Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Bill Prady: Origins of Sheldon, Neurodiversity & Sensory Overload

Episode Date: February 2, 2021

Bill Prady, co-creator of "The Big Bang Theory," discusses how he came up with the idea to make a show about socially challenged scientists. What many may not know is that Prady himself is on the autism spectrum. Mayim explains "neuro-a typical' and sensory overload, Bill opens up about his quirks and challenges and shares intimately about his journey from awkward child and teen to well-adjusted, if eccentric, adult. BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the things that used to do on Big Bang Theory was Sheldon never got when people were being sarcastic to him. And that's part of my own journey. But people will say things to me and I'll go, well, excuse me, but that's not correct. You know, I'm a teenager in the 70s and no one says, in Euroa Typical, they say, let's beat him up. It was a different approach to that. I'm I'm Biallic. And welcome to my breakdown. This is the place where we break down

the things that make us break down. It's Myambiolic's breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break. Let's talk about this episode, which is a very big surprise. Surprise.

Big surprise. When we start, I say like, hi. I'm Miami-Biolic. Oh, I don't say hi. I'm Mayambiolic. Welcome to my breakdown. This is the place where we break down the things that make you break down.

Today we're breaking down. but I didn't say that today. You didn't. Because I didn't really even know what was going to happen. I thought we were doing an episode about obsessive compulsive disorder. And I was going to talk to Bill Prady, the co-creator of Big Bang Theory, about how he developed the Sheldon character and all those kind of quirks and do these characters have diagnoses?

And what happened was we started talking to Bill Prady and it just became this really, really fascinating conversation about him being a person who is on the autism spectrum. And it's not something I've heard him speak about that explicitly, but he wanted to talk about it. And we ended up talking about sensory overload and sensory sensitivity, like people who are sensitive to lots of sounds and even visual input. I'm one of them. It's an amazing conversation. He talked about the inspiration for the Sheldon character. Very specific. Inspiration, really, for the entire Big Bang show. I've never heard those stories. I've never heard those stories.

Let me introduce you to my co-pilot. He'll steal your heart and your citizen. Jonathan Cohen. Hi, Ma'am. Our neighbor from the north. Jonathan, what do you have to say this morning? Most of the time I'm failing. But today, I'm going to succeed by suggesting that people subscribe to the podcast. Please do.

Write us a great review and recommend us to a friend. Also, if you're listening to the audio version of this, try checking out Myam's YouTube channel. Mostly to see what matching outfits we wear. Today we're in matching t-shirts. Today we're in matching t-shirts for the company that Jonathan is. is. That is true. Lodick.

Datag. Shameless plug. Shameful, really. We have a website associated with this podcast, B-I-A-L-K-B breakdown.com. There is a section there called Ask MyM-A-M-A-N-E-A-N-E-T section of the website

is actually for people to ask anything they want, and I will answer it on the air. You can ask about mental health and mental wellness, which really includes just about anything you experience. Like, don't be like, I don't have anything to ask her. You do. You do. Exercise.

diet, sleep, clinical diagnosis. Sex. Our brains, our bodies, everything is fair game. Relationships. And if you feel uncomfortable, you can ask for a friend. I feel uncomfortable. Oh, you mean with asking on camera? Correct.

Right. Okay. Let's do the Word of the day. The word of the day comes from the episode today. What's the word of the day, Jonathan? So I'm going to surprise you with the word of the day because it's almost less of a word and more a collection of words, which is not.

neuro atypical. Oh, neuro atypical is a fancy term. For myambialic. Neuro atypical is a phrase that is used as a much nicer way than we used to talk about people whose brains function differently than, quote, most people. And, you know, when I was a kid, there was the special ed class. A lot of kids were grouped with children who did have, you know, often very profound developmental or psychiatric disorders, but a lot of individuals were grouped with those kids who simply had

different ways of learning and our school systems really didn't know how to handle a lot of those kids who learned and behaved differently. Neuro atypical is often used to discuss the autism spectrum disorders. Asperger's is something that now is called, you know, part of the autism spectrum. That's what we talk about. We also talk about the general forms of neuroatypical development can be even differences in, you know, when children speak. My children were both very, very late speakers. And no, it's not because I breastfed them that long. They didn't have what to speak about.

They were constantly attached. They were constantly happy and attached and nothing was wrong. There's a joke that there's a kid who doesn't speak. And one day he's five years old and he says to his mother, this soup is cold. His parents were like, oh, he spoke. Like what, how did the, you know, what's been going on all these years? He said, well, up till now, everything's been pretty much okay, but the soup was cold.

Anyway, neuroatypical can refer to even things like that. Just different from the norm, it's a progressive term, and it's a way to not say those other words that we don't say anymore. You know, developmental delay is still used. I did work in the field of mental retardation, but that phrase is really only used in a clinical setting. We don't use that word otherwise. So I want to clarify here that people who are neurodeme,

atypical and I'm going to confess here that I am one of those people. It is not always a negative terminology. It just means that you do not fit within the system. You learn in a different way. And I'm going to give a shout out to two other podcasts, Eric Weinstein and Andrew Yang, who both speak a lot about neuro atypicality, if that's a word, and how some of our greatest innovation comes from people who are outside of the box who push the envelope. This podcast came from the innovation of you. We'll go into potentially a longer story. People are like, that's not a good use of his neuroatypicalness.

Well, we'll see if they like it and if they subscribe and recommend it to a friend. But until that time, we won't go too deep into this, but we will do an episode at some point more in depth about neuroatypicality. Sure. But it came up in our episode today with Bill. He's a delightful person to listen to. He's a great storyteller, and he's had a very interesting life. even just the story about the structure of his childhood.

