Temple Grandin: Life's Passion to Help People with Disabilities

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Welcome to Disability Matters with your host Joyce Bender. All comments, views, and opinions expressed on the show are solely those of the host, guest, and callers. Now the host of Disability Matters, here's Joyce Bender.

Welcome to the show, everyone in the United States. Yes, it's me, but I lost my voice. But let me tell you, I could be whispering and I wouldn't miss this show today. As you will see, I have a very internationally famous superstar that doesn't even know how much I admire, and you'll be talking to her in a minute. But first, hey, to all of our listeners around the world, and today Over the past week, we've had Canada, Ireland, Argentina, France, Korea, United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong, Russia, China, Italy, and Japan with listeners in the country. Okay, I've said this before. I don't care if you have one listener in the country like Russia, because You can make a difference. You can make a difference by telling everyone about quality of life and dignity for people living with disabilities like me, living with epilepsy and being hard of hearing. But as you can see, that has not stopped me. As a matter of fact, our show today in January is the kickoff this year— this month is the kickoff of my 20th anniversary on Voice America. And I— so I want to thank all of you. I want to thank all of you great listeners around the world. I cannot tell you how much it means to me. Without you, I would not be here. Also, special shout out to Richard Roberts in Brazil with the State Department that Last month visited me. Oh, I was so thrilled when he came to see me. Gangyung, hello to you in South Korea. Vinyamin in Kazakhstan. Cheryl Smith from the U.S. State Department, who I first met when I did a program for Tunisia. Love all of you. And Yoshiko Dart, my hero. Here we go. Kicking off this month. Just so you know, we labeled this month— because of the 20th anniversary, we labeled this month the Power Month, where we would bring on powerful, powerful guests. Now, I have no words to tell you how thrilled and excited I am to have on the show one of the most celebrated adults who is in the autistic world, but she is a famous academician, animal consultant to the livestock industry. There was a movie about her. Claire Danes played the part. That name's probably familiar to you from Homeland. She has authored books. She speaks around the world. Most importantly, she's the real deal. Okay, I got in touch with her. I said, would you be our guest? And here she is. So Temple, welcome to the show.

It's great to be here.

So Temple, for people around the world who do not know who you are, let us hear your story. When did you— for example, they're going to be shocked because I've read your book. But tell everyone, when did you— you're so brilliant, but when did you first start to read? Uh, you know, what is— how did you get into this? Start from the beginning.

Let's start from the beginning. I had a real severe autism when I was a child. I had no speech till age 4. I was very lucky to get an excellent early intervention program. I cannot emphasize how important early educational intervention is. And you can oftentimes put a good program together just having some grandmothers work with the kid for several hours a day, get them out doing things, get them talking, teach them how to take turns, and also learning basic skills like dressing. My mother always encouraged my ability in art. And I would just draw the same horse head over and over again, and Mother would say, "Well, let's draw the stable. Let's draw the saddle." She broadened that interest in art. And by the time I was 4, I was talking. But when I was 8 years old, I still could not read. And Mother taught me at home with phonics. And the first thing you want to do is get a book that the child will be interested in. You start with that. And she had me memorize the speech sounds, and she'd read a page of the book, and then she'd have me sound out a few words phonetically. And very quickly I went from no reading up to about 12 years of age reading. And I have to thank my mother for that. You know, my abilities were always encouraged. I can't emphasize enough, work on what the child can do. Some autistic kids are musically gifted, some autistic kids are mathematically gifted, then move 'em ahead in math. You see, the problem we have with autism is it's a big range. It goes from Einstein to somebody who's not able to dress themselves. But when the kids are little, you can't tell which one might become Einstein, which one might have much more severe disability. It's a very, very big spectrum. But I just have to thank my teachers, my speech teacher, my mother, my primary school teacher, my science teacher in high school. I was a bored student who didn't care about studying. And he gave me interesting projects to get me motivated to study to become a scientist. Mentors and teachers, they are just so important. And they were looking at what I can do.

Yes, what you can do. And I hope you're listening because I have parents that pity their children and keep them home. That's not going to work. You're not going to help them. Am I right, Temple?

I'm sorry I interrupt. I have problems with timing, uh, breaking up.

That's all right.

