Daniel Tammet on real autistic lives
How We Live Now with Katherine May:
Daniel Tammet on real autistic lives
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Katherine was excited to speak to Daniel Tammet about his latest book, Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum. Katherine has been reading Daniel’s writing for a long time - his first book, Born on a Blue Day, came out in 2006.
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Please note, this is an automated transcript and as a result
there may be errorsKatherine May: [00:00:00] Hi everybody, good afternoon, good evening, good morning, wherever you are, and welcome if you're listening to the recording. I'm Katherine, as you hopefully know by now, and I'm just playing for time while people enter the webinar room. We have got a fantastic guest today, Daniel Tammit, talking about his new book Nine Minds.
Katherine May: I think a lot of you will have come across many years ago and have been following his work for a long time. Um, he was certainly one of the first autistic authors that I was aware of. And I was reading his work before I knew I was autistic. And when I had this sort of fascination with, uh, reading about autism that I couldn't quite explain, guess what?
Katherine May: There's a plot spoiler in there somewhere. Um, so I'm going to invite Daniel onto stage in a moment, but just, uh, while we're, we're all getting sorted out, Sorted. Um, if you have a look in [00:01:00] the resources tab at the bottom of your page, um, you can, uh, click through to buy a copy of Dan's book if you so desire.
Katherine May: It's lovely if you can. Um, and there's also a PDF of the reading guide. For those of you that haven't read yet, that's completely fine. Everyone's welcome here. It's a great introduction to the book. Um. And there, the comments and questions should be working this time. I know we've had problems with them before, I've checked, but please do say hello.
Katherine May: Not least because it helps me to see that, uh, that you're here and that everything's working. Um, final note, I have COVID yet again. Jazz hands for that one, uh, and I'm a little bit croaky, so please forgive me, um, I will do my absolute best to, to be clear and to not start coughing, um, but yeah. That was a blatant play for sympathy.
Katherine May: Now, I am going to invite Daniel on stage. [00:02:00] I think I remembered how to do it this time. I did, uh, I did just have to say, I might, might forget how to do it. Daniel, hi, welcome, it's lovely to have you here. You are beaming in. I love, I love the way that I'm still using the beaming in language. Like it's like 1992.
Katherine May: You're beaming in from Paris today. How's everything there?
Daniel Tammet: Hi, Katherine. Um, first of all, for having me.
Katherine May: Oh, anytime.
Daniel Tammet: Lovely to be, be with you. Um, Yeah, Paris is, we're very excited here. It's the, uh, the Olympics starting in a few days and we've got helicopters, uh, flying just above my apartment here in the center of Paris doing all the last minute, I guess, security checks.
Daniel Tammet: So, and lots of excitement, lots of palpable excitement, people getting very, uh, tense and excited about what's going to be a really great, uh, sporting, uh,
Katherine May: extravaganza. [00:03:00] I'm excited for you. As I get older, I get more interested in sport. I don't know what it is, but I think all my kind of youthful resistance to it is dying down.
Katherine May: And the fact that I can't do it, it's like, I'm okay with that now. I've come to terms with like my lack of sportiness. Um, so we might hear a helicopter in the background from Daniel and of course the usual seagulls in the background from me that everybody notices except me. Like I, I'm seagull blind now.
Katherine May: Um, it is so lovely to have you here because as I was just saying in the intro, um, you You're one of the very early writers, autistic writers, writing about autism. When did you write your first book?
Daniel Tammet: I published Born on a Blue Day in 2006, so nearly 20 years ago. Gosh,
Katherine May: that's a long time. You don't look old enough.
Katherine May: I mean, I know we're definitely here to talk in depth about nine minds, and I'm looking forward to getting into it. But [00:04:00] I really, I really was interested. To begin with, to ask you how things have changed because I, I mean it's, it's almost like you're a bellwether for how we're seeing autism at the moment because actually I, I, I, you know, please correct me if I'm wrong but it feels to me like you were treated first of all as a sort of Curio, you know that your mind was this curious, very special, very, very unusual thing and that there was this kind of slightly prurient fascination with you.
Katherine May: I'd love to know what that was like for you and how that's changed for you.
Daniel Tammet: Yeah. I mean, when I first started out, so nearly 20 years ago, autism was much less well understood, uh, compared to today, obviously. Um, The first reviewers and the first critics I had were broadly, you know, positive in many respects, but there were some that were surprised that an autistic person [00:05:00] could even write a book, and wondered if it had been ghostwritten, for example.
Daniel Tammet: And, um, And yeah, of course, there was lots of media interest around how my mind works, which is understandable. And some of that interest is positive, of course, because people are curious. People are always fascinated to learn more about how different kinds of minds work. So it's an invitation to learn more about how, you know, other people are not always thinking, perceiving, sensing the world in the same way.
Daniel Tammet: That's really positive. Uh, and many people, even those who are not necessarily on the spectrum can relate to that, relate to that feeling of being different on some level and not necessarily finding one's place in the world. And then of course, there's always, as you say, that more Peruvian kind of interest where I You know, people [00:06:00] were, you know, just expecting me to do calculations very quickly in my head, you know, kind of perform like a, like a seal, like a performing seal.
Daniel Tammet: And that was obviously less positive, but that was a long time ago. And it seems that with every book I've been able to, you know, I guess, improve myself as a writer and, and I guess also grow and learn and improve, you know, it's writing's a lifelong journey, it's a lifelong skill. Um, and so, and I've taken some risks along the way.
