Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Autism and Animal Science with Dr. Temple Grandin About this episode Discover how her autism helped Dr. Temple Grandin revolutionize animal science when she sits down with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Featuring Chuck Nice, Dr. Paul Wang of Autism Speaks, and Paul Shapiro of the Humane Society.
Transcript 10,080 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I serve as the director of the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium, right here in New York City. And I got with me in studio as my co-host, the nice Chuck Nice.
0:37 Chuck Nice? Hey.
0:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck.
0:39 Chuck Nice? Yes.
0:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How you doing, man?
0:41 Chuck Nice? I like that, the nice Chuck Nice.
0:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah. I could say the terrible Chuck Nice, but I'd be lying.
0:45 Chuck Nice? No, you wouldn't.
0:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, you would not. So today, you know, we had the opportunity to interview Temple Grandin.
0:54 Chuck Nice? Yeah, fascinating woman.
0:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you saw the movie?
0:58 Chuck Nice? Yes, I did. As a matter of fact, I got to interview, I had to watch it because I had to do an interview with Claire Danes, who played her in the movie.
1:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, okay. So cool. So I got her on StarTalk.
1:10 Chuck Nice? Nice.
1:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah. And she's quite the geek, it turns out, like a Star Trek geeky. She's like, she's got geek in her.
1:16 Chuck Nice? That's a good, that's a good thing.
1:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's all I'm saying. And she's a fascinating person because there are things she does and ways she thinks that like, other people don't think that way.
1:24 Chuck Nice? Right.
1:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It makes conversation with her fascinating. But then you can wonder, well, is she this way and insightful because she's insightful or because she has, in the autism spectrum? And does that give to her or take something away? You know, so, did you have expertise in this, Chuck?
1:40 Chuck Nice? Uh, in the fact that I am not a genius, I know that. I can tell you what a genius isn't.
1:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I had to go out and get somebody who was.
1:48 Chuck Nice? [laughing]
1:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In studio with me is Dr. Paul Wang. Doctor, welcome.
1:53 Speaker 02 Thank you. Great to be here with you guys.
1:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome. And you're Vice President and Head of Medical Research at Autism Speaks.
1:59 Speaker 02 That's right.
2:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's its own organization.
2:01 Speaker 02 It's a nonprofit organization, 10 years old this year.
2:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Well, congratulations, 10 years old. Did you found it?
2:06 Speaker 02 Hardly. I've only been there about a year and a half, founded by Bob and Suzanne Wright.
2:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excellent. And I, you know, in doing the homework for this episode, because I know very little about it, autism has its own awareness month. I didn't know that.
2:18 Speaker 02 April.
2:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? April.
2:20 Speaker 02 Autism Awareness.
2:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now, how do you pick a month? How do you do that?
2:22 Speaker 02 Yeah. That must be the calendar gods.
2:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The calendar gods.
2:26 Speaker 02 AAA Autism Awareness Month in April.
2:28 Chuck Nice? Oh AAA Autism Awareness Month in April.
2:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It could have been August.
2:33 Chuck Nice? It could have been August.
2:34 Speaker 02 We should do it again.
2:35 Chuck Nice? Yeah, absolutely. Well, at least they didn't give you February like they did us.
2:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck can't go a single episode of StarTalk.
2:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Without, okay.
2:49 Chuck Nice? I gotta get it in there, that's all.
2:51 Speaker 02 I think they gave you leap year.
2:53 Chuck Nice? I'm sure that was on the table at the time.
2:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, uh, we, we know, uh, most people who first heard of Temple Grant know her because of, uh, she's a pioneer in, in how you handle livestock.
3:06 Chuck Nice? Right, yeah.
3:08 Speaker 02 Livestock handling, professor at Colorado State, I think.
3:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right, that's correct. And so, the, and, and she's one of the most, I mean, she was in the Time 100, in, in their heroes section.
3:18 Chuck Nice? Yeah, revolutionized, uh, the way you handle like cows. She did a lot of work with cows.
3:23 Speaker 02 Cattle especially, I think.
3:25 Chuck Nice? That's what I meant to say. I said cows, but I meant cattle.
3:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so what we're trying to do in this show today, as, as we feature my interviewer, we're trying to get to the bottom of what makes her tick.
3:35 Chuck Nice? Nice.
3:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And why does she tick the way she does? How much of it is just because she's different? Because any one of us is different from the other, but she's different in this other way? Or could it actually be this medical condition that, uh, she has? And you're an expert in this?
3:48 Speaker 02 I'm a developmental behavioral pediatrician.
3:50 Chuck Nice? Oh, okay. I think that qualifies as an expert.
3:53 Speaker 02 A little bit, a little bit. I've worked with hundreds of families affected by autism and, and now, of course, with Autism Speaks.
3:59 Chuck Nice? Fantastic.
4:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, and so what's the goal of Autism Speaks?
4:02 Speaker 02 Autism Speaks is, is the biggest science and advocacy, uh, organization for, for autism. We want to make everybody understand autism, be aware of it, and do what we can to improve the lives of people with autism.
4:13 Chuck Nice? So now, uh, here's a simple question, and we may or may not have time for it. What causes autism?
4:19 Speaker 02 That's a great question.
4:20 Chuck Nice? Yeah, I was joking.
4:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By the way, you know when people say it's a great question, it means they actually don't know the answer. Have you ever noticed that?
4:25 Speaker 02 That's exactly right.
4:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If they knew the answer, they'd just give you the answer. But it's, oh, that's a great question.
4:28 Chuck Nice? No, I'm only saying that because of Jenny McCarthy and the whole vaccine thing and, yeah.
4:34 Speaker 02 Autism is a complex disorder, and I think like, like most complex disorders, neuropsychiatric disorders, it's caused by a combination of genetic vulnerability and environmental risk factors.
4:43 Chuck Nice? Man, that was the greatest way of saying, "I don't know, I've never heard in my life."
4:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was like, like Wiki page, "I don't know." Here's a whole explanation.
4:51 Speaker 02 I've been practicing that for months.
4:52 Chuck Nice? I gotta tell you, that was awesome.
4:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This explanation needs some more sourcing to...
4:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You got a Wiki info ticket on that one. So, is it possible to have a first onset of autism as an adult? Or is it primarily you see it in kids?
5:09 Speaker 02 Absolutely. It's a neurodevelopmental disorder. It starts very, very early. It may actually start before birth.
5:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, really?
5:15 Speaker 02 There are changes in the brain that we know are part of development before birth.
5:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
5:21 Speaker 02 So it has its roots there.
5:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Temple Grandin, I mean, she has a life story. I mean, if she's an adult and she's a functioning adult, you know she's got some stories.
5:30 Speaker 02 Right.
5:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And let's hear the first part of my interview with her when she came to visit the Hayden Planetarium and came up to my office.
5:36 Speaker 02 Awesome.
5:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I had to hide all the Star Trek things in my office because she's a Star Trek fanatic.
5:41 Speaker 02 I love this woman.
5:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wouldn't be able to otherwise be able to have this conversation because she'd want to talk about Star Trek.
5:45 Speaker 02 And I thought I couldn't like her anymore.
5:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, let's find out how she began.
5:50 Speaker 03 I grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts, outside Boston.
5:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, Dad has a farm?
5:55 Speaker 03 Well, no, no, as a child, no, it was suburbs. I had absolutely no contact with cattle until I went to a boarding school that had a small dairy with 12 dairy cows in it.
6:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, so the dairy cows in the school were part of some educational curriculum?
6:11 Speaker 03 Well, it's just they just had them at the boarding school and I worked at the farm. I took care of the horse barn when I was 15 years old. Cleaned eight horse stalls out every day. Horses were my life when I was 14, 15 years old.
6:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're dressed very horse-like now.
6:24 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You've got a horsey thing.
6:26 Speaker 03 Well, I was bullied and teased horribly. And the only place where I was not bullied and teased were the specialized interest things. And they were horseback riding, electronic slab, and model rocket club.
6:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh.
6:39 Speaker 03 Those.
6:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You were a rocket geek?
6:41 Speaker 03 Yes, I was a rocket geek.
6:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh.
6:43 Speaker 03 And you know what I did? I made a rocket that looked like Mr. Petey, our headmaster.
6:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, my gosh. Wait, was that a compliment or an insult?
6:52 Speaker 03 No, I always said kind of a compliment.
6:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, that is cool, because I, when I did Model Rocket, there weren't many sort of girl rocket people. I mean, it was all boys, you know, and so were there other girls at the time?
7:02 Speaker 03 No, uh, I think I was the only one.
7:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.
7:06 Speaker 03 Mr. Karlock, my great science teacher, got me turned around in science and got me interested in studying. He also ran the Model Rocket Club.
7:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excellent. So, a nice, a good influential teacher story right there. Because some teachers do have the opposite effect.
7:20 Speaker 03 Absolutely, because they, you know, they did a lot of work cleaning a lot of horse stalls. But then, when you get a science teacher, they get you interested. And if you saw the HBO movie, I actually did build the optical illusion room that was shown in the movie. And I was happy to, when I found out the stagehands had a lot of trouble building that, even though they had the drawings off the internet.
7:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So there are some things that are true on television. So, so I had not known that her, you know, professionally, she, she thinks about the design of arms and then how you corral cows. The seeds of that were then very early in her childhood.
7:57 Speaker 02 Sounds like it, yeah. She was interested in animals from an early, early, early point.
8:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, now, back then, she would have been in school like in, in the 50s and
8:05 Speaker 02 Wow.
8:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, that can't have been easy.
8:08 Speaker 02 No, she has a really compelling story. She, she actually was thought to be what we used to call retarded. She didn't speak for the first few years of her life. And then through the hard work of her mom and then these other inspiring teachers, she got to be what she is now, which is amazing.
8:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And back, and back then, people thought what caused autism back then?
8:25 Speaker 02 Back then, in the 50s, they thought it was quote unquote refrigerator moms. They thought it was moms who were emotionally cold.
8:31 Chuck Nice? Just emotionally removed from their children.
8:33 Speaker 02 Exactly.
8:33 Chuck Nice? Wow.
8:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
8:35 Chuck Nice? That's, that's something. So now, you know, she talked about being mercilessly teased. Is there still a stigma attached to autism? We still have so much
8:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You mean, are we still?
8:46 Chuck Nice? Yeah, are we still in that point where we look at people, you know, you know what I'm saying? Or have we made some, some headway?
8:52 Speaker 02 We've made headway, but there's stigma attached to all disabilities still, I think.
8:55 Chuck Nice? Okay.
8:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, common symptoms, so lack of speech, no interest in interacting with people?
9:00 Speaker 02 Really, it's impairments in, in social interactions, impairments in communication. I don't want to say it's lack of interest. If you talk to Temple, if you talk to people with autism, yet they like other people, they want to have relationships, but it's hard for them.
9:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, and how about their, their demeanor, their?
9:14 Speaker 02 It they can they can seem cold because they don't know how to interact.
9:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Got you. Okay, because they uh in in her book, Thinking in Pictures, she allows the rest of us to become aware of how she sees the world. Hmm. Literally and figuratively. Hmm. And let's find out what the visual mind means to her.
9:32 Speaker 03 Later on in my life, I I found out how much my visual thinking was different compared to a lot of other people and and in the my uh book, The Autistic Brain, I have a whole chapter in there where I talk about two kinds of visual thinking. Object photorealistic visual thinking, like how I think.
9:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm hmm.
9:50 Speaker 03 And then more visual spatial, where you are in space, visual thinking and.
9:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One is two dimensions, the other is three dimensions.
9:56 Speaker 03 That's right.
9:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you think about it that way.
9:57 Speaker 03 Well, one of them's photorealistic and the other is where are you located in space?
10:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm hmm.
10:02 Speaker 03 And there's actual scientific research that verifies those two kinds of um of visual thinking.
10:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And uh and which one are you?
10:10 Speaker 03 I am the object photorealistic, more artist type visual thinking or industrial designer type visual thinking, and the mathematician is more where are you located in space in relation to other things?
10:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So do you think there's in the school system, there's not enough of that that we're trained to have, or can you learn it? Can you get can you get a little better at it if you don't if you're not born with it?
10:32 Speaker 03 I think you can you can get somewhat better at it, but you're not gonna take me and make me an algebra specialist. Algebra was just impossible. And I think in science, we need both kinds of thinking, because what I'm really good at, when I review a journal article, is looking at the methods, because when I read the methods section of a paper, especially an animal science paper, a biology paper, I wanna I wanna be able to visualize, how did they do that experiment? And then you got two different studies that come out with opposite results. And I usually find if I read the methods, I'll go, oh, they used a different breed of animal, or they used young animals versus old animals. And sometimes people will leave out really important things in the methods, like what breed of pig did you use in that study? But what I'm seeing now in science is everyone's all hung up on whether you use the latest SAS program, and they fight over what statistics you use.
11:17 Speaker 03 Yes, we gotta do statistics, and I need to work with a statistician, but you also need my kind of mind, I call it the methods police, to make sure that people are fully describing exactly how they did an experiment. So if somebody else wants to redo that experiment, they do use the same breed of animal and they do it the same way.
11:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so what you're saying is everything that we ever do that's new, we need you. We need you like in arm's reach because people you know people are gonna make messed up decisions.
