Thank you all for joining us. I am with Smithsonian Associates and thrilled to welcome you to todays program on visual thinking with dr. Temple. To our members, a sincere thank you. Now more than ever is your support keeps us going. As many of you know, Smithsonian Associates is not federally funded and relies entirely on donations and membership support to bridge gap between Program Expenses and ticket to anyone who might be new to Smithsonian Associates. Welcome. And i invite you to explore the wide range of programs that we offer and to consider becoming member to support our work in bringing you hundreds of trusted learning experiences every year, you can find out more about these events on our website, Smithsonian Associates org as well as on facebook and twitter. While supposed to link in the chat box. Which brings me to my next item of business. I want to quickly mention a few features of zoom. So clear about how we run our programs. First, look for the chat box at the top or bottom of your screen. Well be posting relevant links and messages here throughout the program. Theres also a q a from which will try your questions for the q a after the presentation. We encourage you to submit your questions throughout presentation and well get to as many as we can. You will also notice that tonights program closed captioning, which you can choose to hide clicking the cc or closed caption icon on the toolbar. And finally, id like to let you know that there will be a survey when you exit the program that we encourage you to complete. We value and appreciate your feedback as we learn more about using this platform for. And now let me tell you about our speaker tonight, Temple Grandin is a professor of Animal Science at Colorado State university and the author of the New York Times bestsellers animals and translation animals make us human the autistic brain and thinking pictures, which became an hbo starring claire danes. Dr. Grandin has been a pioneer in improving the welfare of farm animals, as well as an outspoken advocate for the autism community. She resides in fort collins, colorado. Dr. Grandins newest book, visual thinking the hidden gifts of people who think in pictures, patterns in abstraction, is out now and is available for purchase. Our partner bookseller, politics and prose and a link is in the chat. And now further delay. Please welcome dr. Temple grandin. Its great to be here and talk to everybody tonight. Zoom and really appreciate if you could get my slides up so i can see them and going to be talking about different kinds of thinking and this is something that really interests me. I am an extreme visual thinker. Everything i think about the picture and when i was a little kid i was severely autistic. I was very lucky to get into very good early educational programs. I cant emphasize how important that is and im now a College Professor in. Animal behavior. And so i think well go on to my next slide. And the first thing is you have to realize different of thinking exist a lot of people are mixtures of different kinds thinking but there are some people that are really extreme one extreme visualizer if you saw the hbo movie about me, it exactly how i think now when i first started out my animal behavior work when i was in my twenties i everybody thought in pictures didnt know that verbal thinking exists. And then i was shocked when i discovered that there are a lot of people around dont think in pictures that was just a complete shock to me and being a visual thinker really helped me in my work with animal behavior. And well go to the next slide and it shows a shadow in a shoot. And ive done a lot of work on getting cattle handling to better cattle or afraid of a lot of. Theres a shadow thats a picture of me taking a picture with camera on and im making a shadow thats scaring cattle. Oftentimes people dont think to look about those things, look at those things they dont think to look at what the animal is seeing because an animal lives in a sensory world. They dont live in a world based world we dont understand how an animal thinks, thinks sensory. We all know a dogs nose is really, really sensitive. But some new research has shown that the dog actually has a big internet trunk line go out the nose to the visual cortex, think about it, smell pictures, three dimensional smell pictures. Thats really trippy. Lets go to the next slide. Now. The thing is, in looking at things, engineering, theres kind of different approaches engineering, math, medically inclined engineers calculate risk. Visual thinkers could see that might be a risk. Also, thinkers like me who are terrible algebra oftentimes can see just to fix something, too, because all my thoughts are pictures. So five years ago, i went to this launch pad, which now is a rocket sitting on it and we are under the launch pad at 7 00 in the morning, five years ago. And i saw a little motion over on the stairway and i saw something in there. This should not be in there. And hes on the next slide. A raccoon waddled down the steps, and i got to thinking what a human chewing am. Yeah, nobody. Nobody was there. Nobody knew that a raccoon was living the launch pad base. And they had fuel equipment inside that base with a raccoon in there. Now, hopefully it didnt do anything to it, but nobody else knew that he was there. That seeing risk. Lets go to the next slide now. We need thinkers in science. I review a lot of Journal Articles and were getting to where theres more and more and mathematics. So were going to do the most famous issues, all the fancy mathematical stuff on your data. But you see these two little devices right here for mixing samples. One has a little magnet in it that spins around the other little contraption sort of like a ferris wheel for test tubes and a very expensive cancer study, which ruined because one lab used a magnetic the other lab use the rotating thingamajig and it totally changed the results. These data matter that messed up millions of dollars worth of research. Im not very good at doing the math, but i make sure that we vetoes and im repealing a paper right. And