Daniel Tammet: I've not stayed in one particular lane. I've written different kinds of books over time, essays and literary reportage. I've even written some books in French because I've lived in France for many years, so I write in both languages. Um, so that would include fiction and poetry as well. So I, I, I push myself all the time.
Daniel Tammet: That's hopefully positive for many readers as well.
Katherine May: Yeah, [00:07:00] absolutely. And I, I actually, you know, I kind of read through your, your, uh, not in French, sadly, sorry, um, as in preparation for this. And I, one of the things that really, struck me was your, was what seemed to me like this progress of you moving from the topic of interest to a person who was asserting themselves as a writer and as a lover of language and as a person who kind of wants to dance with that.
Katherine May: And I, I hadn't, that hadn't struck me before, but it really did kind of looking at, looking at the totality. That was really nice.
Daniel Tammet: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I, I've had some studying out. There weren't a lot of models, you know, writers often want to have someone that they can look up to and, um, not to compare themselves to necessarily, but just to say it's possible.
Daniel Tammet: It's possible to to, for example, to be autistic and to be a [00:08:00] writer, despite what early critics, you know, suggested it's possible. And one of those models, um, who's actually in Nine Minds briefly, then, you know, um, is the wonderful Australian poet, Les Murray. who was, um, uh, not only a model, he was a friend, a mentor to me.
Daniel Tammet: Um, I had the wonderful chance to meet him in person when he came to, to, to Paris, we shared a stage, uh, here. And, um, we had a correspondence over numerous years. Um, he wasn't at all into computers, Les, so very much old school snail mail. So you can imagine that from Australia all the way to France. It took some time writing, but, um, I have these wonderful postcards from him, you know, with, with his incredible handwriting.
Daniel Tammet: And, um, so he was incredibly encouraging, a wonderful neurodivergent poet, um, author of many books, [00:09:00] um, Nobel prize, uh, in literature, candidate many times, very serious contender and critics kind of didn't know what to make of his autism. You know, it just didn't seem to fit. Um, with their preconceptions of what a poet or a writer is and autistic just isn't, isn't part of it at all for them.
Daniel Tammet: So they kind of pushed that to the margins and it took Les and, and certain readers and people around him, including some who are on the spectrum as well, to say, no, this is really important. This is really part of his, his work, his, his, it explains so much about how his wonderful mind worked and his wonderful poetry as well.
Daniel Tammet: And you can't. understand less without also recognizing the contribution that autism made, a positive contribution to his work.
Katherine May: Incredibly positive. And I, it's so interesting now because I, I [00:10:00] seem to see a different author every day who's now received their autism diagnosis or is, you know, self identified.
Katherine May: Um, and I wonder I now begin to wonder, you know, whether it's actually, we should begin to see it as a prerequisite for the kind of level of obsession, attention to detail, you know, the ability to hold a massive idea in your mind. I don't know. Um, but I do know that when I received my diagnosis, I, the um, the psychiatrist paused and said the one thing that goes in contradiction to all of this is that you're evidently creative and autistic people aren't creative.
Katherine May: And that was eight years ago, seven years ago, such recent history. And it, and in that time, I hope he'll have understood this now, that the research has really moved towards Creativity is like a defining part of what we are rather than an anomaly. [00:11:00] But yeah, I mean the the pace of change is is so fast and we're all we're all learning.
Katherine May: Um, I just I wonder I wonder what shifts in your perspective have happened in the time that you've been writing on the topic? How, how do you, or do you, have you seen it exactly the same all the way through? I just, I just wondered what you've noticed yourself and where you've had to kind of adapt?
Daniel Tammet: So the thing about creativity, something obviously I, I met very often, unfortunately, for a long time and, um, and the example of someone like Les, you know, the wonderful poet, you know, helped reassure me that wasn't.
Daniel Tammet: An anomaly, as you say. And looking back through history, there are many examples. We can't be sure, of course, diagnosis retrospectively isn't possible, but we can imagine that there are these wonderful minds, uh, including many writers and [00:12:00] poets who were eccentric, you know, considered eccentric in their day and would certainly seem to fit the criteria that we have nowadays for diagnosing.
Daniel Tammet: autism. So, but yeah, the other, the other thing that, that always strikes me as frustrating is empathy, the question of empathy and the idea as well, that people on the spectrum
Katherine May: struggle
Daniel Tammet: with empathy. And I kind of feel, and I've seen this, uh, uh, written, um, so well elsewhere that it's, it's, it goes both ways.
Daniel Tammet: Empathy goes both ways. It's also for what we call nowadays neurotypical people to show empathy towards their neurodivergent peers. to understand better how their minds work, make often very small adjustments that cost nothing or very little for them, but make huge difference in the lives of, of neurodivergent people.
Daniel Tammet: And it [00:13:00] just means that people, societies, able to function so much better because people are fantastic resource. You know, human resource. It's there's so much like you say, creativity, empathy, imagination, completely different ways of perceiving and solving problems and perceiving the world and understanding situations.
Daniel Tammet: And in this 21st century, that just seems so scary and so mind boggling. And so like, there's so many things we have to overcome together, drawing on that resource, you know, um, just seems so obvious to me. And we've seen it in people like Greta Thunberg, you know, who's, you know, able to put the question of climate change, you know, front and centre in a way that many politicians never managed to do.