11:42 Speaker 03 And I'm worried now with all the emphasis on math of my kind of mind getting you know pushed off the team because I can't do the algebra.
11:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Can having a photorealistic vision be distracting to you?
11:57 Speaker 03 No, it's just the way I think. My mind thinks like Google for images. And I've been thinking about-
12:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but it could be but wait a minute. It could be too much info. TMI. Maybe there's too much information and you-
12:07 Speaker 03 I can control it. I can control it.
12:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You have the power.
12:10 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So in my field astrophysics, you know, half the field is visual. Yeah, you gotta get in the computer and program it, but Right. there there are things we can only look at because we can't poke it. You can't stick it in a Petri dish. Right. You can't do any of this. So wouldn't it be cool if like in fact more visual people were in the world? And I told her that to her face. So the first time the cloning machine is invented, we'll just make more of you. So we can hand one of you to everybody.
12:39 Speaker 03 But there's the thing is, there's lots of little clones of me around and I'm worried about them going nowhere. And and I'm seeing too many of the little math kids too, especially when you get out away from the tech centers. Just um kinda going nowhere.
12:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So there are people. That was a brilliant answer to my question. We don't need the cloning machines. There are other people like you who are already out there.
13:01 Speaker 03 They're already out there and what I'm worried about is is where they're gonna end up. But I'm seeing too many smart geeky kids ending up in the basement playing video games. Things aren't being done that nurture the ability. When I was a little child, my mother encouraged my ability in art. And a lot of these kids wanna draw the same thing all the time. I did horse heads over and over again, but I was encouraged to do lots of different things. Okay, this kid wants to just do nothing but anime characters. Let's do his car. Let's do his house, you know. Let's broaden that broaden that fixation out. We've gotta turn it into a skill that they can use.
13:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the future.
13:35 Speaker 03 Well, and the other problem you got with autism is I think it's difficult for special ed teachers to shift gears between the smart geeky kid and very severe cases of autism that are definitely not going to be doing science or any other kind of high level job.
13:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Particularly if there's only one word that's supposed to describe the whole continuum.
13:50 Speaker 03 That's the problem.
13:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's a word issue here.
13:52 Speaker 03 Well, I'm seeing smart geeky kids getting these different labels and not going anywhere. They're ending up on social security playing video games when they ought to be out in Silicon Valley or working on some kind of science project. Now, the problem you've got with autism is that the other end of the spectrum, you've got an extremely handicapped kid, maybe can't dress himself, has epilepsy, you know, we're going to need a social security check there.
14:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
14:14 Speaker 03 But it's a very, very, very big continuum.
14:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, the system is a blunt instrument and it's as though it doesn't really know how to, know where to draw the line. Yeah, Paul, this line, I mean, they now speak of an autism spectrum. A few years there, there was like Asperger's people, so how does that work?
14:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, the official classification has changed. There used to be separate diagnoses of autism and Asperger's. Now, it's officially all this one big spectrum. And the problem was people weren't using those terms precisely. Somebody would say you had Asperger's and a different doc would say, no, you have high functioning autism. So, now we talk about a spectrum.
14:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I, once I read what was on that spectrum, I now can identify a fourth of my colleagues. They used to be, oh, they're just not socialized. And now, oh, my gosh.
14:59 Speaker 02 Autism is common.
15:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They're precisely explained by this.
15:01 Speaker 02 Absolutely. And people with autism are amazing. They have amazing minds, like Temple's showing you. People with autism in finance, in programming, inventing, exploding guitars, all people with autism.
15:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you always wonder who might your hero be if you have this condition? And I asked Temple Grandin that. Let's find out. So, Star Trek's your favorite science fiction?
15:20 Speaker 03 Oh, I was a Star Trekkie. Oh, absolutely. Mr. Spock is my favorite character.
15:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Why wouldn't I have guessed that he's your guy?
15:30 Speaker 03 Yep.
15:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right? And, of course, he's many people's favorite character. He was, I don't think people like that were portrayed in that way before. He was straight, rational, emotions didn't come in, and you needed him.
15:42 Speaker 03 Well, I really related to Mr. Spock and his logic.
15:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, and the next generation, there was like Data.
15:48 Speaker 03 That was Data, and I related to Data.
15:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We had Data on StarTalk. Oh, it was great to have him on, yeah. Would you not have liked the shows as much if you didn't see yourself in one of the characters?
15:57 Speaker 03 I don't know, but I just, of course, when I was first starting to watch that show, you know, not as much was known about autism. You've got to remember back when I was a teenager, there were notebooks about this stuff. None of the, none of the resources they have today existed.
16:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, it's come a long way. Yeah, so you agree it's come a long way here?
16:14 Speaker 02 It has come a long way. We talked earlier about the stigma attached to people with autism or other disabilities. It's much better now, but still, we have to make sure these people get the, get the help they need so we can cultivate them to become like Temple.
16:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But we have like Rain Man is a, is a character, is a cultural icon at this point.
16:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And others with other, now, of course, he wasn't autistic, but even Forrest Gump. There are people who are celebrated
16:38 Speaker 02 Right.
16:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? in their disability. Yeah, I didn't even know Mr. Spock was autistic, but gosh, I'm happy to find that out. But he, to the extent that he was not otherwise relating to people, he's got some of the properties of an autistic person.
16:51 Speaker 02 And we should celebrate them.
16:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, so we've got to take a break, but let me give you a hint of what happens when we come back. I asked her, I had to know, if she could be reborn without autism. Ooh. Would she? Ooh. I went there. Oh, you certainly did. I so did go there. We'll see when we come back on StarTalk.
17:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back on StarTalk. I'm here with Chuck Nice. That's right. Chuck, you're still tweeting. Chuck Nice Comic. That's right. Excellent. At Chuck Nice Comic. I follow you. I follow you too. Indeed, and I have here Dr. Wong. Hello, welcome. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, do you tweet? Loving it. Do you tweet? No, sorry, not yet. Well, okay, we've got to work on that.
17:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you're a medical doctor and expert on autism. The future of this, is it in the study of neuroscience? Is it in, I mean, do you know what causes autism at all? Because certainly, a whole lot of people think they know. And they're not vaccinating the children. So what is the latest research on this?
17:51 Speaker 02 In general, we don't know. We know some of the factors that increase your risk for autism. There are genetic risk factors, there are environmental risk factors, and probably those things interact with each other. So you're genetically vulnerable, then you meet up with the environmental risk factor, boom.
18:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then it kicks in.
18:05 Speaker 02 Exactly.
18:06 Chuck Nice? Okay.
18:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But right now, as far as you know, you can't inherit it from your parents.
18:10 Speaker 02 In most cases, no.
18:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That would have shown up in the data already.
18:13 Speaker 02 There definitely is a familial influence, and that shows in the genetics. If you have a brother, let's say, with autism, then you're much more likely to be diagnosed yourself.
18:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, and so the future of neuroscience, are they on the, hot on the trail on this?
18:25 Speaker 02 Absolutely, very cool neuroscience going on, looking at what is different in the autism brain, both in terms of the electric waves that are happening.
18:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is like an FMRI?
18:34 Speaker 02 FMRI, looking at activation.
18:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A functional magnetic resonance, right.
18:36 Speaker 02 That's it.
18:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So they're thinking while you're measuring.
18:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly.
18:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So we've already identified the part of the brain that isn't facial recognition, and you should already know what's not connecting to those parts of the brain.
18:47 Speaker 02 A big theory is that the problem in autism is actually the connections.
18:51 Chuck Nice? Okay.
18:51 Speaker 02 So you have different parts of the brain that aren't working quite right, but maybe it's because they're not communicating with the other parts of the brain that all need to be coordinated.
18:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not because they themselves are not functioning as a part of the brain.
19:00 Speaker 02 Could be, could be both things, yeah.
19:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Then you just stitch it back together.
19:04 Chuck Nice? You gotta figure out how to plug them back in.
19:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Plug them back in.
19:06 Chuck Nice? And that's it.
19:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you're there.
19:08 Chuck Nice? Look at that, we've cured autism.
19:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right here on Startalk.
19:12 Chuck Nice? Oh my god, on Startalk, look at that.
19:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So let's find out what Temple Grandin thinks about the future of neuroscience.
19:19 Speaker 03 Genetics is a very, very big, big factor in autism, because I have found if you have families where you've got, you know, a computer science dad. Uh, Silicon Valley, they seem to be clusters. I see that showing up on my webpage results.
19:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
19:32 Speaker 03 You know, you take two geeks and you put them together. Unfortunately, there's sometimes a chance of having a kid with severe autism. It's not gonna end up working at Silicon Valley, because it'd be non-verbal and...
19:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On that continuum, there is the other extreme.
19:44 Speaker 03 Then there's the other extreme. Einstein had no speech until age three. In a lot of school systems, he probably would have been diagnosed with autism. Let's look at Van Gogh. I profiled him in my book, Thinking in Pictures. How about Steve Jobs? And he was a weird loner who brought snakes to school, and he was bullied and teased.
20:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Steve Jobs, yeah.
20:02 Speaker 03 Yeah. The thing that saved him was the high school local garage computer club. Again, getting in with those other science geeks.
20:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the system needs ways to nurture those who don't fit the mold that we want everyone
20:16 Speaker 03 Well, and the other thing...
20:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? homogenized into.
20:18 Speaker 03 Well, the other thing we need to do, because the other thing, I've talked to a lot of parents and a lot of people where they have little math genius kits. And you've got a kid that's in fourth grade, they're making him do baby math, and then he's behavior problem. I go, "Okay, that kid's probably gonna need special ed and reading, because they often have trouble reading. But he might need to do a high school math book. Well, then give him a high school math book. Just keep advancing him ahead." Another thing you have is some kids can do the math without having to do the calculations.
20:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
20:41 Speaker 03 And I just go lock him in a room stripped of electronics, because I've got to rule out cheating. And once I've absolutely ruled out cheating, then just let him do it that way.
20:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
20:50 Speaker 03 You've gotta realize, he thinks differently. And when I do my autism talks, I've got slides I show, extreme origami that some of these kids have made. On, you know, folding patterns for origami. I go, "This is not my mind, but this is the other kind of, other kind of visual, spatial, mathematical pattern thinker."
21:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, here's what I wonder. Let me ask you a, an ethical question. Once we learn more and more about the brain, we might develop methods and tools to get inside there and make alterations. You going throughout your life, people saying, "Well, she's weird, she can't do the math, she can't do this." Yet you have something extremely important to contribute. What would have been the urge to say, "Well, fix this"?
21:32 Speaker 03 Well, the thing that worries me is, let's say you made me social. Uh, you know, took a lot of scientists and things and made them social, they wouldn't have done the science. See, I kinda think there's a big range here. A brain can either be more cognitive, or a brain could be more social. And there's a great big range, because I've often said, "Who do you think made the first stone spear? It wasn't the yakety yaks around a campfire."
21:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It was the person focused.
21:56 Speaker 03 It's some person that today would be labeled mild Asperger or mild autism that probably made that first stone spear.
22:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, society needs a little bit of everybody.
22:06 Chuck Nice? Right.
22:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It sounds like. Would you agree with that assessment there?
22:09 Speaker 02 Absolutely. We need them. We need them.
22:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, tell me about the rest of what many people stereotype for autism, such as what used to be called idiot savant. The savant elements of autistic, some autistic people.
22:20 Chuck Nice? It is a big spectrum. Are those people autistic?
22:23 Speaker 02 I think some of them are. Yeah, absolutely. And it is a big, it's a big bucket, a big spectrum. So, you have people like Temple, who are doing great, who are doing great in society. But then you do have kids who haven't developed language yet, who really are impaired, who need a lot of help.
22:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Temple has a good, hard-earned and well-deserved reputation and contributions. I'm talking about the people that have singularly odd
22:45 Chuck Nice? like, like
22:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? mental powers.
22:47 Chuck Nice? There's one that comes to mind is a young man who can play anything that he hears audibly. I don't care how complex the piece may be, he is able to replicate it right away. But not only replicate it, he is able to then in turn enhance it, but he is severely autistic.
23:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We like that scene in the movie Amadeus, where he hears the notes once and then plays it back and enhances it. Um, could you give us a, the top three stereotypes that people have for autistic people that you want to overturn? Yeah, dispel.
23:20 Speaker 02 I think number one is that they don't care about other people. If you talk to people with autism, they'll tell you, actually, they do. It's just that it's really hard for them to interact, to be social and express it. Exactly. So, that's number one for sure.
23:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, that's thanks, because I, thank you.
23:34 Speaker 02 Number two is something we've been talking about already, that they'll never amount to anything, that they're retarded, that they can't contribute to society. And that's false too. And we're hearing about that firsthand from Temple, and we've learned that from a lot of other people as well. Those are really the big two, I think.
23:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, and she made the interesting point in the, in the earlier clip, that yes, there are people who will be collecting the, the, the social security check or whatever, but the rest, get them out there.
24:01 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
24:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And but can you, do you know how to draw that line? Is that an awkward thing to do?
24:06 Speaker 02 I think the key is to start working with the kids early, and she was talking about that too, and then hopefully, most of them will be out there, will be doing something. It's a tough hill to climb, and most people with autism now as adults, living at home, don't have regular employment, we need to work on that.
24:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At some point, you have to say, "I can train this person, or I can't train this person." That line that you draw might be different 10 years from now than it is today.
24:27 Speaker 02 Absolutely, I think at this point, you gotta give everyone a chance.
24:30 Chuck Nice? And more awareness may lead to that line being pushed back, because as people become more aware, more educated about autism, then when we spot it,
24:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When you spot it, there it is.
24:40 Chuck Nice? You're able to say, "Oh, I know what to do with this person now," or "How to approach helping this person succeed."
24:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. Oliver Sacks wrote this book, "An Anthropologist on Mars,"
24:50 Chuck Nice? Okay.
24:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And that title refers to Temple Grandin, which I think is cool.
24:55 Chuck Nice? That is cool.
24:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because first, it references Mars, for any other reason.
24:59 Chuck Nice? And it also references that Mars had a civilization at one point.
25:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's as though you are from another planet, and everything else is a fresh observation for you.
25:09 Chuck Nice? Right.
25:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Watching people behave and conduct themselves. Let's hear what she has to say about that reference.
25:13 Speaker 03 Well, you see, when I was very young, I didn't know that my thinking was different. I didn't even know that people had all these eye signals, until I read about them when I was 50 years old, and, but sometimes I felt...
25:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I mean, when they give hints to one another from a distance.
25:28 Speaker 03 Sometimes I felt like I wasn't anthropologist on Mars. Like, I'll be on a plane, for example, I'm in a window seat, and the people in the aisle and the middle seat are like having a romance going on, and they're kinda looking in each other's eyes, and they're just like, they're off in heaven, and I'm like, I feel like I am an anthropologist on Mars, you know, studying the Martians here on this plane that are beside me.
25:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, so, so, when you're, if you're, so, just to follow that through, if you otherwise have no idea what people are doing with one another, and you're simply observing it,
26:02 Chuck Nice? Right.
26:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That is the most unbiased scientist you can be, as an observer of cultures.
26:06 Chuck Nice? Yeah, I mean Pete, as Temple is saying, she just couldn't understand what people were doing when they were interacting. It comes naturally to people who don't have autism.
26:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? She doesn't layer her own expectations or knowledge or presumptions.
26:18 Chuck Nice? Right.
26:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In fact, we have to do that, oh, does she like me? Does she not like me? Did she look in my direction?
26:22 Chuck Nice? Yeah, because it's the social cues that lets you know that you have crossed the line, you're now a stalker.
26:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's right. But the social cues not only let you know when you're across the line, they also tell you if you didn't see it coming, right?
26:36 Chuck Nice? Right.
26:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's a cue that you should have picked up on and you didn't.
26:38 Chuck Nice? Right, yeah. And yes, exactly. It's just like, you know, why isn't he getting that I want him to ask me out?
26:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
26:45 Chuck Nice? Now, why I'm using a guy.
26:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, that's because guys are idiots, but that's well known.
26:49 Chuck Nice? I don't know why that just happened. Okay, but you know what I'm saying.
26:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What does neuroscience say about empathy? Because there are people who are not autistic who don't have empathy. Like certain kinds of criminals who can't relate.
27:00 Chuck Nice? We do call them sociopaths.
27:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, there's a word, that's the word for it.
27:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's gotta be a big factor in the studies.
27:08 Chuck Nice? Oh, yeah. There's been great research, actually, on empathy and how hard it is for people with autism. Some of this comes out of England, actually, from a guy named Simon Baron Cohen. He's a cousin of Sacha Baron Cohen, as it turns out.
27:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I was gonna guess that.
27:19 Chuck Nice? Get out of here. But he shows pictures just of people's eyes. And he asked them, he asked the subjects, try to tell me what emotion this person is showing. Are they angry? Are they dreamy? Are they upset? Are they happy? People with autism have a really hard time doing that, just like Temple was saying.
27:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. And it's, it's, but is it trainable?
27:39 Chuck Nice? It's hard to train. And it, like Temple was saying, she's really need to study.
27:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He turned out pretty good.
27:45 Chuck Nice? Yeah, but I'm still a sociopath. See, that's the problem. Believe it or not, though, that is what sociopaths do. They don't feel the empathy, but unlike somebody like Temple, they learn the actual cues that they should be mimicking as feelings. So, you know, the angry eyes, they recognize as anger, and then they respond in kind. But they don't really feel anything when they do it. Yeah. Got a feeling I'm gonna get a call from the FBI after this show.
28:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are there, is there a tendency for artistic people to need, uh, to be medicated? Because Temple had strong sort of bouts with anxiety.
28:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, definitely. A lot of people with autism have other medical issues going on. Psychiatric things like anxiety, epilepsy also, you need medication for that, other medical problems.
28:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? She talks a little bit about this. Let's find out what she says.
28:41 Speaker 03 Another problem is us visual fingers tend to have a lot of anxiety issues. And antidepressants prevented me from, you know, getting hooked on drugs and alcohol and things like that. And some people have a higher fear or lower fear. I'm a real high fear. In fact, um, my amygdala or fear center is three times larger than normal. But for the last 35 years, my fear has been controlled with antidepressant drugs. Cause I used to have horrible, horrible panic attacks just all the time, horrendous stress related.
29:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What's the top of the, not to get all in your personal life, but an example of.
29:14 Speaker 03 Well, imagine having terrible stage fright all the time. Like you're gonna do the biggest job interview of your life. You're gonna do the biggest speaking engagement of your whole life. And you were that nervous all the time for no reason. That's the way I used to be.
29:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow, but you're totally chilled right now.
29:28 Speaker 03 Well, you know, my very first talk I ever gave in graduate school, I panicked and walked out. I wasn't totally chilled in the beginning.
29:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Well, that's, that's hopeful for people. I wanted to hug her at that point.
29:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That here is somebody who said, here was my problem. Here was the solution. Here was the dose. And now, now we're cool. I'm chilling with her in my office. I mean, it gives me great hope for medicines of that kind for that purpose. If I could tip my hat to the psychopharmacologist or whoever is that's out there doing this.
29:56 Speaker 02 It can help, no question. I'm just sorry that I spent all this time doing drugs and alcohol instead of taking antidepressants.
30:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But is there the risk of addiction in people?
30:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, these drugs of course have side effects like all drugs. We don't want them overused, but they, they have their place. And they can be very helpful for some people with autism.
30:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, but you have to, that's, he just sounded like, yes, we just trial and error.
30:23 Chuck Nice? Well, that is kinda, kinda what it is though, right?
30:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cause you said it's trial and error.
30:26 Speaker 02 Basically, medicine's an empirical science, right? You try things, if they don't work, we stop them.