That's something I have a problem with still. I see too many parents babying their kid. I'm, you know, fully verbal kid, get some kind of a problem and he's not learning shopping, he's not learning laundry, he's not learning how to have a bank account. These were basic things I learned when I was in primary school. And we have to start looking at what the person is capable of doing. And the worst thing you can do is just leave the kid in the house all day and let 'em play with the phone all day. That's the worst thing they can do. You need to get them out doing things. And they need to start learning work skills young. Chores in the house. Maybe when they're 10 or 11 years old, they could help out at a little grocery shop or someplace like that. Do a volunteer job someplace where they are doing a task on a schedule for somebody outside the family who's the boss. This is very, very important. It does— there's lots of different things. It could be a farmer's market. It could be a religious organization. But something where they do a job on a schedule. Instant they're legal age, they need to get real jobs. And when I was really young, I had a little sign painting business. And I painted signs when I was a teenager. And the thing I had to learn is how to paint signs that people want. My first customer had a hairdressing business and I made a sign that she would want. See, this is a skill that the child has got to learn, how to do tasks that other people want. That's a basic work skill.

Yeah, and I want to tell you, folks listening, you know what I do for a living. I place people in competitive employment, you know, like IT engineering, those type of roles. I have had parents want to go on the interview. I had one parent fly into Pittsburgh where I'm headquartered and want to come inside on the interview. And I said, hey, you're more than welcome to sit out there, but you are not coming in. And don't do it. Don't do it. Don't baby your child because, you know, if you want them to have a successful career, you are hampering them by babying them.

The other thing I'm finding is I have grandfathers and grandmothers come up to me all the time and they discovered they're autistic— these are grand— you know, obviously these would be people that were fully verbal— when the children get diagnosed with autism and they were that engineer that was kind of socially awkward or an accountant or or a pharmacist, or maybe a skilled tradesperson, and these grandfathers and grandmothers all learned how to work at a really early age. And I'm seeing this pattern over and over again where the grandparents find out they're autistic, but they have jobs. I just read the other day about a mathematician who's doing quantum computing with two autistic daughters, and he's probably on the spectrum, and he's doing a top mathematics job.

Oh yes, and I know many people like that, but let's remember, if you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. In other words, don't call me and say, oh, they're autistic, they should all do this one job.

No, exactly, exactly. And the other thing that I did is, since I was weird, I learned to sell my work. When I first started my work on designing livestock handling equipment, I would show people portfolios of work, drawings, technical drawings, photographs, articles I'd written in the technical— in the beef magazines and things like this. I would sell the work rather than myself. I also saw doors to opportunity. If you saw the HBO movie about me, there's a scene where I get an editor's card, 'cause I knew if I wrote for our local farm magazine, that would really help my career. And a lot of people don't see those doors. And I got a reputation for being a very accurate reporter on the local cattle meetings, but showing portfolios of work. Another thing is if they were a programmer, they could show off a portfolio of their code. You want something that's a 30-second wow, so that when you show it to somebody, they go, "Wow!" And that's how I got jobs with major big companies, by showing a portfolio.

Wow, that's great advice. That is absolutely great advice. Well, you became internationally famous with this work you've done, uh, in the livestock industry, treating them in a humane way that has made an international impact. First question, what made you want to do that? And second question, would you mind explaining that to our listeners?

Well, first of all, students get interested in things they get exposed to. So cattle was something I got exposed to as a teenager. When I went out to my aunt's ranch. And if I hadn't gone to my aunt's ranch, I would not have been in the cattle industry. Now, another mistake that schools have made in some places is taking out a lot of the hands-on classes—cooking, sewing, woodworking, art, music, theater, automobile shop, welding. And these are classes where students can get exposed to careers. When I was in primary school, I made costumes for the school play.— and I sewed them on my toy sewing machine that actually sewed. And I look back on that and, you know, the same skills that I used for sewing with a soft material, I could transfer to steel and concrete, which was a rigid material, but it's the same skills.

Well, but what led you to do this other— Well, it's something that happened gradually.

I started writing for our State Farm magazine. I did not like the way they were treating cattle. And so I decided I was going to work on designing better facilities. So I went around a whole lot of places in Arizona and I handled cattle and I kind of figured out what designs work, what designs don't work, and started putting things together that worked. And I started getting some equipment out there which was shown in the movie. Now the thing I had to learn is that good equipment is important, but you have to have management that goes along with it. And the thing that I did that probably greatly improved law, welfare the most, was a very simple assessment system I made for slaughterhouses. 5 simple things I measured: every animal's dead when you hang it up on the rail, first shot with the stunner works— has to work 95% of the time, no more than 1% falling down during handling, cattle staying silent, not mooing and bellerin' during handling, and then electric prod use, and then no acts of abuse. And I developed this system, and then I was hired by large companies like McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's to train their people how to do the audit. And when you had these big customers enforcing standards, that's what really made the difference. But the other thing that made it work is that my assessment was very, very simple. And in most cases, the slaughterhouse did not have to buy new equipment. They could do— they had to do a lot of repairs and do things like non-slip flooring. Management also had to start taking good treatment and animal welfare seriously. I would say about half the change was management and the other half was equipment.