Daniel Tammet: And, [00:14:00] and Yeah, and so I'm really, I'm not an elder yet, but I'm looking at all these young, these future generations of autistic men and women and saying to myself, yes, you know, if only the world gives them the space they need to thrive. in. They're going to make wonderful contributions. Wonderful.
Katherine May: Yeah, absolutely necessary.
Katherine May: And I, sorry, I will move on to your book, but I don't get the chance to talk to you every day. So it's quite exciting. Um, I, I did read in the paper last week, this kind of big fanfare announcement that we've, that scientists think they've worked out how to diagnose autism from a blood test. I think it was, or it might've been a stool sample and isn't that great.
Katherine May: And I kind of thought it's That's irrelevant to me. I don't, I don't care about that in the least, but that's, that's the least interesting part of research you can [00:15:00] do into autism because once you've diagnosed us, then what? That question is still completely open and what's more, that feels like a little bit of a power play.
Katherine May: Like we can, we can pretty effectively diagnose ourselves most of the time. Thank you very much. Um, it's, The external understanding is still so shallow and so pathology led, um, and it's not grasping. almost like what we're here to do, like our sort of function within this, this broad society. And I, yeah, I find it a little bit frustrating.
Daniel Tammet: I totally understand. I shared that as well, obviously, that frustration. One of the things I did learn as I was writing Nine Minds, was the extent to which research around the condition, around autism, is the most interesting part of it is [00:16:00] actually being performed by people on the spectrum themselves. Um, researchers, psychologists, researchers, you know, who've got all of the doctorates, you know, all of the, you know, the qualifications, but they've also got that lived experience of the condition.
Daniel Tammet: And they're bringing that for the first time to science, which is something that science sorely needed, because like you say, without it, The understanding is shallow and it's, uh, biased and it's not meeting autistic people's needs.
Katherine May: And interestingly, in the, in the more kind of qualitative areas of the social sciences is where we're really doing fantastic work, which I think is, yeah, that's kind of fascinating because it used to be the sort of insult thrown at scientists, you know, oh, you autistic and it's kind of like, yeah, you know, and now what are you going to do about that?
Katherine May: [00:17:00] Uh huh.
Daniel Tammet: Yes, exactly. And I guess this is the moment to give a shout out to Kanna, the wonderful researcher psychologist in the book, one of the Nine Minds, who is a Japanese, a wonderful young Japanese woman who struggled with her own autism. She didn't get diagnosed for many years because she understanding of the condition is so poor in in Asia and in Japan, perhaps even in particular, and she had to go to the United States to get her diagnosis.
Daniel Tammet: And another reason she went to the United States and later to Britain to do her research was that A feeling that you probably had as well, Katherine, and certainly I had growing up, which is a sense of feeling so different, almost like a foreigner in your own culture, your own country, and your own language, even.
Daniel Tammet: That was my experience in Canada as well. So that's one reason why I'm in [00:18:00] France. My, my home language is French. My Canada is Spent many years in the United States and Britain, and her language of preference is English. I don't know any Japanese, so all of the interviews I did with her were in English, and her English is perfect, you know, really is perfect.
Daniel Tammet: And it's astounding to imagine that, you know, she, She identifies so strongly with the English language and it's such a, but it made so much sense to me and I guess that's one of the advantages of writing about these lives and including these inner lives from the perspective of someone who is Bye.
Daniel Tammet: himself on the spectrum, has that lived experience? Because I wonder to what extent a neurotypical writer, I'm sure to some extent it would be possible, but still to have that time and patience and insight into how these minds and inner lives work, it felt right. It certainly felt like it [00:19:00] was the right moment to, um, as an autistic writer myself, to, to, you know, meet these people and listen to their stories, take huge mountains of notes and then try and find, you know, the best way to put that onto the page.
Daniel Tammet: So it would be accessible both to neurodivergent readers and their families, but to, to everyone else, you know, to, because I wanted it to be a book for everyone.
Katherine May: Yeah, it's a, it's a really, It's a really striking approach and it reminded, I don't know if you've read it, but it reminded me of my first response to Lisa Taddeo's Three Women.
Katherine May: Yeah. In that it draws you so close as a reader, we know that someone else is writing it, but it's almost novelistic in, in the sort of sense of, Total integration with the character in their interior lives. Can you, can you talk a little bit about how you approached that?
Daniel Tammet: Yeah, it felt really important for me to take that kind of approach.
Daniel Tammet: I mean, I loved Lisa Taddeo's work and [00:20:00] I thought it would be really fascinating to do something similar with neurodivergent people, because, simply because, like you, you were saying earlier, you know, We, for so long, were, um, presumed as having no, no imagination, no, no
Katherine May: interiority, um,
Daniel Tammet: that to really push back against that, it felt like actually drawing on all these wonderful resources we have as writers, you know, dialogue and scene setting and characterization.
Daniel Tammet: These were the best tools, in fact, to, to really show that interior life, you know, the inner lives of these men and women. from around the world and to really, to really, you know, dive deep into how their minds and also their hearts, you know, work, what's really going on inside them. And I don't think that a much drier, purely, you know, kind of facts, facts and figures approach would have [00:21:00] done that when they've conveyed that texture to the reader.
Katherine May: No, texture is a lovely word to capture actually. There's a feel to each different, I'm going to say character, they're not characters, they're real, but to each different subject, there's this real sense of inhabiting the kind of sensory world that they exist in. How did you, how did you find that out? Like, what did you have to ask them to elicit that?
