Gathering for another Legacies Series to honor a true industry leader and pioneer are, Dr. Temple Grandin, Betsy Lerner and Kari Estes.
Guests: Dr. Temple Grandin, Betsy Lerner and Kari Estes.
Gathering for another Legacies Series to honor a true industry leader and pioneer are, Dr. Temple Grandin, Betsy Lerner and Kari Estes.
Dr. Grandin, an animal science professor at Colorado State University and a well-known author and speaker, has been featured on national public radio stations, Time Magazine, The New York Times, Discover Magazine, Forbes, USA Today and others. In fact, her movie titled Temple Grandin sharing much of her life story is an Emmy Award-winning movie.
While Dr. Grandin’s career has been nothing shy of exceptional, she led the conversation by explaining how her trials and tribulations at a young age with autism ultimately led her to where she is today. 8:40
After not speaking until the age of four, Dr. Grandin mentioned she began questioning how people think and their behaviors in her mid-twenties. 10:28
Scott Sorrell, podcast host and director of global marketing for Balchem, then asked about any new research on autism and what niche skills the autistic brain gives people. 14:37
Sharing a few stories and examples, Dr. Grandin mentioned that attention to detail, thinking in specific instances and extreme object visualization are all key characteristics of autism. 17:34
Also joining the conversation is Betsy Lerner, an author who previously worked with Dr. Grandin. She described the questionnaire for people to find out what kind of thinker they are, adding that Dr. Grandin scored 16 out of 18 in the visual thinker category, and she scored four out of 18. 18:41
Not only has Dr. Grandin focused her career on understandpeople's behavior, but animals as well.
Opposite of humans, Dr. Grandin added that animals live in a sensory-based world. She mentioned Betsy gave her the book “The Immense World,” which solely focuses on animal sense and living in a sensory-baked world. 28:12
With decades of knowledge and research, Sorrell asked Dr. Grandin what advice she would have for pet or animal owners. 30:20
Dr. Grandin shared it’s no surprise that animals have emotions like fear, anger, separation anxiety and a few others. She went on to add her experience helping producers understand why certain behaviors trigger cows while handled. 36:40
Dr. Grandin said her big career breakthrough started after working with an Arizona farm magazine to write firsthand experiences from ag events and cattle topics that eventually led to speaking opportunities. 43:58
As the industry continues to shift, so does the future of animal handling and behavioral studies. Dr. Grandin shared the story of touring a new cattle handling facility with a slick floor just this last year, adding this is just one of the things she shares in her resources about the basics of cattle behavior and safety. 48:11
Betsy closed by sharing she truly believes Dr. Grandin is an inspiration to everyone she meets. She added that while traveling to Colorado, Dr. Grandin was honored for her years of service and Betsy met many of Dr. Grandin’s students. While it was no surprise, Betsy mentioned each student said Temple truly changed their lives and believes she has made the world a better place. 55:08
Life is all about helping people and finding practical solutions, and Dr. Grandin closed by adding that’s truly what makes her happy. 59:13
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Scott Sorrell (00:00:08):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the podcast we're leading scientists, Andry professionals, meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Hi, I'm Scott Crell, one of your hosts here tonight at The Real Science Exchange, and we're thrilled to be back with one of our most popular and special segments, and that's the legacy series in these segments. We recognize the true pioneers in our industry, both past and present. We take a look at their lives, their impact on agriculture, and their legacy. Tonight we have the honor of celebrating the life and career of Dr. Temple Grandon from Colorado State University. Dr. Granton's name is synonymous with animal welfare, using her insights to improve the lives of animals around the world. So with that welcome temple, thank you for agreeing to join us tonight and allowing us to highlight your career.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:01:02):
Well, it's wonderful to be here.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:05):
Yeah. Temple. You know, one of the things that I've come to admire about you is your flair for Western wear. And I noticed you, you're, you're wearing some Western wear tonight. So how did that fondness come about? Well,
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:01:18):
It started when I was in high school. I got the opportunity to visit my aunt's ranch out in the West, and that's how I got into the cattle industry. And that brings up a really important point. Students get interested in things they get exposed to. So as a teenager, I got exposed to cattle hadn't been west of Mississippi until I was a teenager, and I always liked the west.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:45):
Yeah, no, I, I understand that. I, I grew up on a farm myself, and I don't think, see it or not, but I'm wearing a bolo tie tonight temple in honor of being with you here this evening. Oh, great. That's, this thing's probably 40 years old, I haven't wanted it in quite a while, but in honor of you, I'm wearing that. We have another guest with us here tonight. She's a successful author and has gotten to know Dr. Grant quite well. And that's Betsy Lerner. Welcome Betsy, and thank you for joining us tonight.
Betsy Lerner (00:02:14):
Oh, thank you, pat. Happy to be here.
Scott Sorrell (00:02:16):
Yeah. Betsy can just tell us a little bit about yourself and tell us how you first met Temple.
Betsy Lerner (00:02:22):
I was a book editor at Hoen Mifflin, one of them, a house that's recently been acquired by another company, but at the time it was one of the great independent publishers. And I was a fairly young editor, 25 years ago, and I read an article in the New Yorker by Oliver Sachs, called an Anthropologist on Mars, it was a profile of, temple and her autism and her many accomplishments. So I reached out to see if she would like to do a book, and she had already published a book called Emergence real very early memoir of her early life. But we decided to go to contract and, and do a book that became thinking in pictures.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:03:07):
Yep. This is it right here. Ah-Huh. Very well. This is the this is got a new afterward that we did two years ago in it.
Scott Sorrell (00:03:15):
What was the published date of that first published date?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:03:18):
1995
Scott Sorrell (00:03:19):
In 1995. And now you have a new book called Visual Thinking. That's right.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:03:22):
Visual Thinking. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (00:03:24):
And, and
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:03:25):
I can tell you why what motivated me to write this book.
