Temple Grandin loves talking on the phone!

I could never have imagined, when I read Thinking in Pictures as a teenager, that one day I would meet its author: autistic animal scientist Temple Grandin, a wonderful success story of someone who didn't speak until she was 4 years old, then went on to earn a PhD and become a world-renowned agricultural equipment designer. And yet, I just spent an hour and a half on a Zoom call with her, organized by Instituto Ninar and journalist Mariana Caminha, for a video that will air on October 10 (and will be available here).

Temple answered the Zoom call from her kitchen table at home, after a phone call to organize yet another business trip—the woman has traveled over 4 million miles! With the idea of flying so constantly on her mind, much of the conversation was repeatedly interrupted by her sharing with us her new obsession: the possibility that the GPS trackers that planes use for navigation in some countries are hackable; what she has been learning about it; and what she would do to prevent it. It makes perfect sense: she is an autistic frequent flyer, the threat to her safety makes her extremely anxious, so researching the problem and reassuring herself that she is perfectly safe in North America gives her a sense of control over the situation — and a sense of control is the greatest antidote to anxiety, the bane of an autistic person's existence.

We had a lot to talk about and exchange information about our respective experiences as autistic scientists, but one stood out to me: how we differ in our experiences with that seemingly mundane object, the telephone.

I hate phones. I have to make an incredible effort to understand the sounds a stranger is making on the other end of the line. Headphones help a lot, but there's nothing like seeing the face with the humor and the moving lips that are producing the sounds I have such a hard time separating into words. Then there's the small talk aspect of starting a conversation, especially with someone you know and who may start changing the subject at any moment — I have a hard time with unpredictable subject changes because my brain has trouble parsing language out of context. This explains why I find it much easier to talk on the phone with complete strangers, who usually get straight to the point, which is the same reason why professional calls with strangers are perfectly acceptable to me.

Also, I'm always afraid that my call will be a nuisance (yes, yes, the person on the other end could just choose not to answer, I know, but my brain just ignores that). For all of the above reasons, I much prefer texting. It's not intrusive, I can take my time, edit what I write multiple times while I study how the other side will read what I meant, add emojis to indicate when I'm making a joke, just to be sure.

Temple, on the other hand, loves phone calls. As she says, the phone was her friend when she felt most awkward, in her late teens and as a young adult: she could use the phone and get things done. But I think I can understand why she doesn't have the same problem I have with the phone: A call with her isn't really a conversation, but an exchange of facts and knowledge. While I struggle to relate and infer what the other person is thinking and wants to know and what she means but is now saying and how I could help, Temple seems completely oblivious to all of that. You tell her what you think, she tells you what she thinks.

And anything you say can send her off on a tangent — or back to the Wall Street Journal article (which she reads in print!) about how GPS systems used for air navigation can be hacked.

But that's just how it is, and when you think about it, it's not weird at all. It only seems weird because that's not how normal people behave on a call (i.e., the 95% below the center of the bell curve). An interesting conversation is one that makes you think about various things — and if it makes you think, you want to talk about it, and so you do.

It's really refreshing to know that the person on the other end isn't interested in small talk, etiquette, or clichés. Everything that is said has true intention and meaning, or it wouldn't be said.

And so, 90 minutes flew by, with the two of us trading stories — and you're invited to listen, as soon as it's released!