he's going all over the place and so i would, first of all, if my record was that he said i went to memphis and give a speech last week, i would try to find out if we actually did. a but if he's talking about what happened behind the scenes that he remembered from them there is no way i could check it. so i am just trying to have if it will record of what he said it but i've tried to get the parameters.

>> by that sense, collinton, expect for the scandal, under the level of theodore roosevelt that helped reposition for the big problems that have got us by the throat right now. >> host: when you reconnected with him, how did he change from

'92 to 2000. >> well, he got older right in front of me. i would say a little. i would say wiser. but definitely older. you can see the strain registering on it. i was surprised coming out forward the end of the book. i said are you still as idealistic as you claim to be about the american people to tackle big huge problems in politics? and he said yes. but he only meant that through the voters. he still trusted the voters. i had to tell him you didn't always trust the voters. there was a time after the '94 elections that you didn't. >> out of office by 54. he has a post presidential career for many decades. the personality, you've given a glimpse into his thinking and

what was going on. congratulations on the book. >> thanks. >> host: temple grandin, what coyou do for a living? >> i'm a teacher. i teach a course in livestock handling. i consult on animal handling, and i work with companies like mcdonald to audit their programs? >> host: how did you get there? >> well, i started out in arizona visiting all the feed yards. it was typical freelance kind of thing, before i was a professor.

you start out one project at a time and build up your business. after i'd been in the industry for 10 years, i went pack to school to get the phd when the economy was done. took me a i was. i was still consulting and do engagements on cattle and pig handling. >> host: why is it important that we now how animals think? >> well, when i first started out, since i worked in the meat industry, do cattle know they are going to get slaughtered. i'd go over in arizona, then i'd go over to the same field yard. and they braved the same way in both places. now they know animals can feel pain. "animals in translation" i talking about animal thinking. animal do have thinking, the ability to solve problems. but their thinking is

sensety-based not language-based. as an autistic person, i think in pictures. i don't think in language. language narrates the pictures. it's a sensory world. think about how much the dog learns when he's visited, who's been there, how long, it's all sensory-based detail. >> host: by why is that important for us as consumers of meet to know how animal are thinking? >> we want to make sure they have a good life. what does an animal want? pigs want things to manipulate. really important to give them material to root it. dogs, they need a social life. they need to be social interacting with people. each animal has different thing that is are more important to it. now, of course, animal cognition is not the level as human cognition. but i was reading in the "new

york times" today, there are dogs that know, they will understand over 200 knowns. >> host: temple grandin in our guest this week on "in depth." if i would like to dial in call 202-000- 0001. for those of you in the mountain and pacific you can send us an e-mail or you request tweet us as booktv is our twitter address. what do you mean when you say you think in pictures? >> well, all my thoughts come up as pictures. it's like google for images. instead of asking me like thinking in pictures, and then i see the cover of the book. why don't you give me a keyword. house or car, most people can rationalize that. don't give me something i can see in the tv studio, a control

room or something like that. give me a noun, and i'll tell you how it searches. >> c-span, i'm seeing my house room. the tv has c-span on. so now i'm seeing the remote control and i'm pushing all buttons. that's how i got the tv remote control. and i had to call the desk to get the remote control work. now i'm into like hotel hassle file. >> host: corral. >> corral. i'm starting to see many of the facilities that i've been. they start coming up like slides. now corral tends to be a ranch. so i'm see ranch facilities. you'd ask me feed lot, i start to see things i designed in the feed lots. if you said meat plants, i start seeing facilities i designed at the meat plant. that's something, that's any business, i'm going to tend see

my own stuff. why don't you ask me something that's not my business. >> host: book. >> i'm seeing them. you're in the row. you're not being very creative. the only way i can explain to you how you think, i have to show you the associative thinking. it gets off the subject the same way that the search does on the internet. even when you do a google, word base, maybe first few, then it gets off the subject. but it's associate. >> host: how many people in the u.s. think like that? >> well, there are other people that are visual thinkers that aren't autistic. a lot of graphic design art people, dyslexic, i can test run the drawing in my head. i thought, every other designer could do that. but i found out they couldn't. when i wrote "thinking in

pictures" i interviewed people how they thought. i was shocked to find out people don't think the way i do. when i see church temple, i can see them. i put them in the file. other people get this vague centerrized image. i only have specific ones. >> you were thinking in pictures, dr. grandin, you talk about three different types of thinkers. what are the three different types? >> well, when i first wrote, i thought that everybody on the autism was visual like me. well, i found out that's not true. i changed that. i found that interviewing a lot of people that were on the spectrum, there are three basic thinking. the thing about the as berger mind, it's a specialist. strong in one area.

now virginia picture think of google the pictures. where we are really bad is things like algebra. it was impossible because it was nothing to visualize. i never got to try geometry and trig. i talked to people that could do that just fine. the second type of mind is the pattern thinker. they think in patterns. it's like a more abstract visual thinking. think oragami. these are music and math. they are strong area. and they are going to weak in reading comprehension, and writing composition. and the third type is a word specialist. some of these people, they make good news broadcaster, reporters, they know every fact about their favorite subject. they are a little weaker in math. it's not always exact. you can get mixtures of them.

it's always an interesting to me to talk to how other people think. i found about three people that have absolutely no visual thinking. if i say visualize walking into your house or getting in your own car. i have found three people that could not do that. >> host: how do you define autism? >> well, i define it as a develop disorder that varies that genius like einstein and people that can be nonverbal. it's continuous. asperger is a milder variant. there's no black and white dividing line. if you didn't have a lot of people, this studio wouldn't exist. you wouldn't have all of these technical things. people in the spectrums more interested in things than they are in, you know, socializing

with people. when were you diagnosed with autism? >> well, i was born in 1947. i was taken to a neurologist. they checked if i was deaf. the neurologist didn't know what autism was. they said i was brain damage. then a few years later, i got the autism diagnosis. it's a long time ago. i'm 62 year old. >> who is leo canner? >> he was one of the first people to identify what autism was. i read his original papers. they were published prior to 1997. back in those days, no internet. a lot of journal articles didn't get put around very far. >> as the definition of autism changed over the years? >> well, not really. you see the problem that you got is something like autism or even dyslexia is it's a behavioral

profile. i mean, when i was a little kid, they used to think it was an emotional problem. emotions cost. no, it's something a child it born with. a lot has been learned scientifically about it. there's abnormalities in brain development. white matter is where it happens most in the brain. half ever your brain is white matter. the other half is gray matters. where the defects in autism is up here in the frontal cortex. the brain's funk, there's a poor interoffice communication. and some of the real smart have extra circuits back here in tech land. that may account for some of the so-called savant skilled. >> host: when you were diagnosed with autism, what was your parents reaction? >> well, fortunately, he referred my grow to a good speech therapy to give normal

therapy. mother could see that i was improving. when i was 3, she hire adoniny who played games with me and my sister. now, of course, back in those days, a lot of kids like me were put in institutions. i have to credit my mother on making sure that didn't happen. and i cannot emphasis effort the importance of early educational intervention. you see autistic like rocking no contact, a lot of tantrums, no space in a 3 year old. you don't wait. you got to start working with them. many hours a day. one to one interaction with a teacher. worst thing you can do is nothing. and a lot of people that are watching the program, and so may be in areas that you get good services. others are in the. but don't wait. if you are an area, get somebody to just start spending 20 to 30, playing turn taking games, teaching them language, you have to work on interaction. >> as an autistic, is it easy

for you to go into your own world? >> well, not now. you thing about autistic, you improve. people told me my speeches at age 60 are better than 50. the thing is it's bottom up. i put all of the puzzle pieces to form a whole. i form my hypothesis by putting all of the puzzle pieces together. i talk that in "thinking in pictures." >> host: how many books have you written? >> quite a few. my first book was "livestock handling and transfer." i was the editor. it's now in the third edition. i have the handling. where that came out two years ago. and that has all of my drawings and paper information in it. i got a book i edited on the genetics and the behavioral of domestic animals. and then, of course there's "thinking in pictures." and "autistic" and margaret

scariano helped me put that together. one of the problems i have. organization. my purely professional books, livestock handling, that was pretty much my writing. "thinking in pictures" that was my writing. but betsy had to reorange the chunks and structure. then when we did "animals in translation." katherine johnson had to put together all of the structure. i want to make sure i give katherine credit for linking the core emotional systems. but the -- like the chapters that i wrote in my livestock handling, those are my chapters. also you can look at my web site, grandin.com, that's all me. i have to break things down.

i don't know how to do the writing where she makes it like a story. thinking in pictures is my writing. thinking in pictures, also my autism book "the they i see it." that was made after a series of journals. >> when did you start writing? when did you start talking? >> i started talking by 3 and a half to 4. i was very lucky that i went to a neurology. i'm glad i didn't go to the psychologist. they referred to my mother that two teachers taught out of their home. good teachers that knew how to work with kids. >> host: how was your sister or is your sister autistic? >> no. >> host: is your parents around? >> my mother is 82. she's done some autism talks. >> host: where were you

raised? >> i was raised in massachusetts. when i was 14, i was kicked out of school for throwing a book for a girl who teased me. kind of an appropriate weapon. i was kicked out of a large girls school for that. teenage years were the worst part of my life. all of the teasing and everything. some of these smart, geeky kids that are out in the valley, those parents get them right directly from childhood into adulthood. in fact, half of silicon valley is going to have some degree of asperger. >> host: why do you say that? >> they do. you get the mild autism, geeks and nerds. i'm sure you have some here. none of this would work would these people. nature can design a brain to be more cognitive or social. the social take up processor

space up here. you have a brain that's more thinking, then they are going to invent things like tv station equipment. >> host: why did they call you tape recorder in school? >> well, the reason they called me that. i didn't realize this at the time, whenever i talked it sounded like little scripting. the way i had to learn language, to learn a lot of scripts. you have some kids that will be singing back the tv commercials, repeating stuff verbal out of movies. but they may know know what it means. some of these things the tone of voice is the language rather than the words. then they have to learn that the words have meaning. so you learn a certain phrase has meaning. the kids might start singing a hamburger commercial at dinner time. he knows that's associated with food. as i got older, i got less and less, because as you load more and more information in. i have to fill up the internets inside my head. so i have more things i can

refer to help me understand things better in the future. >> our guest is temple grandin. she is an associate professor of animal science at colorado state university. where is colorado state? >> it's out in fort collins. we need to get that fixed. i got promoted to full professor. >> host: congratulations. what does that mean? >> it just means i'm full professor. i'm happy about it. we need to get it fixed on the web page. >> host: do you know how many books you sold? >> "animals in translation" has sold every 250,000. "thinking in pictures" it sold 35,000 originally. it sold way over 100,000 copies. we had a little bit of problems tracking it because it changed publisher. and the book scan date is missing a pile of data. so i'm not exactly sure. then, of course, i have my livestock handling book.

that sold like 3,000. but that's a specialized book for ranchers. so that's going to be less. now, before we move on to calls and e-mails that have come in for your, you talk in many of your books about all of the livestock corrals. i'm using the wrong termology i'm sure that you've designed. could you speak to that a little bit? >> well, half of the cattle in this country when they go to the meat plant rough handling an equipment. i designed the system where the animal rides to it. i described it in thinking in pictures in some of my livestock books. half of the cattle in the canada and u.s. are handled in that facility. it doesn't -- i've worked with every major meat company on improving their animal handling, both on the design of their equipment and on animal welfare auditing. i developed a system for

measuring animal handling. like a cattle, how many fell down, how many moo. i can determine are they getting better or worse? that's used by all of the major restaurant companies that audit such as mcdonalds, burger king, and it's used in many other countries. >> and you've worked with the u.s. department of agriculture? >> yes. i was hired to do a survey of handling practices at slaughter plants. that's where the numerical scoring system was developed. >> host: is there a connection between your autism and your work with animals? >> well, being a sensory-based thinker helps me with animals. animals don't think in language. you want to understand, get away from language. it's a sensory-world. think about how much the dog learns when he sniffed the local

fire hydrant. there's a famous oliver sacks piece. he describes walking down and smelling all of these smells he never smelled before. it's a world of intense sensory detail. i notice the cattle would go through easily. otherwise it didn't. chain hanging down. a coat on a fence. a shadow. people standing in the way. a vehicle going by. and if you remove them. then they would walk right up the shoot. i have found in many of the meat plants where they fail the audits because they are using the electric prodder, i put the cardboard, i changed the light, then the cattle would move. i fix their cattle handling with big pieces of cardboard and lights. controlling what the cattle see. >> host: who is oliver sacks?