Scott Sorrell (00:03:30):
Yeah, absolutely. I think that'd be great. And, also let us know where you can buy that book.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:03:35):
Oh, you can find it. Any book shop on Amma. Amazon has got it. It's all the outlets have, have got it. It's easy to find. Well, right before Covid shut everything down, I went, on some trips and I realized that we had a skill loss issue. I went to two state-of-the-art pork processing plants, and a state-of-the-art chicken processing plant and discovered that all the equipment was imported from Holland. Then I went to the Steep Jobs Theater, and the structural glass walls were designed in Italy and built in Germany, and the roof came from Depa Dubai. Then later on, I found out that the state-of-the-art electronic chip-making machine, not potato chips, electronic chips, came from Holland. And I'm going, we've got a problem here. And it goes back to our educational system. When the kids are in ninth grade in Holland and Denmark, they can choose to go the university route or maybe the tech route.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:04:40):
We tend to sort of look at the tech route as a lesson form of intelligence. But I can tell you right now, I worked with a lot of brilliant brilliant guys that barely graduated from high school and that was inventing and patenting complicated equipment. And the problem is these people were retiring out and they're not getting replaced. Check out the people fixing elevators and escalators. You are gonna see a lot of gray hair. We've got a skill problem. And so that was one of the big motivations. And Covid comes along. So the book was a big covid project for me. I called up Betsy, she needed Covid project too. And we got together and worked on the book, what we did.
Scott Sorrell (00:05:30):
Ah, excellent bet. Betsy, how would you say that this last book, which was published in October, I believe, of last year, so it's brand new? How does that differ from the original book? Thinking in Pictures?
Betsy Lerner (00:05:43):
I like to think of them as bookends thinking in Pictures was a memoir primarily about how Temple discovered she was a visual thinker. And she describes in that book in great detail how she sees images and how they work in an associative way in her mind and short films in her mind. And I'll let her talk about that. But visual thinking 25 years later backs up all of that personal knowledge and experience with the science behind it and all of the studies she's discovered and dug up and synthesized along the way to help us understand why some of us are visual thinkers, some of us are more verbal thinkers, and where we fall on the spectrum.
Scott Sorrell (00:06:28):
Before we get too far into this one, and to introduce my other co-host tonight, which is Carrie Estes. Carrie, you've been here before and you're also a cowgirl on your own, right? You even have a riding steer, so would you mind telling us that story real quick?
Kari Estes (00:06:44):
Yes, yes. He is my baby. He's 10 years old now. He's a Holstein steer. And he was one of my steers from my research project. I had 10 of them. And I, I fell in love with them, his name is Henry. So when my master's project was over, I purchased him from the university and brought him home with me. And at the time, I didn't have a horse to ride, so I trained him to be a riding steer. So
Scott Sorrell (00:07:15):
Yeah, Very interesting. Yeah. I love, love the pictures temple. Before we get started for those folks that may not know you real well, just kind of wanted to go over some background okay? Some history grants you became a prominent author and speaker on both autism and animal behavior. And today you're a professor of animal science at Colorado State University. You've been featured on National Public Radio, and appeared on national TV shows, and articles about you have appeared in Time Magazine in New York Times Discover Magazine, Forbes USA Today, and H B O even did an Emmy award-winning movie about your life titled Temple Grandon. And that movie's currently available on Netflix. Certainly like to encourage people to go out there and watch that. I found it to be very interesting. With that temple would like to talk a little bit, let's start back at the beginning. As a child, how did you, how did you come to realize that you were a visual thinker?
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Dr. Temple Grandin (00:08:40):
Well, when I first started my cattle behavior research when I was in my twenties, I thought everybody was a visual thinker. I didn't know that my thinking was different. And so the first thing I did was, was looking at what cattle were seeing when they were walking through chutes and they would refuse to move if there were shadows or chains hanging down and coats on fences or vehicles parked along a facility. And it wasn't until my late thirties that I discovered that a lot of people are not visual thinkers. And that was a shock to me. And the way I discovered that I was at an autism conference and I was talking to a speech therapist, and if I say something to somebody who's a visual thinker, think about church peoples, they, they sort of see a whole bunch of specific ones. They name 'em off, but this speech therapist just saw this
Scott Sorrell (00:09:35):
Point. Okay,
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:09:36):
That's all she saw. Very vague. And I'm going, wow, something different's going on here. And then I started questioning people about how I think, how they think. And I used the church people question, cuz I found that worked better than a house cat, or dog because most people are so familiar with that, they can visualize it, but church steeples are just out there in the environment. People don't pay that much attention to 'em, but you see 'em every day. And I've found that that tends to differentiate a visual thinker who would misname 'em off. And then there were some people where they get a generalized steeple that maybe hit, had more detail. And then of course we discovered in the book, some people have Anne Fantasia, they have no visual thinking at all. And, and then I started asking other people, then I found there was a third kind of pattern thinker.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:10:29):
So you have the photorealistic visual thinker, pattern thinker, and word thinker. And then while working on one of my other books, the Autistic Brain, I found the research, I found a single paper in the reference list of another paper. This was ov, I can never say it, right, where she differentiated between an object visualizer like me and the more mathematical pattern thinker. And there were two different things and I thought, wow, hit the jackpot. And I discovered this magic keyword, object visualizer. You cannot find the paper if you don't use that keyword. Object visualizer.
