checklist. That's going to work better.

[ALAN KADISH] Is that because it's too many things at the same time?

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] I can't remember it.

[ALAN KADISH] Yeah.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Can't remember long strings of verbal information. I have almost no working memory. I'm all long term memory. Design work doesn't tax short term memory. No, I can't remember the instructions.

[ALAN KADISH] Got it.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] I got to write them down.

[ALAN KADISH] So let me follow up on that when you talked about your strengths and weaknesses. We all know that, and you mentioned a couple of examples of really high functioning autism in your presentation. And those are all the stories, people like you, who've managed to be extraordinarily successful and maybe even use-- as you said, there's some things that people with autism are really good at. How do we think about this? How should we think about this incredibly broad spectrum--

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, that's the problem. I think it's a total problem because if someone has ADHD or dyslexia, that's much narrower. But it's turned into a real mess with this broad spectrum.

Now, the thing is, when the kids are real little, they all look the same, and you kind of can do the same things with them. And then they kind of go into a fully verbal group, partially verbal, nonverbal. But then in some of your nonverbals, they can type independently.

And they talk about sensory scrambling and not being able to control movements. And so this-- and this is all called autism. See, to a visual person, that just doesn't make any sense.

[ALAN KADISH] So do you think it should all be called autism, or do you think we need--

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, I don't know. Maybe it'd be better to talk more about the specific problem, the sensory problem. The speech is a problem.

Now, the one thing on the fully verbal autism, you're socially awkward. But I think some of the non-verbals who type independently are more socially normal. But they can't express it.

[ALAN KADISH] So let me ask you a little about this. When you talk about socially awkward, what is it compared to others, let's say, that characterizes that awkwardness?

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, I can learn social rules. Like, I was brought up in the '50s. So I was taught to say please and thank you.

I can learn those social rules. But I noticed that when a bunch of people kind of get together, chit chatting, there's kind of a rhythm. I can't follow it.

It goes by too fast. I simply can't follow it. They're having so much fun chit chatting about just almost nothing.

I'd rather talk about something serious, and my processor speed is too slow. But for engineering work, design work, art, I don't need processor speed for that. That's all long term memory stuff.

[ALAN KADISH] Got it. So let me ask you something that may not be totally relevant given what we've just talked about, but if you had to describe autism-- and we did a seminar on this about the question of is autism just something different. Would you say that autism is just differences?

Are there some people with autism who have something that you would characterize as more than just a difference but something that ought to be labeled differently? Do you think it's useful? I mean--

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, autism is a true continuous trait.

[ALAN KADISH] OK.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] When does slightly nerdy and geeky become autism? You see, I think in the very mildest forms, it's just a personality variant. Now, I had severe speech delay. That's obviously an abnormality, obviously.

[ALAN KADISH] Sure.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Didn't talk until age four, all right? But you take the more-- they got rid of the Asperger's. That's basically socially awkward than no speech delay would be another way to describe that.

And there's lots of people working out in Silicon Valley that would be in that category. Well, they're not interested in social things. You see, the autistic brain is more interested in interesting things you do.

OK, like I listened to songs on the radio. I mean, 80% of the songs are about romance and love and relationships. Well, somebody has kind of got my kind of thinking.

I like to solve problems and figure out how to do interesting stuff. I also cared a lot about animals. So I worked on the kosher slaughter to get rid of shackling and hoisting.

[ALAN KADISH] Yeah, so let's talk about that for a second. You said-- I think in your book, you talk about the fact that somehow relating to animals, that autism helped you in relating to animals.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, an animal doesn't think in words.

[ALAN KADISH] OK.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] An animal is a sensory-based thinker. Its memories will be pictures, smells, sounds. The animals pick up a lot of emotion from the sound of their vocalizations.

You see, I think the first thing to understand animals is to get away from words. Now, when you get into some of the discussion, I can't believe that it's still a discussion going on that animals don't think.

Now, if you thought completely in words, you might have a hard time understanding that maybe your dog actually could think. But if you think in a more sensory-based way, which is the way I think, it's ridiculous to say dog doesn't think. And then when you look at the emotions, the brain centers for emotions are the same in all mammals.

Now, a dog is not going to fly to the moon. That's not going to happen because we've got a gigantic computer that sits up here that a dog doesn't have. But let's see what kind of thinker that you are.

