That's so raven
Ravens get a bad rap in western culture. They’re an ominous symbol of death, considered “unclean” by the bible, and star in Edgar Allen Poe’s haunting gothic poem, “The Raven.” A group of ravens is called an “unkindness.” What a burn.
But host Nate Hegyi is on a mission to show that we should give the raven a bit more credit. It’s one of the most intelligent creatures on earth – an animal that can use tools like a chimpanzee, speak like a parrot, do tricks like a dog, and investigate murders like Sherlock Holmes.
So today on the show, another edition of our ongoing series, Holy Scat: raven edition.
Produced by Nate Hegyi.
Featuring Sophie Nilles and Will Geiger
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS
Dr. Kaeli Swift is one of the foremost corvid researchers on the planet, and she’s done a deep dive into corvid funerals.
Here’s the study that shows ravens parallel great apes in terms of intelligence.
If you want a real creepy experience, you should watch Vincent Price recite Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Raven.’
Need more raven stories from southeast Alaska? The Sealaska Heritage Institute just published a collection.
SUPPORT
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CREDITS
Host: Nate Hegyi
Reported, produced, and mixed by Nate Hegyi
Editing by Taylor Quimby
Our staff includes Felix Poon, Marina Henke, Justine Paradis, and Jessica Hunt
Executive producer: Taylor Quimby
Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio
Music by Blue Dot Sessions
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio
Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to outsidein@nhpr.org or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).
Audio Transcript
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Nate Hegyi: Hey, this is Outside/In, a show where curiosity in the natural world collide. I am Nate Hegyi here with producer Marina Henke.
Marina Henke: Hello.
Nate Hegyi: So, Marina, I brought you in here because I want to tell you this wild story. Okay, so the other day, I was at this animal rescue center in Sitka, Alaska.
Sophie Nilles: When we go in there, I'm going to have you stand sort of in the corner. I'm going to introduce you, get you walking around a little bit.
Nate Hegyi: This place used to be a community college, but each of the classrooms now has an animal in it. Okay. And I'm there with this trainer. Her name's Sophie Nilles.
Sophie Nilles: This is an enclosure. I've adorned it with different things. *Knocks* Hey, Onyx. Hi, buddy. I always say hi. Give him a heads up. Come on in.
Nate Hegyi: Just have me stay in the corner?
Sophie Nilles: You can come right over here.
Marina Henke: Oh, God. Nate, I can't even imagine what you're in front of right now.
Nate Hegyi: I go into the room, and then hanging out near this wall is Onyx.
Sophie Nilles: Onyx. Speak.
Sophie Nilles: Good boy.
Marina Henke: That sounds like a dog. Like a bark. Like a little roof.
Nate Hegyi: It is not a dog. It is a raven.
Marina Henke: Making that noise? Not. I just assume it's a “caw caw”
Nate Hegyi: No no no no no no. Much more guttural.
<<caw>>
Nate Hegyi: When you hear the word raven. What? What is the vibe? What's what's what do you think of.
Marina Henke: When I imagine a raven, I think of, like, very big black wings that are, like, swooping down in, like a German forest. Like that's my raven vibe.
Nate Hegyi: Very accurate when it comes to vibes of ravens. At least in Western culture, they are an ominous symbol of death. They are considered unclean by the Bible. A group of ravens, Marina, is called an unkindness.
Marina Henke: An unkindness! So if you're like seeing a bunch of ravens, You're like, that's an unkindness.
Nate Hegyi: I've also heard a conspiracy of ravens, but I am here to tell you that I think we have gotten it all wrong. I think that ravens are some of the most interesting, coolest, complex, and most importantly, smartest animals out there.
Marina Henke: This is gonna be a hard sell, Nate, because I'm spooked by them. I'm spooked. I'll say it now. So sell me. I'm ready.
Nate Hegyi: That is my mission. And to do that, I am gonna bring back our series. Holy scat. It's where we take a deep dive into parts of the natural world that are often overlooked, underappreciated. Misunderstood. We've done antlers, opossums, groundhogs, coyotes. And now.
Vincent Price: Quoth the raven. Nevermore.
Nate Hegyi: Hey, this is outside in a show where curiosity in the natural world collide. I am Nate Hegyi here with producer Marina Henke. Okay, so. Marina.
Marina Henke: Yes.
Nate Hegyi: Pop quiz. Can you give me three differences between ravens and crows?
Marina Henke: I think a raven is bigger than a crow.
Nate Hegyi: Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. That is correct.
Marina Henke: Really?