Katherine May: Was it, was it observation or was it, you know, saying, you know, what would you, what would you do? Like, what questions elicit that?
Daniel Tammet: Um, it was a really interesting process. So first of all, I had to find them. Of course, I had to find these men and women who would be willing to share. That's my next question.
Katherine May: And,
Daniel Tammet: um, so obviously the media that had spoken publicly. about, [00:22:00] about their autism. But the articles were often kind of low key, local press, not, not easy to find. Um, so I did lots of hunting around in order to find them. And then, um, obviously I was mindful about diversity within neurodiversity. So I wanted there to be women, autistic women, and not just autistic men.
Daniel Tammet: I wanted there to be older, autistic people and younger as well. Um, there's a, a, it was a wonderful story, you know, um, a Nigerian born, um, so black British, uh, woman, fantastic story. And so there's, and, and I mentioned Canada, Japanese woman as well. So I was really trying to, to, um, show the extent of that diversity.
Daniel Tammet: Um, they were very, uh, so some of them knew me. had read my [00:23:00] work, um, were familiar with what I did as a writer and admired that apparently and were very happy and very proud to be part of the project from the beginning. And some didn't didn't necessarily read and so didn't necessarily know my work and were, but were very keen as well to, I guess, for reasons of raising awareness, for example, or just because it felt like Like, so for example, for Vaughan the surgeon, this amazing surgeon who discovered his autism at the age of 63.
Daniel Tammet: Uh, he's now in his seventies. I guess he just reached a point in his life where he felt, this is my moment. You know, I've got this story inside me and it's, If no one's going to discover it, if I don't tell it now, it's going to be too late. So I guess there was that feeling as well of saying, this is the moment and this is, and so we, we had this wonderful rapport, you know, this wonderful connection, [00:24:00] um, with, with him and, and with, with the others as well.
Daniel Tammet: And, and that obviously helped the fact I'm also on the spectrum, obviously that played a big part as well. So they, they trusted me to, you know, understand what they were saying, there would be, you know, there was no question of me trying to apply neurotypical
Katherine May: concepts to
Daniel Tammet: what they were getting across to me.
Daniel Tammet: And then they had the opportunity to read. the first drafts as well. So they had the opportunity to come back at me and say, you know, this is, you know, to, to fine tune, you know, if, if I hadn't necessarily understood something a hundred percent, or if they wanted me to include something in more detail or less, less detail.
Daniel Tammet: So there was that as well. So it was a real collaboration.
Katherine May: That's lovely. I wonder what the responses of people like. Vaughan were too, you know having, having not had that knowledge about [00:25:00] themselves for so long, having lived such an interior life. I wondered what, what his response was, to that I'm thinking too of Warren actually, you know what that.
Katherine May: I mean, I imagine it was incredibly emotional for them to, to see themselves memorialised like that, to see themselves presumably so well understood.
Daniel Tammet: So Vaughan, his response was incredibly positive. I mean, he, he was, I was very moved because he,
Katherine May: he
Daniel Tammet: can admire it enormously. He's a surgeon who's been working for 50 years, you know, he's, he's a pioneer in his field.
Daniel Tammet: Um, and to have him, you know, Um, compliment my work, uh, was based on, you know, the, the, the, the heights his career has taken him to was obviously very high praise for me. Indeed. Mm-Hmm. Uh, woman was, so, Warren is a, a, a murder detective or was a murder detective at the time that I, I, um. [00:26:00] interviewed him for the book.
Daniel Tammet: Um, so it's obviously a more sensational, uh, kind of, uh, career. It exists, you know, there are autistic police men and women, uh, and He, um, has solved something like 92 murders in his career and his autism allows him to really hone in on the tiny details, I guess, tiny clues that your typical peers wouldn't necessarily spot, uh, and which can make all the difference between finding the culprit or not.
Daniel Tammet: Um, but my focus was not so much on, you know, trying to play to that kind of, you know, of, you know, chasing the murder. I mean, that's part of the story. Obviously, um, I didn't, I didn't have to. Do anything with it. You know, it was so incredible in itself. You know, he explained [00:27:00] to me one of the most complicated cases he'd had to solve, you know, and how his autism had contributed to how he, you know, solved this particular crime.
Daniel Tammet: And, um, but what struck me most of all, I mean, as much as his abilities as a detective are incredible, what struck me even more was his modesty. modesty as a human being, you know, he, he, he was so shy and so self effacing. So, but why are you writing about me? You know, why, why should I be in a book? You know, and I, I'm having to say to him, but your story is incredible.
Daniel Tammet: You know, how you solve these, these crimes, how you solve this, this incredibly complicated murder.
Katherine May: It's
Daniel Tammet: fascinating, you know, for neurotypical or neurodivergent people alike, you know, it's just, it's just. I mean, I grew up on Sherlock Holmes,
Katherine May: but
Daniel Tammet: I always felt that someone like [00:28:00] him existed and not in the way that they're presented often on TV, you know, because nowadays you get these autistic surgeons,
Katherine May: they're almost psychic, they're like, Ooh, yeah,
Daniel Tammet: yeah,
Katherine May: it gets rude quite quickly.
Katherine May: And
Daniel Tammet: I was certain that these people really did exist, but. They're much more interesting than fiction.
Katherine May: Yeah.
Daniel Tammet: And their inner lives were much richer and much more, yeah, complex and, and, but that's what readers like. They like that complexity. You have to trust readers to, which is often what TV doesn't do. TV doesn't want to trust us with any sort of complexity.