Scott Sorrell (00:11:12):
Yeah. Very interesting. Temple for you know, one of the things I wanna accomplish today with this webinar, webinars kind of give our listeners a, you know, a real deep understanding into who you are as a person and how your career unfolded. Would you mind taking this back to the beginning and telling us what it was like growing up a, as a young child with autism?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:11:33):
Well, I had no speech, and at age four, I had an excellent early intervention. If you've got a two-year-old's not talking, you gotta get 'em into therapy. And if you can't get therapy, then get some grandmothers or somebody to work with a kid because the worst thing you could do is to just let 'em zone out on electronics. The worst thing you could do. So a good early intervention. Great elementary school teachers. My mother had a very good sense of, you know, things I could do. Got me out doing things. I'm seeing too many autistic kids today that aren't learning, shopping, and just basic skills. And a great third-grade teacher, and a fabulous science teacher when I was in high school, cuz I was a bored student who was not interested in studying. And he gave me interesting projects to show me how studying was a way to become a scientist. Then I was motivated.
Scott Sorrell (00:12:26):
Yeah, very interesting. Betsy, kind of curious I'm sure you researched autism a bit as you're working with Dr. Granton you know, back 70 years ago, what did we know about autism, and were there any identified treatments and what, what can you tell us about that?
Betsy Lerner (00:12:48):
Well, originally autism was blamed on guess who mothers. And they were known as refrigerator mothers. And people thought that children with autistic traits, such as lack of communication, lack of speech, couldn't attach, and couldn't hug, were because the mothers were cold and withdrawn. And in 2023, we now know that it's a genetic trait. So we've come a very long way, but it's, I think, been a, probably a very bumpy road for people with autism because it's also a spectrum condition and it, it, and I don't think any two autistic people, like any two neuro neurotypical people, are the same. Would you agree Temple?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:13:36):
Well, I would agree with that. You see, you've got a spectrum that's going all the way from Einstein who had no language to age three. Einstein, if he was a child today, would land in an autism program. You know, that's where today where most kids that have delayed speech end up. And then at the other end of the spectrum, you've got somebody who's non-verbal, who cannot dress on very, you know, mu much more severe challenges. Now, some non-verbal individuals can learn to type independently, and they may never learn to speak, but some of them can learn to type. That needs to be encouraged. But it's such a big spectrum. I, I've been out to the Silicon Valley tech companies, and I'm gonna tell you about half those programmers. I got some degree of autism. We wouldn't even have this streamy yard platform, to talk on now if it wasn't for some autistic brains working on it.
Scott Sorrell (00:14:37):
That's interesting. What do we know about the autistic brain that gives people on the spectrum this gift?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:14:44):
Well, you see the attention to detail. Verbal thinkers tend to overgeneralize broad concepts. My mind thinks in specific examples. Okay. I get on committees when we were talking about accommodations for different people. I don't talk about it in generalities. Just the other day I was with a company that does travel and they had a blind person and he was telling me about his biggest problem at the airport is finding gates. Okay, so let's develop an app called Gate Finder. And there are various ways you could do this. You see, that's something specific, something very specific that's doable where Okay. Sort of a broad, well, we just gotta do accommodations. Let's do something that I think with present technology you could do fairly easily. You need to put transponders on the gates or you make sure the numbers are big enough so an AI program can read the gate numbers.
Scott Sorrell (00:15:45):
Yeah. Very interesting. I
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:15:46):
Think our airport's gonna work just fine as some other airports. I'm gonna have to put up some bigger numbers.
Scott Sorrell (00:15:52):
Yeah. Temple, when did you first become interested in animals? Was that at a young age that
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:15:59):
That started as a teenager?
Scott Sorrell (00:16:01):
Okay.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:16:03):
I was bullied and teased in school a horrible time in high school. I got kicked out of a regular high school and I went to a special boarding school that had horses. Okay. And they put me to work cleaning horse stalls and taking care of the horse barn. Also riding and getting horses ready for the show was the only place I was not bullied. So again, this is exposure. Horses were my life when I was a teenager. And then I went, went out to my aunt's ranch.
Kari Estes (00:16:33):
Is there a particular horse that's had a lasting impact on you? Well, there was a horse when you were growing
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:16:39):
Up. Well, there was a horse named Bay lady, and I had a roommate and we had to share her. So like, I might be in the equitation class and she'd be in the western pleasure class because they didn't have that many good horses. They,
Scott Sorrell (00:16:58):
You've never ridden a steer, have your temple? I
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:17:02):
Haven't ridden a steer. I've just seen people doing that. And I have a picture of somebody riding a steer I use in my, in my talk. So this is a steer that has low stress, no fear of cattle handling, and he's got a western saddle on. And
Kari Estes (00:17:17):
I remember seeing that one. Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:17:21):
Yeah.
Scott Sorrell (00:17:24):
I'm kind of curious. So you, you, you, we were talking before about the different kinds of thinkers temple and I I, and I didn't write them all down, but I understand that you, you outlined those in the new book,
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:17:34):
In the new book, Visual Thinking. Yeah. I outline the three basic kinds of thinking objects. Visualizers, like I, think in the photo, realistic pictures are terrible at higher math in algebra. Okay. Abstract math you can't do. Then you have your visual-spatial pattern, math thinker. These are gonna be music and math people, your programmers, chemists, and physicists. And then you have people that think in words, Betsy's someone who thinks in words. Also, people can be mixtures. But the thing I like to emphasize is how these skills can be complementary. Because what we did on the new book on visual thinking is I'd write the rough drafts, they'd be kind of disorganized. Betsy would straighten 'em all out and organize them. Okay. So that's using the complimentary skills.