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Marina Henke: Yes. Okay. Number two, I'm gonna just keep going with this. With this good vibes. It's going. Um, I think that a raven has sharper talons than a crow.
Nate Hegyi: I don't know if that's the case, but I like it, I like it. I'm gonna look that up.
Marina Henke: And number three, the third classic difference between Raven and Crow.
Nate Hegyi: I love the confidence.
Marina Henke: You know, it's the only way I know how to be. Uh, it is a it's a difference in their diet is one only eating meat and one is eating vegetation, perhaps.
Nate Hegyi: I love that vegan crows out there. No, that's not the case. All right, so you got the size right. Ravens are bigger.
Another difference is that crows are very social – ravens, a little bit more solitary.
And then, ravens and crows – they also have very subtly different calls. So I'm going to play you two calls, and I want you to kind of tell me what you hear and the differences, you know, because you're a great birder.
Marina Henke: Yep. I'm on it.
Nate Hegyi: All right. Here we go.
Crow calls and raven calls: Ah ah ah.
Marina Henke: Do you want me to guess which one I think is a crow or a raven?
Nate Hegyi: Please do.
Marina Henke: I think the first one is a is a raven.
Nate Hegyi: You are wrong.
Marina Henke: Ah, man.
Nate Hegyi: Uh, Ravens a little bit more. Ah ah vs ah ah ah ah ah.
Marina Henke: Nate. You considered bird voice acting. If this doesn't work out.
Nate Hegyi: Once AI takes over this podcast? I'll just be making bird sounds.
MUX Sylvestor
Nate Hegyi: Okay, so that's the difference between ravens and crows. But the thing that brings them together is that they are both corvids. So this is a family of birds that also includes jays <<caw>> jackdaws, <<caw>> nutcrackers, <<caw>> magpies <<caw>> and technically, uh, corvids are a cosmopolitan family of bird. And this is an actual ecological term, by the way. What do you think that means?
Marina Henke: Well, it sounds so fancy.
Nate Hegyi: I know, right? You know, they're sipping, uh.
Marina Henke: They're getting drinks on a Friday night. They're going to the cinema. No, I think it's probably that they are in urban spaces, that they can thrive in urban spaces.
Nate Hegyi: That's such a good guess. And honestly, I think that's what it should mean. It does not mean that. What it means is that they are worldly. You can find members of the corvid family in almost all corners of the globe, and ravens, Marina, you can see them hanging out in subzero temps next to a Costco in Fairbanks, Alaska, or along a highway in the middle of the frickin hot Sonoran Desert. There are subspecies of ravens on Mount Everest in Death Valley, on skyscrapers in London, on Mount Washington, in New Hampshire.
Marina Henke: They're citizens of the world, it sounds like.
Nate Hegyi: But I think this is one of the reasons why we take corvids for granted. We see them everywhere. But I gotta tell you, ravens, crows, all those corvids, they are incredibly smart.
I want you to watch this video and tell me what's happening.
Marina Henke: I'm imagining I'm going to watch something scary.
Nate Hegyi: Come on. I'm trying to tell you that ravens aren't so scary.
Marina Henke: Okay, here I go. All right, so there's three little green cups and a raven is being presented with them. And then it's just tapped one of them.
Nate Hegyi: Yes, exactly. So essentially what this raven is doing is playing a very simple shell game. Are you familiar with shell games?
Marina Henke: Yeah. This is like you put something on her cup. And then mix them all around. You gotta guess where the treat is.
Nate Hegyi: So this is called a transposition test. And it's one of more than a dozen challenges in the primate cognition test battery.
Marina Henke: Oh, so this is like an official thing.
Nate Hegyi: Yes. Yes, this is an official thing. It was created by scientists in Germany almost two decades ago to judge the intelligence of different species. And let me tell you, Marina, this battery is pretty intensive. Like, there is a special memory game where the subject watches food being hid in multiple places throughout a room, and then they must remember where it was stashed. There are logic games, like using a stick or a string to get a treat that's out of reach, and then also they're judged on which stick they pick. Do they pick like the nice, good straight long stick? Or do they pick the stick that's like broken?
Marina Henke: Do you think they're getting stressed the day before these tests? I'd get stressed.
Nate Hegyi: What happens if they just get, you know, a couple of. No offense. Kind of dumb ravens.
Marina Henke: Or, like, I have a bad day. I think I'm a fairly intelligent person sometimes. I'm not batting 100.