And what about the management? What did you see? What did it have to be like to be successful?

Management has to care about, you know, treating animals in a good manner. Management has to care about that. We had 75 slaughterhouses on the McDonald's approved supplier list in in, in the U.S., 3 managers had to be removed. They were all in the corporate plants. And then almost overnight, the plant improved. So you have to have both the equipment and you have to have a management that cares about doing things right.

Well, isn't it like that with everything? That is so true. So Temple, you teach at CSU. Tell us about that. You've been doing this 30 years.

Well, I've been out 31 years at CSU, and one of the ways I got— I got my PhD in 1989, and I called up a good friend of mine at CSU. His name is Bernard Rawland, and unfortunately he just died last year. Really great friend. He helped me get a part-time job at CSU. This is another example of finding ways to get jobs. I called up a friend of mine at the university, and I came in and just started teaching part-time. I'm now a full professor at CSU. But I was very good at finding sort of alternative ways— I call it the back door— into jobs. And I've got a lot of papers published. You can look them up on Google Scholar. I have 3 graduate students now that are now professors, which I'm very, very pleased about that. And they're professors of animal behavior, and they're doing a great job of continuing on doing research and improving things. So I'm really happy about how that's worked out.

Did you ever do anything with dairy farms? Yes, I've done some work with dairy farms.

And one of the big problems there has been lameness in dairy cows. And the lameness is difficulty walking, painful walking. And there's a combination of factors that cause that. And it's very important to measure it because 3 studies have shown that a dairy producer will underestimate the lame cows by half until they actually measure it. And if you measure it, then you can start to manage it. And then you can say, well, okay, now my lameness is really terrible, but after working on maybe genetics, on hoof care, on the proper bedding for the cows to lay on, then I reduced my lameness. I'm a big proponent of measuring welfare indicators. And I've got a new paper online. It's called Practical Implementation— Practical Application of the Five Domains Animal Welfare Framework for Supply Chain Managers. You can find it really easily. If you set Google Scholar for 2022. But the emphasis on very simple measurements, because I did the same thing with slaughterhouses. And lameness for dairy cows is a major welfare indicator. And if lameness is at a high level, your dairy cows have bad welfare, period.

Oh, well, that's very interesting. You don't think of it that way. The measurement, you don't think about it.

I wanna talk about visual thinking. That's my new book, "Visual Thinking." And then my older book is "Thinking in Pictures." I'm a person who thinks completely in pictures. I don't think in words. I don't think in mathematics. I think in pictures. And that helped me in my work with cattle because it was obvious to me that I should get down into the raceway or the passageway and see what cattle were seeing. And they'd be afraid of a coat on a fence, a shadow, a reflection, seeing people moving up ahead. And if you take these distractions out, then the cattle would walk right into the slaughterhouse. They're afraid of a shadow that looks like a spider, things that we wouldn't even notice. And my big thing I'm concerned about now, 'cause I'm past retirement age but I'm not retiring, is there's a lot of kids that are visual thinkers like me that would be extremely good at things like a high-end skilled trade, working with animals, photography, and art, but they're not good at mathematics. And there's people we need in the high-end skilled trades, they can't do algebra, but boy, they can fix stuff. So in my visual thinking book, I discuss research on different kinds of thinking. And when a child or an adult has a label like autism, dyslexia, or ADHD, they often have uneven skills. I'm an extreme visual thinker. Absolutely cannot do abstract math. But you can get another person with autism, they'll be the mathematics genius, and they think in patterns. Like music, math, and patterns, that tends to go together, and they're a pattern thinker. And when I was out working on these big jobs, these big huge meatpacking plant companies, big, you know, multinational companies out on these construction projects, I noticed a very interesting division of the labor. On the engineering. My kind of mind is working out in the shop. We can't do higher math, but we're inventing complicated mechanical equipment and selling it around the world. And then the mathematical engineer with a degree does the mathematical parts of the factory, like the boilers and refrigeration, power and water requirements, and make sure the roof doesn't fall down. So you need both kinds of minds. But in our educational system, My kind of thinker's getting screened out because they make the kids do so much abstract math. Well, I've worked with people that have a corporate jet that can't do algebra, and they're building things all over the U.S. right now, and they're approaching retirement age. And the problem is, they're not getting replaced. We have a gigantic shortage now of people to fix things like elevators, airplanes, and escalators. Well, because the kids that would be really good at doing that, probably a little mildly autistic, and they're playing video games in the basement when they should be fixing elevators. And you don't need a lot of algebra to fix elevators. You need algebra for— to do, um, chemistry, physics, computer programming, artificial intelligence, data analytics. So you're going to have one person that's my kind of mind. We're going to be the skilled trades art, photography, and animal people. And then you've got this other kind of autistic mind that's going to be the mathematician.