Scott Sorrell (00:18:29):
Now, Betsy in the book where you guys described this, I think you also provide a questionnaire so people can figure out what kind of a thinker they are. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Betsy Lerner (00:18:42):
Sure. It was developed by a woman named Linda Silverman in Denver, who's worked with autistic Kids on the Spectrum for many years. And she developed it over many years using many questions. And it was a study that got boiled down into an 18-question questionnaire that asks things like, do you like to navigate with a map or in your mind some things? Things like that. And depending on how many yeses you get, you see that you are more of a visual thinker. And I think Temple scored 16 out of 18, and I scored four out of 18. To give you an idea of how far apart we are on that spectrum.
Scott Sorrell (00:19:31):
So this is not just for determining where auto what kind of thinkers autistic people are, but it'll work for all of us.
Betsy Lerner (00:19:38):
Oh, definitely.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:19:39):
That works. That works for everybody. Now, what tends to happen when a kid gets some kind of label, such as autism is they might be an extreme object visualizer, but there's also another autistic person that might be an extreme visual spatial mathematical thinker. And what you won't have is an expert object visualizer and an expert mathematical thinker and the same person, they're kind of opposite traits. And that has shown up in the research.
Scott Sorrell (00:20:05):
Yeah. And where do you find where most people fall? Do, do we find that people with autism, do they, is there a different distribution on the bell shape curve or the
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:20:17):
Same? Don't know. Because some autistic people are word thinkers and they love facts, they often love history and things where there are facts. They might know all the facts about baseball or certain types of movies. They would know all the facts about him.
Scott Sorrell (00:20:35):
Now, I, I saw a gentleman on America's Got Talent. He was blind, he was autistic. But boy could he sing. It was just amazing how he could sing. And so what kind of a a thinker would he be?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:20:50):
Well, probably probably more of a pattern thinker and up the other thing, and we've written some about blind people in visual thinking in a sighted person, the visual parts of the brain take up almost a third of the brain. Big piece of real estate. So if you're born blind that real estate doesn't stay blank, the auditory system will go in and, and, and take over. And some blind people actually can learn to echolocate, you know, similar to a bat. And, and I, you know, repurpose that visual cortex. I had a blind roommate when I was in graduate school and it was amazing what, what she could do with her cane. Like at the beginning of each semester, somebody had to do sight guide once the leader to the new classrooms and she'd know by feel putting the cane on the pavement where to go with just being led sighted guide once.
Scott Sorrell (00:21:50):
So temple, do you have any insight? Right? You've got these people that, that think differently. I'm gonna have to go go to the book and, and, and take the quiz to find out how I think. Cuz I, I, you know, I, while I was listening to the book and I was like, I wonder which one I am and I haven't got it figured out yet, so I'll take the test. But how do different people, or do you have advice for people that think differently? How can they work together to, to improve the outcome of, of, of the project?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:22:20):
Well, the first step is you have to realize people think differently. I do a lot of talks to corporations and I said, you need these skills of these different kinds of thinkers. So realizing that people do think differently, now let's go back to the food industry and the meat industry. Cause that's the one I know the most about. I went back to all the projects. I've worked for very major meat company on equipment design. And I'd be out on these big complicated construction sites putting in all this complicated equipment. And when I went back through all the projects and listed them well, when we were working on the visual thinking book, I found that there was a division of engineering labor that was the same for every company. And the guys in the shop maybe had taken a single welding class and they were the ones inventing and building complicated mechanical devices, think packaging machines mechanically complicated devices.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:23:15):
The degreed engineers, the mathematicians were doing boilers, refrigeration, wind loads, power loads, water requirements, and where we're losing the skills in what I call the clever engineering department. Those visual thinkers like me, object visualizers and I talked to a bunch of 'em, algebra's something they have difficulty doing that's screening 'em out. And these are the, this is the reason why a lot of its equipment now is coming from Holland because the people I worked with have retired out. And another mistake that was made, taken out shop classes, so these people aren't getting replaced. And also many of these companies shut down in-house engineering departments and that made money in the short run. But then as all the local shops retired out, now you've got one shop left, boy, let me tell they are gouging price gouging right now. 10 times the cost of things to fix things.
Scott Sorrell (00:24:18):
D do you think other people have identified the, the education system has identified some of these gaps? And is anything being done well? I
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:24:24):
Think, I think there's some educators get it, but there's also some educators that aren't even aware that my kind of thinking exists. They will say, well, you need algebra in order to think logically. I don't use algebra to think logically. And when I was doing a book signing for visual thinking, I went to school that they did the, my talk at a school and I talked to the principal, he didn't even know what my kind of thinking is. And he was asking me over and over again about how I think. And I think there's some people that I had somebody call it conjecture that talking about the way I think, Hmm. You know, I, there's some educators that don't even wanna believe that it exists. And these are people they've never worked with factories. Wait a minute. I spent 25 years in heavy construction. I watched how these people did things. Most educators have never done anything like that.
Scott Sorrell (00:25:28):
Right. You know talking a little bit about how you think, I, I was quite fascinated in in, in hearing you describe it in thinking in pictures and I mean it's, it's, I think a lot of us, at least me, I mean, I'm sure I see things as I think, but, but you're almost like looking at I think I, I think you even said you, you superimpose it on a screen and you actually see a picture and you're able to turn it like 3D and look at it from different directions.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:25:59):
I tend to rotate myself around it. Like, okay, I become a drone now, of course when I first started, drones didn't exist, but I can, I, I kind of fly the drone around it. Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:26:46):
You see we need both the visual side of engineering and that's the industrial design side. And we need the the mathematical type. Now I wanna talk about science. We're getting more and more into fancier statistics and more and more math and science, different types of science experiments. And what's happening is I'm seeing methods sections of papers where they leave out crucial things like what type of apparatus that's used to mix cancer samples. We have this in the visual thinking book. The type of mixing device you use can totally change the results. You better state what it is. The type of bedding you put in your rat cage can change behavior results. I review a lot of papers and I go, I can't believe this. They didn't tell me what they fed the pigs, they didn't tell me how they housed the cattle, whatever it was. These basic, basic things are left out. And then they got every fancy pile of statistics you can think of when maybe a simple T test would've worked.