Nate Hegyi: Okay, so originally they used these tests to compare human toddlers, chimpanzees and orangutans, thus the name “primate cognition test”.. But in 2020, German scientists wanted to see how ravens compared to apes in intelligence. So they tweaked the test slightly to allow for the fact that ravens are smaller. They use their beaks instead of their extremities, but it was pretty much the same battery of tests. And what they found was that even a four month old Raven, a juvenile, was as smart as an adult chimpanzee.
Marina Henke: Taking them to town. I feel like the chimpanzees, they have such a hold on us of, like, the smartest animal.
Nate Hegyi: Absolutely.
Marina Henke: This is really shifting that narrative for me.
Nate Hegyi: that intelligence, it's not just for us to, you know, go like, wow and throw them through a battery of tests. It gives them an edge in the wild. So ravens have been observed dropping rocks onto predators that get too close to their nests. Um, they've also teamed up with wolf packs, leading them to prey that once killed, can be snacked on by ravens. And they also play with the wolf pups like they do tug of war with sticks, and they start pulling their tails.
Marina Henke: It's like the Pixar of animal life relationships I've been waiting to to know about.
Nate Hegyi: I know this is this is real life. Uh, Ravens Also just like to have fun. Sometimes they'll just ride thermals for no reason. Uh, they've been seen sliding down snowbanks, so climbing to the top of a snowbank and then sliding down. And Marina, they make snow angels sometimes after a fresh snow.
Marina Henke: Whoa whoa whoa. How do they do that?
Nate Hegyi: They are. They have wings like an angel. They just flap their wings in the snow and make little snow angels just for fun.
Marina Henke: I'm imagining right now a ravens like personal calendar and it's like 9 a.m. play with some wolves. 2 p.m. make some snow angels. 3 p.m. chase some wolves to where I want them to go.
Nate Hegyi: So this this intelligence. It also extends to how ravens vocalize. Like first off, they are amazing mimics. Like parrot level mimics.
YouTube Video: Mischief. Can you say hello? Hello. Good bird. Can you say hi? Hi. Good job.
Marina Henke: Oh my gosh. So I feel like I've only allowed my imagination to give this skill to the parrot.
Nate Hegyi: Yes, I know, but corvids do the same thing. There's a video out there of of a raven speaking Russian.
Russian clip
Nate Hegyi: But they also mimic stuff they hear in nature, like Marina, where I live in Southeast Alaska. Ravens have a very specific sound. I'm going to play it for you now. And I want you to tell me what you think it is.
YouTube Video: DRIP That's her. Do you hear that? It's a raven. Look. Yeah.
Marina Henke: It almost sounds like little drops in the water.
Nate Hegyi: Exactly.
Marina Henke: What are they doing? What are they up to?
Nate Hegyi: Juneau is in the middle of a temperate rain forest, so there is a lot of water dripping from trees into puddles. And the ravens mimic that sound. I hear it everywhere out here. Just little. Sounds. And it's them mimicking water dropping into puddles.
Marina Henke: And are they just doing that for fun? Or is there a is there a reason for it?
Nate Hegyi: I don't know about water per se. I do know that they use mimicry to find each other sometimes. So if a raven loses their mate or they get, you know, like displaced or something like that, one raven will mimic the calls of the other raven to let them know, like, hey, I'm over here, I'm over here, I'm making your sound.
Marina Henke: Oh my gosh, it's like a it's like a strategic game of Marco Polo to find your lost loved one.
Nate Hegyi: Exactly.
Nate Hegyi: And you know, they don't just mimic sounds. They have dozens of vocalizations. They are constantly chatting with each other about where food is, what threats are out there.
And when a raven dies… they have corvid funerals.
Marina Henke: Corvid funerals.
Nate Hegyi: So ravens, crows, jays, members of the corvid family, they will gather around their fallen brother or sister, making like a huge racket for 15 or 20 minutes before flying away. And researchers think that they aren't grieving per se, but they're actually acting as murder detectives.
It’s like an episode of “Caw and Order.”
Nate Hegyi: So what they’re doing is Examining the dead body. Figuring out how it died.
They want to make sure that if there’s some kind of threat – they know about it, and won’t fall victim to the same fate.
So if these ravens catch a human hanging around one of their dead brethren, they might figure that human had something to do about it.
And they'll remember that person’s face for years. Ravens are incredibly good at holding a grudge.