Like, and you can ask me some key words, and I'll tell you how I access my memory. But everything that I think about is a picture. I don't have a picture, I don't understand it. So if I'm going to talk about different ways to treat autistic kids, I'm going to give you specific examples-- stuff that worked, stuff that was bad.

All right, on the job front, super crazy busy clothing store during the holidays was a disaster. 18-year-old girl had failed. Super crazy waitress job, probably a bad choice.

You say, and I see it. There's nothing abstract about it. Good jobs where there's been successes-- auto parts store, office supply store, ice cream shop. These are specific examples of very successful jobs.

[ALAN KADISH] But the interaction with animals is really based on the fact that it sounds like you can understand the way they think better than others. Is that--

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, animals don't think in words.

[ALAN KADISH] Right.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Now, there's a lot of people that are labeled dyslexic and other things that are also visual thinkers. And these are the people that can fix anything. Yeah, they're all retiring.

When the electric wires fall down, you're going to need people with my kind of mind to fix them. When all the big towers get wrecked with the ice-- that's happened in Canada. Bent them right in half.

And when I talk about that, I see it. I see pictures of them. I actually saw them bent in half in Kansas, 2007. Four miles of electric towers bent like that. Ice, ice storm.

[ALAN KADISH] So we've actually-- so this has been great. It's been great getting a chance to speak to you and find out a little bit more about your experiences. We literally have dozens of questions from our attendees tonight.

Some are comments, but many of them are questions. Many of them are very good. So rather than--

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] All right, let's do a few of the questions.

[ALAN KADISH] So let's do a few of the questions. I'm going to turn this over to Professor Levine. Professor Levine is the director of Jewish Law Institute at the Fuchsberg School of law at Touro. But as I mentioned, he's developed an interest in helping people with autism using a legal and multidisciplinary approach. And he has had a chance to read some of the questions that have come in from the audience while I've been concentrating on talking with you. So I'm going to--

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] OK, all right.

[ALAN KADISH] So I'm going to turn it over to Professor Levine, whom I think you've spoken to before.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] OK. All right.

[ALAN KADISH] Try to-- we have about 15 minutes or so left.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] That's right.

[ALAN KADISH] And so we're going to get some of the fantastic questions from the audience answered. So, Professor Levine, please try to see how many of the questions we can get to that were addressed by the audience to Dr. Grandin.

[DESCRIPTION] Samuel Levine joins and speaks to the camera from an office setting.

[SAMUEL LEVINE] Thank you so much, Dr. Kadish, and I just want to say on my own behalf, on behalf of the Jewish Law Institute at Touro Law Center and the program I've initiated at the Touro Law Center on disability rights and inclusion and trying to promote autism awareness and acceptance, that it's such an honor and a pleasure for us to have you with us this evening. Many of the questions have been sent in from individuals who themselves have been diagnosed on the autism spectrum, family of those on the autism spectrum. And on that note, I'm interested and we are interested in your thoughts on why it is that there is such a proliferation, as it were, of diagnosis-- almost an explosion, as some have put it in the recent years-- as opposed to what we used to see maybe 20, 30, 40 years ago.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, I think part of it is originally on the DSM, you had to have speech delay to be labeled autistic. And then in the early '90s, Asperger came in, where speech delay was no longer required. So that drastically broadened the spectrum right there.

And then they took that out, and now all of it's all mushed together in a great big, huge, continuous thing. And I think another thing that's contributed to it-- social rules aren't taught in the same structured way that they were taught in my generation where they'd sit the kids down at the table and you were taught table manners. You were taught to say please and thank you.

Kids had paper routes really young. So they learned jobs really early. That's why the granddad had a job when he discovers he's autistic when the kids get diagnosed. Now, for that grandad, learning that he's autistic, that can be extremely helpful because it will explain why his marriage was a problem.

You see, that's where a diagnosis can be really helpful. I think a lot of it's been here. I've worked in-- I worked in heavy construction for 25 years, and I worked with a lot of people that would be definitely in special ed today. And--

[SAMUEL LEVINE] You've mentioned a couple--

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] --I'm not saying that everybody should go into skilled trades. But a lot of people with my kind of mind, high end skilled trades-- I'm not talking about asphalt in the road or roofing. I'm talking about the real high end stuff, that are building and designing and patenting big complicated stuff. But if you take that out of the school, the kid never gets a chance to try it.