Scott Sorrell (00:27:50):
Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:27:51):
And this is where you need me to read the method section of the paper. Well, I just read the latest fusion experiment and one of the things that made it work was making this little ball in it perfectly round. I wonder who built that? Some guy in a shop somewhere not getting enough credit for it.
Scott Sorrell (00:28:12):
Hmm. Very interesting. I wanna circle back to your work with animals. Do you have any idea in terms of how animals think as any clues that we have?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:28:24):
I can tell you something. We definitely know. They don't think in words. They live in a sensory based world. Okay. Not a word-based world. That's the first thing I tell veterinary students. First thing you gotta do is get away from verbal language. What is it seeing? What is it smelling? I remember Betsy, when you got a dog, I told you to go out and watch, watch exactly what it does. It's a sensory based world. I just learned, there was a study done at Cornell and they found that dog has a huge internet connection from the nose to the visual cortex, smell pictures. Think how trippy that is. And Betsy gave me a really great book called The Immense World. And it's about animal sense, like the octopus. It's all about feel lives in a tactile world. It's a sensory-based world. Now we have a chapter in visual thinking about animal consciousness. I find it just ridiculous when we've got people questioning whether a dog is conscious. And I think it basically gets down to verbal thinking versus other sensory-based
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:30:03):
And I noticed when you read on when the papers come outta the psychology department, more likely to deny animal thinking than maybe come outta the computer science department. In fact, one paper written by computer scientist said, well, gets down to verbal versus nonverbal thinking.
Scott Sorrell (00:30:20):
Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:30:35):
I'm very concerned. A lot of dogs just don't get enough stuff to do. Mm-Hmm.
Scott Sorrell (00:31:01):
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:31:02):
And they don't get to have doggy social life. And, and now that now a lot of people got pets during covid and they were with their owners 24 7, and now the owners are going back to work and there's getting me bad problems with separation distress.
Scott Sorrell (00:31:18):
Yeah.
Betsy Lerner (00:31:20):
I remember when I got my dog temple said that all animals seek freedom and to see if I could get her off leash as much as possible. So I started taking her to this fantastic trail where we never saw anyone else. Every now and then, another owner and dog and my dog, little 10 pound Cockapoo ran like a deer throughout the woods smelling, jumping, running. And now at 16, she still does all of that. And my vet said, well, she's in fantastic condition. Her heart is so strong. And I knew it was because of all that off leash exercise. She got all that incredible freedom to roam and smell. And I mean she's obviously a domesticated little dog. She's not a wild animal, but she's had a lot of time to be free and I really saw that at work.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:32:14):
Well, and the other thing, some people say, well, what if we just put the dog on a treadmill? I don't think that's gonna replace it. And, and I've been thinking about the smell pictures. We now, now, now unfortunately this is not in visual thinking because this study got published after the book went to the printers. But really trippy. I'm going, wait a minute. What this brain scan of this dog shows that was done at Cornell University is that the dog has smelled pictures. I'm going, that's very trippy. So I'm at this veterinary conference and I'm going up the escalator and I'll kick up my head down. Okay, now I can smell machinery grease down there. Now I can smell a popcorn or serving at the trade show and my head up like that. And I'm thinking about the detail the dog could get of a smell picture. Mm-Hmm.
Scott Sorrell (00:33:02):
Yeah. Very interesting. So
Kari Estes (00:33:04):
Temple, what do you think about pets and emotions?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:33:08):
Well, pets, I got emotions. There's no questions that, in fact, one of my earlier books, animals Make us Human. I worked with Catherine Johnson on we went over all of the panke research on animal emotions. And it's very clear they have emotions. And there's seven basic emotional systems. There's fear and there's anger, then there's separation distress. And separation. Distress is a different emotion and a different brain system than fear. Then you have seek or the urge to explore. Some animals have a high urge to explorer some cattle, if you put GPS collars on 'em, they graze a whole bunch of pasture. And others just lay around the water hole. One's a high seek, the other's a low seek. And then you've got a sex drive. You've got the mother young nurturing, that's the oxytocin system. And you've got play. Now what separates us the most from the animals is not emotions. It's pure computing power. We've got computing power sitting up here that a dog doesn't have the stack stuff,
Scott Sorrell (00:34:19):
You know people tend to like to think of dogs and cats of, they, they, they tend to project our emotions in the way we think on, on them. And it's not true. What, what are some of the problems that that causes and what kind of advice would you give? Well,
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:34:38):
There's some places where, you know, emotions are similar. Okay. Separation distress and grieving is, you know, kind of the same thing. You get SCA and people that you know, don't see enough new things, get scared of new things.
Scott Sorrell (00:34:55):
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:34:55):
You know, you know, fear of heights. People and animals both have that.
Scott Sorrell (00:34:59):
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:35:00):
Visual cliff effect. You have a, you have a, a sheet of glass over a four foot drop off a baby and a lamb will both refuse to cross that. It's fear of heights. See, that's, that's a primal fear. Fear of falling. That's why I emphasize for both pets and for catalysts, very important to have non-slip flooring. Mm-Hmm.
Scott Sorrell (00:36:21):
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:36:22):
No, I'm gonna put the feet down the moment they stay a little bit quiet.