So for example, Sophie Nilles the avian specialist from the beginning of the episode - part of her job is rescuing injured birds. And one day
Sophie Nilles: I Was called to this baseball field. A little nestling crow was on the ground, unable to fly because we later found out it had a broken wing. I came over to that baby and the crows immediately were mobbing me. So mobbing is just a behavior where they all get together. They're yelling, they're screaming, they're dive bombing, and they're saying, hey, don't take our kin. You know, this is this is our this is part of our family. And so when I would come back here the next time that family of crows is probably going to recognize me and probably going to dive bomb my head and yell at me and congregate in the trees above me like a scary nightmare.
Nate Hegyi: ‘cause think about it, corvids. They are surrounded by threats. I mean, raptors and raccoons target their nests and kill their babies. People will shoot them for fun or for target practice. They can get lead poisoning from eating dead animals shot by hunters. And all of this can create some pretty suspicious birds. Have you ever heard of the term neophobic?
Marina Henke: No, I have not.
Nate Hegyi: It is my new favorite word. It means afraid or wary of new things.
Marina Henke: Are you neophobic, Nate?
Nate Hegyi: Sometimes. You know when it comes to like AI.
Marina Henke: Oh, I'm neophobic then.
Nate Hegyi: All right, so, uh, corvids, they can be very neophobic that rehabilitated raven. That Sophie works with, Onyx.
Sophie Nilles: If you bring in something new, he will do, like 60 laps around it. For example, I brought in a baby pool in here to Onyx's enclosure, filled it with snow, built a snowman. He didn't touch that thing for seven weeks. Not seven weeks. About a week because he was so nervous about it. But he spent that week patrolling, looking at it, understanding it, and eventually he started interacting with it and rolling in the snow in there.
Marina Henke: Trepidatious is a new word I'm thinking about when I think of ravens.
Nate Hegyi: Ooh, I like that. Trepidatious. That's a great word I don't use trepidatious enough.
Marina Henke: I just feel so bad I'm calling them spooky. Turns out trepidatious.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah. Sophie didn't bring that kiddy pool in just to make Onyx feel trepidatious. She's always trying to stimulate his brain because, you know, he's a rehabilitated bird hanging out in an enclosure by himself all day. So she's been teaching him tricks using a clicker. Do you know what clickers are?
Marina Henke: People use them for dog training, right?
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, yeah, it's like classic positive reinforcement training. Onyx does something you like, you click to mark the behavior and then you treat. So.
Sophie Nilles: Just tossed him a peanut. He's gonna rip that up and eat it.
Nate Hegyi: Sophie has taught him how to speak, how to paint with his feet. The coolest thing that Onyx did, though, when I was there, was something completely spontaneous.
Sophie Nilles: Oh my God, he's okay. So cute. Was he doing? Oh he is. He just opened his kennel door and walked into his kennel. Um, this is something I am training him to do right now, to voluntarily walk into a kennel for emergency reasons, and to be able to just explore the rest of the facility. This is a really big deal that he's doing this in front of Nate because, oh my God, I could cry because this is a really big sign of trust.
Marina Henke: Oh, my heart has grown three times the size for Onyx.
Nate Hegyi: I think is fascinating. For an animal that is as intelligent as complex as a raven is. They do get this, like, kind of heavy rap.
Nate Hegyi: And we are going to get into WHY they have that heavy rap… after a break.
And so after the break, we are going to get into the myth and lore of ravens. But before we do, I want to hear from you all about your interactions with corvids. Have you ever had a whiskey jack land on your finger? A crow family attack you? Have you ever heard a raven make an odd sound? Send us a voice memo to Outside In at npr.org. Do you know what a whiskey jack is, by the way?
Marina Henke: I have no idea what a whiskey jack is.
Nate Hegyi: They're like little jays. And in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. I remember as a kid, you could put your finger out, and they would land on your finger if you had a treat. And so they would just, like, they were, like the friendliest birds in the world.
Marina Henke: I don't think I've ever had a bird land on my finger. Gotta go find one.
Nate Hegyi: I did not have onyx land on my finger, by the way. I was still a little spooky.
Nate Hegyi: Hey, this is outside in a show where curiosity in the natural world collide. I am Nate Hegyi here with Marina Henke.
Marina Henke: Hello.
Nate Hegyi: Okay, Marina, what's your favorite snack?
Marina Henke: Peanut M&Ms.
Nate Hegyi: Really?
Marina Henke: Yeah, and I count them as a snack, cause that's. That's a nut. That's some chocolate. It's a little combo snack.
Nate Hegyi: Wait, do you do you assume that all snacks have to be combos?
Marina Henke: I think some people might hear me say peanut M&M, and they might say, Marina, that's a candy. That's not a snack.