>> he's the author of "anthropologist from mars". pro filed me in 1994. it was a wonderful profile. he did a really nice, kind man. >> what made you write your autobiography at 1986. >> well, i was at the conference. she said i know a publisher that might be interested in working with you on writing an awe biography. emergency emergence" was where somebody on the inside was telling it. i was very, very busy. i don't know how to write things up, story form. i especially didn't back then. i was put in contact with the publisher. they had the writer, of the children books. and i said, yes, we'll do it.

and we got together and did it. and thinking in pictures came about after the oliver sacks piece came out, i had an agent contact me. that's how "thinking in pictures" came about. >> host: how do you write? >> well, all of my writing, i do on a yellow legal pads. and i've found out the other dinosaurs like me that do that. well, stephen king in one of his books wrote a little acknowledgment to the world's finest word processor, the fountain pen. i talked to the drivers. how many people my age write my hands. they said a lot of them do. i have somebody else do the typing. i don't type. i didn't learn how to type until i was 18. and the i never learned properly. >> host: what kind of instrument? >> i like mechanical pencil with soft led that's going to move very easily over the legal pad.

i don't like the cheap legal pads. i also have to have an eraser. i erase a lot. instead of marking out everything, and even thoughs things on my web site, that's all my writing unaudited if you want to see my writing unaudited. >> and somebody else types it up? >> yup. that's right. > host: dr. grandin, in school were in special ed classes? >> as the young kid i was in private nursery school. i went to a normal small school when i was 5 years old for kindergarten class. it was very old fashion. structured classes, older experience teacher. i started out going half a day. going to the elementary school, i stayed in the school. very small classes. 12, 13 kids in class.

and usually i did go. and then high school. that was a disaster. large girl school, all of the social problems, that was absolutely horrible. and then when i was 14, i got thrown out of the school for throwing books. i wanted to the special boarding school for emotional distinguished children. back in the '60s, everything was freud everything emotional disturbance. >> host: you've talked about thane and special schools, did your parents have a lot of money? >> yes. i was fortunate to have family that had enough money to do these things. but i've taken the price of the thing that is were done with me. i've figured it out for inflation, and my program is as a little kid cost money. but it cost less than some of the expensive programs today. the nanny was $50 a week.

and the other school was two teachers freelancing out of their home. the thing that got really expensive was going away to special boarding school. when you get into the more mild asperger, when i go out, there's asperger kids that are 40, 50 year old doing plant maintenance, plant engineer. a lot of those people game from modest backgrounds. people that work in the meat packing background. >> host: do you think the public schools are doing enough to meet the needs of autistic children? >> it all depends on where you are located to the school. they ranged from wonderful to awful. i travel all the around the country. i will not make a general statement about that. > host: what about the national institutes of health? do you think enough money is being invested into research? >> i want to see more money into the sensory/sensitivity

problem. people a autism, adhd, i have problem with sound sensitivity. loud noise hurts my ear. other people with visual problems. they can't stand fluorescent lights. it makes it look like it's flickering. i can't to the rate scratchy clothes. i like it. it's a real rag. i don't let anything see it. but the sensory problems can be debilitating. to completely debilitating where you cannot work in normal school or sporting event. there needs to be research on treatment. you can take somebody that's high functioning that can't tolerate a normal environment.

my problem with sensory/sensitivity are only in the nuisance category. >> host: what about drug therapies? >> well, i'm not a big fan of powerful drugs given out to little kids. i have a whole drug talk. there's a few books on this. one the problems that we have. drug companies advertising stuff, and pussing it for a lot of the wrong reasons. i had no medication when i was a child. let's look at some things. i know some families where some of the diets have worked. one the problems, the gluten free, dairy free diet, low-sugar diet, is autism is so variable. the diet helps one kid, it does nothing for another kid. that's worth trying. another thing in science is omega 3 supplements. that's a paper that just came out on that. obviously, i prefer scientistic

studies. but the diet, i've talked to enough family that those diets can work. handing out powerful drugs to 5-year-olds, even though it's cleared, is a bad idea. on the other hand, i can't be against medication. i read all of the stuff on this. i subscribe to medical terms. i needed anti-depressant medication. as i got older, my anxiety attacks got worse. i had horrible panic attacks. i say to people, imagine what it would have been like. imagine how nervous you were. imagine if you had to live in a room full of poisonous snakes. imagine how nervous you'd be. that's the way it was all the time. this is why i have to drink so much water. the and the -- the anti-depressant medication worked. i don't know what they do for depression, but where they really work, and there's

literature to back it up on the anxiety and the panic attack. it really works. i know people that are not autistic, good visual thinkers, addicted to drugs, all kinds of problem. a little dab of prozac. then when they go off it, it's one horrible mess. i want to warn you, people on the spectrum, tiny doses. 1/3 to 1/4 the starter dose. oh, i gave them a small dose. it was great. we doubled the dose and it was horrible. no sleeping, all agitated. and, you know, my feeling about medication is conservative use. now prozac isn't going to be anything for competitive behavior. where it works for anxiety, panic attacks. i have seen people just turned around. >> two more questions. then i promise you'll get your chance to talk with dr.

grandin. you used the terms asperger. >> well, it's defined as no speech they. autism is the continue yum. asperger is mild autism. when the kid is three, nobody is running to the doctor. he's verbal. he might be a little professor. but he's got no reason to be taken to the doctor. now there's a lot of controversy when the dms5 comes out as to what's going to be done with the asperger diagnosis. some people suggested to get rid of it and merge it all into the spectrum. i don't want to get rid of it. it's been around for too long. it's a part of the real high functioning end of the autism spectrum. it is definitely not a separate disorder. that's been pretty well proven in scientific research. i follow a lot of research.

>> host: i read in an interview or one of your books when you were talking about the mountains in colds. you told somebody that they don't bring you pressure. you see them as pretty, but you can't experience pleasure. >> well, i do experience pleasure on some things. when i'm together with all of the other building nerds, i find that fun. it's using my mind to try to solve problem. that's fun. now i'll look at a pretty sunset, but i don't get so emotional over it. that doesn't mean i don't have emotions. i know pretty. i know how to take picture that is are attractive. the aesthetic sense is not separated from the emotions. but i don't swoon over it. my emotions are more like a dogs happy one minute, next minute snarling and barking. you know, they can switch back and forth. it's simpler. in fact, animals make us humans,

krautth -- catherine and i discuss people brains have the same circuits. i made sure when i worked on the reference list "animals make us huge" people wouldn't say that was rough. i spent a lot of time for the footnotes, going back to get all of the original that these emotional circuits exist in animals. the thing that is ridiculous is those papers have been around a long time. they were in the psychology, not the veterinarian literature. >> caller: what a joy. you are my hero. dr. grandin. >> yes, we're listening. please go ahead with your question. >> caller: hi a little boy in 1965. he had hypothigh roadism. he was also autistic. what they are calling autism,

all of these -- one out of every 140 children born is supposed to be autistic. it's nothing like the children -- my little boy and the children that i was around. and awful those years. he died at 13. but we had wonderful schools in the county in california even in 1965. and they saved me. he was about four years old by the time that we went there and found the schools. and i think one thing that you have helped me so much in is i've got every time you've been on television, i've taped you. so i can always watch you. when i want to. and when you -- you made the statement one time that -- about the sound. these little kids that shake their hands and all back and forth. and scream. that they are hurting.

because of the noise. and you really enlighten me a lot. and i think you are doing so much good. you and your family are my heros. you really are. >> thank you, very, very much. i just want to say that i've got information on these sensory/sensitivity problems. if my "way i see it" and "thinking in pictures." >> host: next call. good morning. >> caller: thank you, temple. you are my hero too. you've done wonderful work. i want to congratulate you on all of it. i teach what we call resistance free training for horses. many times that jack russell a type is the one that's crazy and should be put down. with your work, we've been able to really realize that this is a very sincetive horse. that just needs wider training.

>> that's right. >> caller: my question is how do we -- is there any relationship between that little gene there and what we see in the a person? the obsessive/compulsive person? >> i think there are some basic behavior traits. one is startle response. if i put a fire cracker underneath. how much would you heart rate and how much would you jump? or if you did that a horse. i don't recommend that to a horse. if you put one under a arab than under the draft horse. the nervous system is more reactive. that's a trait that is very, very inheritable on sort of how startle and fearfulness. but there's also other traits. one is separation anxiety trait or panic trait that's talked about in animals make us human. and the research in france, it's called social reinstatement. i don't know why they call it that.

i think it's the weird translation thing. you get one bird off that doesn't want to be separated from its meat. so they measured how hard quail would go the wrong way on a moving walk to get by, to stay close to the cage full of their meats. and he was able to manipulate that with breeding. he could make a high social and low social animal. same thing with -- some dogs they want to please you. others don't seem to have that same trait as much. there's some animals in people. some people want to jump off mountains. i saw the 60 minutes that gave me the creeps of people putting oo wing suit on like bat man and jumping off the mountain like a parachute. and the news camera man almost fell off the mountain. you could see him on the show. there's no way i would do that. that's strong seeking, strong novelty seeking. there are some dog that is are out there and into everything

explorer. >> host: do you still ride horses? >> i don't. my balance is horrible. i have an autoimmune problem that's trashed my hearing, and as i gotten older my balanced is worse. my cerebellum is smaller than normal. when i tried to learn how to sky, i had to keep them apart because i'd fall over. and i'm just, i'd like to to. i'm scared now of falling. i've had some bad falls. things like slipping at the mailbox. >> host: riding was important to you when you were younger. >> absolutely. it was all about horses. getting my horse ready for the show. one the things that saved me. even when i went to the new border school. they took away horse back riding when i got in the big fight in the cafeteria.

what i had to do was change anger to crime. i don't know how i did. but i don't get angry, i just cry when i get upset. because i had to turn over. controlling emotion. so i just frustrated with something, i just tend to cry. if i can't get the phone off silent. i don't try to throw it through the window, i start to cry. that's much better. but the only places where i had away from teasing were the special interest, horse back riding, science teacher, science lab. if i hadn't had those things, i would have been just done for. >> in your research, doctor, has been the incidence of teasing the children, does that affect them throughout their life? >> well, once they get into a job where they are recognized for their skill, then it stops. i mean you go out to, i gave a talk at a large computer

convention out on the west coast. and walked into the breakfast room. everything on the laptops. nobody is socializing. it was aspies heaven. they certainly weren't getting teased. one of the things hi to to do, like the way i sold jobs is i showed people jobs. pictures of jobs i had signed. they said, you did that. i had to sell my skill, not my personality. >> host: is there incidences of higher rates of alcoholism and drug abuse among autistic children. >> no, not necessarily. when you do, it's due to high anxiety. and they have some that have gone that rout. there's others, a lot of the word thinkers tend to be calm. they don't go that rout at all. the thing is autism is very,

very variable. i know a lot of people in the design field that are not antistic and real anxiety that got into trouble with drugs and alcohol. >> they got over it by lots of counseling and tiny pr vox ac. obviously, i cannot identify. >> host: you're on. >> caller: good morning. this is such a delight. this is the first knowledge i've had of temple grandin. and i god bless you for all that she's doing. i'm curious to know if you have ever worked with other than land-based animals, like dolphins and whales and if you are familiar with the work of joan ocean, it's as,. she does a lot with dolphins and whales as far as communicating. i also have some creative powers that i feel are self-taught. but the human mind is just

unbelievable. i would love to interact with you in some way. but i wanted to see if also you're opinions on theology, religion, how that is in your mind. and i just want to quickly read a poem to you that i wrote to see how you would react. it's called mine your mind. mine your mind. and you may find. new gems to be discovered and uncovered. the cure for illness. and the end of poverty are just two examples of what may come. when someone mines their mind. perhaps that someone is you. ask god to guide you, and you will see unlimited possibility of opportunities. be kind as you open your mind, and you will learn to care and share. once with you become aware, you can change the world to love and understanding. it's not too late. but hesitate. so today is tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes.