Scott Sorrell (00:36:27):
You know, one of the things that fascinates me is, is is your ability to put yourself in the place of the animal, whether it's, you know, in the squeeze shoot. Is that a learned skill or is that something that just came naturally
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:36:41):
To you? Well, I just you know, I was one of the first people to notice that animals were, would get really afraid of stuff like shadows. And you can have shadows that change with the time of day. I, I'm trying to find this shadow on my phone. I call the spider monster that oh yeah, here it is right here. Here's a big shadow I call the spider monster. Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:37:45):
Well, let's stop it. Wiggling. Those are the little things that cattle tend to
Scott Sorrell (00:37:50):
Notice. Is that your ability just to concentrate on details? Is that what what that
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:37:54):
Is? No, I, I'm, I just, the other thing I have to, I can train people. I'm, I, one time the same plant call me up. They had a problem at night. They said the cattle get halfway up the shoot and stop. So I said to the guy, I want you to bring up nice and calm. I want you to watch your leader. And when the leader stops, what is he looking at? He'll show you. And there was an l e d light on the side of the building Hmm. That he didn't like. And they got rid of that.
Scott Sorrell (00:38:23):
Very
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:38:24):
Interesting. They, they were able to do that one themselves.
Scott Sorrell (00:38:29):
So temple, not only have you done a lot, quite a bit of work in, in animals, but you've done a lot of work with working with families, with children, with autism. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:38:40):
Well, one of the biggest problems I'm seeing right now is to, it's like these dogs that don't get out and see enough stuff and they're afraid of everything. These autistic kids are getting to over shoulder and they're not learning basic skills like shopping, bank account, ordering food and restaurants, learning how to greet people and shake hands. Just very basic things that I learned when I was seven and eight years old. You see, social skills are not taught in the same structured way that they were in the fifties. But I'm appalled at the amount of teenagers, fully verbal. We have never gone in a store by themselves and bought something. I mean, and this is coming up all the time.
Scott Sorrell (00:39:22):
So what's structurally changed?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:39:24):
Contractor, I tell 'em that they, I said, the next time you go to a gas station and you're pumping gas, you need to hand the kid a $5 bill and send 'em into the shop to buy a junk milk. And you're right there, you can see in there. Hmm. That's where you start. Or I was at the airport and a mom and her 12 year old daughter came up to me and, and they wanted a picture. And, and then I said to the girl, if you ever gone in a store and bought something yourself, and she had not, I handed her $5 bill and there was a little shop across the hall and could go in that shop and buy something. It was right there. We could see it. Mm-Hmm.
Scott Sorrell (00:40:14):
So, so what, what does structurally change about our society or the, the family structure that the kids aren't getting that kind of
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:40:21):
For the parents get too much into the label. Mother had a very good sense that she had to get me out to doing things and, and when I was 13, she got my little sewing job with a seamstress that worked out of her home that was just done in the neighborhood. I had an allowance and I knew with 50 cents was about $5 now 50 cents. And I could get five comics or 10 candy bars, but if I wanted a 69 cent airplane, I had to save for two weeks. Mm-Hmm.
Scott Sorrell (00:40:57):
Yeah. And
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:40:58):
It really, and it hurts the autistic kids more. I just ran into a kid last night who had never gone shopping and I told the mother that she needs a next time you, you know, a mom pumps the gas, the kid goes in the store and buys something.
Scott Sorrell (00:41:12):
Yeah. It kind of reminds me of the conversation we had just a bit ago about animals. Right. And, and, and, and, and getting them out and teaching them and getting them socialized and at a very young age they're
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:41:25):
Terrified of that. Everything. Yeah. And, and and they're having all kinds of behavior problems we didn't have before. See, when I was a child, the dogs ran loose. Now the downside was car accidents, that was the downside. But they were out socializing with other kids and other dogs and we just didn't have all these behavior problems we've got
Scott Sorrell (00:41:46):
Now. Yeah. Yeah. Betsy, you're gonna comment before and we'll cut ya. Do you remember what you were gonna ask?
Betsy Lerner (00:41:56):
I think you were asking about parenting au kids with autism, with autistic traits and temples observed that at so many autism conventions where as she said, kids are never trying anything, doing anything stuck on stuck on their video games and parents, the labels really locking people in and parents being even worse helicopter parents than they are today. Kids not having any freedom to explore, to build things to just root around and mom's sewing box or dad's toolkit. Such basic things that kids aren't being exposed to anymore. And especially if you're a visual thinker, learning at a young age that you can build anything, put together any Lego box with even without the instructions. These, these kids just need to be pushed in the areas that they are naturally good at and gravitate toward. But we're sort of trying to make it an one size fits all education. And the same with disabilities. Just there's this focus on disabilities that are preventing people from exploring their, their gifts. And I mean temple, really everything you did at that farm set the stage for a life of tremendous success with animal behavior and designing equipment and communication, which, you know, very few people would expect from somebody with autism. You've talked to probably what, hundreds and thousands of people at this point in your life communicating one of your greatest skills of all?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:43:41):
Well, when I started out my livestock stuff, I can remember when I got invited for my first big livestock conference. That was a real breakthrough. But there's a scene in the H B O movie where I go up and I get the editor's card and he was the editor for our state farm
Scott Sorrell (00:43:57):
Magazine. Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:43:58):
That. And that's happened. And I started writing for that magazine that really helped my career. And I got a reputation that if I covered the Arizona cattle feeders meeting, it was covered accurately. And I'd summarized the speeches accurately. Because one thing's helped me to be influential is I would design ara system or something like this and then I'd put the directions out there on how to make it the drawings and the materials and just explain how to make it
Betsy Lerner (00:44:29):
Long. Youtube
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:44:30):
Do a lot of great innovative innovation in, in a lot of things, whether it's education or whether it's something like grazing or something like this. But no, but nobody's writing about it.
Scott Sorrell (00:44:43):
Hmm. You still do a lot of writing temple?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:44:45):
Yes, I do. In fact, I got a paper right here on grazing.