Daniel Tammet: It's very simple. It's very woo, as you say. Yeah. So I, I kind of said, no, I'm going to trust readers with this. I'm going to give them all of the texture of these people's inner lives and, and, um, But yeah, Warren is a fascinating man.
Katherine May: Absolutely. I mean, it was, again, it kind of read like fiction to read about his process.
Katherine May: And he did have that sort of slightly heroic [00:29:00] quality about him in a way, you know, the sort of the flawed hero. And I, but equally like the, you know, the kind of quieter, accounts, people like Kanna, who you've already mentioned, people like Amanda, and the, there's a kind of sense of service that runs through all of these, these different people.
Katherine May: I think that was one of the themes that really jumped out for me was this sense that, that different people wanted to serve in a different way. They wanted to, draw out their love of somebody else to share it with other people, or, you know, I was, I was so moved by Kanna's research into loneliness, because I think that, I think she's completely right.
Katherine May: I think loneliness is a huge problem across all of society, particularly for autistic people. She, she's completely nailed it. But her knowledge of that couldn't overcome her own sense of, [00:30:00] of loneliness too, which was so poignant. And I have just accidentally locked my keyboard. I locked myself out of my own computer then, that was quite impressive.
Katherine May: Um, yeah, can you talk to me a bit about the characteristics that your different interviewees shared? What sprung out for you? What are we?
Daniel Tammet: Well, we're so, we're very different, you know, in many ways, and so the diversity is there in, you know, in the, in the range of stories, you know, that I, that I share.
Daniel Tammet: Amanda, you mentioned Amanda, Amanda is such a, an amazing person because she's both autistic and blind. She was born blind. And, um, she explains to me in, in the the chapter, obviously, about her, how she perceives the world as an autistic blind person. And I'm sure something like this happens to many people who are, who are born [00:31:00] blind, like Amanda, but I'm sure that the autism makes it just that much more intense.
Daniel Tammet: So what she's doing is what scientists call echolocation. It's what bats and whales also do when they're navigating the world. Instead of light and sight, obviously she's navigating by virtue of sound. So she's here. The dimensions of a room she enters, um, in such high accuracy, a degree of such a high degree of accuracy to such a high degree of accuracy that, you know, she could tell you how, how big the room is, you know, just by entering, you know.
Daniel Tammet: But the furniture, the kinds of furniture, you know, how many chairs there are and whether whether the table is square or round, um, and, and a bottle, you know, if she had a bottle of water on one of the tables, you know, she could tell you if the bottle was half full or three quarters full, because it makes a different sound in her mind, it makes a [00:32:00] different sound, depending on how full or not the bottle is.
Daniel Tammet: So that level of perceptual, uh, Intricate knowledge and understanding and for someone like myself is very visual.
Katherine May: Yeah,
Daniel Tammet: it's blew my mind, you know, just realize how autistic people who, who, who don't have sight. But have all of the gifts that autism can give us, you know, that, like you were mentioning earlier, Katherine, that the detail, level of detail and the, the intensity of the perceptions that we can have, how that helps her, you know, to, to,
Katherine May: which
Daniel Tammet: is fantastically sophisticated and compelling.
Daniel Tammet: And she doesn't feel her, her blindness as something that imprisons her. It's, she's made her way in the [00:33:00] world. She's a fantastic academic. She studies poetry. Um, and writing and creativity and she reads with brow, obviously, so she's reading with her hands, not with her eyes, and again, how she describes what words feel, different words feel like.
Daniel Tammet: I
Katherine May: loved that. I'm sure
Daniel Tammet: you could relate to that and myself as well.
Katherine May: Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I, what that drew out for me, I think is that, that kind of, I mean, you've written a lot about synesthesia, that sort of merging of the senses that I think is one of the characteristics of being autistic. And I, you know, I've often talked about like the mouthfeel of words, you know, I, I choose my words by how, not, not by, not the mouthfeel of saying them, but they have a sort of physical, um, texture to me that I feel in my mouth.
Katherine May: And I, I've actually, I've run workshops with younger children. As [00:34:00] kids get older, they can't do it, but younger children can do exactly what I can do with words. And they can, they can sort of taste their way through a sentence because they're not, they're not putting up barriers to it. Um, and I just like you writing about a blind person, and it made me think about what it must be like for reading to be something you feel through your Skin.
Katherine May: That, that felt so exciting to me as
Daniel Tammet: an idea. Yeah, exactly. So that, that, that's one of the, the, the driving ideas in the book, you know, really helping readers to experience all of the different ways in which neurodivergent perceptions open up windows, I guess, in, in neurotypical minds, you know, it's about opening those windows and saying, okay, because, and these are windows that opened on their own minds as well, because as different as we are, um, as neurodivergent men and women.
Daniel Tammet: We're human, you know, we're human beings. We have [00:35:00] dreams and desires and, and, and frustrations and hopes and fears. And, and that's something that's very little, um, described in literature. It's, it's almost absent. And so it was about writing a book that could fill, fill that gap, you know, in, in everywhere.
Daniel Tammet: Um, because Unless we do that, you know, unless we tell these stories, um, Amanda, Vaughan, Canna, Warren, these people, they don't exist otherwise, you know, it's like literature has kind of, you know, it's literature reflects the world. So if, if these stories aren't there, aren't told, aren't written, aren't read, It's like we don't exist, you know, in a way.