at the end of your days, will you be in a haze, or give up a quest for the rest. a poem or solution to pollution are a waiting could be mined. it's all up to you to mine your mind in the betterman of all mankind. >> well, i'm getting some association that is are inappropriate. like a trap door in my head. open up your mind. then poverty, i'm seeing picture of loverty. love i'm seeing the volkswagen beetle. when i read a book, i convert it into pictures. some of these, i don't understand. and, you know,ing now as far as whales go, dolphins, i know -- i am familiar with some researchers. fabulous research that's been done on the ability of the

whales to make bubble rings. very complicated bubble rings. and i talk about that in "animals make us human." this is an animal with a huge complex brain. it's assembled different than our brain, but it's huge. >> host: how many speechers do you give a year? >> i'm on the road about 90% of the time because autism, doing interviews in february, hbo is going to have a movie about me starring claire danes. i was involved with that. i had to make sure the cattle stuff was done right. they did a beautiful job. i'm just living on the road right now. > host: are you teaching? >> i have a short course that i teach that goes half a semester on tuesday on livestock handling on cattle behavior. i've already done that for the first half. next semester i do it twice. second half, one class, another

class for animal behavior. and then i do a lot of talks about vet schools, a lot of colleges. lots of autism talks. i've been doing a lot of book talks. my now in my career, i'm sort of doing a whole lot of talks. i also have a i've had four students with the phds with me. and i have a fifth student kurt who's really a star. and hopefully, and really young go get her guy. hopefully he's going to go out and keep doing the kind of things that i'm doing to make real change. i'm not into the abstract, i'm into practical change. i hear all the stuff about banks and foreclosures. i see the shoe shine lady crying. it's a very angry shoe shine man. i'm seeing a limo driver.

i want to see stuffed fixed on the ground. >> host: do you follow politics? >> yeah, i do. i'm appalled at hows a instruct and divorced from reality. we have people arguing over things that have no touch with the practical things on the ground. i do not talk about partisan politics. but i will talk about the abstractification. i've talked about that both "animals make us human," and "animals in translation." i think governments are having a harder time getting things done. the people making gets too far away on how that affects the real people on the ground. >> and our next call is from north carolina. please go ahead. >> caller: yes, i admire what

you do. i admire c-span for devoting three hours to the topic. my simple question is over the course of your lifetime, how have you been available to process the words in your existence of life, the word love, and it's just a simple question. >> well, i've before asked that question quite a few times before, actually. and i see thing, i get a mother nursing her baby, and taking care of her baby. some inappropriate like the love dug. i know that's totally inappropriate. but i tend to see it as what would be the examples of loving behavior? people that take care of their kids, and help their kids to turn into good people, that would be the example of love. i've got to only refer it back to a picture. something i can put in the love file. and we're leave the love bug and love utility vehicle out of it. something i might put in the

nasty file. but i have to put pictures in the file folders in my brain. when i was a kid, how did i know the dog wasn't the cat. i sorted them aside. when the neighbors got the dachshund. they looked the same. i looked at the nose. i could also do it by sound or smell. >> host: do you have pets? >> i can't. i'm traveling 90% of the time. i'm going to get home for tonight, and i have to turn right around after i've washed my clothes and stuff. and take a 7:30 plane to omaha, because i have an auditor training course in omaha. we teach people how to do the animal welfare. >> host: do you get recognized in airports? >> yeah, i do. i have to dress better at the airport. >> host: one of the things

that you've written about, and people have written about you, you've developed a sense of humor. >> that's something you develop. i had to do the talk, i panicked and walked out. when i first started my cattle hasn'ting, i was awkward. i was a good photographer. and i had fantastic slides. showing all of the different things about thing that would scare cattle like chaining hanging down, coats on fences, pictures of right and wrong design. and really worked hard on great slides. that's one the things that saved me. make sure you have fantastic set of slides. because the worst thing that can happen when you have to present the paper is you will gown and read the powerpoints. for beginning students, that's not the end of the world. >> host: cindy in california. good afternoon. you are on with temple grandin.

>> caller: thank you, hi, dr. grandin. . something i noticed, i say you on tv probably the first time you were on television. you make eye contact, you are not monotone, you make eye contact. you didn't used to do that. i wondered how you worked on that. but my main question, do you still sleep in the hug machine? thank you very much. >> i never slept in the machine. i just get in there to calm myself down. getting back to not talking to the monotone. the thing about being autistic, you continually keep improving. i learn more and more and more and more. and i have to say, i was kind of mazed that people say there's different from 50 to 60. autistic is always learning. you have to get them out to expose them. when i was a little bit, i worked a lot of different job

things. i worked different entrepreneurships. get them out and expose them. >> what is the hug machine? >> well, when i got in puberty, i started having total panic attacks. i was separate for a release. i watched cattle going through the squeeze shoot. i noticed some of the cattle relaxed. so i tried it out. then i went and made it like the device that i could get into. and pressure is calming. a lot of things sofa cushions, apply pressure to large parts of the body. because it's calming. you do it for 20 minutes, then you have to take it off. the mistake, is they leave it on too long. the relaxing effect wears off. >> do you still use the hug machine? >> well, it broke. and i havement fixed it. if you want to read more about

it, it's all described in "emergence" and the plans are on the internet. >> we have them up on the screen right now. >> oh, you do. okay. >> host: do you have a patent on that? >> even if i did, it would be exposed. i invented it in high school. >> host: next up is jane from west virginia. >> caller: yes, thank you for taking my call. temple, i have a not read all of your books. but i have read "adolescence on the autism spectrum" and your information in there. i'm calling after a distraught couple of weeks. our son is 14 almost 15, was not diagnosed until 11 after i quit home schooling and send him to a private school. things did not work out. it got worse and worse. finally, i asked the public

school for help. and when it was 12, his first day of school, he hit his teacher. she blocked his ocd. they put a charge on him. and since the state hasn't tried to help us. they have not helped. we still don't have the services we need here in west virginia. we live in a pretty productive city. but i have hired attorneys to try to protect my son. they sent him away for 60 days. put him on drugs. as far as i'm concerned, he's worse now than he was when we had him on omega 3 supplements and kept him on the schedule. even to the weekend when the schedule changes from school to the weekend, he's only up until 1:30 now. he just goes off. and the pass two weeks, he's

declined. so severely, my husband is out walking with him now. he's great in the woods. and he's a great athlete. wonderful baseball player. but i would consider him more asperger when he was younger. now he can barely write, he can barely stick with anything. we just don't know what the next step is. i've even looked into a special residential place. >> you can get people loaded up on too many of the drugs, he is a zombie. if he can't write. did he write before, now he can't, you need to look at all of the drugs. he maybe on all of the wrong stuff. i have found in traveling around the country that there's very few doctors that know. the very good are conservatives with drugs. they try one at a time, and see. they certainly wouldn't give a lot of drugs to get somebody where they couldn't write. now one the problems on a tv

show, i can't give you any specific advice. i'd recommendation that you read "thinking in picture." i have a lot of information in that. also get with your local support groups. the other thing that helps me a lot was mentors. you know, i was the goof around student. i didn't want to study until i got my science teacher who got me interested in becoming a scientist. one the things your son needs, he needs to have a goal. so then i studied all through college. i wanted to go to graduate school to become a scientist. if i didn't had that goal, i wouldn't have done that. unfortunately, i can't troubleshoot your problem. i'd have to talk to you for about a half an hour. >> it was my stepfather's sister. my mother got remarried when i was 14. that brought a ranch into the

family. i went out there when i was 15. i was afraid to go to the ranch. i talk about the ranch a lot in "thinking in pictures." mother made me go. she said you can go for two weeks or all summer. you have to push them to get them to do stuff. you can't push them into the sensory world, but you have to push them to do stuff. i would have never gotten into my cattle career if i haven't gone out on the ranch. there's a fantastic scene in the movie about doors and how i had doors to symbolize. you have a scene in there, can't tell you because it'll be a spoiler. >> what was your involvement and comfort level on license with your life? >> well, i realize they had too. they simply had to. this is one the things i learned in a lot of books. i learned a lot from my editor. when i did "emergence" i messed up some things.

i learned a lot from the book editing. i also learned in the movie, you can't put in everything. you have to do a little bit of fixalization. i thing that i wanted to make sure that everything was accurate. that's really important. that i wouldn't be doing something that would be out of character with somebody with autotism. i thought they did a fan tastic job on -- fantastic job on the movie. watching claire dane was like a time machine. the puree is in college, high school, and getting my career started. a lot of discrimination against women. that's going to be shown. i spent a half a day with claire, i got to talk to her. i sent her all of these old video tapes of me on tv shows in the '80s. she'd get a better idea of my mannerrishes. my house. there was something in the

script i hated that they changed it. and then the thing i worked with them on was cattle accuracy. they built one of my dip baths. i said you can't get cattle in there. city slicker was like the dumbest movie. everything was wrong. anything about cattle was just stupid. and their cattle accuracysive was beautiful. >> host: i'm going to say something rather impolitic. a lot of autistic children and or adults cannot live by themselves throughout their lives. i presume you do. >> guest: yes. >> host: fully. >> guest: yes, i do. auti going from some artistic intuit epilepsy on top of other diagnosable neurological problems in addition to autism. and the other in a spectrum he be labeled autistic today. and many have a lot of people would be labeled with asperger's and maybe like mozart.

like there is a book called asked burgers and self-esteem by famous musicians and scientists who probably had asked burgers. i do want to be logical here. there's going to be about half the people on the spectrum that probably will not be about to live independently. and the other half can. i was talking shue cheryl, my sister last night, she's a nice e-mail came in from a girl who's said that i motivate an artistic lady that are motivating her to study hard. that makes you really happy. i think when they get you hired of the spectrum is not a expectations. if i laughed at fat people, my mother made it very plain that that was not acceptable. see the thing about being autistic as you have to learn social skills like being in a play. you have to pounded into all the kids. it's like when the aspers case.

i see lots of those that are undiagnosed that work in the meat industry would've come out of the ground. but i've seen a 16-year-old today coming up to the table and he is headed down the wrong road. even though he's really smart, he doesn't have a mentor like my site teacher. you know, the lucky ones teach mechanics or some other thing. i think it is a real shame they took out all this hands-on classes. all these kinds of things that can turn into good careers. and i have another book called "developing talents." that is my career book where i talk about, you know, we need to be giving people, teaching and job skills and things like this long before they graduate college. isaiah 23-year-old graduate college, never even had motive on, walked a dog, delivered a paper. >> host: next call, karen and greenville, north carolina.

you're on with temple grandin. karen, are you with us? >> caller: i have a son who is eight years old named jack who was diagnosed at the age of two with autism. since that time he has become a very sociable little boy, but he still struggles with expressive and receptive language. and he is there echolalia. he was correct entire movies. and it's like a record that has been scratch that repeats itself as if the brain is short-circuiting. my question for you as i was thinking about musical training for him like tsuzuki programming which are thought to be on that. thank you. >> guest: one of the best ways to train them is they've got to learn that the scripts mean something. some of these kids repeat these movies back and they don't know what it means. and what you want to do is start teaching nouns. i attacked to three people that are fully verbal at uc echolalia and they learned the language because they had hundreds of

last cards we have a picture of a cup, picture of a book, picture of issue here than the period and the words on the same time of the card. you hold the deputies issue. then the person will start you take that out of conversation. and you start with nouns so if you say shoot someone will them shoe. if he says, someone will give him choose. you may be able to take some of the spaces and use them in a situation where they will be used where they have meaning. what i find happens i listen to spanish icier blah, plural. and i hear a word that i know the meaning. it's gibberish of many worded now. that's the way it's going to be with the echolalia kid. then for your action words, put a sign on yourself that says wave. in two ways.

i can't get up because i'll pull the microphone out. put a sign on yourself that there's clapping you do this. then learn action words. start with nouns, use things this child may want to menus your action verbs. how about over in a under. the plane flies and lands under the table. >> host: you talk about over under in "thinking in pictures" and how do you associate over and under when you hear those terms? >> guest: well, i have to actually see something. right now we're talking about a toy airplane so i'm actually seeing they have the airport place that you can buy at the airport. the united jet that looks like a real one, a real fat, funny looking jack. i can see i take that plane under the united airlines place that and i have it in my hands and i'm going to fly the plane

over the table. i'm going to land the plane on the table. i see it in my hand. i'm going to take the toy airplane and go under the airport. i have to see. you know, someone says the dogs under the table. i will actually -- isaiah picture of our golden retriever under the piano laying on his back, that's not under the table, but i don't know why that picture came out. >> host: when it comes to left and right, i come to a certain intersection that i know from my childhood to remember left and right. does that put me on the spectrum somewhere? >> guest: know, there's all degrees of visual thinking. i had problems learning left and right until i broke my collarbone and i learned that was on the right-hand side. i sometimes mix up right and left. go into the hotel, get off the elevator in room 502 is that way and i will go the wrong way. >> host: do artistic or aspers children recognize you as someone they can relate to?