Scott Sorrell (00:44:49):
Okay. I'm getting,
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:44:50):
I'm getting really interested in regenerative agriculture. This is grazing cattle, sheep and goats are an important part of the sustainable agricultural future. And I went and looked up every scientific study I could find on rotational grazing and soil health and improving a land cover crops and grazing cover crops. You know, things we can do with livestock to improve the land.
Scott Sorrell (00:45:18):
Yeah, there
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:45:19):
Is, I wanna encourage that sort of stuff.
Scott Sorrell (00:45:22):
Yeah. temple, can you talk a little bit about the, the, the future of ag? We kind of talk about sustainability there. What are some directions that you think we need to go?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:45:33):
I, let's work on, on some doable things. Okay. I just told you about, I went to this disability meeting, it was about travel stuff. Well, the blind person, I wanna make him a gate finder app cuz he told me that's his worst problem at the airport. Okay. That is something specific that I can do. It's not abstract. Also something I know that wouldn't be that hard to do. Right. I want to, I, right now, one of my big things I'm working on is I wanna see the kids who think differently, get out and have really good careers. And I tell business leaders and I've talked to steel companies, computer companies, pharmaceutical, all kinds of different things, travel companies. You need these skills. You actually need these skills. You don't have to do it to be just to be nice. You need them. You need someone to fix airplanes.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:46:30):
You know, these skills are needed. Yeah. Talk about changing some of the interview processes where you show off portfolios of work. That's how I sold my cattle handling jobs. I would show off a portfolio of my work. In fact, here I would show you some of my drawings right here. I would just show people my drawings. That's how you deal with not interviewing. Well show the work off. No, I wanna help these kids that are different get into really good careers. So that's something I wanna do now. And what I did on my cattle handling stuff, I published it all the drawings, it's all online. It's in books. I've got book, two books. I'm just on cattle handling.
Scott Sorrell (00:47:17):
Are, are there some innovations that still need to take place with animal handling?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:47:21):
The biggest thing in animal handling is management. I just got an email about a dreadful animal shelter and understaffed mass, which also sounded like that maybe it was underfunded. But what I have found is management sets the tone for the animal handling and management has to decide they are gonna handle cattle. Right. Or whether it's pets in an animal shelter, whatever it is they've got management sets the tone you need to have good facilities, but facilities alone won't do it. You also have gotta have management and it sounds like animal shelter. They, they put two animal shelters together. I think they ran outta money. But I, you have to I have seen places get good with the change in management. I've also seen 'em get terrible with the change in management.
Scott Sorrell (00:48:10):
Mm-Hmm.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:48:11):
Scott Sorrell (00:48:54):
Yeah. Betsy you've written some books with Temple and, and I'm sure you've learned a lot over the course of doing that over the several years. What are some big topics that maybe we haven't touched on so far?
Betsy Lerner (00:49:06):
Well, we temple wrote two books for middle grade students. One's called Calling All
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:49:13):
Mines on All Mines,
Betsy Lerner (00:49:15):
Which is all about invention and it connects up Temple's favorite inventors. You, you had a book as a child that had all the inventors and we loved it. And so you connected all of that up with how we think and how we build and make things. And the second book was also a lot of fun called The Outdoor Scientist, which is all about science and nature with also lots of great activities for, for kids to do. And both books I think really opened the minds, not just of kids, but of parents how the world around us, not just our screens, is really where the wonderful information comes from. And both those books just encourage kids to get out and and make things discover things. Whether it's the beach, whether it's your city street, doesn't matter where your environment is. There's so much.
Betsy Lerner (00:50:09):
Even just in the sidewalk we, we talked about, you know, what, what's cement made of
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:51:04):
Well, when I did the book signing for this, it was about four years ago now, I I did it in a suburb outside of Denver, 20 to 30% of elementary school children had never made a paper airplane. I totally removed from the world of the practical. I had a girl in my cattle handling class last year who had never used a ruler or a tape measure to measure anything. In other words, totally separated from practical things. And we have to make policy about important stuff like power grid and things like this with people that are totally separated from the practical. And then when I heard when they had some power grid failures, I'm just appalled the abstract nonsense. They talk about like when the power grid went down in Texas, all the stuff they went in the papers was abstract nonsense. No, I wanna know what froze in each one of those planes. And I know if enough about equipment and if I found out what froze in each plant, then I can rank 'em in difficulty of fixing them.
Scott Sorrell (00:52:12):
Hmm. Very interesting.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:52:14):
Yeah, you see, I, it was gonna be nothing abstract and it was like 15 plants. I wanna get a list of them. Well, I can tell you right now, you turn me loose for three hours in that plant, I'm gonna head right down to their maintenance shop and we get rid of the suits and they'll tell me, they'll show me exactly what frozen, they won't lie to me.
Scott Sorrell (00:52:30):
Mm-Hmm.
Kari Estes (00:52:32):
So I'm kind of losing track now. Can we go run through your books really quick? Oh, I'm losing count
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:52:38):
Scott Sorrell (00:53:40):
Folks we're getting toward the end. They just flickered to lights. That means it's last call. So what I'd like to do is have each of you guys kind of wrap things up for
Speaker 5 (00:53:50):
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Scott Sorrell (00:54:14):
I'm gonna start with Carrie. Carrie, what's a couple interesting things that you learned today?
Kari Estes (00:54:20):
I think for me is just to recognize and understand that we all think differently. I think that we get in this idea that, you know, well why didn't you agree with me or see it my way? Right? But I think we should all be more understanding of that and because in the end we can use those attributes together and create more successful outcomes both in the human and animal realms.
Scott Sorrell (00:54:55):
Mm-Hmm.