they dont. They havent told me whats in the feed. More now. This is really, really important it matters when youre feeding animals to one of the next slide. Now theres three basic different ways of thinking. And im an object. So lets just go to the first one. And a lot of people are mixtures. Now, my kind of thinker thinks totally pictures. Were very good with mechanical things, very good, like fixing skilled trade. And you got some of these autistic adults holed up in the basement playing video games. This is where we need to get a retired auto mechanic, get them out working on cars and going to find. Thats more interesting than the video. And a lot of these people are getting staying in the basement doing this. Theyre not going into great careers in the video industry. So visual thinkers like me that are lousy at abstract are good with inventing mechanical equipment, graphic design, working animals because they dont think in words and photography. These are some of the things that were good at, totally terrible in higher math and the visual thinker a similar name where needed solve a lot of practical problems you know lets keep the Water Systems the Electrical Systems working and well go on to the next slide. Okay. Now your mathematical thing, this would be the engineer thats got an engineering degree computer programing, engineering, chemistry, physics, music and math go together. Art and mechanics go together. I know that sounds weird. And music and math go together. And im also going to show you later on how the different kinds of minds, once you realize they exist, can be complementary. And many, many, many people are mixtures or of the different kinds of thinking. But then you get the kid to get the specialized label. They tend to be an extreme, an extreme mathematician, maybe an extreme mudd mechanical person to go the next slide and then you, your verbal thinkers, writers, sales, psychology, lawyer, teacher, people that think words and we go on to the next slide and theres research. And this research is outlined in a chapter in my visual thinking book. Im going to hold it up right here in my visual thinking. It made the New York Times bestseller list for one week number seven on hardback and number nine on the print and ebook. I really, really pleased about that, but research showed is there actually two different types, visual ones like me and the more mathematical ones that think in abstract patterns, go to the next slide. So how do you figure what kind you are . A lot of people are mixtures, but the thing is, one kind of thinking tends to be dominant. And theres been discussions in the schools about, well, we going to teach phonics or were going to teach a whole word. It would be a good idea to teach different methods, you know, the kids that are mixtures they might be able to learn to read with either one of those methods. But the kid is different, like needed phonics. Lets go to the next slide. Turns out i got a big visual trunk line in my brain for visual thinking. Well go show another slide of that. And theres another picture of the big internet trunk line for visual thinking. And well go on to the next slide. Now, lets look at how you prefer to take in information on an object. Visualize your like if im trying to show you how water, for example, works, youd rather look at the pictures, on the photographs of the diagrams the verbal thinker will look at the written, the mathematical visual, spatial mind. They tend to look at both both the diagrams, the text. So the next slide. Now lets look at how the different kinds of thinkers might design a planet. This is a very study done with High School Students that were the specialist art school, specialist Science High School or a Humanities Program would be very language based and the art students working in teams, they made fantastic planets with crystals and maybe made a native planets square with polar bears on it. Really really imaginative science students tend to just draw a round planet, not very much imagery. Describe its gravity and other factors. And the humanities students may just splashes of color and in the beginning they just used words and then they raised it because it was sort of an art project, not words, but go to the next slide. The thing thats interesting is verbal thinkers, where i taught down they tend to over. I get questions all the time. How do you teach autistic kids . Well, i need to know if we got a little at three years old and we got on a kid thats super good at math. Maybe needs to be moved ahead in math. I need to more information and both the object visualizations and the mathematicians are bottom up. I get my concepts with specific examples and put them like on a spreadsheet sheet like maybe specific examples of good and bad behavior. For example and you can put them in different categories like robbing a bank is much worse than maybe spitting the sidewalk, for example. Then i can put them on, but i have to use specific examples to make concepts. Lets go to the next slide now. When the Patent Office first started the, object visualize is like name the very, very mechanical people. They ruled making things like grain harvesting equipment, the sewing things that are mechanical devices. You know, now weve got a lot of people in tech and a lot of computer programmers, but even with tech like with zoom visual things can make the simple interface the more mathematically inclined have to programed. So well go to the next slide and the inventor of the 3d printer, you got to remember 3d is a mechanical device controlled by a computer. Its not our car not just a rolling computer. Its a mechanical device theres got a electronics in it that control it. Lets go to the next slide now. Im very concerned that were screening out my kind of thinker an absolutely do algebra and done a lot of work on a large plants designing equipment and there were all kinds of people working out in the shop that barely graduated from high school and they may have taken a single welding class and theyre inventing patterning equipment. Yeah, theres two parts of engineering. Theres what