Alan Rabinowitz: Man & Beast - The Moth

Summary

Alan Rabinowitz: Man & Beast – A Journey of Silence, Strength, and Conservation

Introduction

In the captivating episode titled "Alan Rabinowitz: Man & Beast" from The Moth podcast, renowned wildlife biologist Dr. Alan Rabinowitz shares his profoundly personal and inspiring story. From overcoming a debilitating stutter in childhood to pioneering jaguar conservation efforts in the jungles of Belize, Rabinowitz's narrative is a testament to resilience, passion, and the unspoken bond between humans and animals.

Early Life and Struggles with Stuttering

Dr. Rabinowitz begins his story by recounting his early childhood experiences that shaped his relationship with communication and animals.

Encounter with a Jaguar at the Bronx Zoo ([02:07]): At five years old, Rabinowitz stands before an old female jaguar, an encounter that becomes a pivotal memory. He attempts to communicate with the animal, only to be interrupted by his father.
Battling a Severe Stutter ([02:17]): Rabinowitz describes his lifelong struggle with a severe stutter, distinguishing it from typical childhood speech delays:

"But the complete blockage of airflow where if I try to push words out, my head would spasm and my body would spasm." ([02:25])
Misunderstood by the Education System ([03:15]): Faced with misunderstanding from authorities, he was placed in a "class for disturbed children," a label that compounded his feelings of isolation and frustration.

Finding Solace with Animals

Amidst the challenges of communication, Rabinowitz discovers a sanctuary in his interactions with animals.

Communication Without Words ([04:00]): Rabinowitz shares how he found he could speak fluently with his pets—hamsters, gerbils, turtles, and even snakes—without stuttering. This revelation fostered a deep connection:

"I would talk fluently to them. I would tell them my hopes and my dreams." ([04:15])
Promise to Be the Animals' Voice ([05:00]): Inspired by his bond with animals, he vows:

"If I could ever find my voice, I would try to be their voice." ([05:10])

Academic and Career Journey

Rabinowitz's academic pursuits become intertwined with his passion for wildlife, leading him down a path toward conservation.

Overcoming Stuttering Through Education ([07:30]): After enduring years of despair and feeling misunderstood, Rabinowitz attends an intensive clinic that provides him with the tools to control his speech mechanically. This breakthrough allows him to speak fluently:

"In 20 years, I had never been able to voice everything inside of me. Now I could." ([08:45])
Diverse Academic Interests ([10:00]): Despite excelling academically and athletically, Rabinowitz realizes that his true calling lies not in medicine or labs but in the study of wildlife:

"Being in the forest alone with the animals was my real world closet." ([14:30])

Conservation Work in Belize

Rabinowitz's professional journey takes a transformative turn when he embarks on a groundbreaking conservation project in Belize.

Joining Dr. George Schallop ([15:00]): Befriended by a leading wildlife biologist, Rabinowitz is invited to study jaguars in the Belizean jungle—a venture that would define his legacy:

"I was entering the jungle to catch jaguars, which nobody knew how to, and put radio collars on them and get data that nobody had ever gotten before." ([16:10])
Challenges Faced ([17:20]): The expedition is fraught with dangers, including a plane crash, a member succumbing to a venomous snake bite, and various diseases. These hardships underscore the perilous nature of field conservation work.
Realization of Jaguar Extinction Threat ([18:00]): Witnessing the rampant killing of jaguars, Rabinowitz grapples with the urgent need for conservation:

"They were all being wiped out. Yes, I could sit in that jungle, but then I wouldn't be true to myself." ([18:30])

Encounter with the Jaguar

A profound and symbolic encounter in the jungle mirrors Rabinowitz's internal struggles and resolutions.

Following the Jaguar's Tracks ([19:00]): While tracking a particularly large male jaguar, Rabinowitz becomes acutely aware of his vulnerability in the wild.
Face-to-Face with the Jaguar ([19:35]): As dusk approaches, the jaguar confronts Rabinowitz. Instead of fear, he experiences a deep connection:

"I looked into this jaguar's eyes... what I was seeing was a reflection of the way I was feeling, too." ([19:50])
Resolution and Assurance ([20:20]): Overcoming instinctual fear, Rabinowitz speaks softly to the jaguar, symbolizing his commitment to being the voice for these majestic creatures:

"It's okay now. It's all going to be okay." ([20:45])

Reflections and Conclusion

Dr. Rabinowitz's narrative culminates in a reflection on his dual existence between the human world and the animal kingdom, emphasizing his role as a bridge between the two.