30:31 Chuck Nice? You gotta try something else.
30:31 Speaker 02 If they work, great.
30:32 Chuck Nice? Right.
30:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If it doesn't work, then you stop it. Okay. What I always wondered also, as an educator, I, I don't like seeing intellectual capital go untapped in anyone. And, and now I see why she'd be the Time 100 in the hero category. Because she, she'd be a hero, even if you didn't have autism. Just somebody who, who has achieved, who has figured out what was, quote, wrong with her. Taken some of that, exploited it, taken the other part, fixed it. And now she's, she's carving a path that everyone else is gonna have, is gonna wanna emulate. Who might have the challenges that she has.
31:08 Speaker 02 That's fantastic. We want everyone like this to be what they can be.
31:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is this one of the goals of your organization?
31:13 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
31:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, Dr. Wong, thank you for coming with us on StarTalk.
31:17 Speaker 02 It's been fun.
31:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On this journey, I learned a lot interviewing her and I learned a lot listening to you. And Chuck, you knew all of this already, right?
31:23 Chuck Nice? Oh, yeah, you know, what can I say? Me and Temple, we're geniuses. We go way back.
31:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back, StarTalk. Grass Tyson here, Chuck.
31:38 Chuck Nice? Hey, man.
31:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Doing good.
31:39 Chuck Nice? Yes, sir.
31:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, we've been featuring my interview with doctor and professor, hair doctor, professor, Temple Grandin.
31:45 Chuck Nice? Yes.
31:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And.
31:47 Chuck Nice? Fascinating woman.
31:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I wanna talk about her work with animals. Uh, this is more closely related to her profession and how she's employed.
31:54 Chuck Nice? Right.
31:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, and pretty sure, since you like grew up in Philly, you don't know anything about farm animals. So I had to bring in some expertise.
32:03 Chuck Nice? Yes.
32:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so I brought in Paul Shapiro.
32:05 Chuck Nice? Yes, Paul.
32:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome.
32:06 Speaker 02 Neil, Chuck, great to be with you.
32:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, he's a vice president of the Humane Society of the United States.
32:12 Chuck Nice? Is there a humane society outside of the United States?
32:15 Speaker 02 In fact, Chuck, we do also run Humane Society International.
32:18 Chuck Nice? Oh, okay.
32:19 Speaker 02 Global, baby.
32:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So he's thinking about farm animals, but he's a vegan. So is that the right, but don't you need someone who eats animals to?
32:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To understand.
32:27 Speaker 04 You must, you must have a kid to be against child abuse, right? That's the only way you can be against child abuse.
32:32 Chuck Nice? You know, to be honest, I, I gotta tell you the truth. I was never against child abuse until, uh,
32:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Until you had kids.
32:37 Chuck Nice? Until I had children.
32:38 Speaker 04 Now you understand.
32:39 Chuck Nice? And now I'm like, oh, so that's what this is about. You know?
32:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, she revolutionized the cattle industry with her. And she, she figured out how to create humane animal handling facilities.
32:53 Chuck Nice? Wow.
32:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Paul, did, you guys are well aware of this in your world?
32:57 Speaker 04 Dr. Grandin has done remarkable work to help reduce the suffering of animals that slaughter.
33:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And there's like statues to her on the farm.
33:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For the people to, right.
33:07 Chuck Nice? The cows did. You go to any farm and there's a cow looking up at a statue of Temple Grandin.
33:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so, you know, we discussed her autism and, you know, it, it's, it's often people will think of the autism and say, oh, well, she did this in spite of the autism. You know, she did these great things, but maybe in fact she did it because of the autism.
33:27 Speaker 04 Wow.
33:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It could, the autism gives her a different outlook that the rest of us don't have because nobody else was thinking that way to achieve those design changes.
33:37 Speaker 04 Gotcha.
33:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So let's take a look at another clip of my interview with her where she talked about the very fear that she had. She has, she has strong anxiety issues, medicated anxiety issues. Let's find out what role that actually played in her insight into designing farms.
33:53 Speaker 03 Where I got into the head of the cattle was the things that they were afraid of. You see, back when I first started working with the cattle, I didn't realize I was an extreme visual thinker, thinks completely in pictures. In fact, some brain scans shown in the autistic brain book actually show that they have a huge, big visual circuit. So I started going out to these ranches and feed yards in Arizona and I noticed cattle would block at a shadow, refuse to walk over a shadow, refuse to go by a reflection. There'd be a chain hanging down, they'd stop, wouldn't go through the veterinary chute, hang a coat on the fence, refuse to go by it. And they were afraid of all these little visual details and nobody else had noticed this before. And, and it just seems so obvious to me. Because I found if you get rid of all these little visual distractions, and you make sure it isn't too dark, because they don't like to go into dark places.
34:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who does?
34:37 Speaker 03 Then the cattle would walk through the chutes. And it seemed obvious to me. And now I've learned later on, that a lot of other people are not a visual thinker, to the extent that I am, and that's why they don't see it.
34:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it's not that you actually got inside the head of the cow, you just made a connection that no one else ever thought to make.
34:55 Speaker 03 Well, that's right. And, other thing big insight ahead, is how animals make fear memories. Like, dogs get afraid of things, horses get afraid of things.
35:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Something can happen once, and then they're afraid of it evermore.
35:05 Speaker 03 But it's sensory based. Like, in one of my earlier books, Animals in Translation, they talk about the horse that was scared of black cowboy hats. Because during a veterinary procedure, someone had thrown alcohol in his eyes, and he was looking at a black hat when that happened. Now, white cowboy hats were no problem. But, black cowboy hats were bad. Or another animal that was terrified of diesel-powered equipment, but if a piece of equipment ran with a gas engine, then it was fine.
35:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because diesel makes a different kind of noise.
35:30 Speaker 03 That's right. And maybe this happened to be an elephant, maybe someone had done something to it with construction equipment, and that would have been diesel-powered. But they tend to-
35:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Meanwhile, people are saying it was just an engine. And they're not really thinking closer about it.
35:43 Speaker 03 But you see, you gotta think sensory. Diesel sound different than gas engines. You know, the, the animal tends to associate something it was looking at or hearing, right when the bad thing happens.
35:56 Chuck Nice? So, uh, horses are rasis. That's basically what I learned.
36:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why the guy be the black hat?
36:03 Chuck Nice? Of course. I'm like, once again, okay. Well, that's, uh, that's fascinating, though.
36:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Paul, uh, have you read Animals in Translation?
36:11 Speaker 04 I have read it, and I would only wear a white cowboy hat.
36:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just because you'd get kicked in the ass. You'd have a horseshoe imprint on your, on your... Uh, what can you tell us about that book?
