Week 8 Interview with Wade Davis and Peter Gzowski

        The interview with Wade Davis and Peter Gzowski focuses on Gzowski’s book The Serpent and the Rainbow. When I first listened to the interview, I felt that it went on in a quite informal way as it seems that the interviewer’s questions were not well prepared and it’s more like chatting between friends. Also, Davis questions are to a large extent based on Gzowski’s answer of the last question, so the flow of the whole interview seems very natural and casual.

        However, after I listened to it several times and transcribed the interviewer’s questions, I found those questions are quite structured. The organization of the interview questions goes from general to specific. Gzowski first asked about Davis’s identity when writing this book, the nature of the book, its purpose and targeted audience and so on. After that, he asked about more specific contents of the book and finally, implications the Gzowski draw from the book. One the one hand, the interview is well-organized and we can see some questions are pre-planed, for example, the interviewer asked what the interviewee set up to do and the lesson from the book for modern medicine. On the other hand, there are questions that flows from the interviewer’s listening such as “Was it 350,000 times more powerful as cocaine?”. Furthermore, sometimes the interviewer tried to ask for clarification from the interviewee or check if his understanding is correct or not (e.g. do you mean that?), which, in turn, promote the interviewee to talk more about the topic.

        As we can see from the questions, one possible purpose of this interview is to introduce a new book to readers as by listening to this, the audience interest of the book might be raised. Another possible purpose is to satisfy some readers curiosity towards the author and meanwhile to answer questions or make readers have a deeper understanding.

Interview Questions:

00:30 Tell me what you set up to do? Is this an essentially academic exercise or an exercise of adventure writing?

01:11 But I’m thinking when you came back to start sorting through your materials, I mean, the book is a symbol so much, it began so much like an old thrilling adventuring yard, you must have been aware of that as you are writing it? Now a professor has beautiful daughters and all those things happened to you have a kind of just set out I mean starts like a movie.

02:42 When the academic community generally think of what, cuz there was some evidence. there were some stories that peak their interests and you got asked to go down there, outline where they thought were going

03:41 Do you mean that… Give me the Nase’s case…

04:17 This guy died. And they added all the symptoms they knew that they turned blue and all the stuff about it. Then in 1980s there comes the guy.

05:09 So they got all way the F know but and they said: “you go down there to see if there are drugs could do this”, right?

And tell me now how do you go… Cuz you hadn’t been Haiti before. You did a lot of traveling you kicked around the world a lot including in the jungles of south America. Tell me, just take me to Haiti with you, you get off quickly to see things going on.

06:46 I want to know a little bit about the drug, I mean, your scholarship really shows up in the bucket you should go through, you have obviously read all the literature of the old drug. It’s fascinating, cuz it’s half romance and it’s half science as you are talking about. If you are, I’m really simplifying it, and you can straight me out pharmacologically. But here you go, you boiled a toad, you get what you get, it’s not what your boiled tow but there are secretions, here, and certain kinds of toads that are poisonous. You talked about blowfish, you don’t eat blowfish, it was puffer fish, it hits your tongue. But it’s also that it knocks you down. The chemistry is solid here.

08:15 Was it 350,000 times more powerful as cocaine?

08:40 you just said, as you are talking about this morning. It’s also evident in the book. But you just said there are certain community assumptions that are important. If you don’t believe in this, it doesn’t work, right?

10:29 Would you be a little hypothetical. You didn’t witness this but you put together all of the evidences. Tell me what could happen in a village where he gets out of line and somebody is going to zombie him and gave him the powder.

11:14 You cannot so far they are breathing

12: 57 To what extent do you buy the hypothesis of the existence of a secret society or a set of secret societies with access to this information, with the thread of turning someone into a zombie if you go against what they are doing in your community. Cuz this is, the book is very much about Haitian and the history, and the darkness of that society. You buy the existence of this society.

15:08 What about bringing people back? What about coming back from being a zombie?

16:45 Is there any quick, easy, handy lesson for modern medicine out of your discoveries? Cuz you have confirmed something and talked about.