Commitment to Conservation ([21:30]): Realizing that true change requires engaging with human institutions, Rabinowitz champions the establishment of protected areas:

"The prime minister and the cabinet had voted to set up the world's first and only jaguar preserve." ([22:00])
Legacy of Silence and Voice ([23:15]): His journey from a silent child to a powerful advocate underscores the transformative power of finding one's voice:

"The truths of the world, the reality is not defined by the spoken word. In fact, it's not even speakable." ([24:45])

Dr. Alan Rabinowitz's story in The Moth podcast is not just a tale of personal triumph over adversity but also a clarion call for wildlife conservation. His experiences illustrate the profound interconnectedness of human and animal lives and the imperative to protect the voices—both spoken and silent—that resonate within our natural world.

About Dr. Alan Rabinowitz

Dr. Alan Rabinowitz is internationally recognized as a leading expert on big cats and a passionate wildlife conservationist. He serves as the president and CEO of Panthera, a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving the world's wild cat species. Often likened to the "Indiana Jones of wildlife conservation" by Time magazine, Rabinowitz's work has been instrumental in establishing protected areas and advancing conservation efforts globally.

This summary captures the essence of Dr. Alan Rabinowitz's compelling story as presented in The Moth podcast episode "Man & Beast," highlighting his journey from a silent childhood to becoming a formidable voice in wildlife conservation.

Transcript

Dan Kennedy (0:00)

As we approach the end of the year, I'm thinking about the next. Next year is the year I finally make my Spanish better than my 9 year old's. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app, and it truly immerses you in the language that you want to learn. I can't wait to use Rosetta Stone and finally speak better than my 9 year old who's been learning Spanish in his own way. Rosetta Stone is the trusted expert for 30 years. With millions of users and 25 languages offered. Spanish, French, Ital, Korean. I could go on fast language acquisition. Rosetta Stone immerses you in many ways. There are no English translations so you can really learn to speak, listen and think in that language. Start the new year off with a resolution you can reach today. The Moth listeners can take advantage of this Rosetta Stones lifetime membership for 50% off, visit rosettastone.com moth that's 50% off. Unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your Life. Redeem your 50% off@Rosetta Stone.com moth today.

Dr. Alan Rabinowitz (1:09)

Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. Before we get to this week's story, I want to remind you again, the Moth is coming to Denver on March 7th and Chicago on March 28th. That is part of the USA Characters Unite tour to combat prejudice and discrimination. Tickets are going fast, but you can still get them@smartticks.com the moth receives support from Amazon.com this story by Alan Rabinowitz was actually featured on our very first podcast back in 2008, and since we only had a handful of listeners back then in the early days, and since it's one of our very favorites, we decided to share it with all of you new listeners. It was originally recorded in 2005 at the New York Public Library. The theme of the night was Hear Ye, Hear Ye. Lost in Translation Stories.

Alan Rabinowitz (2:07)