36:21 Speaker 04 It's a great book. I highly recommend it. And one of the most interesting things that I remember from it is that Dr. Grandin talks about, of course, there are all types of environmental problems that we cause for farm animals and the way that they're housed. And one of the biggest problems is that we're genetically selecting them to overdrive them. So she talks in the book about how today's chickens have been bred to grow so big that they balloon up and many of them can't even take more than a few steps without collapsing. And this is one of the bigger problems that farm animals face.
36:45 Chuck Nice? Chicken obesity is a big problem?
36:47 Speaker 04 Hey, man, you are what you eat.
36:48 Chuck Nice? Oh, I get it.
36:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chicken obesity.
36:50 Chuck Nice? Chicken obesity.
36:52 Speaker 04 These birds are monsters compared to what the ancestors of the today's chicken were. I mean, these birds can barely even walk toward the end of their lives.
37:00 Chuck Nice? Oh.
37:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, but what I try, maybe it's semantic, but to say she taps into the mind of the animals, is it fair to say that? Or is it just she sees the world differently than the rest of us?
37:10 Chuck Nice? Yeah, she's not tapping into their mind like the force. You know what I mean? These are not the cows you are looking for. These are not the cows we are looking for.
37:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or Spock mind melding with the chicken, you know?
37:23 Speaker 04 I mean, in all honesty, I think that she can see the world in a way that perhaps cattle might be able to see them more visually. But of course, there's a humongous difference between cattle to pigs to chickens. I mean, you're dealing, difference between birds and mammals in some of those cases. So I don't think that any one person could look at the way that all farm animals see the world. But I do accept that she probably sees the world differently than non-autistic people do, and that may be more similar to how some cattle do too.
37:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So she works at Colorado State University where she's a professor, and I didn't know that she authored like 400 scientific papers.
37:53 Speaker 04 Wow.
37:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So she's totally going at it, right? Making, making this happen. There was a film about her that, that made a big deal of the curved corral. Can you tell me about that briefly?
38:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, sure. So cattle want to return to where they were coming from. And so if you have them walking in a straight line, many times they'll balk and they'll want to go back. And so she invented basically a curved chute so that, let's say you want to vaccinate cattle on the farm. You bring them in a curved chute so you go to a semicircle for them. And so that way they're much easier to vaccinate than if you were to have them just go straight there.
38:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Where's it there?
38:22 Speaker 04 To, let's say a vaccination. You need to put animals in a chute to vaccinate them, for example.
38:25 Chuck Nice? Okay, so. So if they feel like they're going to return to, from whence they came.
38:29 Speaker 04 Yeah, and they are.
38:30 Chuck Nice? They're more likely to cooperate.
38:32 Speaker 04 Yeah, they're more likely to cooperate and they are returning from whence they came because they get vaccinated and they go back to where they were.
38:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what's interesting to me is what's this expression, do this until the cows come home? That implies they never want to come home.
38:44 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, that might be another one of these.
38:47 Speaker 04 Yeah, this might be another one, kind of like out of thin air, and you realize that, you know, air actually isn't that thin.
38:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Telethon, and asteroids slam it to the air and they break up.
38:56 Chuck Nice? Or it could be, like, when the cows were on dra- the cattle drives to go off to be sold and slaughtered, because they're never coming home.
39:02 Speaker 04 That could be, Chuck.
39:03 Chuck Nice? You know?
39:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Paul, you're not a meat eater?
39:06 Speaker 04 That's true.
39:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And Chuck?
39:08 Chuck Nice? Oh, God, yes. Are you kidding me?
39:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Long show to have that attitude, that comitude like that.
39:13 Chuck Nice? When I hear the name Temple Grandin, I'm, I think steak.
39:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. I, I, half of all cattle is now handled in, in the designed facilities that she influences. Is that, is that about right?
39:24 Speaker 04 In the United States, half of the cattle go to slaughter plants that she influenced, yeah.
39:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, so, I, I was-
39:30 Chuck Nice? Why, why only 50%? I mean, if they, if it works so well, why hasn't it been embraced by the industry as a whole?
39:37 Speaker 04 The meat industry isn't necessarily known for its progress and progression on a lot of issues, Chuck.
39:41 Chuck Nice? I got you on that one.
39:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I asked her about this, because I, I always wondered, if you're going to care about the animal, then you're going to eat it. It's just, let's, I mean, let's, it's just one simple thought. Let's find out what, what this, where this goes.
39:57 Speaker 03 People ask me all the time, how can you care about animals, be involved in slaughtering them? One of the things I got to thinking was those cattle would have never have existed at all.
40:06 Chuck Nice? I think about this all the time.
40:08 Speaker 03 Would have never have lived at all. We've got to give those animals a decent life. There are problems. You know, there's problems with pushing the metabolism of dairy cow too hard, there's problems with the beta agonist, growth promoters and things, pushing metabolism too hard.
40:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, what happens if you do?
40:21 Speaker 03 Well, you get lameness, you can get stiffness, chickens, if they grow too fast, and that's just done with genetics. And, and one of the things that I've worked on, on animal welfare guidelines, is outcome standards. I don't care what you feed them or how you breed them, but that animal better not be lame and in pain, it better not have a good body condition, it better be an environment where it's not going to get lung damage from ammonia. Back in 1999, I worked with McDonald's Corporation and Wendy's to implement animal welfare audits at slaughter plants. And, boy, I can tell you, before 1999, the plants were bad. Broken equipment, they'd have problems with, you know, you couldn't get cattle shot on the first shot because a gun was busted.
41:02 Speaker 03 And things are not perfect today, but they're much better than what they were in the past.
41:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And there's still room to go, but the trend lines are.
41:11 Speaker 03 But compared to the early 90s and the 80s, things have drastically improved. I mean, I used to go into plants on the night shift back in the early 90s and the 80s and you'd have four broken captive bolt guns and they were shooting every animal five times. It was absolutely atrocious.
41:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? These are the bolt guns that they shoot into the temple, I guess.
41:29 Speaker 03 Well, they shoot it right into the forehead of the cattle. It's got a steel bolt about six inches long. Bam!
41:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Takes them right out.
41:35 Speaker 03 Right into the forehead of the cattle and when it works right, it will make them brain dead instantly.
41:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Instantly, right.
41:39 Speaker 03 Instant brain dead.
41:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And if it doesn't work, it's like, that's bad.
41:42 Speaker 03 It was totally bad.
41:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
41:43 Speaker 03 It's totally bad and, and these guns require a lot of maintenance. Now, most of the plants have a dedicated maintenance program. They put the gun on a test stand to measure that it hits hard enough. You know, before the McDonald's audit started in 1999, none of that existed.
42:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Paul Shapiro, you are Vice President for Farm Animal Protection at the Humane Society of the United States. And you're vegan, so is this even the right question to ask you? What's the most ethical meat we can eat? Are you the wrong person to ask?
42:13 Speaker 04 Listening to that quip and watching Chuck's face as she described the slaughter process, I wondered what he was thinking about that.
42:18 Chuck Nice? Oh, I was thinking about no country for old men, but that's a whole nother story.
42:23 Speaker 04 So, you know, look, most of the animals who are raised and killed for food in our country suffer in ways that most people wouldn't want to see. However, there are some farms that are treating their animals better, no doubt about it. But one of the things that I've thought is most interesting about this whole issue, yes, there are some farms treating their animals better and there are also companies now that are producing meat where no animal was slaughtered whatsoever. They're taking a cell from an animal and growing cultured meat that's anatomically identical to regular animal meat, because it is animal meat. And that's what people are doing. So, yes, there are more ethical options out there that you, for example, Whole Foods has higher standards than other supermarkets, but this cultured meat may be the next wave of the.
43:01 Chuck Nice? Oh, paycheck. Nobody's eating your laboratory meat, Paul. Okay? Just letting you know.
43:07 Speaker 04 Chuck, right now, you're eating meat from animals who lived in their own feces, pumped full of antibiotics and hormones.
43:12 Chuck Nice? And that's what makes them taste so delicious!
43:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the good part.
43:15 Chuck Nice? That's the good part!
43:16 Speaker 04 You love the hormones.
43:17 Chuck Nice? Okay, I'm not, the Petri dish meat is not happening.
43:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, here's, here's a fascinating question. When you think about just the genetics of selectively breeding animals, you can breed them to maximize something or to optimize something. Maybe that's the same. Concept and and so this came up in my conversation with Temple Grandin. So let's find out her take on this. Racehorses are pretty edgy.
43:39 Speaker 03 Well, I'm concerned about what I call biological system overload racehorses. We're breeding to run, we're breeding to run. So you're breeding great big muscles on a matchstick legs. I mean, the fact these horses have broken their legs when they're just running on soft dirt. That's totally horrendous. You know, if you overselect an animal for some single trait, you're going to end up with bad things happening. And I call that biological system overload. You know, the dairy cow right now has gotten to where she's producing so much milk, she won't breed back. You know, she's got to have a calf every year to to keep milking and and if she's put so much into milk, that's hard for her to breed.
44:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So so it's the cost of success, the unintended consequences of the successful genetic selection.
44:20 Speaker 03 What we have to do is look at what would be optimal, not the maximum. What would be optimal? We don't want to go back to the dairy cow of the 60s or 70s. We certainly don't want to do that. But what would be optimal?
44:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They just gave less milk.
44:32 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, they gave less milk.
44:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm hmm.
44:33 Speaker 03 They also lived longer. We've got some dairy cows right now that only last for two or three years of lactation. Takes you two years to grow a dairy cow. It takes me two years to grow a dairy cow, where she's a full lactating milking dairy cow, and only use it for two years. That's not very efficient, not very efficient use of resources.
44:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh huh.
44:50 Speaker 03 You know, maybe you cut back a teensy bit on the milk production, then you have a dairy cow that lasts for five years of milking.
44:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And your total milk is greater.
44:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, they're they're very difficult to breed back now. She's putting so much into milk that she's not putting anything into repro.
45:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So tell me about stress in animals versus abusive animals. Maybe it's the same thing.
45:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, sure. I mean, it can be abusive to cause them stress, but as Dr. Grandin is pointing out, right now, we're breeding animals to really overload them. So for example, think about turkeys. We've bred turkeys right now to have breasts that are so huge that they can't even mate naturally. So what you have.
45:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, Hollywood has done the same thing.
45:25 Speaker 04 That was an alley-oop for you, Chuck. I throw it up, you slam it in.
45:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait Chuck.
45:34 Chuck Nice? I'm sorry.
45:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The breasts are so large they can't mate.
45:38 Speaker 04 The tom cannot mount the hen. So there are dudes on turkey farms whose sole job it is, is to "collect" the semen from the toms and then transport it over to artificially inseminate the hens. So virtually every single turkey that is eaten in this country comes from the process of artificial insemination, just because they bred them so big that they can't even mate.
45:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I was once at a Thanksgiving dinner and the guy boasted that he had shot a wild turkey and brought it in. Turkey on the table, I said, "What the hell is that?" There was like no meat on it.
46:05 Chuck Nice? No meat on it, right.
46:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I felt like it was during the Depression or something and we got a pigeon out from the back.
46:11 Speaker 04 And interestingly, the turkey is the only Native American farm animal who we eat in this country. All the other farm animals we're eating are not native to our continent. But...
46:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you're saying turkeys are Native Americans?
46:21 Speaker 04 They are.
46:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that what you just said?
46:23 Speaker 04 They are. And in fact, Ben Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national symbol rather than the bald eagle.
46:29 Chuck Nice? You know, that's the only thing about Ben Franklin that I don't like. I love everything else about Ben Franklin. He is my hero, except that one fact. Because you can't be tough with the turkey as your national symbol.
46:40 Speaker 04 You should go try to look at a wild turkey, man. Very fleet footed, fast runners, fast flyers.
46:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what I'm saying. There was no food to feed everybody at the table with the turkey. Temple wrote a paper called Animals Are Not Things. And do you have thinking about this? I mean, there are things. I mean, what...
46:59 Speaker 04 There are things in the way that we're things. We're all animals. And animals, like turkeys and other farm animals, have personalities. They're individuals. They have likes, they have dislikes. And most importantly...
47:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so if they're a thing, you're more likely to deny them certain protections?
47:16 Speaker 04 That's exactly right. They're not objects. They're not inanimate objects in the way that Descartes thought animals couldn't suffer. These animals are individuals. They're smart, they're social, and most importantly, they don't want to suffer.
47:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so you draw a line between something that can suffer, that's alive, and something that presumably can't suffer, that's also alive. Like a blade of grass.
47:35 Speaker 04 Yes, that's exactly right. I think that if someone is capable of suffering, I'd prefer not to cause him or her to suffer. I believe that the treatment of animals is such an important moral decision that we're making, that future generations really are going to look back at our current treatment of animals in utter revulsion.
47:50 Chuck Nice? And I believe the children are the future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.
47:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You've been listening to StarTalk Radio and I've been your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I want to thank Temple Grandin for putting time in her day to come to my office and give us a StarTalk interview. And my in-studio experts, Dr. Paul Wang from Autism Speaks, the non-for-profit organization thinking about those challenges and problems, and Paul Shapiro from the Humane Society of the United States. And Chuck, as always, it's great to have you as my co-host. And it's always great to be here. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. As always, I give you the key.
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