This is the memory palace.

I'm Nate Dimaio.

The earliest surviving record of an encounter of a European and a talking tropical bird

comes from the travelogue of the Greek physician Cetezius, who wrote about his time in India

with a marvelous red-beak bird who spoke the region's native language like a local, at

least the doctors' ears.

He even managed to teach the presumed parakeet a bit of his own language.

The physician didn't seem to quite understand that the bird didn't actually speak, as

we think of it, it hadn't mastered human language, of course, but was rather simulating

speech.

And that, to the bird, the doctor's words, well they were Greek to him.

Increasing European contact with the warmer parts of the world brought a modest stream of tropical

birds to the trading ports of the Mediterranean.

And after a while, your Greeks and Romans and Turks and Gauls and whatnot came to understand

at least some of the limits of what your average parrot or cockatoo could understand.

But the birds were prized as pets.

The talking was maybe not actual talking, but was still hilarious.

In their vibrant feathers, their ability to learn tricks, a good parrot was a good time.

And so exotic birds have been part of the Western life for a couple of thousand years.

Plenty of the elder kept one in his Roman apartments, taught it to say, Hail Caesar.

Henry VIII had a gray parrot he trained to call to the boatman on the other side of the

river.

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