I was five years old, standing in the old great cat house at the Bronx Zoo, staring into the face of an old female jaguar. I remember looking at the bare walls and the bare ceiling, wondering what the animal had done to get itself there. I leaned in a little towards the cage and started whispering something to the jaguar, but my father came over quickly and asked, what are you doing? I turned to him to try to explain, but my mouth froze as I knew it would, because everything about my young childhood at that time was characterized by the inability to speak. From the earliest time that I tried to speak, I was handicapped with a severe, severe stutter. Not the Normal, kind of repetitious, buh, buh, buh, kinds of stutter that many stutterers have or many children go through. But the complete blockage of airflow where if I try to push words out, my head would spasm and my body would spasm. Nobody knew what to do with me. At the time, there were very few books written about stuttering. There was no computer, no Internet. The reaction of the New York City public school system was to put me in a class for disturbed children. I remember my parents trying to fight it, telling them, he's not disturbed, but the teacher said, we're sorry. Whenever he tries to speak, it disrupts everything and everybody. So I spent my youth wondering why adults couldn't see into me, why they couldn't see I was normal and all the words were inside of me, but they just wouldn't come out. Fortunately, at a very young age, I learned what most stutterers learn. At some point you can do two things without stuttering. At least two things. One of them is sing, and I couldn't sing. The other is you can talk to animals and not stutter. So every day I would come home from the special class, which all the other kids called the retarded class, and I'd go straight to my room, and I'd go to a closet in my room, and I had a little dark corner of that closet. And I'd go into the closet and I'd close the door. And I'd bring my pets, New York style pets. Hamster, gerbil, green turtle, a chameleon, occasionally a garter snake. And I would talk to them. I would talk fluently to them. I would tell them my hopes and my dreams. I would tell them how people were stupid because they thought I was stupid. And the animals listened. They felt it. And I realized very early that they felt it because they were like me. The animals, they had feelings too. They were trying to transmit things also, but they had no human voice. So people ignored them, or they misunderstood them, or they hurt them, or sometimes they killed them. I swore to the animals when I was young that if I could ever find my voice, I would try to be their voice. But I didn't know if that would happen because I realized that I lived in two worlds. One world was the world where I was normal. With animals, I could speak. The other world was the world of human beings where I couldn't. My parents didn't know what to do. They tried everything. They tried hypnotherapy, they tried drug therapy. They sent me to Many kinds of psychologists, but nothing really worked. I got through school, through grade school, junior high school, high school, and eventually college by learning tricks. Stutterers learn. Learning when to not speak, learning to avoid situations, learning just to not be around people. When I did have to speak, then I would prove to people that I was not only like them, but I was better than they were. In the academics, I excelled. I got straight A's in everything. In sports, I joined the wrestling team and the boxing team in high school and college, and I took all my teams or helped take them to the state championships. Everybody always said I was an up and coming athlete, and I wasn't. I didn't even like it. I was just a very, very frustrated young man who had to find an outlet for his anger. But by the time I was a senior in college, I had never been out on a date with a girl. I had never kissed a girl except for my mother. And I had never spoken a completely fluent sentence out loud to another human being. About midway through my senior year in college, my parents learned of an experimental new program upstate New York in Genesio, where it was very intense. They had to send me away, and I was essentially locked away for two months. It was working with severe, severe stutters, but it was very expensive. But they would do anything for me. So my father sold something very dear to him in order to send me there. That clinic changed my life. It taught me two very important things. One of them was that I was a stutterer. And I was always going to be a stutterer. There was no magic pill, and I was not going to wake up one morning, as I had always dreamt, and be a fluent speaker. But the other thing it taught me, the more important thing, was that if I did what they were teaching me at this clinic, which was give me the tools, the mechanics to mechanically control my mouth, the airflow, if I worked hard, I could be a completely fluent stutterer. And I worked hard. And it was unbelievable. For the first time in 20 years, I could speak. I could speak. In 20 years, I had never been able to voice everything inside of me. Now I could. It took a lot of work because while I was speaking, I had to be thinking about hard contacts, airflow, this and that. But it didn't matter. None of it mattered. I was a fluent speaker now. Life would be different. I would go back to school and they would accept me. I returned to finish the last half of my college year, and things were different. On the outside, I could speak, but nothing had changed. On the inside. Too much had happened for that. I was still the stuttering, broken child inside. Throughout my academic years, I had focused on science. I loved science because science to me was the study of truths apart from the world of human beings. And when I got to college, I decided to channel that science into medicine, pre medicine, thinking that maybe if I become a doctor, people will like me, people will accept me. But I never liked working with people. And when I got back from the clinic, I realized I can't be doing this. I hate being in labs. And worse than that, I hated. I was tortured by feeling the frustration and the pain of the lab animals in the little cages spinning in those little wheels. So I applied to graduate school at the University of Tennessee in