Nate Hegyi: That's silly. Candies are snacks. All right. Onyx. The rehabilitated raven I met. He also has some favorite snacks.
Sophie Nilles: Are you squirmish at all?
Nate Hegyi: No, no, not at all.
Nate Hegyi: His trainer, Sophie Nilles, took me to the Alaska Raptor Center's kitchen to show me. She pulls out this Tupperware, And it was full of stuff that I would not eat late at night watching a movie.
Sophie Nilles: Onyx. He's gonna get a mixture of a lot of things right now. Today he has some salmon, he has bear meat. He has a few dog kibbles in there. Um, this is a rat tail. Loves that.
Marina Henke: That was unexpected.
Nate Hegyi: Sophie is trying to mimic what Onyx would eat in the wild.
Sophie Nilles: So obviously they're going to be eating pretty much anything they come across, whether it's the pizza in the trash can or the baby bird out of the nest or, you know, the dead opossum in the street that was hit from the night before.
Nate Hegyi: Evolutionary wise, this is a pretty handy trait, right?
Marina Henke: Yeah. You're never going hungry.
Nate Hegyi: But also, scavengers are a super important part of the ecosystem for us. I mean, like Marina, imagine a world without scavengers.
Marina Henke: Yeah, I guess I've never thought of, like the detritus of, like, roadkill. That sometimes a Ravens picking that up.
Nate Hegyi: Ravens, crows, whatever. All our scavengers are just cleaning up the highways. And not to mention all the pathogens and diseases that would be out there without something cleaning up our dead. But eating the dead. It is a big reason why ravens have a dark cloud hanging over them in Western culture.
If there was a plague.
Monty Python: Bring out your dead one.
Nate Hegyi: If there was a big battle.
Braveheart
A public execution.
Monty Python: You know she is a witch. She looks like one.
Nate Hegyi: There were ravens picking on the dead.
MUX Cabana Flats
Nate Hegyi: How is your Bible knowledge, by the way?
Marina Henke: My Bible knowledge.
Nate Hegyi: Do you remember? Like what the big beats of Noah's Ark are at all?
Marina Henke: Uh, there is a massive flood and all of the animals are put onto Noah's Ark. He is going to take them and they are going to survive the flood. They are paired. Uh, and that's that.
Nate Hegyi: So after the big flood, Noah releases two birds to figure out if the waters had receded. A dove and a raven dove eventually comes back with an olive branch. But the raven. The raven never comes back. And it's been widely interpreted. That's because it was feeding on all the dead people and animals.
Marina Henke: Ah, see, I mean, that is tough for the reputation of the raven.
Nate Hegyi: And this heavy vibe. It has stretched all the way from Genesis to Edgar Allan Poe, who this is. I think my favorite fact of this whole episode originally was going to use a parrot as the talking bird in his famous story, but he switched over to the Raven because of all that creepy, spooky history.
Marina Henke: Can you imagine if we said, oh, have you read The Parrot by Edgar Allan Poe? It's Halloween, we should pick up the parrot.
Nate Hegyi: And what would the most famous quote be? Quoth the parrot. Nevermore.
Nate Hegyi: But it's not all bad dark Raven stories and myths. The Raven does get kind of a good rap in some places, so Great Britain ravens are considered the protectors of the crown and kingdom. They live in the Tower of London and they are protected by a special Raven master.
But there is one story in particular, Marina, that I really, really love, and it comes from the Tlingit people of Southeast Alaska.
Will Geiger: When I see a raven, the first thing that comes to my mind is the word yeith, which means raven in Tlngit.
Nate Hegyi: So this is Will Geiger, and he is a fluent Tlingit speaker. And I should say the pronunciations in Tlingit are so different than in English that I am going to use the anglicized version of their name. And while Will isn't a member of the Tlingit tribe, he works for one of their nonprofits, and he has been tasked with translating all of these oral stories about the character Raven.
Will Geiger: In the stories, he appears most often in the form of a human being, but he has all these raven like characteristics. He's very, um, curious. He's often hopping around like a raven and flying, and he's ravenous no matter how much he eats. He's just a bottomless pit, just like ravens you see there. They're really hungry.
Marina Henke: Ravenous, a bottomless pit.
Nate Hegyi: When I was editing this with Taylor, we were like, does the word ravenous come from ravens? It doesn't.
Marina Henke: Shoot.
Nate Hegyi: The character Raven. He will do anything to get food. He will kill others. He will trick them. And in one case, he literally changed the entire world just to get back at some people who didn't give him food. That story is called The Origin of Daylight.