This book is outstanding. It's called Visual Thinking, and it— you said it even took you 30 years to realize that you were a visual thinker.

Well, actually, the correct thing is it was my late— wasn't 30 years, in my late 30s.

—Oh, in your late 30s, okay.

—In my late 30s, that's when I discovered that a lot of people are verbal thinkers. A lot of people think in words. And the thing is, visual problem solving like what I do is a different type of problem solving. I can just see it. And the verbal thinker tends to generalize, like, okay, we have a big broad principle, and— but they— I think more of specific examples of how to implement the principle. And it was a shock to me when I was in my late 30s, when I discovered that this speech therapist did not think in pictures the way I did. She would only get vague representations of things. Like let's say I said, "Think about a factory." She'd get this vague thing, maybe with smokestacks coming out of it, where I'm seeing specific meatpacking plants, I'm seeing specific factories. They're not abstract. They're specific places. That's bottom-up thinking. She would just get a vague representation, like just some lines. And then working on the visual thinking book, I worked with my fabulous co-author Betsy, who's super verbal. So I would do the rough drafts, and then Betsy would reorganize them. And we were a great team and we used each other's complementary skills.

Oh, that was great. But you need to buy this book, by the way. You know, I don't endorse— I don't endorse all books. I get many people that send me books. This book is outstanding. Visual Thinking. And you can buy it. You can get it at Amazon, I'm sure, you know, at bookstores. It is so good.

But it's available in an electronic book. It's available both on US— there's a hardback version, and then there's a paperback version you can get right now from the, the British publisher. There's audiobooks, and there's also electronic books, which I know for a lot of people in some countries, those are easier to buy.

Right. If someone's listening and they're saying, okay, I think I get this, but I don't totally understand, could you give a little more specificity to what it means to be a visual thinker?

Well, when I design equipment, as I'm drawing it, I see the concrete, I see the reinforcement rod, I see the fences. I see mechanical parts of the equipment. Now in order for me to get those pictures, you have to fill up the database, because I'm bottom-up thinking. My mind works just like an expert done artificial intelligence system. It uses information in its database. So this is the other reason why you need to be getting autistic kids out doing things, 'cause you need to fill the database. In order for me to visualize what concrete forms look like, I will have had to have seen these, or just the fencing and the gates. And, and one thing I found as I got older, I thought, I can think even better and better and better because I put more and more specific images into the database. It's bottom-up thinking. It's not top-down verbal thinking where there's big abstract concepts. So everything I think about is a picture. And I think the easiest way to show how I access my database is pretend that I'm the internet and give me an interesting keyword and I will tell you how I access my memory. And make it original, not cat or dog and not something I could see in my office right now.

Wow, that's really interesting.

Give me an interesting keyword and I'll tell you how it comes up in my memory when I search my memory base. And also you'll see how it associates and how it gets off the subject in an— so it's associative thinking, it's not linear. So give me a keyword. Theology. Theology. Yeah, I'm seeing different churches, I'm seeing mosques, I'm seeing synagogues, I'm seeing a house that I drove by this morning coming home from the grocery store that used to be a Jewish, um, um, organization. You see, I tend to oftentimes see real recent things. Wow. But you see, it's pictures. That's the first thing that came up. I'm seeing my childhood church. I'm seeing— and I actually, um, I'm seeing PowerPoint slides I've shown of this. You see, it's not abstract. And then I can get off the subject. Okay, because now I'm seeing the house that used to have a Jewish organization in it. And then where was I when I went by it? I had been in a grocery store. So now my mind's back in the grocery store, and I'm picking up a red net bag with a bunch of oranges in it and putting it in my basket. I'm now shopping again and buying some of the things I just bought in the grocery store this morning. I stopped at McDonald's. I'm now seeing that. And you can now see how it got off the subject, but it— there's a logic to the associations.

Yeah, and I like the part, if you had never seen the synagogue, the church, the whatever, that would not have been in your database.

That's right, that's right. I have to either pull it off of— that's right, I have to get out and see a lot of things. And when I first started, I was a member of the American Society for Agricultural Engineers, and I would go to all the talks about harvesting equipment, machines to pick fruit and things like that, just so I could get ideas for mechanical devices in my head. Like, I— like, if I'm at a hotel and the elevator's inside a glass enclosure, I love to look at the mechanism. I just find that very, very interesting.