It's very interesting. I literally had a whole thing written, pages and pages about OCD. It's so fascinating. Oh, your thesis was on OCD? Yes, Jonathan, I wrote an entire thesis about OCD. We'll use it for another episode. We don't need it because Bill Prady created his own episode. So I think that's all I have to say.

Let's listen. Let's listen. Break it down. Bill, hi. Hi, Ma'am. Welcome. Thank you. Welcome to my breakdown, which is really why we called it Miami-M-B-Alex breakdown.

So I could say, welcome to my breakdown. Bill Prady, you are one of the co-creators of a little show called The Big Bang Theory, which is how we met, among other illustrative credits. You were a computer programmer in a... I was a computer programmer. In a previous iteration. You also worked for Jim Henson. That's where I started writing.

Right. And what were the Muppets things that you did that we would know? I think that you did things that I absolutely know. I think, you know, my favorite thing that I did, I mean, a bunch of stuff, my favorite thing was the Muppet 3D movie that played at the Disney theme parks. I think it still plays in Florida.

It doesn't play in California anymore, but it was on for 30 years. Awesome. Okay, so I was right. There was a Henson connection that is close to me. So why did I bring you on to discuss OCD? People might be wondering. Well, one of the reasons I want to,

wanted to have you on any podcast I ever would do is because you are absolutely one of the most globally knowledgeable people that I have ever met. And I've met a lot of knowledgeable men. But you are absolutely, you are one of those people who knows not just a little bit about everything. Like you know a lot about a lot of things. And you excel, you know, at things close to your heart, but you also excel at really a broad, broad kind of swath of knowledge. What I wanted to say about you, which I'll say in front of you, was that you're incredibly articulate, articulate, as I stutter over how articulate you are. And I remember during Big Bang theory, you had a very, very scary migraine, and it sent you to the hospital, I believe.

What happened was you were telling me about it, because I'm, you know, the resident brain person. And you said that they asked you to describe the pain, because that's something, you know, doctors do. and you said that you described it as, this is how you said it. Fascinating. And I just loved the image of Bill Prady in the ER. And when they said to him, describe the pain, he said, fascinating. So you really, you're a delight to know and to have gotten to work with. And I've learned so, so much from you.

Obviously, you've also done many other things besides the Big Bank theory. You wrote on Gilmore Girls. You produced, right? Gilmore Girls. For a year. Okay. Darmine Greg? Yeah, for its whole run.

Married with children? One episode. Okay. Because it's in your bio. It's in your bio. And so I figured I should mention it. Okay. Yeah.

But it was my first produced episode of broadcast television. Oh, that's awesome. Blossom film next to Married with Children at Sunset Gower. But I think it was probably in years after you probably had been there. So anyway, you were awarded NASA's Exceptional Public Achievement Medal, correct? in 2013. An asteroid has been designated 8630 Bill Prady in your honor. And you're also an adjunct faculty member, correct, at USC?

Anything else special that you'd like me to say about you? I think you've really summed me up. Okay, great, great. Also, he's exceptional at guessing what size pants people wear. He is absolutely exceptional at guess. Jonathan, can you stand up? It's hard. It's hard to do.

Can you do it remotely? I'll try. I'm going to. The background is that my first job was I sold suits. Like you do. Like you do. I worked in a clothing store. I sold suits.

And there was an old guy who had been there for a thousand years. And he taught me things. He said, kid, I'm going to teach you how to sell suits. And he said, one thing is, is when a customer walks in, if the first jacket you put on him doesn't look good, you're not. not going to make the sale. You've got one shot that he's got to put on that first jacket. And what you do is you get the most expensive jacket in the store and you say, I'm just going to put this on for size, right? Because you want him to love it. He says, but you got one shot at it.

So he said, when you see the, when you see the customer coming in, you've got to size him. Right. So that by the time he gets to the back of the store where you are, you know his size. And so we did this all day, every day. And I would size people. I've never tried this. Jonathan over the internet. Let's maybe, I don't know he's going to be able to see from the camera angle. The only thing I'm going to ask is I will ask you how tall you are for your sense of scale. This is a tall comment. Not tall enough to be a basketball player.

Well, okay, but six to some measure. Six two. It feels like six four. This is really hard to do over the internet. But I'm going to say your suit size is a 44 long. 42, although I never wear a suit, so maybe I'm wrong. Okay, and I would say that I'm now going to guess that your pants are a 34-36. Is it also very close? I'm very thin, though, so it's- 33-36?

33-34. Yeah. Over the internet, that was pretty good. You're at a low camera angle, it's distorted view. That was very good. You're not going to size my pants? I'm boyish. Well, see, I never sold women's pants.

I wear men's pants. I don't even wear women's pants. Well, Ma'am, I'm five, I'm going to say that you probably get a third, you probably, you probably pick up a 33 men's pants. I actually like a 32, but you know what? Okay. Post that second child, you could be right. I do wear Jonathan's, I've worn Jonathan's pants. Yeah.

What we just also revealed is that we're both in sweatpants. And I've worn your pants. Okay. back to the podcast. My NBi Alex's breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful. Maybe they're like, you're fine, drink more water.

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get an additional $20 off with the code break. Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention Miami-Biotics Breakdown to help support the show. So, Bill, let's talk. You're from Detroit. Yes. I think you're one of the only people I know from Detroit. just so we can kind of position you in the universe. Tell us just a little bit about sort of like how you grew up, what your folks do, what were you like as a kid? Annoying.

