Struggling to Speak: Understanding Stuttering

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Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter in "The King's Speech"

Hour 2

The new movie The King’s Speech is about King George Vl and his struggles to overcome his stammer at the onset of WWll.  It follows the King, played by Colin Firth, and his relationship with unconventional speech therapist Lionel Logue, played by Geoffrey Rush.  The film has won critical acclaim and Firth’s King George is one of the first sympathetic portrayals of a stutterer on film.  It is estimated that 1% of the population stutters.  So this hour we thought we’d take a look at stuttering – what is known about the causes and what it’s like to live with a stutter.  We’ll talk with the screenwriter for the The King’s Speech, DAVID SEIDLER, Philadelphia chef and the restaurant owner of Vetri Ristorante, MARC VETRI, and University of Pennsylvania speech-language therapist JOSEPH DONAHER.

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[audio: 122010_110630.mp3]

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