>> guest: a lot of them do. you know, one of the things that a lot of the high-end spectrum need. they need to realize there is a lot of things they can do. you can't push a kid into sensory overload. there's some kid that cannot tolerate going to wal-mart. they feel like the inside speaker of the boiler factory at a rock concert. they just can't do that. multitasking is a real problem. i cannot multitask. i also cannot remember long strings of verbal information. i have to write it down. as long as i do those things is a lot of things i can do. being on time is something i can do. that was founded in when i was six years old. you've got an alarm clock and i was expect you to use it. postcode next call for temple grandin. dawn in california. >> caller: hello. i trained dogs for 20 years specializing in aggression and

giving them a purpose to help them overcome their fears. it's very physical work, but the most critical factors in motion. and dealing with their emotions than your own. i applaud all of your work and everything you've done. i've been following you for years now. >> guest: well -- >> host: any response for that caller? >> guest: well, i'm really glad that my information has been held for to him. one of the things i tried to do with is to try to get people to understand the world that is not language-based. and yes, dr. twomey do have a found emotional system, but it's going to be simpler. and this is solo artistic thing there you won't patch the computer mouse and that distracted me because it made the screen move on the computer. and then i didn't realize that the caller had stopped talking.

i thought the callers tonight should have been disconnections. postcode i apologize i was multitasking. >> guest: i find when i do my taxes someone is spinning themselves in of me that it distracts me so much it's hard to me for me to do my talk. postcode you get into a or air that is uncomfortable to you, what do you do? >> guest: give me an example. postcode such as the fiber of your constantly moving and knowledge in. >> guest: i would ask you to stop doing it. >> host: next call. >> guest: if i had to do this interview face in the control room that would be difficult. all in seen as a painting here of books. that doesn't bother me. but while looking at the control room now they're waving. you know, that would be distracting. the fact that the controller does not decide doesn't bother

me. i've been stuck in studios where they want to do about that in the newsroom. i absolutely hate being out in the newsroom. people walking by and everything. because they're asking you questions. i had an earpiece on and ask any questions and there's people walking right by going to the xerox machine and things like that. that was horrible. postcode then, please go ahead with your question for temple grandin. >> caller: >> host: cindy, are you there? i'm not sure what is wrong here dr. grandin. dorothy, clifton township michigan. >> caller: hello, i am here. i'm enjoying your talk today. just a little bit ago she had mentioned how her teenaged junior high, high school years were the absolute worst.

i have a daughter was been diagnosed with asper's. it took me until she was almost ten before i got diagnosis. and since then she's been on this medication and in the beginning when i was taking her to therapy, you know, it was all behavioral and they suggested no medication, and new school, new house, new psychiatrist, and then it was all this medication trials and tribulations. and you had said that you don't recommend most those psychopathic medications. while it just so happens my daughter is on the medicine and she has terrible panic attacks. anxiety that causes her to have total meltdowns and everything. and you had mentioned prozac being the answer to you as

getting over anxiety and panic. i had heard horror stories about prozac. so i was wondering and correlation -- >> guest: me answer a few things. most of the problems you get horror stories with prozac hamas zoloft, like the pro-enemy of the ssri is overdosing. you give them way too much and they are absolutely totally horrible. and as soon as using those symptoms where they can sleep in their agitated you got to cut does this. the doctor should be decreasing doses. there are some choices where it might be the right choice for anger outbursts. resveratrol and a bill if i have weight gain, shaking. one of the things you got to ask yourself when you do it is does this strike have an obvious beneficial affect? when you try a drug you don't

want to try to school otherwise you don't know what's working. if it is working like magic for you, then you work to risk anyone to make sure your daughter doesn't get too heavy because some kids get hundreds on the weekend on resveratrol and that is dreadful. make sure she isn't getting that changes in her blood and the shakes. the problem you've got with all the antidepressant is if you overdose someone on the spectrum with them, often times the dose is recommended in the physicians desk reference are way too high. if you use those doses, they are going to be terrible. and i explain this fully in "thinking in pictures." postcode here are some e-mails for you dr. grandin. how can we help a nonverbal child deal with the frustration related to limited communication skills? >> guest: one of the things you need to do is give them away

to. some of the programs or the picture exchange program. you can make a thing out of cardboard where you can point to things that he wants. there is via the talking things you can get when you press a button and it'll say something. there is a map you can get now for the iphone. i think if you type an iphone autism into google you will find it. you've got to give the person a way to communicate. if he needs to go to the bathroom he needs to be able to say you've got to go the bathroom. frustration without being able to communicate causes a lot of care jobs and outbursts. >> host: where does the dr. stan on the issue of autism and vaccination? >> guest: when they get a drink of water first. that comes up every autism meeting i do what comes out. and i've talked to a lot of families and lead me just tell you some things scientifically

that need to be done before the book can be completely close on that subject. one thing that is to be done is to look at autism as a separate study. these are the children missing to be normal and that at age two, they lose language. they need to be studied separately. another thing that needs to be done on existing data is to go back and get all the original papers, not just the summaries and look at a thing called significant difference. as a vaccinate group how they different set of variable of data. it is a sign that there may be some vaccine reactors. on the other hand, we can't just stop vaccinating. i'm from the 50's. i had a cousin that was in an iron lung. we can go back. polio and all the sick children's hospital. would you do with you at autism in the family history? face the shutout and delay them. maybe do them when the kid is re.

the interesting thing about cattle vaccinations is they are spaced out. nobody shouts every shot in the past and it dropped them to the ground. postcode where. >> guest: well, i should've been mentioned and moore by we got to talking about some of the other things and i certainly want to spend some time in this interview talking about couriers because he did on the high-end of the spectrum, not enough is being done with that. i've seen too many smart as burger kids being trained to clean toilets and suit the floor. and they are capable of much higher level jobs than that. one of things that i talk about and developing talent is finding the right job for the thinking style. visual thinkers are going to be the industrial jobs. when i handle livestock equipment that is industrial design. a product like an ipod is made, the industrial designer thought the idea for the cool little control wheel. engineers had to figure out how to make it work.

engineers to the innards. rapid design, artists, photography, there's been a lot of different kinds of jobs. how about our music of mass mind? mathematician, engineer. in fact there is a shortage of electrical engineers. they had these really cool robots in there that move just like a human being. and i said who programs those? they are made by an american company. they hired five engineers from china and india to program those robots because they said they didn't have people here that could do that type of electrical engineering. well, i was not very happy about that. you know, you get out in silicon valley and those smart aspy kids get apprenticed into the industry. if i make it in the midwest and they don't know what to do. and then you've got your word thinkers. i've been interviewed by a lot of journalists. i know on the spectrum, on the mild end of the spectrum. >> host: am i a word figure? >> guest: i have a quiz to get under thinking style so i can't be sure yet.

we talked about the church steeple, how did they come into your mind? >> host: childhood church. >> guest: that is specific. a person with visual wealthy specific church steeple. a real world think are what give a vague outline, sort of a vague generic one. >> host: covina california please go ahead with your question for temple grandin. >> caller: i am on the air, right? >> host: what is your question? >> caller: sorry i just wasn't sure. my question, well during your show you talked about white matter and gray matter. what about the black matter? black matter, you have to have black matter to make gray matter. >> host: william, how old are you and why are you interested in this topic?

>> caller: tan and i am interested because i am watching in the morning and i'm usually interested in stuff that morning. >> host: all right. dr. grandin, and the answer for william? >> guest: is just the gray matter is made that way. i'll leave it at that. >> host: will you talked about your cerebellum been 20% smaller than normal. how do you know that? esko i was braves send a year ago. they'd did imaging on me, found out that i've got a gigantic internet cable that goes deep into my visual cortex. it is twice as big as the control and that probably explains my visual thinking, i can tell you those pictures were a mind blower. >> host: view of a broadband cable? where does it go? >> guest: is really fat, about that big around and the control

is half the size and doesn't extend all the way to primary visual cortex. and there is also some other interesting research that shows people with autism think what the primary visual cortex, rather than thinking with the language parts of the brain. >> host: do you do any work with nih, national institutes of health? esko i think some of the people i've worked with a bat and ih grants but i haven't done anything directly with them. i need to be working on the sensory issues, sensory issues are so debilitating. i talked about those and all of my books. because they are the barrier to living independently and a lot of things. it's going to the supermarket feels like the inside of a speaker at a rock concert, how do you function? >> host: what kind of situations do you avoid? esko i don't like noisy restaurants but if i have to be the one i can tolerate it. for me it is a nuisance, but

with someone with more severe sensors or birdie its not tolerable. >> host: luria in connecticut. please go ahead. >> caller: hello dr. grandin, i'm so excited to see you because in 19860 bakersfield, california and my son attended the school in japan. and dr. grandin, when i heard you, my son was five years old and you were very robotic in your speech and now you are speech is just wonderful. and i am so excited to hear that. my son cannot -- he says words and sometimes whole sentences, but he can't really carry on a conversation. why can i do for him? he is now 25 years old. >> guest: all i can say is not just a person always keeps improving. it's sort of like the more experiences i have in the more

information i load into the database of my brain, then the google inside my head has got more webpages to surf through. so the thing you can do with your son is taken out and get him different experiences. more and maybe going into that brand anything. there is a very interesting book called how can i talk to my lips don't move. this is a person that is totally nonverbal and he can type independently. he describes a world of sensory fracturing, but he also describes how his mother read them all kinds of grown-up look and that information was going in, even though it's not obvious. he flaps and he looks very low functioning. all i can say is you keep exposing your son to different things, taken now, do different things. they gradually, you often gradually improve. >> host: another e-mail for you. this is from a secondary teacher who was taught mild, moderate, regular and gifted students with

autism and asp workers. her question or his question is i need to know what you think is most important for people to do when teaching children with autism or asperger's. the important thing is clear direction, clear instructions about what is expected. no long strings of verbal information. no multitasking. a quiet structure costume is a lot better. i works a lot better than the chaotic costume we've got people working at different works sections. figure out where he can strengthen his. you know, there's always an area of strength, build on the strength. the other thing is that this kid likes airplanes, teach math with airplanes. teach reading with airplanes. you know, if he likes to draw pictures and all he does is to airplanes, well, them up and into dry picture of a place and airplane flights to. you see they are you still have an association back to his fixation. without fixation is a great

motivator, but broaden it out. >> host: what do you think about mainstreaming? >> guest: for little kids, i want to try to mainstream as much as possible. but again, you've got to be reasonable. i'm a much bigger fan of mainstreaming little kids. autistic kids have to have contact with normal children. but there's a good bunch of teenagers, especially smart asperger's do better out of mainstream high school class because the students know that they definitely have a knack for melody leave them alone. but that's aspies are the one that needs to be taken out. they try to put them into the computer field. some of those kids need to go from being a child to being a grown-up. i want to say very seriously, socializing with teenagers is not a life skill i need. and i say that very seriously. other kids to find in high school. so much of it depends on a

particular school and particulars teachers. others that are being teased and others that are being tortured probably need to be taken out. >> host: we've heard from a lot of callers, a lot of personal stories and some anguish. do you hear that same english and do you have the desire to help them all? >> guest: well, very, very definitely. some people there if we had been at an autism conference i would've talked to them for a half an hour. but i also can't be giving out specific advice over a tv thing where i don't know anything about the case. if we were at a conference i would've said you did this, you did that now what would be the next stop. and i do and i've had people right back to me and people say to me something you told me or something they read in a book really helps them. then make me happy. a couple people called in. there is no way i can troubleshoot their problem is a question on a tv show.