Let's see, I was born in Detroit in 1960, which is a long time ago. I'm going to say this is a random fact, but later it will be pertinent. I was born under one of the rarest U.S. flags that has existed, the 49-star U.S. flag, which was the U.S. flag from July 4th, 1959 to July 4th, 1960. Let's see, my dad, when he was young, he was a newspaper man, he was a reporter, and then after that he was an advertising man for, and that's what I knew him as. My mother was a receptionist at a synagogue, and I can distinctly remember, you know,

old enough that when she had that job, she had an old-fashioned switchboard with with plugs and I would go visit her and she would be talking to me but but she would the phone would ring so my whole childhood she was punctuated by shalom sherrits edict okay that was that's my memory of my parents are still alive but that's my memory of my mother from my childhood you know I was a really nerdy child just uncomfortably so and socially awkward my personal journey I I I don't discover until we're doing Big Bang Theory when we have a lot of conversations about being neuroa-typical.

It's not until then that I discover that I'm what used to be called Asperger's and now is called Autism Spectrum. Although when I say that to people, people say to me, yeah. You know, one of the things that we used to do on Big Bang Theory was Sheldon never got when people were being sarcastic to him. And it was always a surprise because he was a very sarcastic person when he spoke.

And that's part of my own journey. I'm very sarcastic. It's one of my favorite go-to kinds of humor. But people will say things to me and I'll go, well, excuse me, but that's not correct with no understanding that they're joking. So it gave me this odd outsider thing,

which I think is why I became a writer. you know, a lot of paying attention to people and trying to figure out why people do what they do. You spend your days listening carefully and watching behavior. I truly believe writing came out of that. You know, I'm a teenager in the 70s, and no one says, in Euroa Typical, they say, let's beat him up. It was a different approach. It was a culturally a different approach. I'm going to come clean here. I'm a neuroscientist. And I actually have never really thought of you

the way you describe yourself, obviously, because I've always said you're my people. Obviously, we talk about a spectrum. But to be honest with you, you know, I think of so many other aspects of many of the characters of Big Bang, you know, as more kind of quote, classical, you know, Asperger's or classical what we talk about with autism. spectrum disorder. But what does distinguish you from a lot of sort of, I think, people's stereotypes, you know, about, quote, those kind of people is you do have remarkable social ability. I have social anxiety. I have a very hard time going places and being places and being seen, which has nothing to do with being a performer, because I'm paid to take someone else's words

and make you believe that they're true. I'm not paid to go to parties and I'm not paid to look good in four inch heels and I'm not paid to be a size two. Like, But that's a lot of what I have to do. So you and Eric Kaplan also, you know, were really the two people who I knew that if I, again, it makes me emotional because if I could find you at a party, I knew that I could be okay. You know, I really, really appreciated my time with my fellow actors, but really Jim and I were the only ones, I think, who I really related to in this way. And he often didn't go to things because he was this way. You know, I always said, like, if you were to meet, you know, my favorite writers, my favorite producers of Big Bang, they seem a lot more like people than writers, you know. And I think that's why,

because you have this, you know, a flavor of someone who, you know, has really kind of gotten to the other side of a lot of things that I feel like I haven't. I feel like you can talk to anyone in a room. You have a lot more ability, I think. And I wonder, did you have an experience as a child or as a teenager of saying, like, there is success for me socially? Did it come later? So it came, it came very late. Yeah, I was just going to say, you've also talked about how, like, coming of age in a time when, like, everyone was cool and doing drugs and sexy. And you were, like, so just like cerebral and, you know, getting your head around so many other aspects of existing. So talk a little bit about that. Well, good God, if I could have come of age during what we

depicted on Big Bang Theory. One of the reasons I think that Big Bang Theory was successful is we caught the zeitgeist. We caught this change from a single set of social success markers, right? There was a very limited set of social success markers that existed. And then all of a sudden, and I think this has to do with the fragmenting of media that, you know, people no longer sat in one room and consumed one television show at the same time, but people saw it. out there on things. So this celebration of individuality is what really, you know, came to be during, I'd say, the last 15 years or so, but not, you know, not when I was, not when I was a kid. And I dropped out of college when I was 19. I'd graduated high school very young. I was 16 when I

graduated high school. I couldn't have been less prepared for the world. And I dropped out of college when I was 19. Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, they list me as an alumni. It's very generous. They gave me an alumni award and I said, I think technically this is the first time this award's been given to a current student. And by the way, I've angled for an honorary degree from Wayne State. I know. I've heard you. They haven't come up with it. But when I was 19, I had a girlfriend who was my girlfriend because she went and announced, I'm your girlfriend. And I went, okay, that seems fine. And she wanted to move to New York.

And so we moved to New York. We broke up, I think I was 25. And now I was living in New York, you know, single. And I was working at the Muppets at the time. And I just remember being beyond lonely. You know, I was, you know, when I was at work, you know, it was lovely. But then I would go home and I was, I was just beyond lonely. I was faced with a choice and the choice was either figure out how to function socially

or just commit to getting out of the subway, buying a piece of pizza, renting a blockbuster and going home and that would be my night every night. And it was very hard because this is New York City in 1985. And so what's social? Is social going to some club where it's loud and I experienced sensory overload and I can't talk to people and, you know, things like that? I actually, I wrote a pilot about this. This was that was never produced that was based on, you know, this time in my life.

And I wanted to meet a woman. I wanted to have a girlfriend. And I thought, I'm never going to meet a woman at a bar. That's not my world. And I'm not going to meet somebody at a disco. Where would I meet a woman? I would meet a woman at a bookstore. That would be how I would meet a woman.

So I would have these days, which in retrospect I call bookstore Saturdays, where I would spend about two hours trying to figure out what to wear, that would in some way suggest that I was, you know, a desirable human being. And I would go to a bookstore. And I would spend two or three hours at that bookstore. It took me years to realize that not ever speaking to anyone, not that my plan would have worked, but never speaking to a single human being while I was there was not a pathway

for success on that particular route. You know, I had to figure it out. And it's interesting because a lot of the, especially in the early years of Big Bang, you know, Big Bang is a wonderful collaborative effort. As time went on, there were so many voices that contributed so much Steve Milaro in particular. But very early on, a lot of things were drawn from my really painful experiences socially. Wait, you're getting ahead of me. It's like specifically a question.