Daniel Tammet: And so it felt really important for that reason as well, um, as a writer, for an autistic writer to, to tell these stories and to tell them well, and to tell them with all the resources [00:36:00] that writing gives us.
Katherine May: To tell them with tenderness, which I think is what you've really, really brought to it. Talk to me about Cedric because I, presumably he's more famous in France than he is in England, I've not heard of him.
Katherine May: Um, he is doing something that I, would be one of my barriers, you know, I would think I, that's not a career that I could do and therefore I'd assume that other autistic people can't do it too, which is always the wrong, you know, assumption to make. So let's, let's talk about him. He was fascinating. Yeah.
Daniel Tammet: So Cedric is, uh, yeah, he's a very famous person in France.
Daniel Tammet: Um, I met him not long after I came to, to the country. Um, I guess he would have seen me on stage somewhere to give a conference. He gives lots of conferences as well. He's a mathematician originally. He won. Back in, I think it was 2010, he won the Fields Medal, which is the most important prize in mathematics, kind of like the Nobel Prize in mathematics.[00:37:00]
Daniel Tammet: And what drew a lot of media attention around him is, um, he, he has a very unique style, you know, he has his unique style, which is, uh, a suit, which seems to come out of the 18th or 19th century. You know, he's got the, the, the watch, the, the, the chain watch on the chain, you know, and the. The, uh, the cravat and the, uh, uh, and a spider, a brooch, a spider brooch.
Daniel Tammet: He wears, um, constantly wherever he goes. And he apparently he's got a collection of 60 of them. And the media are always asking him, but you know, which country are you, which century are you from, you know, and, and, and what is this about? And he's just very humble. Another example of humility, very down to earth, very simple.
Daniel Tammet: And he's just says, but this is me. This is who I am. I'm not. And it's true, wherever he goes, this is how he dresses. And he's been dressing like this since he was a teenager, because [00:38:00] that's I describe his journey in the book, obviously, how he found his way in the world, how he found confidence in himself, which he hadn't had as a child growing up.
Daniel Tammet: And, uh, yeah. And at some point he decides to become a politician. Um, it's kind of a decision that is forced on him by circumstance. I don't think he necessarily anticipated ever that. going into politics at all. But in 2017, there was an election in, in France, which was unlike any other.
Katherine May: Well, since it's the last, until the most recent one.
Katherine May: Yeah.
Daniel Tammet: It was, you know, the left and the right completely exploded on both sides, you know, and it left this centrist, uh, candidate. Macron, you know, the current president, to become elected, you know, become president. And he decided to govern in a, in a new way. He claimed it was a new way, a new politics. Um, and he brought in people from outside of [00:39:00] politics.
Daniel Tammet: And one of those was, was Cedric and Cedric was open to that conception. You know, this idea of a new way of doing politics, you know, um, and that obviously has appeal for many people who feel. like we need to completely start over, you know, how we, and how we do politics and how we talk about, um, our lives as well and how we find solutions together.
Daniel Tammet: And because of his amazing mind, uh, you know, given he's mathematical, skills and so on. So it seemed like he had a lot of qualities. And what happened is at one point he wanted to, after a few years in the, I guess we call it the parliament, you know, National Assembly in France, he decided he would be candidate to become mayor of Paris, you know, just a huge responsibility, like the mayor of London or the mayor of New York.
Daniel Tammet: And he ran and he ran on his own ticket because the [00:40:00] party, Which he'd been so loyal to and which he'd, you know, lent, he'd lent his amazing career and name and reputation to just push him aside, you know, and put someone in his place who had no credentials other than, you know, being a run of the mill politician, you know, who obviously had all of the insider connections, which Cedric didn't have.
Daniel Tammet: Um, and out of that disappointment and frustration, he said, no, I'm going to continue running. I'm going to be a candidate, an independent candidate, because, you know, I've got so much support around me. You know, people are telling me you have to run, you know, you can bring something new to politics. So he ran and obviously he didn't win.
Daniel Tammet: Uh, it's very hard to win
Katherine May: out there. I mean, that's so many of these people are so inspiring and, uh, and, you know, I see them do things that I can't do, but I can also really see the commonality in their approach and the [00:41:00] way that they navigate the world and the way that they receive the world around them.
Katherine May: There's, there's, and the, yeah, I, um, I just saw Beth was commenting that, um, that she knows a lot, she's autistic herself, and she knows a lot of people who dress anachronistically and it's been dubbed history bounding, which is lovely. It is lovely. But it does seem quite common in autistic people to, uh, to pick a very distinct style.
Katherine May: And I, you know, that, that is almost like comforting, you know, it's like, it gets fixed quite early on. I, my, my friend's daughter saw a photo of me as a child recently and said, you've had the same haircut since you were three. I was like, Oh yeah. And it would never change, you know, like I, cause that. My face recognition is really bad.
Katherine May: I think sometimes I need to look the same to myself everyday, otherwise it looks, it just doesn't look right. I get very easily undermined by [00:42:00] that. But, um, it was really, it was really lovely to read about him and his, his transformation. his very like particular way of presenting himself and I thought that was it was really nice to see as part of this beautiful representation of all of these different people.
Katherine May: Yeah. Um, I, we are in the the final segment here and I, you know, I don't want to keep you too long. I'm just going to turn around to avoid the sun, which is now shining my eyes. Um, people here in the audience, if you've got any questions, please do answer them. There is a questions box that makes it really easy for me to see them rather than putting them in the main.