wildlife, biology and zoology, and I got accepted. And that first year I was down in Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains, studying black bears. When I was in the forest with the animals, I was at home. This was what I was meant to be doing. Being in the forest alone with the animals was my real world closet. This is what made me feel good. And I came to realize what I'd always known in my heart but never been able to put it into words. And that's that the truths of the world, the reality is not defined by the spoken word. In fact, it's not even speakable. And I knew that this was how I had to live my life somehow. Fortunately, right before I got my PhD, I met the preeminent wildlife biologist in my field, Dr. George Shallop. He and I spent the day together following bears in the Smoky Mountains. And at the end of the day, George said to me, alan, how would you like to go to Belize and be the first one to try to study jaguars in the jungle? The very first thought in my mind, I remember it so clearly, was, where the hell is Belize? But the very first words out of my mouth, not 30 seconds after he had asked me that was, of course I'll go, of course. Within two months, I bought an old Ford pickup truck, packed everything I owned in the back, which didn't even take up half of it, and I drove from New York to Central America. Those last few miles, that's a separate story. Those last few miles of driving into that jungle where I would set up base camp for the next two years was just unbelievable to me. Driving by the Mayan Indians gawking at me. I was entering the jungle to catch jaguars, which nobody knew how to, and put radio collars on them and get data that nobody had ever gotten before. This was what my life was all about this was where it had to take me. For the next year, I did just what I set out to do. I learned from hunters. I learned how to capture jaguars. I captured them, I followed them. Many things tried to stop me from my goal. There was a plane crash where I almost died. There was one of my men got bitten by a fer de lance, a poisonous snake, and unfortunately, he died. Many diseases, but. And those changed me, and I had to really look upon things differently. But this was my life. This was where I knew I could stay forever and be happy and be comfortable. But I couldn't. Because I also realized that as fast as I was catching jaguars and gathering information about them, they were being killed in front of me. My jaguars were being killed. The outside jaguars out of my study area were being killed. They were all being wiped out. Yes, I could sit in that jungle, but then I wouldn't be true to myself, and more important, I wouldn't be true to the promise I made to the animals in the closet, that I would be their voice. And I had the voice now if I wanted to use it. So I realized I had to leave it. I had to come back into the world of people and try to fight with the world of people to save the animals and these jaguars in particular. But ironically, I realized that if I was going to save these jaguars, not only did I have to enter the world of people again, but I had to go to the highest levels of government. I had to talk to the prime minister. Well, it took some doing, but within six months, I was standing in the capital city outside the office of the prime minister. He had given me an appointment with the cabinet. They'd given me 15 minutes, had no idea what I was going to say to them. Frankly, I'm sure they gave me the appointment because they just wanted to meet this crazy foreigner who was in the jungle catching jaguars. I had 15 minutes. I couldn't stutter. I couldn't stutter. I couldn't distract them from the point of trying to save jaguars. I had to use everything I had learned and be a completely fluent speaker and convince one of the poorest countries in central america no protected areas in the entire country at the time, a place where tourism wasn't even of economic benefit. Ecotourism wasn't even a term at the time that they had to save jaguars. An hour and a half later, I came out of there amidst laughter, back slaps. The prime minister and the cabinet had voted to set up the world's first and only jaguar preserve. And I promised Them, I would make it work. I promised them. I would show them it could be of economic benefit. A month later, I was in the jungle following my jaguars. You never see jaguars. If you see them, they'll be killed. So the most prominent evidence of jaguars are their tracks. I knew all my jaguars in the study area from their tracks. But this one day, when I was in there, trying to see where they were all going and what they were all doing, I crossed a completely new track. It was the biggest male jaguar I had ever seen in my life. The biggest track I knew. I had to follow him, hoping I could catch a glimpse, but at least finding out what he was doing in here, whether he had come in from the outside. Was he passing through? I followed him for hours, glued on those tracks, until I realized it was getting dark. And I didn't want to be caught in the jungle at night without a flashlight. So I turned around to go back to camp. As soon as I turned around, there he was, not 15ft in back of me. That jaguar, which I had been following, had circled around and was following me as I was following him. He could have killed me at any time. He could have gotten me at any time. I didn't even hear him. I knew I should feel frightened, but I didn't. Instinctively, I just squatted down and the jaguar sat. And I looked into this jaguar's eyes. And I was so clearly reminded of the little boy looking into the sad old female at the Bronx Zoo. But this animal wasn't sad. In this animal's eyes, there was strength and power and sureness of purpose. And I also realized as I was looking into his eyes that what I was seeing was a reflection of the way I was feeling, too. That little broken boy and that old broken jaguar were now this. Suddenly, I felt scared. I knew I should be scared. And I stood up and took a step back. The jaguar stood up, too, turned, and started to walk off into the forest. After about 10ft, it stopped and turned to look back at. I looked at the jaguar and I leaned a little towards it, the way I had at the Bronx Zoo so many years before. And I whispered to it, it's okay now. It's all going to be okay. And the jaguar turned and was gone. Thank you.