i call the clever engineering department. And then the degreed engineer doing the more mathematical parts of engineering. We need to have both go to the next slide. Now, i came to the realization that theres a lot of stuff weve stopped making, like we dont make the of the art 3d printing. So go to the next slide or how about the state of the art electronic chip making machine . Its holland and next slide shows all the mechanic gadgets on it. Yeah, theres plenty of work there for us non to do and the same thing is true for big Food Processing plants like right now you want a poultry plant or pork Processing Plant. Its to come from holland. And the reason for that is they you can go to the university in holland or if you end up going the tech track and they dont stick their nose up at the tech track, weve got a gigantic shortage right now. Plumbers, people to maintain staff heating and air. All the people that id call the clever engineers and we need how are we going to keep the water running the thing about the autistic kid is to the autistic kid hes in charge of the water system thats going to be the most important thing in his life. Well go to the next slide. And were not making a state the art electron microscope. Go to the next slide and were not making that in 2019, just before shut everything down, i went to this point. This equipments all important high wage country, most of it from holland were paying the price for taking the shop classes and all hands on classes out of the schools. Well, theres a lot of retired people out there that the school wont do it. Then we kick the cars out of the garage and a retired mechanic starts teaching video game addicts how to fix cars. Or somebody else can start an art thing or start a cooking class. Were going to get kids getting doing hands on things. Im concerned that weve got kids growing up the day theyre going to be making policy that have never used raw theyve never used a tool. This is not good. And theyre going to be making decisions in the future about really important stuff that involve things. The goal. The next slide, lets look at the parachute for the mars rover we showed the parachute here, but the fabric was woven on high tech looms and made in the uk. Its lets go to the next slide and then i want out steve jobs theater. This was my fourth stop, my 2019 trip right before closed everything down. She those structural glass walls that golding has no columns they were designed in italy and built in germany and theres a lot of Farm Equipment now. Its coming out of italy and were going to have problems fixing it, getting spare parts for it. And the roof is from the by she is a connection here on what we did and educate on 25 years ago. Taken out shop classes welding auto mechanics and whats going on now. Another big mistake that industry made was shutting down in house engineering like here, fort collins, where i live, we used to have this big giant place called the monfort farm shop, where the Monfort Company, which no longer exists on built and patented and designed lots of equipment. They built some of my equipment. Thats gone now and now, paying the price for taking inhouse engineering and taking out shop classes. And were building always do chip factories. Well, were going to have to get people to repair all that equipment, make equipment to go to the next slide. Well, these are the classes we to get back into schools, cooking, sewing woodworking, playing music legitimate welding theater. I just talked to somebody the other day where their kid went into technical, an autistic kid. Thats all the people backstage make, all the lights work and everything while he got interested in it. Because their school had a theater program. See, all of these expo . Those kids, two possible careers. Im saying too many kids. They get an Autism Diagnosis and theyre not learning how to do anything. They get way too overprotected. She one of the problems weve got with autism is at one end of the spectrum, youve got einstein, and at the other of the spectrum, you have somebody that cannot dress, that has much more severe problems. Lets go to the next slide. Now. The problem is my kind of thinker cannot do algebra and id be screened out of a lot of programs. Right. Like in california for right right now. I dont know if i could from high school, but the thing is you need my kind mind. We need a mathematician too. Also need my kind of mind. 60 of Community College students need remedial math. Well, this could take remedial math to get car mechanics class. Maybe wont ever get into car mechanics class. So the next slide, then grandfather was the inventor of the autopilot for airplanes and he was an mit trained mathematical engineer. He worked with another guy who was probably autistic who came up with this crazy new idea, an auto pilot, people in aviation. It was ridiculous. And they tinkered. They tinkered and they tinkered. They finally it to work and then it was stolen. And the stolen version was at every point during world war two. This is where needed a lawyer. Thats where they needed a verbal thinker. So the is we need all the different kinds of thinkers and they can work in complementary wait till the next slide slide now lets look at who builds a huge Food Processing plant. The object visualizer is like design the layout, the whole entire factory, and then build all the clever mechanical equipment things, packaging, machines, whole shops for these people. Most graduated from high school. Thats it. High end skilled is the one place you dont need a college degree. Other things you need a college, then youre visual spatial math thinkers. Your typical stem kids, they become the degreed engineers. Well, they got to engineer the boilers for Food Processing plant, calculate the roof trusses, power and water. Yeah, that we know how to do. We know how to build bowling, but the stuff inside it where theres problems, we go to the next slide. So look at this book, visual thinking that she learner my verbal thinking coauthor really helped me with because i would do the first drafts by associating, by thinking to all as