[SAMUEL LEVINE] I think you've mentioned Asperger's a couple of times, and you've mentioned some of the controversies and challenges in trying to categorize autism and define autism. What are your thoughts on Asperger's as a category of autism, whether that's something that's helpful, that can help promote understanding?

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, it just-- it got socially awkward with no speech delay. Now, I know there's controversies about Asperger's past. So maybe you might want to get rid of that name. Let's just use a neutral name-- socially awkward with no speech delay, all right? That just explains exactly what it is.

And you see, the diagnosis has gotten so-- now, for the little kids, yeah, you pretty much do the same things to the little kids, and you make some adjustments for the sensory when you're working with the two, three, and 4-year-olds. But once you get past that, they really diverge into these different groups that need very different kinds of services. And I'm also seeing way too much where the kids are allowed to get addicted to video games and these video--

[SAMUEL LEVINE] On that point, you've emphasized-- I'm sorry. You've emphasized early intervention, and this is something that a number of our viewers have asked about. There's sometimes a tension between the notion of letting kids develop in their own way versus pushing them maybe too hard through early intervention.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, you have--

[SAMUEL LEVINE] [INAUDIBLE]

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] My mother stretched me. You don't chuck them in the deep end of the pool. But if I hadn't got the early intervention, I wouldn't become a college professor.

She always would give choices, stretching me, things like just teaching manners, just basic things. You can't be a rude, filthy, dirty slob. That just is not OK.

And too many kids are becoming recluses in the basement playing video games. I'm seeing way too much of that with young adults. And there's been three successes where car mechanics was used as the thing to gradually wean them off the video games. You always have to do it gradually. Then once they got doing the car mechanics, they found that was more interesting than the video games.

The other big problem is anxiety. I had horrible problems with anxiety. It worsened all through my 20s. I was saved by a low dose of antidepressant medication. And that's fully described in Thinking in Pictures, and I've been on the drug for 40 years.

[SAMUEL LEVINE] Do you think the anxiety that's somewhat common among autistic individuals is part of the condition of being autistic, or do you think it's more the way society treats individuals?

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] No, no. It's part of the condition. It's part of the condition.

My nervous system was ramped up, ready to fight lions, but there were no lions there. No, it's part of the condition. When you hear some people on the spectrum talk about autistic burnout, I think some of that is just anxiety.

I went on the medication in my early 30s. My health was completely falling apart. I had colitis that wouldn't stop.

I went on the medication. The colitis mostly cleared up. I still have just a little bit of a problem with that now.

[SAMUEL LEVINE] You also mentioned--

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] --part of the condition.

[SAMUEL LEVINE] Yeah, thank you. But you've also mentioned the importance of focusing on the transition to adulthood, and a number of our viewers have asked for advice when individuals have not been diagnosed at a younger age, have not gotten that earlier intervention, and now they're at that transitional point. Some advice you might have for them.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, let's look at are they fully verbal. Are they-- fully verbal kid, I want to get them doing jobs. Let's say you got a kid that's addicted to the video games.

You got to wean them off slowly. You wean them off slowly, replace it with other things and give them choices. That's what you do.

It's never too late. There's been three young adults, where the car mechanics worked, you see. And in probably my mind, I've played a few video games.

I won't have any of that stuff because for me, the drugs. Won't have it on my phone. None of that stuff's on my computer. If I have to check out what the subject content is of the latest game, I just watch trailers because you can't play those. But I can find out what the content is.

[SAMUEL LEVINE] Another question that's come in is the issue of self-diagnosis for individuals who have a sense that they may be on the autism spectrum, that their children may be autistic, and may have a very difficult time getting a diagnosis from a medical professional. What's your view on individuals who themselves--

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, I have a certain amount of problems with this diagnosis. I'm trained as a hardcore biologist. You get a COVID test and they find out you have a delta variant, that's precise. Autism diagnosis is a behavioral profile. It's nowhere near as precise.

Now, the only reason for having a formal diagnosis is to obtain services. I tell a lot of people we've had some bad stuff where a person wasn't allowed in the military because they had a diagnosis. I've had military people come up to me, and I'm almost sure they were on the spectrum. And so they get diagnosed and said, no, you want to stay in the military? Absolutely not.

It's a behavioral profile. I tell people, you read the books, you'll know. You'll know.

And for me, I'll tell you the most valuable information for me was books written by people on the spectrum. And the other thing was scientific papers, especially on brain stuff, on the social circuits, on the brains and the scientific studies on that. That's the stuff that was most valuable to me.