>> host: do you have a photographic memory? >> guest: not for everything. it's not as good as it used to be. i have a photographic memory for things i am really interested in. back in the 70's, i got a 52nd look at it and you better believe i remembered it. and there's other things like all the houses on the way to school i could care less about those houses. i have to be interested. i've got to press the save button in order for you to remember. >> host: one caller called in and said he spoke in bakersfield, california in 1986. did that bring back a visual memory? >> guest: unfortunately, i've done so comprehensive that that file got overwritten. i don't remember the meaning unless there is something really, really striking about the meaning. sometimes an attack to me and they tell me about a particular conversation i will remember. at the age of 62, things that

are very similar now are starting to mix together like time and newsweek. all mixed up whether i read it. i didn't do that when i was younger. if i was 30 i would never done that. i would not make that "time" magazine with nature because it is totally different kinds of magazines. >> host: next call for temple grandin. not in north carolina. >> caller: i was wondering just when it comes to, like when they're showing a longshot, the guest and the moderators seem to have more distant than usual. is that just the way it happened to be set up today or is that in fact something related to autism? just don't know, that is something that is just the way the studio is set up. >> host: what is deceiving is

we are closer than it appears. wouldn't you agree? >> guest: yes, i can picture her foot. >> host: catherine in north conway new hampshire. >> caller: hello and thank you for this program. i appreciate hearing all the news and information. i have two questions. if my young child has visual or auditory problems, they use glasses and hearing aids so they can see and hear. why if the child is diagnosed at a young age with autism or asperger's they can't put a hearing aid device or a glass is that would mute the noise and the chaos and the confusion. it would make it less loud and so forth.

that is my first question. my second question is, when people lived in world environments? >> guest: let me answer the first question. one thing i found in the sensory issues is that by normal people have a hard time imagining an alternate reality. they can imagine i staff my ears with cotton, i might simulate deafness. and i think one of the reasons why a hearing aid that can mute up those signs is not an invented because the people that make hearing aid haven't recognized the value of it. i mean, i've been talking about sensory issues for 25 years and it's only been the last five years that i've started singing on a public website called mad. a lot of articles of scientific studies on sensory stuff. i think such a hearing that could be made. but i find that a lot of normal people have a hard time imagining this alternate sensory reality where a specific sound like his local line hurts the ears or another doesn't.

>> host: catherine, second question. >> caller: the question is, the second question is society lives in quieter environment farms, rural areas, so forth. today the noise level of everywhere just goes on and on. and i'm wondering if our rise in seeing autism and asperger's is because we change from rural to urban sort of areas and therefore that counts in the increase in autism and asperger's. >> guest: i doubt it really seriously. autism has a very strong genetic basis. one thing that has been talked about as there is a huge amount of autism out of the tech areas. when i look at the hit list from

my website, i cannot track users, i can only track domain names and servers. an awful lot of cities on there that are major tech centers. you take those geek genes and he put them together and concentrate them, that accounts for more cases of autism and those are just hotbeds of activity on my website. there's also concerns about environmental contaminants, but it's very strongly genetic and i think one of the thing environmentally that is more difficult is the fluorescent lights. i think in the school system and offices it will be the single biggest problem and it's not just people with autism. there are some people with dyslexia that have a problem. some people with adhd, some people with other learning problems. i'm a dyslexic student in which he got in a room of 64 of them might she just spaced out. that's something that eventually we'll have to convert over to higher frequency for smi than they solve the problem. but until they ban 100-watt incandescent lights, that's what

the people in the spectrum need to be using. and i can tell you right now i heard in europe they will be on them. i don't have a problem with the fluorescent lights, but if i did i would be working cases of light bulbs. >> host: with the new regulations that are going into place -- >> guest: the problem is with fluorescent writing if it is a 60-watt light these people can see the flicker. it drives them crazy. and it isn't just limited to people with autism. there's some things you can do to help. a light with a hundred watt incandescent bulb. the other thing is a laptop computer is often a better screen because the lcd screens don't flicker. instead of using white paper you use light blue or tan or one of the pastel colors of paper. some people are helped by colored lenses. but there are some people were the fluorescent lighting and offices is worse than the sound

sensitivity. sound sensitivity you can put a headset on. >> host: if you would like to send dr. grandin aide tweaked our address is twitter.com/booktv. in fact you can follow all of the booktv that way. before we go to a break, richard frost, dr. of education ev.dr. of education has a two-part question. do you have a sense that you process information quickly or slowly? >> guest: icann process relatively quickly, but there is a slowness. i have to go back and search in the database. another thing is a lot of questions on the show are the standard questions were the answers are right there. but if you ask me about something where i have to think about it a whole lot more got to go back and bring the pictures up in a computer with my mind of one image at a time and troll through them. like i had been asked on an e-mail that they were all these

bugs i was interested in and outside well i was eating dinner and sat for 20 minutes trolling business books, books that influenced me, favorite children's books animal books, the most precious but i had in college, that was my statistics book. i would never let anyone borrow that. autism books. but it took me a lot of time to troll through the database, looking to the amazon website. to define and write down my books. i don't know if we'll get to discuss this, but i had this because obesity than the show for 15 seconds trying to access these books. i have to have keywords. the questions i've been getting so far are standard questions. i've answered a lot of these types of questions many times. >> host: while we are going to show you these in just a minute. we will show you some of the bugs that temple grandin have influenced her. we'll show you that in two seconds. second part of dr. frost

question. have you had sensations were the environment to perceive is altered, such as seeing things in slow motion or seeing things larger or smaller than someone else? >> guest: no, i don't have a problem. there is a thing with slow motion where in certain emergency situations you have time to act and i had one thing happen one time. i was driving on the freeway holding the airport, right-hand lane of the freeway, this idiot and a trailer pulled by me 82 by six lead off the back of a trailer. and it was sliding across the freeway this way. and it did slow down. it was like it was floating on the freeway. i went on and moved my car over, tracking the board all the way over into the breakdown lane, straddled the board successfully, avoided the accident. but then fear came on and every swear word i can't say and hard pounding also came out.

but that's something that happens to normal people in certain emergency situations. it was like the board was like floating and i had plenty of time and they just moved over into the perfect bit of driving and avoided hitting the board. >> host: driving is multitasking. do you have trouble with it? just go driving is multitasking only when you are learning. when you learn to drive, shift, work the steering, work breaks and yes. you have to think about it. but driving eventually becomes a motor skill and so what i would recommend him learning to drive is a year under really easy roads for operation of the car becomes fully and completely automatic. it's back here in the mortar core facts before you start going freeway and traffic. >> host: dr. temple grandin is our guest on booktv. back in march, we met up with

dr. grandin and tucson, arizona. she was doing a book signing. we are going to show you part about followed by some of the books that dr. grandin does have influenced her and that will be back with your calls, e-mails, and tweet. the >> it's nice to meet you finally. i'm an occupational therapist and i work in a couple of autism classrooms. a lot of teachers have talked about you. >> hi, how are you? >> okay, thank you very much. >> both of these to them. >> emily, okay. okay. >> hi, how are you.

>> and this goes to? >> hi, i love your books. i've read everything you've ever written. >> do you mainly work with autism or animals? >> animals. i have many friends who have children that are autistic. >> do you do rescue work? >> no i don't. >> pat. >> pleasure to meet you. well from the autistic and animal respective. >> nice to meet you. >> and this goes to? >> and that one as well to. >> thank you very much.

zero good, you got my career spoke. >> my son is trying to graduate from high school right now and he has asked burgers. he is getting very frustrated. >> what is he interested in? >> he is interested in arts and is a great skateboarder. >> you need to find something he is good at that he can turn into a career. one of the things he will have to learn how to do with how to do an assignment. i had to learn how to take midsession with cattle chutes and turn it into actually designing things that people want. he doesn't want to just talk about cattle, they want to design. it was going to have to learn how to do artwork that is artwork that somebody else wants. he can't just draw pictures of mickey mouse all the time. and some kids are doing that. all they do is just one cartoon character and they won't do anything else. you've got to say well, let the user and pictures of mickey mouse all the time, maybe have them drop mickey mouse's house,

car. then you get that connection. >> thank you so much. >> ms. grandin, it is an honor. i have two daughters that are special ed teachers here. >> jessica? thank you very, very much. >> okay, it's your turn. >> dr. grandin has found that the reason for autism ever been discovered? autism is a very big genetic and genetics is a very big out of what causes autism. you know, there's a lot of controversy about other environmental factors that may be causing it, but it would be interacting with susceptible genetics and it's a complicated genetics. and the thing about deserved it the more markers you have in the family history like whether or not you have one autistic kid,

anxiety and depression in the family history. allergies in the family history, other neurological problems, other learning problems in the family history. those can increase the risk of having an autistic child. >> well we just heard your talk and you are absolutely wonderful. it's not personalized. this is william was 14 he was diagnosed at age four. auntie is always been mainstreamed and worked with. >> how is he doing? >> good. he attends the number one nation school. >> you need to get this book right here on couriers. and this goes to? >> back and go to caroline. tell her quickly what you're doing in two or three weeks time. >> i'm doing better geography.

it's the "national geographic." and i'm going to be doing the state and representing my school. >> that's really, really good. the other thing you need to do is start getting some job skills. whenever stories my mother had me working out the lady who did dressmaking out of her home. you've got to learn how to do assignments. when you do a job you have to do an assignment. like my cattle handling stuff i have to design something other people want. >> what kind of things would you recommend for people who are academically but not socially there? >> you after this social interactions. what is your best subject in school? >> history. >> let's think about the kinds of things you can do. there's not that many jobs for history professionals, but lots of jobs, writing jobs, journalism jobs here in you've got to start thinking about what you're going to do when you grow up.

>> what are you writing at the moment? >> well, i write stories. >> novels. >> well, you can be a novelist. >> solitary but enjoyable. >> get involved in book clubs. here at the book festival you should find out where the book clubs are here in tucson. that's where you're going to get your social interaction and shared interests. you can find a history book club event. >> that would be cool. >> but the thing that saved me in high school when i was getting teased, the only thing that saved me was specializing in horseback riding, electronic lab come and nobody was using in those places. >> well luckily his school is a school full of nerds. >> and i'm so glad that he is at that school. i have too many kids like you getting tortured and teased and i'm in terrible time in high school. i was one of them. you know what i got kicked out of high school for doing?

during a book at a girl who was teasing me. it is strange my weapon of choice for the book. >> thank you very much and you're absolutely wonderful. >> i had a terrible time in high school. it was the worst part of my life. >> well luckily this is a school full of highly gifted kids were probably all over the spectrum that are odd, but high functioning. thanks very much. news

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♪ >> dr. temple grandin, what is it about malcolm gladwell that you like? >> well i really liked his book the tipping point. when i worked with him on the animal welfare back in 1999, it was a wild ride with it tipping point just yet. what started out as little training sessions for food safety auditor is turned into a gigantic change in the industry. and that's an example of the tipping point. plus all this other stuff that malcolm gladwell says that i actually do not agree with. there is a lot -- i don't agree with the part where talent makes no difference. i agree with him, that you need lots of practice, because i didn't learn my cattle handling stuff overnight. i had to go out to all these

feed yards and study a whole lot. mentoring is extremely important. but in a talent does make a difference because he has a chapter in every tax about bill gates having access to this wonderful computer in 1968, the teletype computer terminal. it did not require a punch card. it was having access to that computer that was so important. i access to the same computer and i couldn't do it. and no matter how hard i tried, i couldn't ski with my skis close together. i think any talent does make a difference. i do agree you have to develop talent and nurture talent. just being smart isn't enough. you have to have mentors. you need to get nurturing. i think innate ability does make some difference. i've had students with problems in my class. they absolutely cannot draw. and my livestock handling class they have to draw a line like this, we intersect team half circles like this just a free handout. they can't do it.

>> host: is a visual person, how do you approach reading? >> guest: well, i see pictures. like red water for elephants. i thought that was a wonderful book to read. i love you because i had all this vivid description of the circus back during the depression. and i could make the movies in my head of all the things that were described. i love books with a lot of description. i don't like the mystery novels because there is too much and i can follow the sequence. >> host: what about malcolm gladwell? >> guest: there was one about the hush puppy shoes and i saw the shoes and a stupid ad with the bath and downs. even not, i made pictures of each individual thing that he is discussing. >> host: we are back live with the temple grandin. this is book tvs in-depth. 202 is the area code.

707. 202-77-0001. but to be at c-span.org is her e-mail address. and the tv@twitter.com. you can follow booktv or you can send a tweet to dr. grandin. in fact we have a tweet hear from colleen. we've asked the doctor if she sees a neurological similarity between autism and some aspects of alzheimer's sensitivity. >> guest: well, one thing that is similar is this typos alzheimer's in a journal article by bruce miller and general neurology weathers a frontal temple lobe dementia eats out the language parts of the brain and the talent to make come out of somebody who has no previous interest in parts. using the normal human brain, language covers up all the math stuff, the art stuff. and one of my slide shows the

lecture i called animals and design i've got a painting of a van gogh's starry night. its mathematicians and physicists look at them and they said they followed a pattern of turbulence. i don't think van gogh knew anything about that. >> host: mike in bloomington minnesota you are on with temple grandin. >> caller: i'd like to talk to dr. grandin. icu interacting with policies and the intermission here at the book festival. you're able to exchange small tech with people that came up and also you aren't a lecture circuit quite a bit. i was wondering. i'm not positive if you're introverted or not, but are you able to cope him live, you know, the extensive interaction you have with the public. and once you are done with these events are you able to, do you have to go to your hotel room and be compressed?