So I just, before we get into the Big Bang of it all, I do want to ask you, we share a heritage, you and I. We do. We've also shared many stories, competing stories, about our moms. Without, you know, getting overly personal, you know, what was sort of the mental health environment that you would say you were raised in? You know what, let's, you know, given that my family are all alive, although I don't know how internet savvy they are. Complicated. Very, very, very complicated. The sort of defining event of my childhood was the death of my grandfather. You know, the most classic Eastern European immigration story to, you know, to the United States. And there was a family that in the 40s and 50s, there was sort of a mutual investment society. And

the patriarch of this was my father's father, my grandfather. He lived life as a very very big man. And when he died, it was apparent that it had all been a lie. You know, that he had maintained this image of this very successful real estate entrepreneur. And what he was was kind of a broke slum lord. My father, it hit my father hard because the central mythology of our family was that, you know, we were the heirs to this great legacy. And, I, you know, I was, you know, we were the heirs to this great legacy. And, you know, I think, you know, it shattered our family in a remarkable way. And it certainly rocked my dad's perception of the world. And so, you know, we all have the experience. Everybody at some point in their life will realize their parents are human and that they are,

that they are flawed in some way. But for me, it happened when I was 12. It was just overwhelming. part of the reason that I, you know, I was very lost when I was young was that the household was focused on trying to manage this crisis for years. So when it came time for me, this bright Jewish kid who went to a prep school, you know, to like start looking at colleges and things like that, nobody was doing it. Nobody was saying we should tour colleges. Nobody was saying, you know, we should do anything. So ultimately, so I, you know, after, I graduated because I was young and I worked for a year for Radio Shack. And then on my own, you know, I applied and went to Wayne State because it was local.

I, you know, because the notion of going away to college, I couldn't even figure out how we would accomplish that. I think fundamentally, I was a person who needed help in functioning in the world and my family didn't provide it. When I look at my own history, it probably isn't really until my mid-20s that I I managed to assemble a group of friends around me that functions as a family to help me finish growing up. Yeah. I mean, first of all, that's, it's an amazing story. And also, I only know the Bill Prady that I know. So when I get to learn these little tidbits, it makes it even more incredible to me where you've gone, you know.

And once you got out of that part of your world and your life, the adventures that you have had. I've gotten to see your children go from little ones to, you know, a young woman and a young man. And, like, you know, you have a whole other life here and so many amazing things about you. So it's really beautiful to learn other things about you. You know, when I started on Big Bang Theory, it was the season finale of season three. And I met you before I met Chuck Lorry. And you obviously co-created the show and you were both executive producers. You know, I have tremendous, tremendous respect for Chuck Lorry.

And the two of you gave me my life. you gave me an adult existence. I was a neuroscience doctoral student with a nursing infant and a just-wined toddler. And I was planning on, you know, making 20 bucks an hour teaching Hebrew and piano for the rest of my life. So the two of you really are, you're the next level of parent for me. I don't really know that I know Chuck Lorry, but I do feel like I got to know you. The two of you created this show and the story that we were told, the story that I was told coming in, I had never seen the Big Bang Theory.

I was busy nursing humans and like watching sci-fi movies. But the story that I was told was that like, Chuck's the one who's like the Hollywood one and Bill's like the real geek who's also the Hollywood one. It sounds like that is about accurate, especially because you revolved in a computer science, you know, a computer programming kind of place. And when I was told that they were looking for a female Sheldon Cooper, I had no idea who that was. and I googled Sheldon Cooper, and I watched, I don't know, 10 seconds of Jim Parsons in character.

And I was like, oh, I know people like that. I can do this. Like, I went to neuroscience grad school. And, you know, I'm arguably either, I think this could be said about you, either the most fascinating person in the room or the most annoying person in the room. And sometimes I'm both. And I literally was like, I can, A, I'm a mimic. So I was like, I can mimic Jim Parsons as a girl version.

but, you know, what ended up becoming my home, you know, for 10 years was the place where I got to be on a show about people like me. I play Dungeons and Dragons. I grew up in comic book stores and record stores. I like things other people don't like. I understand things. Other people don't understand. And I want to connect on a level that many people don't. And that's why you were my person because you got it. And it meant a lot to me. I was coming onto a show with people who had all been working together for years. They were all. very famous. I was someone who was a child actor who left the industry, who like, you know, whatever, had two kids and was, you know, pumping on breaks. And so to get to be part of this world with you and observe was really, really an exceptional, exceptional opportunity. But I guess I'm curious when you started, you know, designing these characters. I do want to know what it was like because I'm curious if there was like a notion of this one should look like OCD, this one should look like classic neurosis, this one should look like social anxiety.

this is autism spectrum. Was it that or was it an evolution? What was it like? I've talked about this many times in interviews because people will say the most asked question and not to say, never asked the way you just asked it, but they say, tell us the origins or the beginning of this. And I'd known Chuck Lorry for years

and I've met him during the pilot of Dharma and Greg. This is a very interesting thing. And this sort of goes to, I'll tell this story because it goes to my social cluelessness, my fundamental cluelessness. So Darman Gregg was co-created by Dottie Zickland, then Dottie Dartland and Chuck Lorry. And Dottie and I knew each other. And she said, I'm working on this pilot. I'm working with Chuck Lurie and we're kind of at loggerheads about something.

And what I'd like to do if you're available is to bring you into the process and have you help. Now, any person with like an ounce of social comprehension would hear, I'm in a dispute with somebody, I want to bring you in because I need an ally. I hear things literally. I need your help. What's help? Help is making the best TV show possible. So she convinces Chuck to hire me to work on the pilot with them. I get there and by the second day, I've listened to both pitches and I like Chuck.