Betsy Lerner (00:55:08):
Well, temple is an inspiration to I think everyone she meets. I had the distinct pleasure of going to Colorado where she was honored for many years of service. And I met with so many of her former students and each one said the same thing. She changed my life. Temple's devotion to making the world a better place across, across all fields is just incredible inspiration. And my life has been so enriched, working, working with you Temple the books, but also her gold standard for how to conduct yourself in life. She has a a phrase called Project Loyal, which means you put your ego to the side and you get the work done and you finish the project. And in book publishing, let me tell you, there are a lot of egos,
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:56:39):
Well, I think now I am my seventies now. One of the big things I'm working on now is I want show people different kinds of thinking exist. And these skills can be complimentary. Lemme see. This is the thing like Betsy and I working on the visual thinking book, that's an example of complimentary skills. You have the object visualizers like me, we're good at art, mechanics, photography and animals. Those things, mechanics and art tend to go together. Then you got the mathematical little spatial music and math minds. Then you have the word mines much more linear, often generalized. Now the interesting thing I've seen is in startup companies you've probably got the visual thinkers and the math thinkers inventing something new. But then you need a verbal thinker to actually run the business because you've got people that are startup people. I've seen that in the food industry.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:57:37):
But then you need somebody else to just come in and run the business, keep the payroll paid, pay the rent on the building, just keep things going. Then the techies will call that hiring a suit. And I've learned a lot because when I was young and mistakes were made on jobs, I used to think it was stupidity. Well, I was wrong that it's, they don't see it. But then the people that think verbally need to recognize that when they're a visual thinker warns them about something that could be a engineering hazard. They better pay attention to
Scott Sorrell (00:58:09):
It. Yeah. Temple, you, you mentioned that you're you're in your seventies now, you know, most people your age are slowing down, winding down, but that doesn't appear to be the case with you. What, what's a future hold for you?
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:58:22):
Well, I'm gonna go going back on a heavy travel schedule now. I'm, you know, I've got other things I still want to, you know, do writing on. I wanna encourage the ki people who think differently to get out and have a successful career. I'm seeing too many kids labeled autistic, getting addicted to video games. They're not getting great video game jobs if they were, I wouldn't be criticizing it. So the most fun I ever had is we'd sit around the job trailer or sit around the shop and we'd, we'd brainstorm how to build stuff. You see, and that's friends who shared interests. The most fun stuff I ever did was in construction also, some of the most nerve wracking and stressful stuff. You got a whole bunch of money tied up in something. Is it gonna work? You know, that can be, it was also some of those stressful times.
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:59:13):
Yeah. But I think for me, having a career where I've done, you know, stuff to make, makes improvements. You, I get asked, well, what's the meaning of life? Well, it's one simple thing at a time when a mom comes up to me and says, my kid got a job because of one of your books. Or My kid graduated from college because of one of your lectures, that makes me happy. I, those are the things that are important. And that's stuff I'm working on now. Yeah. There's things I don't do. I used to climb up a feed mill just to get a picture. I wouldn't be caught dead climbing up a feed mill man,
Scott Sorrell (00:59:49):
Dr. Temple Grandin (00:59:50):
That's 75 years old. There's no way. So physically I can't do some of the things. But hope, hopefully when you get older, you get wisdom. And I lo I, I, I wanna see the kids that are different, be successful. We've gotta find practical solutions to problems. You know, I, I get invited to a lot of corporations, you know, through, through the diversity part. And I wanna emphasize it. You need to hire these people because they can actually solve problems. Your company needs them.
Scott Sorrell (01:00:23):
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin (01:00:24):
Talk to a steel company. And I go, but you need the person like me who can't do math. Keep your milk from falling apart.
Scott Sorrell (01:00:30):
Yeah.
Dr. Temple Grandin (01:00:32):
And for some, and for some people, that'd be a very satisfying career. Not for everybody. I'm a big fan of getting a lot of different kinds of hands-on classes back in the schools, because that gives kids a chance to try a musical instrument, try theater, try welding, try mechanics, try cooking, try sewing. Because what I've learned about careers is it's exposure and then mentoring. And that's definitely true for me. Animals came when I was a teenager.
Scott Sorrell (01:01:02):
Yeah. Well said. And I'm sure you're quite a mentor temple. Want to thank you for allowing us to honor you and your career here on the Real Science Exchange. It's been a pleasure getting to know you. My little bit of jealous of Betsy. She's gotten to know you for, for many, many years now. One thing that I've that we haven't talked about is you, you come across as a very kind person, you know, during the conversations we've had on the phone. And, and I really appreciate that about you. Appreciate all the things that you've done for our industry, the passion and, and the joy that you bring to it. And Betsy, I also want to thank you for coming and sharing your memories and your insights and to Dr. Grandon. And lastly, Carrie, thank you for joining me once again and thank you to our loyal listeners for coming again to join us on our journey. Appreciate you guys sticking with us. And we'll be around hopefully for 60 more exploring more topics. And so, as always, I hope you learn something we'll, hope you had some fun, and we hope to see you next time here on The Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 5 (01:02:10):
We'd love to hear your comments or ideas for topics and guests. So please reach out via email to anh.marketing@balchem.com with any suggestions, and we'll work hard to add them to the schedule. Don't forget to leave a five-star rating on your way out. You can request your Real Science Exchange t-shirt in just a few easy steps, just like or subscribe to the Real Science Exchange. And send us a screenshot along with your address and t-shirt size to anh.marketing@balchem.com. Balchem's Real science lecture series of webinars continues with ruminant-focused topics on the first Tuesday of every month. Monogastric focused topics on the second Tuesday of each month, and quarterly topics for the companion animal segment. Visit alchem.com/real science to see the latest schedule and to register for upcoming webinars.