>> guest: i need a little time to decompress. sometimes i want to sit and read "the new york times" and not talk to the passenger next to me. as other kinds of more congregated social interaction i have problems with. singles bar scene, that's beyond me. i don't do that. i go up to the room and stay in the room. i'll go up to the restaurant then you shall he reading a book. last night they put me right next to another two ladies than we were almost right at the same table and i told her the soup was really good and she might want to order it, but, you know, i know enough not to totally engage in conversation. >> host: what are you reading right now? >> guest: i was trying to read "the new york times." there was article in there about small toymakers that were giving him problems at the law and how it will be changed and not having dangerous materials and toys and some of the extensive lab testing that would put these small toymakers out of business. and i wanted to read that because we need to figure out a

way to have a safety lasso it doesn't put small toymakers out of business. like for example, they have to use ingredients to paint toys that are known to be suffered. .com the general safe fda list, the grass list. there should be a problem with that. and then you don't have to test every toy. just make a little garage shop company. i was trained to read that in the dark last night because i'm very concerned. the kind of thing that might be a good job for somebody with asperger's might be making custom-made toys. some of these little small freelance businesses. i know a lot of people that make these businesses. i saw four or five asperger's better. everyone as a freelancer. a lighting guy has his own business, does that guy, the costume, the catering, the dressing room is another business. and these are great little freelance jobs.

for a lot of people on the high end of the spectrum. and so i'm concerned. i do want to put toymakers out of business. and there is a way to fix that so that they don't have to do $30,000 worth of lab work every year. >> host: how often do you write and do you write a certain time of day? >> guest: usually like to write early in the morning. most of my serious writing i do in the morning. i don't do it late at night. i get too tired. i tend to pay bills late at night. >> host: next call for temple grandin comes from quibbling, idaho. >> caller: hide. dr., i am familiar with your advocacy of creating systems for slaughter and how you can do that diagnosis and how you recognize when cows displace beer. you also look at the similarities of other cows and humans. so understanding how similar we all are, what keeps you still

obligating animal fodder and eating meat? >> guest: i cannot function on vegan diets. i have tried it. i have terrible yeast infections and i have lapses in my diet. i eberts' peanut butter cups and things like that at the airport and not get any animal protein and now the yeast infections flared up. the last item was having soup and salad and that didn't work. i get lightheaded if i don't eat me. the other thing is i have seen beef cattle really done right. when i first started out my career and i talk about this in animals make us human" and the afterword. in the 70's there were some ranchers to raise cattle raids. their cattle had a great life. when i worked out in the feed yards they weren't models. they feed yards wide shade. tattle handling was awful, but for the cattle was living was good. i have seen places where things could be done right. and i feel very strongly that

we've got to give those animals a decent life. that's just essential. also, i feel grazing animals have a place in the ecosystem. there's a great article in the saturday new york times. i think the book was something pork chop. and it was talking about how right now in brazil they are not clearing the land for cattle. they're clearing the land for soybeans. and soybeans aren't all that great for you. they're absolutely loaded with hormones. i've eaten too much and i've got four right here from it. that's not good e-rate we've got to give animals a good life. egg layers of the most problems, but beef done right can really be done right. animals can have a really good life. when the slaughter plant is working right they go on calmly. i've taken a lot of nonindustry people through the slaughter plants. they watch the cattle get off the track and go up the ramp. they walk up so quietly i can't believe it. that way it should be. >> host: wet dog is on the

cover of animals make us human"? >> host: next call for temple grandin. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i have first a comment and a question. i comment is about the fluorescent light. not only do they flickr but they also have a high pitch sound so that people who are not only light-sensitive type auditory sensitive have a big problem with those lights and they do need to be taken out of public laces. my question is we have recently had a young boy relocate to north carolina. he was diagnosed with asperger's but he does not have a good oral communication skills. is there a place that you are aware of or some places that you could give us resources where we might have this young boy reevaluated? >> guest: i don't know about your particular place. i'd recommend that you contact with the parent support groups. that would be the best thing to

do because other parents would know the best place. also if a child of poor speech skills, he probably should not be diagnosed with us burgers because the way the guideline is written right now as burgers has no obvious speech delay. >> host: next call for dr. grandin comes from steve in la. you go ahead, steve. although hi, dr. grandin. i was wondering if you could speak more to why you believe the genetics is so much a part of all this. i have my own personal beliefs, my friends and my family and myself. and i think that postindustrial revolution we can see an explosion of all these things. >> guest: well, i think that there's a lot of research done on genetics. let's go back on the original twin studies and a cover those in begin in pictures. they have a thing called concorde and traits. all that means is that one twin has the disorder, does the other twin habits?

well, when you have one autistic twin you have something like a 60% concorde and traits. if they are fraternal twins, not identical, it is much lower. there's also been a whole lot of genetic research if you want to look at that you can go to the pub med database, qb ned. type that into google. i think there is a possibility there could be environmental contaminants that could be making some of this worse. but it is probably interacting with susceptible genetics. and what is being done in his genetic research as it is not simple like down syndrome whether as a chromosomal abnormality. it is a little tiny covariation inside of jeans. and possibly genetics could be interacting. you might have a situation where somebody that should adjust their name mild asperger's, maybe a little bit eccentric turn into low functioning. i'm concerned about some of the things like plasticizers and water bottles. what i've read in science and nature and would not feed a baby out of a plastic nursing bottle.

i am not -- i cannot to be drink another glass or if you travel then use the one that has polyethylene bag inside the playtex nurse or it does not have hard plastic weird that's the bad kind. >> host: what do you think about testing for autism in vitro? >> guest: if you got rid of all the genetics you simply wouldn't have any scientist, any artists. a bunch of social got to be asked. it's a continuous traits. and a little bit gives us an advantage. you can design a mind to be more cognitive and disconnect a few social circuits or designing mind to be totally, totally social. there's a big range in the middle. in fact, on the dms five if you go to the apa website, american psychiatric website the committee is thinking about having a category called socially awkward, but within normal limits. autism is not a black-and-white disorder.

it's not like hunting we've got a specific bank or downs. it's a continuous trait. when does moody turn into manic depressive. there is no black and white dividing line. >> host: another tweet that is coming for you via twitter. what is known about people who are faster with children wax how might they be affected and what can they do to overcome deficits? >> guest: if you take high functioning autistic and asperger's your chance of having low functioning kids is high and that is the reason why the website gets hits from top tech cities. i think all evening fell, but that doesn't take much imagination to figure out where the cities are. they are in my top ten, been there for years. and what i've can of observed is the more you concentrate the traits and both sides seem to contribute. fortunately, my brother and sister got married there were no autistic kids. but the family histories of the

spouses were completely clean. let me tell you what i mean by that. no asked asperger's traits. no epilepsy. these are all markers that kind of concentrate these things. your chances on both side of the family of having a kid with problem tends to go up. into your design. she did wear a french château. and my other sisters run a restaurant. she has done sculpture and runs rental properties. >> host: sounds like an overachieving family. >> guest: well, everybody, my brother really works hard, has a long two hour commute each day on the train which is really hard. >> host: do you know what your iq is? >> guest: when i was tested in elementary school it was 138 and

i did my best test and the object is silly, which is pretty typical for the high functioning autistic. there is another that is the word thinker and a test result is the >> and more the verbal things are their best. >> genius typically started at 15, 140? >> well, i'm not going to -- the iq things are vague. that's one thing that you got to little at little kids is can't do needs to be different from refuses to do it. you have to find where the kids strength is. one things that seems to have ab a lot of kids with learning problems is an area of strength and weakness. you got to build on the areas of strength. and i emphasis that in my "developing talents."

i think it's terrible that the schools have taken out of the phonics. these are some the classes to axel. they don't have a chance to get rid of the automechanics, because they got rid of the class. they are not going to outsource that job overseas. >> why do you think that boys get autism more than girls? >> well, there's -- it's probably three or four times as much. boys tend to be less lateral. lady gets a stroke the left side takes over. boys have more problems with that. >> host: marion, you are on. >> caller: is dyslexia related? >> well, there are some symptoms of dyslexia that are related. the thing i found in looking at the literature.

i recent got on thes,. i was looking up the sensory issues in adhd and dyslexia. they talk about the awareness. that's the ability to hear hard constant sound. you go to some other paper, they call it processes disorder. i think it's the same thing. i have problems with awareness. when i was the kid, and the grownups talked fast, i just started oinking. i just heard the vowel sounds. so my teachers would enunciate the causes like cup, dog, cat. a lot of the sensories issues, some of those things are similar. aware that where autism would be different would be the social aspect. the social, emotional problems with eye contact, repetitive

behavior, and there's a lot of cross over with dyslexia. there's a lot of mixing up the adhd and the real smart aspy kids. interesting enough, ritalin work on those asperger kids. and they don't work on the classically artistic. that's crazy. that's another same. there are symptoms that cross over. >> what do you think about mental institutions or group homes for autistic children. >> well, i'd like to try to work on little children as much as possible. but for adults, adults that cannot live by themselves, a group home is going to be -- a good group home would be the best place that they can go. a lot of parents have worked hard on establishing good

services. i travel around the country, that the places that have good services have a very strong parent support group. the united states have a super organizized well done parent group. are there certain states that do better? >> yes. but then it's spotty. california ranges. you get around the upper midwest, that tends to be better than the south. some of the worst medical, like overdoses and drugs and awful stuff like most of the worst stories come out of the southeast. then you have other states. you have one that's just right. again, so many things depend upon the particular people involved. if you are in an area that's got bad services, you need to get

the parents together and form a strong support group. one of the problems that i found, they get in there fighting, rather than working together for the common goals. >> another tweet for you, dr. grandin. this is from voyager. what goes on inside the head of a kid with severe autism? what do they think about? >> to get some glimpses into that, you need to read books by some people who have severe autism, like how can i talk if my lips don't move. donna williams, somebody somewhere. but her best book you have to order online is autism, an inside out aapproach by donna williams. these people describe factored sensory processes. tido describes if he looks at the blue door, he might see the color, then he sees the shape that it's a door. shape, come already, and motion. they have to work together to form a graphics.

what happens in severe, they are not working together. so there's seeing fractured visual images. their hearing may be fading in like a bad mobile phone connection. that's why they do a lot of touching like this. those circuits still work. they are loss complicated than seeing or hearing. on the other hand, somebody can appear functioning, and have a good brain. tido looks at the low functioning thing and shapes all the time. when i showed him a picture of the astronaut on a horse, he typed out quickly apollo 11 on a horse. he jumps up. i showed him some cattle. india, we don't eat those.

this brings up another thing. he didn't say cattle. he has to come in the back door. like to define the flower. you ask what a flower is. you might say the color part of a plant. he has to come in around the back door. but more information is going into that kid than you think. you talked to one parent, her kid was nonverbal kid. he was typing depression into the computer. those words were never used at school. you need to down load the memory and find out what he's doing. he may be reading and you don't realize it. i think it's good to introduce the keyboard. you don't have to click, and get exmaterial keyboards. teach them how to type.

>> pam, are you with us? helps if i push the button. sorry about that. >> hi, you are on the air. please go ahead. >> >> caller: yes, i'm a 57-year-old woman who all through my life has been misdiagnosed with a problem. as a child i instantly fit in with horses. living in a city, at 8 years old, a movie, horse training business had me working their horses for commercials they could not get the horses to do what they needed. my entire life, the horse back lessons, i was a breeder of ray rarian horses. and training them.

that's where i became homeless, poverty sticken, not expected into the normal work force because of my capability that had not been diagnosed. i was an assistant to henry winkler on the film. >> pam, can you get to your question. >> caller: he had dyslexia. but he said i could possiblily have a high functioning asperger syndrome. i have not been diagnosed but i have become qualified. they imposed a payee and all of these people managing my income that has worsened my condition to the point of its killing me. can you recommend a source for

me to prove two social security that i can manage my own finances. >> i would recommend getting in touch with the support group. is there any way you can get back into horses. this brings up another thing. where things were working and switch. >> host: another i mail. this is from sandy. she has a cat. she says that i have the original scarety cat. is there any hope that she'll be able to be more social and tolerate.

i have to get a complete history about this cat. what is it afraid of? they stated the case. was the cat traumatized? i don't know. i don't even know what's the cat afraid of. to solve behavior, i have to have detail. there's a really great dog behavior. she's done a lot of great books. and she told me that she tells clients to imagine a video tape of what the dog is doing, and explain in detail exactly what the dog is doing. sometimes you can gradually desensitize an animal and what's it's afraid of. one thing is taking a cat and shoving it into what's it's

afraid of. that would be a bad idea. >> host: how much time do you spend around animals? >> i still spend a lot of time. i have to do the auditor training thing tomorrow. doing less because of all of the speaking and stuff i'm doing now. one the things i'm trying to work on, i wish i had more time to do the fun stuff is to get students turned on. one of my big concerns, and i've gone around the book signings, there's not that many students. are they not reading? that concerns me. i thought it's been taking a lot of speaking engagements where i can talk at colleges and schools. i want to get students turned on to animal behavior. and doing interesting things with knelts.