Chuck's better. And I say, well, you know, that's the right way to go. And I never understand, you know, it's some years later, Dottie said, how could you have done that? I brought you in to be my ally. And I said, but I don't understand, you know, it's Spock. The task at hand was the best television show. I evaluated the various options. And I chose the one that I believed would make the best television show, just what we do here on the planet Vulcan. So I knew Chuck Lurie. and now, you know, many years go by and we're going to develop a pilot. We explore a whole bunch of ideas, and then I start talking about a specific group of people I knew. When I moved to New York, I was a salesman at Radio Shack, and I met a fellow named Howard Wallowicz, not just a coincidence.

Personal computers were new. They were brand new, and he was developing software. He had started a little software company, and I left my job at Radio Shack, and I went to work with him. and we have this tiny little software company, and we had offices on 41st Street. We wrote software. And it was a very odd group of people. So when Chuck and I were talking, I started to describe this group of people. And I described, you know, in retrospect, we know what they are. But at the time, they were just who they are.

I described a person who worked in our office who was a mathematical savant. Computer software, the way we were writing, it was one of the things you had to often use is base 16 instead of base 10 math hexadecimal. There were two ways to convert decimal to hexadecimal. One was to hunt in the office for that stupid HP calculator that everybody can losing. Or you could just shout across the room at Ken. And you could say, what's 191 in hex? And he would tell you.

And then you would go back to your work. And he would do it in his head. But Ken couldn't calculate a tip in a restaurant. Jonathan, I'll let you puzzle through it. What is the formula in the United States if somebody were coming to this country and unfamiliar with American tipping? And they said, how much do I tip in a restaurant? What would you say?

15 to 20 percent? 25 percent if it's some of the people on the Big Bang. 15 to 20 percent. Yeah. Right? Based on your personal preference, based on service. There you go. So we would go to a restaurant and we would say, can you leave the tip?

And he'd say, I don't know how much to leave. And we'd say it's 15 to 20% based on quality of service. And he would say, how do I evaluate that? Is it the speed with which the food came out? Well, no, that could be the kitchen. Is it the waiter's demeanor? Well, that could be genuine or it could be disingenuous. They could be angling for a tip.

And we said to him, why didn't you split the difference and leave 17 and a half percent every time? And he said, that's the worst option mathematically. And we said, why is that the worst option? And he said, because logically it's more likely that service is good or bad. The probability that service is exactly middling is infinitesimally small. Therefore, if each time I tip 17.5% I can guarantee with near certainty that I am over or under tipping. And I told that story to Chuck. And Chuck said, well, we've never seen that guy on TV.

I started to talk about other people. And these were people who had all come up with coping mechanisms for their social deficits. So here's an actual conversation that I heard. And I'll never forget this. It's a conversation between two of the programmers. And one of them says, I'm really worried. I'm invited to a party tonight. And people tell me I stay too long at parties.

I don't know when to leave. And the other programmer said, I used to have this problem, but there's a formula. Stop it. Stop. What's the formula? And he said, it's very simple. When you enter the party, count the number of people who are present and assign that value to end. when the number of the people in the party is 0.7N.

And if you stop and think about it, you go, that's correct. If you walked into a party and there were 10 people there, and then at some point the party would grow, and then it would start to shrink. When there were seven people there, if you left, no one would stay you stayed too late. And if you walked into a party and there were 100 people there, and it grew and shrank and then you left when they were 70,

everyone would say you did that right. And then there was one of the programmers who was, as they say in Hamilton, very successful with the ladies. And he would bring girlfriends around on a regular basis. And this was the most astonishing variety of people that you had seen. He would bring women in who were modeled. he would bring women in who looked like somebody's mother. He would, and at one point we said to him, what is going on?

And I think somebody may have phrased it as, what's your secret? Because he seemed very romantically successful. And he said, it's simple. I have two rules. What are your rules? Proposition every woman. Have no standard. And you go, well, of course, from a mathematical point of view, that is an absolute formula for success.

By the way, that sentence was the early foundation for the Howard character on Big Bang Theory. It's an interesting thing. And I think you can look back on work and you can say, you can talk about aspects of it being more or less successful. And you can also talk about we've lived through a period of great evolution sociologically and a really wonderful one. about how people are treated and how people should be respected. We're now going back 15 years to the origin of Big Bang theory. And I think that there's a lot about how we depicted Howard's character that maybe now we might not do in the same way.

At the same time, what came off as really desperate and kind of misogynistic behavior on his part stemmed from a desire to be loved, a desperate, desperate, desperate desire on his part to be loved and his belief that this was a pathway to that. And all of these characters, and this was the fundamental thing for me about Big Bang theory and its conception, they were trying to use intellect,

logic, and reasoning as a substitute for social proficiency. because they weren't naturally socially proficient. So they would try to use intellect and reason to replace that. And it's a lousy replacement. It's a lousy. It's a terrible replacement. It just doesn't work. You know,

this connected to me and connected to my time in New York in my mid-20s, you know, for true or not the way my self-image, and this is based a great deal on, you know, how my mother, what my mother told me I was. my self-image was centered on being bright. Well, you're bright.

To this day, my mother says, oh, what a lawyer you would have made. And my question was, well, if I'm so bright, if that's true, why am I alone? Oh, Bill, Bill. Why am I lonely? If I have this understanding of the world, if I have this understanding of the universe,

why am I sitting in Brooklyn in my apartment by myself? I don't want to be. Before I was an actor, before I was famous, I had many, many years before that happened. You know, what I was sent into a world of was I'm told that I'm the best. Everybody's jealous of me. But I know that's not true because I'm alone. I haven't found people that get me. I'm interested in things that other people aren't interested in.