And then I'm always learning. I have a book called Different, Not Less, and its 18 older people on the spectrum. They all learned to work at a young age, all different kinds of jobs.

[SAMUEL LEVINE] And many of our viewers really appreciate your focus on employment, which is so important, of course, for everyone and autistic individuals. A number of viewers have asked the question regarding the interview process, where social skills are often such an important part of the process.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] --short circuited no interview process. I'll tell you how I got jobs. I showed off a portfolio of my work to the people that actually would want the work.

Pictures of jobs, drawings-- that's what I did. You get HR people, no. They're not the ones that should be picking out a computer programmer or a skilled trades person.

It's showing off the work. Show the code off. That's how I sold jobs-- showing my work.

[SAMUEL LEVINE] And maybe as a follow up, one of the concerns regarding unemployment and, in a sense, underemployment and promotion for autistic individuals. Is the office setting, the office politics, and the social aspects of the office that may be challenging to autistic individuals, what are your thoughts on those challenges?

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] I learned to stay out of it. Just stay out of it. Do the job.

Also, OK, I'm a professor, I come in, I teach my class, and no gossip. Just stay out of it.

I don't bring politics to work. I don't bring any controversial subjects to work. Sex, religion, and politics can stay at home.

Don't bring it to work. I'm what I call project loyal. I want to do a good job of teaching my class and a good job of maybe enlightening you in this talk--

[SAMUEL LEVINE] Absolutely.

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] --and what I do. And I have to say, when I'm at a hotel, I have nothing to do, I like to watch shows like heavy tow truck drivers that have got to get tipped over trucks out of ravines and things like that. The good news is the drivers almost hardly ever get hurt. It just messes up the truck.

But these guys are amazing visual thinkers to figure out how to prevent a truckload of lumber from falling off a bridge. And those ninja things, they go through all those obstacle courses, well, I just want to turn the mind off. I like to watch those shows. And the things-- the obstacle courses are so clever. Now, think about the people that make those obstacle courses.

[SAMUEL LEVINE] Well, we are near the end of the hour. So I just want to ask you and once again to thank you so much. It's been an honor and a pleasure for us to have you with us for this very special evening with Dr. Grandin. Any final thoughts, advice you have for us, for individuals on the spectrum, their families, and for society as a whole in the way society should interact and accept autistic individuals?

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, I think of specific examples. There was, just this year, an autistic person was placed in a food safety lab receiving the samples. They love them.

They'll never cross contaminate a sample with this guy. And it was just through contacts. We got to find more back doors to jobs.

Half of all good jobs are back door. We got to start looking at what the person can do. I like what Stephen Hawking said about disability.

Concentrate on those things your disability does not prevent you from doing well. He could do math in his head really well, and that's about all he could do really well. But boy, he did the math in his head really well.

And we've got to find out what that person can do and also talk employers into sort of having a trial. And we got-- the multi-tasking and the long strings of verbal information, that just does not work. They need really clear guidance.

On my first job, I criticized some welding, and I said it looked like pigeon doo-doo. And the plant engineer pulled me into his office and explained that was rude talk. He told me what I should do calmly and quietly.

The other thing is you cannot be a rude, filthy, dirty slob. You can be eccentric. That's fine.

But I made myself really good at a skill that other people wanted. People want cattle handling facilities. People want somebody to receive food safety samples and do it right and not mix them up.

An autistic person is perfect for that job. That's a person placed this year. This is recent.

They love it, love it. And I think it would be good to write about some of these successes, individual successes. I think most of you are verbal thinkers. Take out some really good specific examples of where an autistic person just fit in perfect into a job.

[SAMUEL LEVINE] One final question. Based on your own personal experiences and everything you've seen and all the work you've done over the years, what are your thoughts toward the future? Are you optimistic about the future of society and autistic people?

[TEMPLE GRANDIN] Well, you're going to need us when the storms are wrecking more stuff. We build the stuff. We can also fix it when it gets wrecked.

And people with autism are really good about details. And there's certain things. OK, let's go back to the kosher slaughter.

Details of procedure matter, matter a whole lot. Little details of procedure, and a whole lot of little details, when you do them right, add up to doing things right. A lot of people that are more top down verbal thinkers have a hard time understanding the importance of how all these details add up.

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[TEXT] Touro Talks, Touro University, touro.edu/tourotalks

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