>> i like to do the fun stuff. i feel like i'm in the part of my career, 62 years old now, try to get out and get the next generation interested. >> has the computer era been good for autism and aspergers children? >> well, one thing, you are getting online and meeting other people. that part has been really, really good. that's i'm all for that. what i'm against is looking at the plane. i would be a video game addict. i don't have the skills. i don't do the kind of art work that they want. if i'd been addicted to video games, i wouldn't have been out taking care of horses, doing carpentry work that would start

forming the career. my feeling about the video games is one hour a day. you don't ban them. i would allow them an hour a day. the rest of the time, i had to get together. we need to use computers to help open it up. scientific database, a lot of the stuff on the internet, all of the physics lectures on m.i.t.. >> host: do you have to force yourself sometimes to socialize? >> yeahing i get tired. i get tired of social chick chat. endless talk about the weather. it's a social emotional connection. i remember one time there was a whole bunch of pharmaceutical sales man. four hours of drunken sports-themed chitchat. there was no information. they didn't talk about why is it a good coach or why that was a brilliant play or analyze the game, it was just chitchat.

and i'm sitting there. i found it boring. i just don't get much out of that. >> next oned in mississippi please go with your question. >> hello, this is christine, i am enjoying you so much. i wanted to talk about something fun. are you there? >> host: we're listening. >> caller: okay. okay. i have found it incredibly therapeutic for my kind of brain that i have, i'm an artist, everything is very visual. i sit and watch the animals out by my place and just am totally entertained. well, this morning, i was watching some wood ducks. they have all been born out here in the last 10 years. and we started with a couple of them. now we have about 40 of them. and they were doing a very by cat pattern dance. it looked like it had been core yo graphed.

it was the most amazing thing. i was wondering, is this typical? or something i hadn't seen before? or is it because they are all related and they all been, you know, they've known each other behaviors for a long period of time? or? >> host: doctor? >> well, birds who have a hard-wired mating rituals. you know, the male will fluff up his feathers, and the female wants to wiggle her butt. it works like fixed action patterns of you may have been watching bird mating. if they were duckling, they wouldn't be doing a mating dance. the mating rituals are going to be look like it. >> who is the skinner, and what's your correction? >> b.f. skinner is father of behavior. i talk about him in "animals in translation" when i went to the college in the 60s, he was the

god of psychology. and everyone said, behaviors explained everything. well, i want to visit him. and he put his hand on my leg. and then i asked him -- well, if we can learn about the brain. he says we don't need to learn about the brain. i couldn't believe that. because i was taken a behavior class and the retired behaviorist. he was a reptile specialist who stiedae tholing and the natural behavior of rep constitutes which are hard wired. they are sort of like a more extreme version of the bird mating dances. i never could die the total behavior stuff. yes, it is important. i'm a believer of doing it on very young autistic children. but it doesn't explain everything. it explains about half of it. >> so b.f. skinner's research goes back 40 years. how much is still valid today?

>> a lot of it is valid? >> talk about that in animals. make us human. that's b.f. skinner type training. all of the stuff about forward background chaining. that works in animal training. that works on the young autistic kids. that doesn't mean that the stimulus response type idea explains everything. in animal behavior. because you have a lot of hard wire. like the dog wants to play with the front end down, wagging the tail. the dogs happy. just like this. those are differences in how the nervous systems are wired. >> and animals aren't capable of thinking. marion defines thinking as solving problems under conditions. and there's been some

interesting studies done with crow. they figure how how to bend paper clips to snag a bucket. >> host: next call sarah in queens, new york. >> caller: all right. i'm enjoying listening to you. but my question is how do -- is it -- is -- what do you think about late diagnosis in some of my questions, i always kind of wondered if i had to have aspergers of some sort. it seems like -- it seems like i can't -- is there a place i can go to explore that? is there a full-proof scan that would show it? >> there's no brain scan or medical test. there's a behavioral profile. it's all a behavior profile when the dms5 comes out. i recommend that you read the books, join support groups.

i don't know what your employment status, if you are employed with a group job in health insurance, keep it off the medical record. i don't know what it's going to do to the health insurance. it might be a good idea. it's more important to diagnosis is getting your life to work right. and i think my books will be helpful. and books will be helpful. i have found the books that have been most hellful to me have been written by other people. of course, i got thinking of pictures, that's my book. there's also john "look me in the eye." that's aspergers. he has a successful car dealership. he was one of the kids that did all kinds of naughty things. worked for kids on special effects. leon holidays book pretending to be normal. i think i have found that the books of other people on the spectrum were some of the most important books, and other stuff that i got a lot of inside out

of brain search. but try to find the support group in your area. >> have you been following the health care debate that's been going on? >> i am -- perfectly honest. i don't understand it. they've got something there so complicated, i don't understand exactly what they are doing. most things on capitol hill i follow and understand. this has gotten so complicated. you know, they talk about well, this percentage of people have health insurance. yeah, everybody on 65 is on medicare. the people that have the least is self-em employed. we're going to 80% of those. and insurance policies that selling, they are so expensive, it's outrageous. and then as you get older, they jump them up to $1200 a month. who can afford that? you know, i don't understand what they are doing. okay. they passed the bill.

what is it going to do? i hate to say it. most things on capitol hill, i understand. >> i say that because you told that last caller to keep it off her insurance. >> well, i don't know what's going to happen. i had a guy come up to me, he was a colonel in the national guard. and he thought he had an asperger. a kid that has autism, let me explain. this guy is national guard. did you get diagnosed? no. sit down in the military. if you are doing really well, i really would recommend keeping it off the medical record. yeah. read the books. but keep it off your records. keep it out of the computer systems. >> host: what do you think about electronic medical records? >> well, there's a lot of good things. there's a lot of things that certain things i probably pay cash for to keep it out of

there. i don't care if they know i had a infection or hysterectomy or cancer taking off my eye. i don't care about that. other stuff, i'm going to pay them in cash and give them a safe name. there's certain things i don't want on records. >> host: minnesota. you're on with temple. > caller: hi, doctor. i want to ask you a few questions because i haven't seen any research that neurological problem such as ocd or tourettes syndrome. >> yes, that's what they call cold which means you have asperger and something else. it's common to have ocd along with that. entourettes sometimes can go along with it. anxiety and pressure are also things that are associated with autism ands a aspergers.

there are also people who have anxiety that are not. >> i want to go a little bit more into depth about the autism. we already talked about those that are more able and how they make contribution to the society. so what about the more severely affected that don't make progress in the behavior treatment so there's another type of program. what are your thoughts about trying to help them have better life through care? >> well, it's definitely seem like the better quality of life. that's more severe one that plays to be a good idea. it looks like we can continue. as you get into the more severe forms there's more problems with the different parts of the brain. but it gets into a really,

really controversial issue. if you haven't trade, definitely to get some advantage. but in the very severe. i mean there are individuals where they are not functioning at all. you thought genetic testing. that gets into the very, very difficult questions p you need to be learning more and more about how to treat autism. you learned biomedical approaches. things like the diet, different supplements, and some better ways to treat it. being researched on. i'm sick and tired of the fight of the alternative medicine. i used some. i'm taking the anti-depressant. i take the water fill. but i'm using probioanotherrics for my yeast infections, and i'm doing the diet to help some of

my yeast problems. some of these kids with a lot of problems, they have yeast infections so bad. no wonder. > host: e-mail for you. could you please contribute to the youth in asia methods used? >> well, of course the recommend overdose things as they standard method of way to put cats down. also, we maybe working on cutting down the amount of dogs and cats that are bred. and most responsible animal shelters don't let one out that's not sprayed or nudered. you better have the methods that are not acceptable, and the representable ones that don't use them. >> jenni from baltimore e-mail hims.

she has a 5 year old daughter with autotism. we are thinking of using the approach for the element here. >> well, some kids do well with that. there's a lot of controversy over the month sorry or times. every expert will agree that young autistic kid, 2/3-rbg -- 2, 3, 4, 5, 6-year-old kids, one to one interaction with a good teacher. you need to teach them turn taking. i was taught that. it's part of teaching me chinese checkers. one to one interaction. intensity interaction. it allowed a little bit of downtime. but the rest of the time i had to be tuned in. three males every day. i had to waive in church. if you fine that working fine, the enough hours or whatever you are doing, are you seeing nice progress with your kids? are you seeing nice progress with your kid. then you are doing something

right. i'm also a believer in the occupation therapy as part of the treatment. there are some kids that you can get a bean bag chair over them and put some pressure on your body. you can do it better. it kind of clears out some of the problem that is you are clearing with the processes. >> you use the phrase, i was allowed to actor'stistic for an hour or day? >> what did i do? there was the brass thing on the bed post. all i did was spin. then i was into some spitting stuff. chew up and spit them out. i was allowed to do this for an hour after lunch. then the rest of the time i had to be tuned in. >> could you go back to that behavior today? i mean if nobody wanted your attention right now and you were on your own? >> well, i'm not going to go back to spitting. i'll take this paper and make designs all over it.

the whole note pad is full of little designed. i still do that. i usually have something to read. >> host: all right. carla from virginia. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. it's an honor and pleasure. i have two questions. if you want to take them separately, that's fine. i have a 14-year-old son withs a bergers and sensory processing disorder. and basically he does well academically. however, he has a really problem with reading comprehension with regard to the abstract or, you know, id yums already anything that's innuendo of that nature. do you have any recommendations regarding how we might be able to help him understand, you know, these subtle nuances of reading as he's 14. so they expect a little more than, you know, the tank engine and things of that nape.

the reading a getting more difficult as he gets older? my second question is how do you feel about faith and god? and do you believe that autistic children have any concept of that? > host: carla? >> i'm going to start with the reading comprehension. first of all, start with concrete things. if there's a story about explorer in the arctic, ask how many dogs, what color was the leader coat? don't start out asking abstract, why are coats needed in antarctica. when it comes to idioms, i had to learn those by straight memorization. then i use a lot. i see the horse in the starting gate, and wanting to go. when you are hot to trot, you are ready. i had to learn them.

just like learning stuff in a play. >> host: her second question? >> host: her second question about god. i recommend when you read the last chapter in "thinking in pictures" because that's going to answer that question. >> caller: pleasure to talk to you. i recently saw a program about autistic people in scandinavia where they are having work programs where they go into industry because a lot of people that are autistic people in particular, need to be productive. they enjoy doing engineering type things. and they very much enjoy being out there in the work force. and contributing to society. which is something i think here in the u.s. we seem to be not seeing a potential in the artistic population. i was wondering if you knew

anything. and if you know of anything that's starting up in the u.s. where more people with personal who kind of helps them through the ins and outs of a workplace. if we had anything starting you up in the u.s.? >> there's a program called, i don't know it wassing? sistern where people are doing electronic computing jobs. i wrote about it in my book, "the way i see it" out in silicone valley, there's lots of workplaces too. we have to get creative. i got into college through the back door. you know, i didn't do well on the sat. find a professor that's willing to work with a kid. i have lots of employment ideas in my book on developing talents. and you got to figure out, what can you do with the skill that is person has. a mentor is so important.