Well, I know you spoke about— I think it was a ship, and there's something they didn't see underneath it that you saw. Do you know the story I'm talking about?

A ship? Okay, now, no, this was the launch pad at Cape Kennedy, I think. Okay, okay, okay. And that is— I do talk about that in my book, Visual Thinking. I'm, I'm kind of a— I just love, um, space. Oh, Cheryl just gave me— she's my assistant— fun book about the astronauts when they went on the moon, and they'd taken little airline bottles of booze to the moon, put in the pocket of the spacesuit. You know, little fun things like that. But I'm a real space fan and I wanted to do aerospace. I could not do the math. So I went into something where I could do something good and not, you know, not do the math. Well, I got invited to NASA to do talks on neurodiversity and disabilities.— and I talk about the different kinds of minds, and I found people working at NASA that were dyslexic mathematician designing control rooms, a person who had Tourette's building launch pad. So I got to tour the launch pad 5 years ago that the Artemis rocket eventually took off on, and I found something in there that shouldn't be there. We were there at 7 o'clock in the morning, and I saw— we were under the launch pad— and I saw a motion, and a raccoon came out of it and went off into the bushes down the stairway. Then we went inside the launch pad base, which they were using as a workshop for fueling equipment. I'm walking around all this equipment, and I'm going, "I don't want a raccoon near any of this stuff," because I'm visualizing what he could be chewing or urinating on or some other thing. And nobody knew that a raccoon was living in the launch pad base. I saw that.

Yeah, that's your scene. Hey, listen everyone, listen everyone.

The little motion that I saw on the stairway, and I looked and I watched him waddle across the landing, waddle down the steps, and he went off in the bushes.

That is in her book. And I have a message. Yeah, I have a message for, for parents right now. If you have children living with autism and they're being terribly, horrifically bullied at school and people are telling them they're not going to make it, you have a great role model here with Temple Grandin. That's why you should buy this book. I know that you're not going to explain details, you know, at a comprehensive level, but you can explain how this woman got this job with autism, became famous, and how she did not have to do trigonometry or algebra or whatever to be successful.

Look, she saw that worked for her. I worked with a lot of skilled tradespeople. Some that had multiple patents on mechanical devices that they were selling around the world, and they could not do algebra. And they got started just taking a welding class in school, and then they had maybe a welder on the back of a truck, and they start doing little jobs, and then gradually turned into a great big shop. I'm, you know, about 20% of the people I worked with in machinery design were either autistic, dyslexic, or ADHD, and the thing that saved them was learning about mechanical things, working on cars. In a lot of countries that are listening, there's lots of motorbikes that need to be fixed. That's a good place to start. Or they took a welding class in school or got introduced to welding and they started making just a few things and then their business grew and they made more and more complicated things. Then when the shop got big, they'd hire a mathematical engineer to do that work. But as I go back and forth between the educational world and the industrial world, industry needs these visual thinkers that can't do math. I'm noticing now that I've been on a lot of elevators where they're scraping in the shaft, skipping floors, not getting serviced. The kids that ought to be growing up and doing that are playing video games in the basement and never even get introduced to tools. I see too many kids today, never have used a tool. One girl I had in my college class had never used a ruler to measure anything. That's ridiculous. It is ridiculous.

And I want to tell you about that, uh, Temple. I bet I have another company, the Bender Leadership Academy, which is a not-for-profit where I train high school students with disabilities about the world of work and how to deal with bullying. And many times these students, whether they have dyslexia, autism, blind, whatever the disability is, they'll say, "I know I won't be able to go to college." Either their family's poor or they feel they won't, you know, they weren't good in math or whatever it is. And I'll say, "Yeah, so what? You could be a plumber." you could work in so many other areas where you end up making more money than the person with the college degree. But I have noticed, even from years and years and years ago when I went to high school and there was Vo-Tech, that people would always act like those kids were not the smart ones. That's wrong.