I want to relate on a level that other people don't want to relate on. something's not lining up. But I guess, like, I wonder for you, you know, especially in your, in your kind of developing years, like, where did you, did you find comfort in that kind of, you know, conflict between what you hoped you could be or what your mother hoped you could be and sort of what the reality was? Like, what did, I mean, I know for me it was very devastating for many, many years. Well, no, I think it ultimately, it stopped me. as a writer to try to explain ourselves as a character.

You go back to some specific things. One of the things that happened to me, my birthday is in June, June 7th, if anyone wants to send anything next year, that'd be nice. That's 6-7, that's special. In 1989, it must have felt really good. That's very good. So the way the cutoff was for school enrollment

in those days in Detroit, the cutoff was June 1st. a June 7th birthday makes you among the youngest in the class. And I entered school knowing how to read. I entered kindergarten knowing how to read. There was a real thing from my mother and this really, you know, when you talk about how your mother spoke to you, this repeated message of your special. You're special, you're special, you're special. And one of the things was, well, Billy is just, bored in first grade because they're learning how to read and he can read. So in, you know, in those years, people still double promoted children. They skipped kids a grade. So about a month

into first grade, I was moved into a second grade classroom. Well, what this meant was for the rest of my schooling. Two years younger than everybody. Two years younger. And so it does a very peculiar thing. First of all, it ruins sports. It just, you know, that was the end of sports. You're a nine-year-old on a touch football field with 11-year-olds. And it's awful. And, you know, the locker room trauma of being a little boy in a room with teenage, in a locker room with teenage boys was awful. It was God awful.

By the way, it was even worse because in those days, at the beginning, at the beginning, of the school year, the Detroit Lions used our high school fields for practice before the season began. So it wasn't just that I was a pre-adolescent sharing a locker room with adolescent boys. I was also sharing a locker room with Rosie Greer and the Detroit Lions. I kid you not. I was skipped. My brother and I were both skipped because, again, we were these precocious kids. And so then I was not only the youngest, also everyone in my family was, I was a head shorter than even the shortest kid. While I distinguished bullying from a lot of the standard harassment that many children experience, it was painful and annoying. I was asked if I was premature. I was called Webster.

Sure. It's funny now. Wasn't funny then. So my classmates weren't peers. And there's no, it's not socially acceptable to, you know, to have friends. outside your class. That's, I mean, that just, you know, you're a seventh grader. You hang out with seventh graders. But there was this constant drumbeat from my mother of your special and, and all of that. And when I would come home, when I would be around my family, when I would, you know, when there were family gatherings, darling, play the piano, you know, mine would be say something smart. And so the

accumulation of knowledge, the accumulation of facts seemed to me to be the, to be the only thing I could do that maybe if this is my if this is my lane an expression by the way that wouldn't really come into popularity until the 2000s but if this is my lane then I'll learn everything I can I'll acquire all the information I can because if that's what it makes me is going to make me succeed then let me get to be the best at it so this this means among other things that when I'm 10 years old I set out to read the world book encyclopedia covered to cover. And so I read every volume of the 1968 World Book Encyclopedia, and I can still remember huge, huge chunks of it. And then I have specter me information compulsions. And so that leads down

things like flags. Right. So that was originally when this episode was, you know, going to focus kind of on some of Sheldon's particular quirks. I'm going to list the things that I know about you. So just from Sheldon. So Flags is you. So anybody who enjoyed fun with flags, it's really fun with Bill Prady. Trains. Trains is me a little bit, but much more, much more that came from the son of one of the writers, who was much more profoundly on the spectrum. And he had a very, very strong train compulsion. I think of mine more as sort of comfort, as soothing things. Looking up train routes and knowing the names, you know, knowing where the sunset limited in the Pacific Surfliner and the 20th century,

knowing where these trains go and the history of them is very soothing to me. Tell me about that. What is that? I'm asking what it's like for you. Is that a physical sensation? Is it a psychological sensation? It's a psychological sensation. It's equivalent to collecting.

And I'm absolutely a collector. If there's something I can acquire the set of and have all of, you know, I'll walk through the living room and I have a set of Vonnegut novels that was published as a set that has, when you put them in order, there's an illustration on the spines of the book. And that's incredibly satisfying. But what I discovered is that I can acquire knowledge in sets. It's just the same. So whether that's something like flags or military rank or anything like that. And there's just something incredibly, incredibly satisfying. What else do you like like that?

Music. So for example, right now I am in an acquisition mode on Coltrane albums. To make the decision, you know what? I only have, I have four Coltrane albums. I could have all the Coltrane albums. especially in a world with eBay. Here's the great, great collector moment. As a teenager, I was a huge fan of the singer Janice Ian,

who's most famous for, her biggest song was at 17. Janice was the first musical guest on Saturday Night Live. She's less known now. But because of Big Bang Theory and one of the great things, the overwhelmingly best thing of Big Bang Theory, was the people I got to meet. Yes.

Beyond anything else. And one of the people I got to meet was Janice Ian. Who is lovely. Who is lovely. I mean, like, I'm not just saying that. She's super, super, she's everything I wanted her to be for you. She is a glorious person. In fact, while I'm talking to you guys, texts from Janus Ian are coming in.