one kid went into doing programming after his mother taught him programs. she taught him old fashion stuff. it doesn't matter. you are getting the kid turned on. does it discipline in learning automechanics. somebody has to teach it to him. this brings up the whole thing of mentors. i would have been lost without the teachers. you find them willing to work with the kids. you also need to get creative on starting some of the businesses. >> host: dr. grandin, kids who are diagnosed, would you recommend that the parents get them in the social security disability system early or get them in the public health services early so that they are taken care of when the parents aren't there? >> i think that's how severe it is. you have someone that can take care of themselves, they don't

need that. i was just talking to a lady where she has gotten into the system where she used to be an executive. now she's a handicap. you know somebody that's severe, nonverbal, yes, you are going to have to make planning for the when the parents aren't there. you take somebody that's smart, i don't think that's one of the things you want to do. they are good at dealing with some of the more severe. they don't know what to do in the smart aspy kid. you have a smart aspy that aught to be taking 12th grade math in the class with the severely handicapped kids. i would get out away. there's nothing interesting for these kids to do. i go wait a minute. this is kansas. there's field yards. oil wells. meat plants. irrigation equipment. combines. there's all kinds of interesting stuff. you know, you got to take kids out. show them interesting stuff to get them interested.

in the movie, the door to opportunity is going to open. and it's really cool. it illustrates that very thing. >> host: you are really looking for the hbo movie. >> i've seen it already. >> host: and it comes out in february? >> you have written that if you could do it all over again, you wouldn't want your autism to be removed from you? >> i like the kind of thinking that i have. you were asking about the political stuff. they are in their fighting over stuff. rather than trying to figure it out. how much debt? what kind of programs can we do? being the bottom-up my approach is to look at everything in every other country is doing first. there's a book about that. i forgetten the title of it. i heard it done in an interview from this book. and all of the other health things can do.

find out what's out there. reinvent the wheel. and then you sit down and watch the way. you figure out how to design it. this is not what happened, with politics and worse. it's just so much mighting. i remember back in the 50s, they got stuff done. i write about that in "animals in translation." the interstate highway system. >> another tweet has come in for you. have you found a way to understand the human of neurotypicals? is there a particular type of human you enjoy? >> well, -- it's funny to watch the program that are satires on certain things. i think that's funny. a lot of human i do understand. especially visual humor. if you say, how do you think of something humorous. i have the mind that i think circular devices facility, and i go. i like to fanned size 1,000

years they are going to dig it up and be talking about. now you see a learned archaeologist from the futuristic and it's got like powerpoint version 100 or something up there. and that's showing the thing. a lot of human. i do get it. but i have slower of the picture of like visual humor. i don't think it's funny to watch america's funniest videos and nay have people falling down. that's not funny. i don't like that. that's just not funny to me. >> host: "saturday night live." >> i like it. it just coming on too late for me. i used to watch it all the time. >> host: from pennsylvania. >> caller: hello, i work with

children with autism. i'm going to be attending graduate school for occupational therapy so that i can work with autistic children. i'm wondering, what recommendation do you have for someone with the spectrum going to graduate school? thank you. >> one of the most important things is to get the professor that's really interested in you. these are the things that helped me. you get back to the whole thing. another thing i'd recommend while you were in school, is make sure you get hands on time out in therapy. so you start learning your job before you even graduate. so you have a slow transition from the world of school to the world of work. i think that's really, really important. and i had to learn, my freelance business not to tell clients off. clients are -- manners are my person in the world. i'll tell it to their face. i talk about how to deal with the problems in developing

talents and thinking in pictures. but get that work experience before you graduate. and the other thing is build up the port portfolio. that can get you get jobs. >> host: did you learn that the hard way? >> yes, i had some things that it was very difficult for me to understand. i'd be hired by a plant manager. a resident would get jealous that the nerd was coming in. i had several situation where people have broken a hand. and it was very hard for me to deal with the personal break. and then the calculated the cost of the downtime. it cost $2,000 worth of downtime. $10,000 worth of downtime. they can be so large. now the day is chalk it up with

normal behavior. >> the economic affairs, financial affairs, you have a lot of different income screens. >> i have to hire a professional to do that. i have all of that stuff. , you know i got book money off of this, and i've paid this. i can't keep track of that. i like to count. but that's way too complicated. >> host: brandy in tennessee. >> caller: i think -- how are you? >> great you. >> caller: great. i had a few questions. i hope you don't mind. i previously in my life have studied animal behaviors and i'm

licensed to do so. i recently in '06 was running a large point out in las vegas. and i had two autistic clients. random behavior et cetera. what i did out there, interesting. i just want you to comment on this. i could not give them the lesson compared to the brother who was a basketball case so to speak. i then did something very behavior. i simply saddle him up. i moved on. and i had him in the air. i tell you what, i saw all of it. he did not have the security. he to save that board. that autism left. >> so he really fell off to pay

attention. >> caller: and there was over, all of the behavior, it was like fear factor in the violence. >> well, he didn't want to fall over the horse. it's a really problem. like when i had a chance to do that. you type out one sentence, and get up. his mother had to call him back. with the problem. but when he didn't want to fall off the course, then you have to be careful so he doesn't. there'll be a point if he did that, it would get to really impressive. that does bring up the point, you got to get to the point. and as long as he didn't have a key or training ramp and you did that a little bit, that's only the good point. make sure you don't push him not point where you go here. then he just starts and he will fall off the horse and scare the horse. >> host: okay.

another tweet. what does dr. grandin think about the role in mirror neurons and empathy related to the aspect? >> i think neurons related to -- basically what neurons do, i have watched somebody else. so you can feel how they feel. that would be it. >> host: kathleen in new jersey. go ahead. [inaudible] >> caller: we get that of

practice. as you know the directive, 23, this is insufficient findings. some connection to the point of the sitting. is there any contact that you can make through you. would you have no problem graduating dillion to school and finding the career? but after graduating to social functioning, basically seized? >> well, he no longer had anything to go on to. the thing about finding of back doors to get into these places. you never know where to go. back in the '70s, i wanted to get into the swift plant. they said we don't do tours. then one day at an arizona

cattle feeders, i met the wife of their insurance agent of all things. and she opened the door. you never know where the back door is going to be. it could be a friend of your mailman. it could be a -- you know, he asked some people for dinner. their son-in-law worked in the ally. it was somebody that you bump into the super market. show some of the work. >> you kind of have to look for the back door. it's there. it's right there in front of you. you just don't see it. the livestock meeting. i thought it would be a great place for wendy to work.

i went up to them and talk to them about it. it's called networking too. and you need to just find all of the people that you can find that are in that field. it needs to be very neatly presented. wow, here's his s.a.t. scores. now, here's some mathematic stuff. you look at in a 30 second. people don't open with strings attached. >> host: next call, angela in idaho. please go ahead. >> caller: oh, yes. i have a son who is 6. he's been diagnosed with autism. he does really very well academically. he's maintained kindergarten, he

does speeched, speech therapy, occupational therapy. but there is a huge hole for the support for them socially. he really does have a lot of problems socially. i wondered if you can give me books to read, programs to implement, what to say to the teacher or principals so i can get some kind of social program going for him at school. >> well, there's a lot of books out there on social. i got a book on unwritten social rooms. autism, future horizons. the other thing is get together with the parents. and put together social in school. the thing is in the 50s, he can't just talk. he has to be thought what to do. if i made a social mistake. my mother would say ask yourself

to pass it. you just have to learn. hi to learn not to talk on and on and on about the same subject. some kids have a problem with interrupting classes in college. i had a rule. one question per class. there's a -- get together with somebody in the support groups. there's a lot of parents that have gotten together. some social skills, training groups. >> dr. grandin, you talked about the learning behavior like when you referred to driving is now a learned behavior for you. >> it's unlearned behavior. the driving is totally automatic. >> host: automatic. right. is that the same thing with the manners. >> yes, like saying please and thank you. you forget to say thank you. or say please. it gets to where you do it. it's drilled into you. in the '50s, they drilled that into kids. all kids. >> host: here's an e-mail about something you've written about. you ask temple to speak about

her views and experiences recording jewish ritual animal slaughter. >> i've done a lot of work on improving slaughter. you have two welfare issues to do. and sometimes hold the animal. and take a chain and put it around the ankle and whether or not it hurts. the thing that i've worked on is getting plants to get rid of this horrible moistening. and put in a shoot of cattle then. and then the other issue of course is the throat cover. and there is some research that shows pain there. but the restrain is the thing that's absolutely the worst. now the slaughter and have an acceptable level of welfare.

>> and rather than just a dot-com. i have a lot of stuff on there. you may want to read this. >> meatless mondays in schools because animals have methane? >> well, methane comes from rice patties, land fills add methane. and there are some ways to get it in methane. but there's other sources of methane out there that are way, way, way greater than livestock. >> second point. many doctors advocate going through the vegan lifestyle as the best way to come back heart disease. >> well, i think the important thing is cancer is eating lots of veggies. people tend to eat a high-meat diet. they eat potatoes and meat.

fruits and veggies have a lot of beneficial things. you have to separate meat eatings for the lack of fruits and vegetables. i cannot function on a vegan diet. i get light medded. there was the thing about the blood types, and i went and had the blood type tested just recently. i said to my doctor. this one is fine. the blood type is o-positive. and i will call the -- i think on so many different things it's moderation. but i make a point in eating lots of fruit and vegetables. i also eat a lot of meats. and i eat lots of fruits and vegetables. >> we have five minutes left with our guest on "in depth" on

booktv. go ahead. >> caller: i'm so glad to see you on tv. i'm a registered nurse. i'm 60-year-olds. my southern is high functioning asperger with a phd. my grandson i'm certain he has aspergers as well. and i'm just wondering, i mean there have always beens a bergers cases. but the frequently now that happens, what do you think is the basis for this besides genetics? >> well, i think it's always been. i don't think it's increased. i find tons of undiagnosed out in the meat industry, doing technical jobs. i've been interviewed by a lot of journalist. cameraman that i know are undiagnosed. it's always been there. not just more of them are getting diagnosed. more of them are getting problems now. i think some of that is our less

structured society today. it hurts the asperger people a lot more than it hurts the so-called normal people. i can think of the kids i went to school with, went to college with, that today would definitely be diagnosed withs a bergers. >> walter in north carolina. >> caller: curious, theory of multiple intelligence. and if so, could you comment for a brief period? >> yes, i am familiar with that. and the thing is, i think that different people are good at different things. some people are good at art, some people are not. you get into the whole debate about talent. i couldn't keep the skis together right. there's a big huge middle ground where you got the average abilities in a lot of different things. you need to push the brain either way. the thing that i can do, is test

run equipment in my head. they can't do that. it's the art of the brains. i mean to get to the old nature/nurture. i read a lot of stuff. i think it's half and half. what we are is half of our genetics. the other half is the environment. >> host: you recommended a lot of sites for people to go to. but none have been government sites. nih or cdc. >> nih, cdc, they say things about autism. but in the local area. it doesn't really help people that much. if there's something good, i'd like to know about it. what i have found where again the places that have strong support groups are places that get the good surfaces and thing like that. really recommend parents getting

together and forming some good support groups. >> i have thought of a noun to ask you. >> okay. >> host: basketball. >> okay. i'm seeing when i was in high school, one the few places i wasn't teased. we'd go out and shoot baskets. and you had to eat launch fast so you can get down and get a ball. i really enjoyed doing that. now i'm seeing a tv documentary i watched about the history of basketball. i don't have that many things in the file. i'm not interested in sports. just now. it's just not interesting. i'm seeing a restaurant tvs, wars with a whole lot of tvs. my assistant mark loves basketball. now i've gotten out of the basketball file. i'm now seeing mark, his dog. >> host: big dog? >> no, red is -- red died of old age.

he has a new dog. and it's a small dog. and i'm seeing her. i'm seeing having launch with him. i worked with mark on the humane handling books. you can see how i got to basketball to dog. you see that is an association. it's a association thinking. this is exactly how my mind works. >> host: president obama? >> i'm seeing different pictures of him. in fact, the airport the cardboard cutout. and right beside the picture was a guy that looked like president obama. are you obama stand in for the store? and he wasn't. >> host: last call. 27 seconds. go ahead. >> caller: yes, my son has been autistic for -- since he was born. he was born with low birth weight. 47 pounds two onces.

cords wrapped around his body. he does have brain damage. but he's high functions. he has adhd, but he was not diagnosed with autism, but i see signs of it. he had no support through the people that he can say than we do. he has before in classes four years, and now it's hard for him to find a job. it's hard for him to do anything but be a janitor. would you have any suggestions, including college for him, because he got a 4.0 in high school. it was not a regular school, it was a charter school? >> i don't have time to answer. i don't know where skills are. read some of my books. i hate to say that. but i need to talk to you for 15 minutes. we just don't have the time. i'm