MUX Bismuth Boss
Nate Hegyi: So this story starts in a world before daylight. Everything is dark. There is no moon. No stars. Nothing.
But there are people in this world – and they can’t see, but they can hear.
Raven comes to this river and you can hear some fishermen hanging out. Remember, he is always ravenous. So he calls out to these fishermen.
Will Geiger: **Tlingit** would send me something to eat and these people refuse him. And he says, oh, you watch out. Or I could break daylight on you folks.
Marina Henke: Break daylight? Those are some fight. I don't even know what it means. And those are some fighting words.
Nate Hegyi: Now, at that moment, though, it was an empty threat by Raven. But then these fishermen, they say this insult, they say.
Will Geiger: Who's this so-called, uh, child of the head of the Nass to have the daylight.
Nate Hegyi: So the Nass is a major river in Southeast Alaska. But then Raven gets to thinking maybe there is actually someone on the Nhus who can actually deliver on his threat. So he goes to the head of the river, the head of the Nhus.
Will Geiger: Where there's a kind of wealthy man living with his family, and he possesses these containers within which are the daylight and the moon and the stars, depending on the storyteller.
Nate Hegyi: So, Raven, he comes up with an elaborate plan. First, he shrinks himself and hides in a dipper of water. That water dipper is brought into the house.
Will Geiger: And then that wealthy man's daughter drinks that water, and he slips down inside of her and turns into a baby.
Nate Hegyi: Raven is reborn, grows up, becomes a toddler.
Will Geiger: He starts crying relentlessly and gesturing towards the containers of these luminaries. And, uh, it just can't take the crying anymore. So the grandfather is like, sure. take that down and let him play with it. I just I don't care anymore. It doesn't matter how precious it is to me. Let him have it. And one by one, he gets his hands on them and releases them outside. So first the stars and then the moon. And then he gets his hand on the daylight, and he kind of waits till no one's looking at him. And he goes, oh. And cores like a raven and flies up out the smoke hole and disappears.
Nate Hegyi: And then in the ultimate payback, Raven goes back to those fishermen, the guys who insulted him.
Will Geiger: And he has the same sort of threat. Send me some food or I'll. I'll crack open the daylight on you guys. And, um, they're like, ah, who are you to, you know, have the daylight. And then this time he really does and cracks it open and boom, Boom. And then the whole cosmos is radically transformed.
Marina Henke: Conniving genius is what I'm feeling. yo, you wouldn't give me food. Boom, now you got daylight broke upon you.
Marina Henke: Boom. Every day of your life has changed.
MUX Town Market
Nate Hegyi: there are other, arguably more majestic animals in Tlingit stories, like the eagle or the wolf, but it is the raven that is the most developed, complicated character. Like, he's arguably the most human like, he can solve problems, deceive. He's selfish. He's not above dealing out some payback.
Marina Henke: Hmm. I mean, it makes me wonder the instinct we have to be scared or to say, the foreboding. Like, I think sometimes when animals are intelligent, at least in, like, Western culture, I don't know if we always know what to do with that. And so we say you must be causing a problem. You eat gross things you're up to no good cause to reckon with the other side is to say, oh, you have intelligence. You are like me, you know, you do perceive me and I perceive you.
Nate Hegyi: Ravens remind us of us. Like, that's one of the reasons why Sophie Nilles Loves working with the rehabilitated Raven Onyx.
Sophie Nilles: This might not relate to all people, but for me, being a neurodivergent person, I feel like I can be very comfortable around him because he has all of his weird quirks and I have all my weird quirks, and I have a hard time around people. But with Onyx, he makes you feel like, hey man, I'm kind of strange too. I need a lot of specific things and it makes you put yourself aside. It makes you wholly dedicate your time to him and what he needs. And, um, it's just amazing. I don't know, you just relate to him. It's just great.
That is it for today’s episode. I thought about training a raven to read the credits but I ran out of rat tails to feed them.
So it’s just me.
This episode was written, produced and mixed by me, Nate Hegyi, your host.
It was edited by ravenmaster Taylor Quimby.
Our head of house ravenclaw is Rebecca Lavoie, head of on-demand audio at NHPR.
Our Baltimore Ravens offensive line includes Left guard Felix Poon, Right guard Marina Henke, left tackle Jessica Hunt and right tackle Justine Paradis.
Music in this episode was by Blue Dot Sessions.
And quoth the raven, “Outside/In is a production of NHPR”