You'll send my love when you're off. I will do that. So Janice and I became friends, and there came a point where she stayed in our guest room here at the house, and actually a number of times. The first time she was here, I have my childhood collection, complete collection of Janice Ian Records, Vinyl. And I said, Janice, would you sign one of these for me? And she said, sure. And she took one down, and she took a Sharpie, and she signed it. and then she's looking at it

and she looks at it and she decides to make some fun annotations on it and she, she, it has a picture of the band and she starts writing call out captions, this person was this,

this person was that. And she's having a good time and then she starts taking the other Janus Ian albums down from the shelf and writing on them. And in my head, it's stop writing

on my collection of Janus Ian albums, Janice Ian. I love that. If there could be a moment that sort of epitomized this, you know, this weird wiring in my brain, that was it. The desire for my pristine collection to exist in pristine form was maybe bigger than the fact that Chanis Ian was in my house. I just have a couple more questions for you. Yeah.

But this leads to a really interesting one. On this podcast, you know, we're talking. about all aspects of mental health and mental wellness. But one of the things that Jonathan and I, you know, that's been so important for Jonathan and my and our personal journeys is understanding what it feels like in your body when something's not right or when something doesn't feel right. And as someone who shares a lot of your atypicalness, I know what it feels like in my body when something's not right. And one of the things that is the most confounding to people who don't understand it or have no experience with it is what it is like to be sensory sensitive.

I have a very, very sensitive startle reflex. There is a very distinct set of somatic, you know, physiological things that happen to me when my nervous system gets flooded. And some people get flooded by emotions and some people get flooded by touch and some people get flooded in particular by sound. I just, because you're so articulate, Can you describe what it feels like? Sure. I absolutely can. Go for it.

Yeah, so I'm misophonic. So somebody chewing or a rhythmic sound or a rhythmic sound with slight variation. Hate it. Hate it. A rhythmic sound. So in other words, in other words, a faucet that's dripping. And it's a faucet that's dripping where the drips are falling, say, once, you know, once every two seconds.

But the physics of that is every now and then it'll miss a drip. So, and that re-engages me with the sound. And it's an inability to prioritize. If I want to trigger this in myself, I can go to Costco. And I can walk into Costco. I'm not, I can't quite identify specifically what it is, but part of it is that it's a warehouse and the ceiling is very high. Oh. And that...

Say it. It does something to the sound. Yes. So if I have to go to Costco, I prepare for it. And the first thing that I do is I take a deep breath and I say to myself, when you go into Costco, you're going to have this experience. Because part of it is what happens is it'll hit me and I'll go, what's going on? What's going on?

So I'll just remind myself, just in my head. I have a mantra. I will share with you my insane mind. mantra. This mantra comes from an event. I don't particularly like roller coasters when I was very young and I was working for Jim Henson and we were doing a lot of work with the Disney theme parks. And I'm at, I'm at Disneyland with Jim Henson and Frank Oz, who played Miss Piggy and Yoda and all of that. And a bunch of other people. I'm at Disneyland and they say, let's go ride Space Mountain. So if you don't like roller coasters and you have sensory issues and indoor roller coasters. I got it. I recently did it, and it does not feel good in my body. No. But I'm with my boss, and my boss's boss and all these people. This is happening. And I get on this ride and I begin repeating something to myself, which is my mantra. I repeat to this day in these circumstances. It's lunacy. And it's this sentence.

This experience occupies a finite amount of time and it will come to an end. Oh my God. Say it again. This experience occupies a finite amount of time and it will come to an end. Is that a direct translation from the Sanskrit? It is a direct translation from whatever voice within me said, this will reassure it. So talk about the physical. So what does it feel like physically?

Talk about it. The first thing that happens is an inability to speak. something shorts out in the pathway from thought to mouth. And what what shorts out is the inability. So when you speak, your brain offers you a palette of things to say very quickly. Somebody asks you a question. Your brain, an astonishing bit of processing offers you 10 or 15 responses. You pick one quickly and say it. Well, what happens to be in that moment is like, Jonathan always picks the one he shouldn't say. Sorry, but that's a different story.

Nevertheless, he picks one. Correct. What happens in the moment is that process is paralyzed. So somebody asks me a question, I'm aware of different things that I could say, but I cannot, I can't get the needle to land on one, to drop it into my mouth. So I can't communicate the problem.

And then that becomes its own problem. So one of the feelings of this is all of these things trigger their own crises. Right. So there's the initial crisis of what I'm dealing with. And then, oh, my God, I can't communicate this. And the other thing, then that extends to kind of a paralysis of action. So if I go into Costco and if I haven't made a plan, and by the way, the plan can be anything. The plan can be, I'm going into Costco and I'm just picking up toilet paper.

paper. Or the plan can be, I'm going into Costco and I'm going to meander down the aisles and see what I'd like to buy. So it doesn't have to be a concrete plan as long as it's a plan. If I don't have a plan, I will just stand there and then I'll reach a point where I'm standing there with my hands on the shopping cart and I'm not moving. So this, you are describing what happens when I go to any supermarket. And my children used to think it's because Mama's famous and she like doesn't know how to function in public. But now that they've gotten older, they realize that it's, that's not it. It is too much information coming at me in all the ways. And what I have to do is I have to go down every single aisle because if not, I have no structure or comfort to the entire experience, meaning I can't do anything. Right.

Now, one of the interesting things to think about, and I know this because my father, was in advertising is supermarkets are environment with deliberate sensory overload by design, by design. Box copy, and the easiest way to think of it is the cereal aisle, right? So if you look at the colors that are used, and if you look on a box at the color combinations, they're jarring. They're colors that don't belong together. Pick any cereal box and think about painting a room, those colors, and you go, oh my God,

that would be the worst room to spend time in. It's so jarring. Well, that's to get your brain to stop and look at it. Even people who don't suffer in this fashion when they're going through their head, they're being pulled in various directions. Well, for somebody who has sensory input control problems, you walk in and it's just lunacy in your brain. That's what it feels like.

