Wade Davis is a Canadian cultural anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author, and photographer. Davis came to prominence with his 1985 best-selling book The Serpent and the Rainbow about the ‘zombies of Haiti’. He is professor of anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia.

Davis has published articles in Journal of Ethnopharmacology, Outside, National Geographic, Fortune, and Condé Nast Traveler. He is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society and had produced 18 documentary films. His work has largely focused on worldwide indigenous cultures, and has taken him to, among others, East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru and Tibet.

As a honorary citizen of Colombia, Wade Davis educates about the true culture of a country known mostly for its drug cartels and cocaine scandals. Listen to this week’s episode to find out about Colombia and its sacred plant - Coca, a stimulant milder than tea and with more nutritional benefits than all the plants we know of.

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Leaves of Grass

Gold Museum, Bogotá

Kogi people

Morphine

Opium

Opioids

How Coffee Fuelled Revolutions

Caffeine

Penny university

DEA Drug Scheduling

Hallucinogens

Timothy Leary

Manuel Santos

Cocaine

Coca leaves

Coca wine (Vin Mariani)

Dennis McKenna

Albert Hoffman

Peyote

Richard Evans Shultes

Alkaloid

Volstead act

Andrew Weil