That is wrong because the visual thinking of the Vo-Tech kids, it's a different type of intelligence. And some people don't believe me about this, but the people that don't believe me have never worked in industry. They've never even been in big factories. I've been in big, huge meat plants when they were under construction, and of course I walked around the whole entire project. I didn't just stay in my part. And big complicated stuff that they were doing. And, and I, when I was doing the book tour in the U.S., one of the, one of the, um —talks I gave, they did it in a school because they couldn't fit them in the bookstore, and the principal didn't know— this is this October, October 2022— didn't know what visual thinking was. And they were really heavy into the algebra and the math, and I was explaining to them how I think. He didn't know what it was. This is today, this year. Wow. Terrible. No, it's terrible. And the other thing that's happening is the, is the countries like the Netherlands and Italy that have strong vo-tech. They are selling specialized food processing equipment all over the world that's no longer made in the U.S. And the reason why it's no longer made in the U.S. is 25 years ago we took out our vocational classes. We took out our shop classes. And it's the worst thing we ever did. And people ask me what would I do if I could fix the schools. I'm going to put all those classes back in. That's going to include sewing. Cooking, art, theater, music, welding, fixing cars, technical drawing. I'm going to put all those things back in.

I'll tell you, there is a school in Delaware, and they partnered with an organization, and, and what they do is part of the internship is working in areas such as what you just described. These were kids that weren't the math people, but so what? I mean, they can have a great career.

Yeah, that's really sad. Well, you know, you've seen building these big, huge factories, what's happening is, okay, let's say, I'll have to use the US as an example, but right now for poultry and pig processing plant, you have to buy all the equipment that goes inside from the Netherlands or Italy, because they, they don't look down on the vocational. You're talking about complicated equipment invented and built. And we used to have big shops here 25 years ago where each— where companies had their own shops, and they shut that down. It was a gigantic mistake. And I saw people that barely graduated from high school patenting and inventing complicated equipment and selling it all around the the industry. See, educators don't know about that, 'cause these things I'm telling you about, in the U.S. at least, 25 years ago. But now, if you want to see an example of what I call the clever engineering department, you can go online and look up the Apollo chicken harvester machine from Italy. And it picks up broiler chickens. Looks like a combine. Very mechanically clever. And then I went and I looked up the Italian educational system. They actually have a university route, they have a tech route, they also have kind of an art route too. And that's similar in the Netherlands. You can go either university route or in 9th grade, around age 14, go to the tech route. And when you look at these things these people are inventing, you're talking about complicated mechanical devices, specialized mechanical devices.

We should get you in front of Congress or the Secretary of Education because people don't realize this is an impact on our economy.

Well, it is, and I've been doing little surveys on the graying hair of elevator mechanics, escalator mechanics, and airplane mechanics. The last two airplane mechanics that are on my flights— and I've been flying all the time now— they were gray. A major airport in the UK— in the US, 4 people had an escalator all ripped apart. 3 out of 4 had gray hair. They're not getting the place.

Not getting the youth.

We're not getting the youth. So let's say to get the kid interested, you go to the hotel that has the glass elevator. Have the kid watch how it works. It's free. You see, you've got to first expose kids. And then a lot of kids are brilliant with Legos, but they never graduate to tools. I think Legos are wonderful, but by the time they're like 8 years old, they need to be using tools. I was using tools at that age. Not power tools, but hand tools. And start learning how to make stuff. And I loved sewing as a child, and the skills I learned in sewing went right over to steelwork. It's the same skill. The only difference is hard material versus soft material.

By the way, I love that Western shirt outfit you wear.

Well, yeah, that's kind of like— I like it too. It's kind of my uniform.

Yeah, well, I like it a lot. Okay, so as you heard me say, my company, Bender Consulting Services, what we do is work with major corporations and federal agencies to try to find employment for people with disabilities in competitive areas like mathematics, engineering, etc. That's right. But we still have double the unemployment rate, and only 70% of people with disabilities are counted in the workforce today. And people with autism have a very high unemployment rate.

I wanted your advice. Well, right now, the young ones do. That's the thing. I forgot to address bullying. I had a horrible time as a teenager with being bullied. And the only places I was not bullied was friends through shared interests. And back then, it was horseback riding and model rockets and electronic circuits. You know, for another child, it might be music. Another child, it might be theater. You know, there's a whole variety of things that it could be. But friends through shared interests. Get these kids out doing things because that's where they're going to find friends.

Yeah, yeah, they— and they have to. It's having that buddy, it's having that friend with you that is so going to help. Well, what about young people with autism listening to the show right now that are having a hard time finding employment and they know it's the stigma attached to their disability?

