Transcribed Interview with Wade Davis and Peter Gzowski

Transcribed Interview with Wade Davis and Peter Gzowski (18:00)

Intro:

For centuries, fantastic stories have emanated from Haiti about voodoo ritual, about people being raised from the dead, and mysterious secret societies. Wade Davis is a Canadian student at Harvard, spent a couple of years in Haiti, trying to uncover the truth behind the stories of voodoo and zombies. The results of his investigation are in his new book “The Serpent and the Rainbow” and he joins me this morning in the studio, good morning, Wade…

Question 1 (explore researcher’s paradigm and intention):

Tell me what you set out to do? Is this essentially an academic exercise or an exercise in adventure writing?

Follow up: But I’m thinking as you came back and started to sort through your materials, it is assembled so much, it begins so much like a good old thrilling adventure, you must have been aware of that as you were writing… it starts like a movie…

Question 2 (learn external reasons):

Why did the academic community generally think of … there was some evidence that, there were some stories that peaked their interest, and you got asked to go down there, outline what they thought was going on there…

Question 3 (introduce research case):

Give me the Narcisse case, you’ve become so familiar with this now…

Follow up:

This guy had died! ...And they had all his symptoms, they knew that he had turned blue, and they knew all this stuff about him…and in 1980 here comes this guy

So they get Wade, the ethno-botanist and they said you go down there and see if there are drugs that can do this, right?

Question 4 (learn researcher’s experience):

And tell me know, how do you go, because you hadn’t been to Haiti before, you had done a lot of travelling, you kicked around the world a lot, in the jungles of South America, just take me to Haiti with you, because you go right there, you get awfully quickly to things that are going on

Question 5 (learn about technical research):

I want to talk a little bit about the drug, because your scholarship really shows up in the book as you go through, you have obviously read all the literature on all of the drugs, and it’s fascinating because it’s half romance and it’s half science. I’m really over-simplifying and you can straighten me out pharmacologically here but here you boil a toad, right, you get, what you get is not just boiled toad but there are secretions and certain kinds of toads that poisonous you talk about the blowfish which we all know you don’t eat the blowfish or the puffer fish because it hurts your [stomach], but it also turns out that it knocks you down and the chemistry is solid here

Follow up:

Was it [tetrodotoxin] 350 thousand times as powerful as cocaine?

I knew there was a giant figure there

Question 6 (learn about social aspects of research):

You said that as you were talking about it in the morning, and this is also evident in the book, you say that there is some certain community assumptions, and that really boils down to if you don’t believe in this, it doesn’t work

Question 7 (learn about social aspects of research): Would you be able to hypothetical, and because you didn’t witness this, but you have put together a lot of evidence… tell me what could happen in a village where a guy gets out of line, and the guy is going to zombie him

Follow up:

You could knock someone down so far that they’re breathing and…

Question 8 (learn about social aspects of research):

To what extent do you buy the hypothesis of a secret society or a set of secret society that has access to this information and with the threat of turning you into a zombie if you against what they are doing in your community, because this is a, the book is very much about Haiti and this history of Haiti and the darkness of that society, do you buy the existence of the secret society?

Follow up: What about bringing the people back, what about coming back from the zombie…

Question 9 (researcher’s insights):

Is there any quick easy handy lesson for modern medicine out of your discoveries, because you have confirmed something, and you did talk about the…

Conclusion: Thank you very much, Wade Davis is the Author of the Serpent and the Rainbow...

Reflection

The interview with Wade Davis was exploratory and a dialogue, but with very clear objectives. Specifically, the themes explored in the interview are:

1)    Researcher’s paradigm and intentions (Question 1)

2)    External reasons for the research (Question 2)

3)    Researcher’s experience (Question 4)

4)    Learning about the research (Question 3, 5, 6,7, 8)

5)    Researcher’s insights (Question 9)

It is clear that Peter Gzowski did his research on the topic. The format was based on questions that were open-ended, such that they allowed Wade Davis to answer freely, but still provided specific parameters or scope of inquiry. For example, the first question: “Tell me what you set out to do? Is this essentially an academic exercise or an exercise in adventure writing?” Although the question is open ended, Peter Gzowski set the parameters by first introducing the general topic (the research on voodoo in Haiti, and the book resulting from the research). Secondly, he limited the answer to options – academic or adventure writing.

The interview was a set of questions, but also at times conversational. The interviewer achieved a more conversational format by asking follow up questions from the interviewee’s answer or reaffirming or adding to what the interviewee was saying.  Based on my transcribing of the interview, I interpreted 9 questions (and 9 follow up questions or comments) out of the 18 times Peter Gzowski spoke.

The interviewer was able to guide the interviewee through the general “planned” direction of his interview by leading into related, yet different questions. For example, after the first question and follow up (which was more directed to the Wade Davis’ personal experience), the interviewer then asked a question external to the interviewee (that is, the academic community’s reason for researching this topic).

I particularly liked when Peter Gzowski asked Wade Davis situational questions, such as “Take me to Haiti with you…” (Question 4) or “…what could happen in a village…” (Question 7) because these questions give the reader/ listener a personal experience that could be easier to understand and empathize with.