Katherine May: Uh, the main chat. Um, oh, someone's now got a crush on Cedric, which is good to know.
Katherine May: Um, I just, you know, I've got so many things I want to ask you. Um, but I wonder what the reception's been like in the outside world. You were serialized in the Telegraph, which is fantastic. Um, how have non autistic people responded [00:43:00] to these people that, that to us seem so Fully realised and gorgeous and recognisable.
Daniel Tammet: So far, so good. I mean, it's early days, obviously, the book only came out, what, 10 days ago, um, here in the, well, in the UK, UK and Ireland, um, and comes out in, in Europe in, in the autumn. Um, but so far, yeah, people have been really, I mean, I, I was, uh, on BBC Breakfast and people and the presenters were, you know, So, um, lovely, and really,
Katherine May: who did, who did you get to meet on, I'm, I want to know now, who did you meet on, it was
Daniel Tammet: Charlie, Charlie and, uh, Maggie, and they was, yeah,
Katherine May: I met her at a party once, she's so beautiful.
Daniel Tammet: Yeah, she is, I said she's number 11, number 11, 11 is such a beautiful number. And, and she was, she, she was happy, you know? Yeah. She
Katherine May: was thrilled with . Yeah, it was.
Daniel Tammet: And she asked me to sign the copy, her copy of the [00:44:00] book. And so I wrote her name and opposite, but I wrote 11 as well, you know, because for me she's like the number 11.
Daniel Tammet: So, and yeah, so they were really enthusiastic and, and everyone's been lovely so far at her times. Radio, the Guardian, it was a lovely review in The Guardian as well. Um, uh, last Saturday I think it was. So yeah, so, so far, so good. You never know, you know, and you're not when you when when we write, we don't write for reviewers, we don't write for journalists, we write for readers, you know, so, um, but yeah, I've had some lovely messages as well from people who started reading it.
Daniel Tammet: And, you know, and, like you say, it's, it's, it's so new to so many people to be reading about it. Autistic lives in this way for so long it's been kind of like Oliver Sacks, you know, the only way into autistic lives was Oliver Sacks. He was a wonderful writer.
Katherine May: Yeah.
Daniel Tammet: Yeah. Um, had wonderful gifts as a writer and a [00:45:00] doctor, but For some reason, his empathy kind of failed him, bizarrely, when it came to autistic lives.
Daniel Tammet: He describes in his most famous book, you know, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, meeting autistic twins, and he described, describes them as a grotesque Tweedledee and
Katherine May: Tweedledum,
Daniel Tammet: and, and absurd little professors. Obviously, I, I hope and I imagine
Katherine May: drawing the director, the direct Leo Canada language there as well.
Daniel Tammet: If he was writing today, I'm sure he wouldn't have used that language, I'm sure. So it is partly the time that he was writing in the 1980s, but you know, I'm a chart of the eighties, so it just shows you how much progress we've made as well. And
Katherine May: you know, I, I say this all the time, but I studied psychology as part of my degree.
Katherine May: I. you know, learn about autism. And I didn't recognise myself in a single part of what I, I learned. And I, and I, you [00:46:00] know, went out and repeated what I'd learned to other people as well. I mean, it, it's, it's changed a lot very quickly. But when I look back at Oliver Sacks now, you know, a book that I've really enjoyed at the time and thought, Oh, this is fascinating.
Katherine May: Fascinating people. And I'm, you know, I'm ashamed of my own response, but that was, that was the best of what we were given at the time, actually. Um, and, and, and it got a lot worse than that too. Um, and I, yeah, I, I wonder, I do wonder what book he'd write about it now, and of course these people, you know, we're not able to challenge him and not able to ask him, but I, but unfortunately for a lot of people who've written harmful things, they, they tend to double down quite often.
Katherine May: Yeah, yeah. You know, it's, it's really interesting being called a sort of, you know, a person that doesn't like to change, that's, you know, that's very [00:47:00] stubborn, um, to, to realise how stubborn, how stubbornly other, you know, neurotypicals have stuck to their, their very fixed prejudices about what autism can be.
Katherine May: Exactly. And I, yeah.
Daniel Tammet: When talking about the 80s, one of the, the last chapter of the book, so the last of the nine minds is the most famous. I couldn't, couldn't actually get, you know, because he's just so famous, you know, he's, he's, he's on another planet in a way, but I managed to, this is Dan Aykroyd, you know, the wonderful comic actor, genius, behind Ghostbusters, Blues Brothers, you know, Changing Places, all these wonderful films from my childhood.
Daniel Tammet: And Dan, I'm so lucky because actually, I, by chance, I found out that, so I have family in Ottawa, and found out that one of the neighbours of my family actually grew up with Dan. And another friend of a [00:48:00] friend went to school with him. So starting from that basis, I was able to discover all these incredible anecdotes, anecdotes about.
Daniel Tammet: about Dan Aykroyd's childhood, about his incredible mind, and about his autism, because about 20 years ago, about the time I was first diagnosed, he went on to National Public Radio and shared that he identified, or he'd been diagnosed as, Asperger's, as we said at the
Katherine May: time.
Daniel Tammet: And, um, and I almost fell off my chair, as I say in the book, you know, because You're
Katherine May: like me and Dan Aykroyd.
Katherine May: Yeah.