What advice do you have for them? Alright, so let's look at the different things. If you have a per— if you have a kid that's good at art, they can show off an art portfolio. I showed off a portfolio of cattle handling facilities. A mathematician could show off a math portfolio or a programming portfolio. But now there's another third type of autistic kid where they are verbal, they love lists, they can tell you every movie star, they can tell you every soccer player. And where those people can be really good is specialized retail. There's been some real successes with stores where your specialized knowledge is valued, like a farm supply store, an auto parts store, because they'd know every part in the store. An office supply store, and they'd know every printer and tell you all the pros and cons about the different printers. And people would value that. You see, I'm seeing examples that work. Now let's— There are certain jobs we need to avoid. Multitasking is an issue. A chaotic takeout window would be a bad first job. A chaotic clothing store during the holiday season. Those are things I'd want to avoid. Avoid some of the multitasking. A pizza parlor where they have to make pizza super fast. That maybe they could assemble boxes but some of those jobs are hard. The other thing is that I cannot remember long strings of verbal information so let's say I'm working at a store and I have to close out the cash register at the end of my shift— give me a checklist similar to what a pilot would have of the steps to close out that cash drawer because if you just tell me blah-blah-blah-lah-la-la-la, I won't remember. Give me a checklist. That's a very, very simple accommodation. And if the employer thinks it's stupid, remind them that pilots have to do it for every single flight, and the airline authorities think it's a really good thing to do.

Yeah, it's an accommodation.

Well, the thing we see, oftentimes the verbal thinkers think about accommodations in a vague, abstract way. And I'm saying let's look at specific accommodations like the checklist. And the other thing is I want to avoid the chaotic multitasking jobs. I'm not going to put the autistic person on a super busy McDonald's takeout window. That's not where I want to start them. But on the other hand, we have to teach the little kids skills like being on time. We need to teach skills like being polite and having manners. And there's another reason why the grandfathers got the jobs is because my generation Manners were taught. You shake hands with people, you say please and thank you. These are not difficult things to do.

They're important things to do. That's why I always say to my employees, here's our motto: I will be at work early every day with a smile on my face.

No, that's right.

That is, is really important. Yes. Well, obviously someone impacted you to do all of this. But before I go on to that, and one more time, Visual Thinking by Temple Grandin, go buy it. In that book, Temple, what are you the proudest of? Well, about— what are you the proudest of?

One thing that really helped me was when I discovered the scientific research that different kinds of thinking exist, especially the differentiation between the object visualizer— that's the correct scientific name for me— object visualizer, who thinks in photorealistic pictures, and then the visual-spatial-mathematical mind. And, and I think this is a very important thing, and I've got a very big reference list to show that different kinds of thinking exist. Now a lot of people are mixtures of the different kinds of minds, but you get somebody with a label— autism, dyslexia, or ADHD— you tend to get more extremes, like maybe an extreme mathematician, maybe an extreme visual thinker. You know, less likely to be a mixture. And I've been out to the big computer companies And I'm gonna estimate half the programmers are probably on the autism spectrum. Now that's a field where you can get employed by showing samples of your code. That's a field where portfolios will work. But I see parents getting so stuck into the autism box that they'll say, well, my kid's a great artist. Or, well, do you have any of their work on your phone so I can look at it? Oh, they go, "Oh, I haven't thought about that." You know, like maybe sell their kid an art project, and then the kid has to learn to do art the client might want. Just like my first sign painting job, I had to make a sign that the lady that owned the hair salon would want. So I put a picture of a shampoo ad on it, 'cause I figured she'd rather have that than horses on it. But that's an important skill, doing stuff that the client would want. Okay, a mathematician, you gotta do mathematics that's gonna benefit that client.

Well, one more time, Visual Thinking by Temple Grandin. You can probably tell I love her. I do. I admire her so much. But this book is phenomenal. You've gotta get it. So Temple, as I was saying earlier, you've had someone or some people, whatever it is, that had a tremendous impact on you. So who would you say is your role model?

Well, I, I've always had pictures of Einstein up on my wall, even though I couldn't do the kind of math he did. But he did quite a lot of visual thinking. He visualized things like riding in train cars and— and riding on sunbeams. And my science teacher, in terms of, you know, he was a super important person for me. And he worked with me for about 4 years, you know, and we'd do all kinds of interesting projects together with things like optical illusions. He was extremely important. And then getting my business started, there was a small contractor. He was a former Marine Corps officer starting a tiny business with steel and concrete. And he was another really important mentor. He saw my drawings and he seeked me out to sell jobs and design jobs for him. And we built jobs together for 10 years. The other thing that Jim did for me is he showed me how to set up a business. I had absolutely no idea how to set up a business. And so he was a mentor who was extremely important in launching my career. Where the science teacher was extremely important in getting me to study. Now, I still couldn't do algebra, but bad grades in English, that was just goofing off. Actually, my writing skills, I learned to have pretty decent writing skills. And people ask me how I managed to have an effect on the cattle industry. I wrote about things. I designed something, I'd write about it in a beef magazine and tell people how to do it. I wrote lots of articles like that. Did you use a pen? Well, this— I started, you know, um, you know, wrote by hand. I mean, I'm from the typewriter era, and I'm, you know, I still say— I have Cheryl works for me and she types my stuff. I never learned to type correctly on the computer on one finger.