I have methods for the supermarket. And one is, you know, one is, and things you would look at and you would say, that's just a helpful tip, and everyone should do that. It's not a response to lunacy, but I do a, when I do a shopping list, I do it on the computer, on a word processor, right? And then I sort it by department. And you say, oh, that's just efficient, right? But no, what it means is, if I put all the produce together and all the baking together and

all that stuff. It means that I have a path through the store. I will one-up you. When I unload my grocery cart, I do it by department. Perfectly reasonable. And every time, now here's another wonderful thing is my intrusive thoughts are jokes. How do I ask God to exchange my intrusive thoughts for yours? Is there a prayer? My intrusive thoughts are jokes, but they are every time. So every time I unload groceries, I comment to myself, you know, groceries are only called groceries while they're in motion. At the store, they're milk, eggs, and bread. And when you get them home, they're milk, eggs, and bread. But while you're moving them, they're groceries. I love that. Bill, I thank you so much. I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to,

I won't ask you back soon, but I could talk to you forever, which is often why we were the 0.3% left at a party. But what I will say, I want to thank you mostly is that as a writer, you understand how time-consuming it is to write. I had written an entire script structured around this episode, which I can now use for someone who I will have on to talk about that because you just made your own episode. So thank you. Oh, my goodness.

Thank you for saving a script for me. Thank you so much, Bill. Thank you. What do you think, pants size 33? He was very good at that. Well, I'm impressed. He's a very, very impressive man. I should also note that 6-2 is tall enough to play basketball, but only for the select...

Everyone thinks you're 6-3. I say you're 6-3. Only when looking at me from your height, do I look taller. How about that Bill Prady? We could talk to him forever. I might need to. And I think we should have him back on as soon as we can. I literally went into that interview.

thinking, let's talk to Bill about a lot of the OCD features of Sheldon. I didn't want to be that person who was like, was Sheldon autistic? Because that's what everybody asks Bill Prady. And he always says like, well, what's to say with a diagnosis? And then I was going to ask Bill Prady, what's it like hearing feedback from people who say, my kid, my friend, my sibling had never seen someone like them on television. And thank you. We had people say to us that they had never seen a couple both on the spectrum and that it gave them hope that their children would find someone like Amy found Sheldon and Sheldon found Amy. I want to talk to him about all those things, but instead he shared so many interesting things about him and just I knew a lot of those things,

but I didn't know them put together, you know. And I think a lot of people have what he called sensory input control problems or having sensory overload, but they don't. to understand that that's what they're experiencing when they're feeling. I mean, I have a much more visceral, you know, like for me, I get, I'll start buzzing, and it feels like my insides are rattling. It sometimes visibly looks like shaking. It's very, very uncomfortable. I have been on Space Mountain and had a proper panic attack as an adult.

It's terrifying because there's a closing in feeling. It's terrible. but it was really interesting because he's a much more cognitive person, meaning he's much more cognitive about the process of understanding things. And like, I'm not organized enough to make a spreadsheet for the supermarket because I don't have that. Like I'm the mad scientist version of him. I don't have that.

I have a need for order and I have a need for organization, but I don't have his precision. And of course, the grass is always greener. I wish I had that precision with which to deal with my sensory input issues. I want my children specifically to hear this episode because while they know that I'm not the only one like this, it really helps, I think, you know, to have someone else who has that experience share about it.

And the thing that I have in places, I've literally been to Costco, I think, once in my life. I'm not a Costco person because I get overwhelmed. I literally, I can't. No. But there's a sound that I'm very sensitive to when like there's any movement. Sometimes it's like the air condition. I don't know what it is. But I feel it in my body.

It feels like it is in my body and it's unpleasant and I can't get things done. I don't want to. Costco is the store that has everything you never knew you needed. And the only way to find out what you need is to go down all the aisles. I also, I can't handle a museum that doesn't have a logical path. I love maps. I mean, I love maps. If I go to a museum, it's kind of like an all or nothing experience.

we either do all of it so that I know that I did it or I don't want to be there. It's very hard. I can't do like, oh, let's do like when I was married to Mike. And he'd be like, well, let's just do this wing. And I was like, no, that's not an option. I'd rather barely look at anything and say that I went to every single room of a museum rather than only do one wing well. And that's not good. It's not why I got divorced, but I can't imagine it helped.

You have said that you don't like the gray, the things that are. It doesn't like me. Have you ever, for example, been traveling? You get to a city and you just decide you're going to wander around and see where the day will take you? That's not something you can do. I don't do that in my own city. I never see where the day will take me. No, which is not to say I'm not an adventurous person.

I mean, I backpacked through, not all through Europe, but I backpacked through Paris, took a train to Italy, went to Greece. Cairo, Jerusalem, Israel, but you mapped out a plan to do that. Oh, well, it was before the internet and before computers, yeah, but, meaning I can go, I'm not, it's not that I'm not fun is really what my concern is that everyone's thinking like, she's not fun,

but you're absolutely, you're fun on a list. I'm fun, I'm fun with a lot of rules around it. But no, like, the notion of like, let's wander around. No, but I was also, you know, I was raised by people who were like, here are the four fun things that we're going to do today, if we don't do them this day was a failure.

And I can confirm that you are one of the best list makers I have ever met in my life. Why, thank you, Jonathan. Your listmaking skills are second to none. Bill Brady's a good listmaker. I have not spent enough time with Bill to compare our list. I'm going to tell you something after I got divorced. I didn't even have the ovaries, the chutz, but to say this to Bill Prady's face. My mother suggested I date him.

when he was my boss, because she knew how similar we were. I'm emailing him right now. Hold on. He's engaged to a lovely woman, and she's much cooler than I am. Not married yet. Anyway, that was a really, really special episode, very special to connect with Bill that way. He's a really special man. His mother was right. That's what this episode's called.

Bill Prady's mother was right. From my breakdown to the one I hope you never have. We'll see you next time.