Daniel Tammet: I'd grown up on his, on his films and he's such a comic genius. And I thought, you know, talking about models, you know, needing models to. know how to feel about how we are and what autism is like, you know, because there's so much negativity around it, particularly back then as even more so back then, and to see some, to see myself in him [00:49:00] to some, even to some small extent, you know, apart from the fact that we have the same name, Danny, Daniel, Dan, um, it was incredible.
Daniel Tammet: So, and, and going through the anecdotes and writing his story, you know, And, and it's stuff that his fans, you know, no one has written about this before. You know? It is, it's there in plain sight, you know, in the archives, but no one had actually done that work. Yeah. I
Katherine May: must have met. I I had no idea until I read.
Katherine May: Yeah. I mean, I, you know, there's a lot of names I do know and I, my little radars out for all the time. But that was, and but, but equally at the same time I thought, yeah, of course he is. Obviously, yeah. Like delightfully, you know, .
Daniel Tammet: Yeah. Delightfully. Neurodivergent. And. And his films, you know, when you, when you, when you know that you, you, you watch Ghostbusters, you watch Blues Brothers and you say, Oh yes, you know, the humor is, you know, there's, there's definitely that.
Daniel Tammet: That zaniness and that, that, that zip and that, that fantastic creativity as well. We go back, we're going back to what we were saying at the beginning, you know, and the [00:50:00] fantastic autistic creativity. So getting all of those anecdotes and piecing that portrait together that had never been done before.
Daniel Tammet: Told before and saying to myself, wow, this is, this is, yeah, so hopefully this is inspiring, you know, to take one of the words you've kind of used about the book, you know, this is inspiring, you know, but for me personally, it was 20 years ago when I had my diagnosis and I learned this and now writing about it, I feel inspired all over again.
Daniel Tammet: And hopefully some of the readers, you know, those who grew up with him, like I did, will get that, you know, and feel that inspiration, you know, he's a fantastic. That's very funny, obviously, but very human as well. And obviously, it's not all funny, you know, with like a lot of comedians, you know, he went through a lot of difficult moments as well.
Daniel Tammet: And that's something I share as well, you know, that people were very kind, you know, that close to him, they shared that the struggles he had to overcome, it makes his journey to Hollywood. even more incredible than it already is, you know, all this stuff. [00:51:00]
Katherine May: Yeah. Yeah. And I, and actually there is another quite defining part of autism that I think is not very well known, which is that autistic people are really funny.
Katherine May: And I, when I'm, when I'm with autistic people, I'm expecting to laugh really hard. Like it's, The humour is often quite dark, often quite trenchant, you know, um, but all the better for it. Like, I, I love that kind of humour and I, um, yeah, I, that was, it was a sort of thrill to read. about this, this, yeah, maybe more vulnerable side to him.
Katherine May: Um, and I feel like it made the recent Ghostbusters film more poignant for me as well. Yeah, exactly. Him coming in as an elder. Yeah,
Daniel Tammet: exactly. And again, seeing the journey that autistic people have made and society has made because of him. He's in his seventies now, so he was growing up in the 1950s seeing autism through the eyes of a [00:52:00] child growing up in the 1950s.
Daniel Tammet: I mean, it was fascinating obviously for me to, to research that and to write that. But, you know, measuring the progress we've made, you know, even if we've still got a long way to go, but still, you know, progress for, for someone growing up in the fifties and, and where we are now in 2024, it's, it's. It's incredible as well.
Katherine May: Well, Daniel, thank you so much. It has been just a joy to talk to you about all of this. For me as well. And to, yeah, to really, uh, I don't know, I just, I wanted to hear everything about all of these people. They were such lovely company, and as you say, it's a much needed book. And I really hope that a wider audience will find this more accessible than the kind of dry facts.
Katherine May: Or the politicising that we've all had to do about it from time to time. Saying, no, no, no, no, you're wrong about us. [00:53:00] I hope a softer way in for people that will, that will let them integrate this information more. And, and just a really pleasurable read. Um, I, I couldn't put it down and I know Rebecca, uh, felt the same.
Katherine May: So if, if we are, you know, a sample of two, um, is anything to go by, I think it's gonna become very much beloved. So thank you. Thank you. And thank you for talking to us tonight.
Daniel Tammet: Thank you so much, Katherine.
Katherine May: And, uh, next month we will be talking to Lucy Jones about her book, which I'm terrified to pronounce now, because I think it's called Matrescence, but somebody said Matrescence.
Katherine May: Um, I will definitely be asking her how to say it before anything else, but it's about the, the physiological changes that happen in women's bodies related to motherhood. It's a, it's such an interesting book and it's been like a real creeper hit, I think. So, uh, please join us next month. And, and just thanks once again, it's been [00:54:00] fantastic.
Katherine May: Thank you.
Show Notes
Katherine was excited to speak to Daniel Tammet about his latest book, Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum. Katherine has been reading Daniel’s writing for a long time - his first book, Born on a Blue Day, came out in 2006. At the time, he was writing about his experience as a savant (his synaesthesia means that he conceptualises numbers and dates in a completely different way to most of us), and in this conversation Katherine and Daniel talk about the way that he was treated during those years. Daniel is a beautiful writer, but his talent was often invisible to people who only wanted to see him as a kind of specimen, not fully human. Hear as they talk about the way Daniel’s persisted, asserting his rightful place as a thinker and a master of prose.
Links from the episode:
Daniel's Website
Daniel’s book, Nine Minds
Other episodes you might enjoy:
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