I'm, you know, well, let me tell you why I'm asking you that. Here's another one. Because teachers are telling children they— you don't need to learn cursive writing, just use the computer. Well, if we're— everything in life, we stop doing this and just use the computer, no one's going to do the things you're talking about.

Well, I, I, I never learned to type correctly. and I find sometimes I can get my thoughts to get better with handwriting. And when I was doing book tours for some of my other books, they have these drivers that will take authors around, and I got to talking about it, and a lot of older authors just write by hand. Stephen King, who writes all the famous, you know, scary books, he writes everything with the Parker fountain pen, and he acknowledged it in one of in his books, he called it the finest word processor that there is, the Parker fountain pen. And so what I'll do is I'll write, um, I mean, I can type out an email, I can peck that out, um, but unfortunately in high school I never learned to type correctly. And, and I went with a manual, I was able to type 3 fingers pretty fast. Then when I got to the computer and I tried to do it, I just push all the wrong buttons. So now I just look at the keyboard and I just hunt and peck.— and I'm really glad that I've got my wonderful assistant Cheryl to type my stuff.

Well, Temple, this isn't the only book you've written. What else have you written?

Well, Thinking in Pictures I wrote 25 years ago, and I described how I thought in pictures, and at that time there was no research on different kinds of thinking. That didn't come in until later. I have another book, The Autistic Brain. Discuss a lot of sensory stuff, also brain scans that were done on me that show that I have huge visual thinking circuits. I'm— I've got another book, Different Not Less, where 18 people in their own words that are on the autism spectrum that are fully employed, and they're older people diagnosed later in life, tell about their experiences. And where the diagnosis helped was in their relationships. But these were people that learned how to work at an early age with things like delivering newspapers, which is a job I know is gone now, but we need to find paper route substitutes. Maybe walking dogs, for example, would be a paper route substitute. And they learned work skills young. And all the people that are profiled in that book are gainfully employed. But I think part of the problem with employment is not teaching the skills, and the other problem is they get stuck in the autism box. And they can't imagine this kid could do anything. But you see, I'm going from this autistic kid where mom does all the talking for them, and then I finally get the girl to take, this little girl that's like 7 years old, to take a mic. I'm seeing her just the other day at a meeting and talk to everybody and ask her questions instead of having mom ask the question. And now I'm seeing the factory, this big metal fabrication shop that built stuff for me, that's closed now. 20 years ago I was in there. I'm in there back at the fab shop. So I'm going in my mind, I'm going back and forth between the autism meeting and all the factories I've worked in and shops, people I've worked with. You see, nothing's abstract. Right. Well, I have a question.

Okay, well, anyone listening to this, to, uh, the show right now around the world, if they want to get in touch with you to be a speaker at some huge conference, uh, or whatever, how do they do that?

Well, they can, uh, I'll give you my mobile phone number. They can call it. It's 970-443-1510. Also, I could be reached through the Department of Animal Science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. And it's Colorado State University. See, there's another university in the state. Colorado State University Department of Animal Science. I could be reached there.

That's excellent.

Well, Temple, I can't thank you enough. But I gave you that phone number, 970-443-1510. They could reach me through that. I find a lot of younger people today, they don't like to pick the phone up.

That's so true. They don't. Well, Temple, thank you for being on the show today. Having you on this show, to me, was like having superstar, which you are. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. And I want to see these kids that are different get out and do things. Let's just mention nonverbal autism. Some of the nonverbal autistics can learn to type independently, and some of them have a good brain hidden inside there, and we need to teach them how to type independently. And they're often underestimated on the things that they can do. You know, now they're not gonna be doing engineering or jobs, something like that, but some of them are good at art, but they could do a job like stocking groceries grocery store shelves. There's a lot of things that they can do, and they're often underestimated.

They are. Well, listen, folks, before we end the show today, you know we end the show with a quote. And right now you're going to hear my favorite quote. I use it all the time when I'm speaking, and it is, "I am different, not less," said Temple Grandin. This is Joyce Bender, America's Voice. Where Disability Matters at voiceamerica.com. And in the words of Mary Brocker, choose joy.

Voice America would like to thank you for tuning in. Please join us next Tuesday at 11 AM Pacific Time and 2 PM Eastern Time for another installment of Disability Matters right here on the Voice America Variety Channel. We are the leader in Live Internet Talk Radio. VoiceAmerica.com.