The King’s Speech

One of my favorite Moth stories is Alan Rabinowitz’s “Man and Beast” (below). Like The King’s Speech, it’s the story of a man struggling to find his voice in the face of a crippling speech impediment. 

As a child, Rabinowitz had a stutter so severe he couldn’t even speak. But he soon discovered that there was one situation where he could speak fluidly: when he was talking to animals. So he spent hours at the zoo and with his pets, pouring his heart out to the animals, realizing along the way that they were just like him: they too lacked a voice. 

“I made a promise to animals,” Rabinowitz tells Stephen Colbert in an interview. “I swore to them that if I ever found my voice and could control my stuttering, that I would be their voice—and I would actually try to speak for them and save them.” 

Hearing this, Colbert is so moved he completely loses his composure, breaking character, looking directly at the camera, and choking back tears. “Are you trying to make me cry?” he asks. “Because this is the closest any guest has ever gotten.” 

Alan Rabinowitz: Man & Beast by The Moth
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