On Being Blog

Alan Rabinowitz: A Twitterscript

by Anne Breckbill, associate web developer

On June 30, Krista interviewed Alan Rabinowitz for this week’s show “A Voice for the Animals” — discussing topics ranging from his severe stutter, Dawi (the last pure Mongoloid pygmy), large wild cats, genetic corridors, and his recent cancer diagnosis. We live-tweet (SOFtweets) all of our interviews now. Here is the Twitterscript of that interview:

1. In 10 minutes, we’ll be live-tweeting Krista’s interview with Alan Rabinowitz, dubbed the “Indiana Jones” of wildlife science.
2. As Alan Rabinowitz sits in his chair, he says, “Grabbing a taxi on 5th Avenue is much more challenging that tracking a tiger in Bhutan.”
3. Rabinowitz — “What turned me away from religion is what people were saying or reading did not go along with their actions.”
4. Rabinowitz on his childhood stuttering — “Most stutterers can do two things: sing, and you can speak to animals.”
5. Rabinowitz — “Over and over, I swore to myself as a child if I ever found my voice that I’d be there for them [animals].”
6. Rabinowitz — “…[I found that] when I could speak fluidly, most people didn’t have that much to say that’s interesting.”
7. Rabinowitz — “I associate myself with those who pit themselves against environmental hardships than I do with pure scientists.”
8. Rabinowitz — “Science is a language of truths that would be there whether humans would be there or not.”
9. Alan Rabinowitz is talking about a pivotal moment of his life when he found the Taron in the Himalayan foothills.
10. Dawi, a Taron tribal elder asking Alan Rabinowitz why isn’t a father — “You act like a man who still has this deep, deep hole inside of him.”
11. Rabinowitz — “We had to save the last tigers. Tigers are just plummeting.”
12. Rabinowitz — “The dictatorship in Burma consists of several dozen generals. The one man on top is the controlling influence.”
13. Rabinowitz — “Being among these remote communities showed me a model how people can live w/ their environment and can move forward.”
14. Rabinowitz — “You can tell a person from Churchill because they’re always looking around the corner.”
15. Rabinowitz — “You can tell a person from Churchill because they’re always looking around the corner.”
16. Rabinowitz — “I rarely meet a Mayan now carrying a gun..’if we see a jaguar we stop on our bicycle and watch it now.’”
17. Engineer Chris Heagle summarizing Alan Rabinowitz talking with Krista Tippett — “Marriage is like confronting a wild leopard”
18. Rabinowitz — Genetic corridors for large cats vital to saving them - more than conservation parks http://is.gd/daooj
19. Rabinowitz — “Stuttering gave me my life. I’m so pleased to be born a stutterer, because that’s how I got to where I am.”
20. Rabinowitz — “As I get older and have thoughts of slowing down, I get told ‘I have cancer” and that has the opposite effect.”
21. Rabinowitz — “I don’t see myself as a hero..I see myself as lucky for being able to..pursue the things I love that made me feel whole.”
22. Rabinowitz on his son’s stuttering — “Seeing my son sad is painful. Although stuttering gave me my life it’s not something I wish on anyone else.”
23. Rabinowitz on continuing adventures despite having cancer — “I had to live the life that defined me the best, both to myself and to my family”
24. Rabinowitz — “I truly believe when you attempt to do good things for good reasons a lot of positive energy gets out there in the world.”
25. Rabinowitz — “It doesn’t matter if life is short or long, it matters if there’s meaning for you personally.”