Stephen Davis
speaker
46 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Stephen Davis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
We have a man dying suddenly, and we don't know why. The organization responsible for him just wants to wrap it under the carpet. And they have no grounds for complaining that there are lots of suspicions because they acted in an incredibly suspicious way right from the start. You know, it's appalling.
It's appalling that the National Science Foundation and the US government allowed this to happen.
I have been to spectacular, scenic places all over the world, and there's nothing like Antarctica. You know, you look outside and the sun is there at 3 o'clock in the morning, tracking slowly across the horizon because it's light the whole time in the summer. And the next thing you realize after you get over the physical part of it is how awe-inspiringly beautiful it is.
I remember talking to the guide about the beauty and the dangers of the place, and he said something which really stuck with me. He said, this is the most beautiful place that's also trying to kill you.
I suspect that after my investigation, the chances of the U.S. authorities letting me go to the South Pole are pretty minimal, to be honest.
When people think of the Antarctica and they think of ice and they probably think of snow and things that melt. It's not like that. It's solid ice rock and it's an incredibly dry climate. You can't just go and find water. You can't just chip into the ice. I am one of those people who thought of it that way.
His supervisor in Boston, the wonderfully named Tony Stark, who I interviewed, said Rodney was doing well. His science was doing well. He had all the sort of incarnations of a man who was having a successful career and doing what he loved.
Winter over at the South Pole is when all the summer people have gone and a small group stay behind. Rather than being light all the time, when I was down there it is dark 24-7. Exceptionally cold, very difficult to move around. You are effectively trapped.
He was in a band down there with his then girlfriend. So they celebrated the millennium at the South Pole and his band played a concert. And, you know, they had, as it were, a few drinks and an amazing celebration.
Over a 36-hour period, he made three trips to the doctor's surgery. He was at one stage, vomiting blood. He had severe headaches. During one visit he wore sunglasses because he was complaining about his eyesight and the pain behind his eyes. During the night he was sleepless, he felt scared, his breathing became uncontrollably fast, his joints were painful.
At one stage the doctor injected him with a sedative. which calmed him down and he returned to his own bed. On another visit, he became hyperventilating and the doctor found him to be combative. I think he was desperate to know what was happening to him. He was given an antipsychotic injection to calm him down.
But all of this, I think, was a doctor guessing and guessing wrong at what happened to him.
What I think was equally or even more shocking is what happened immediately after that. So you can imagine in New York, somebody at a lab dies suddenly for no apparent reason and very quickly. What would happen then? The police would be involved. People would be interviewed. Tests would be done because you want to find out how he died.
It was a fascinating story. But in the course of investigating it, a source said to me, it's very easy to cover things up. in a place like this, because access is controlled by authorities and it's a long way away from anywhere. And you know what, Stephen, you should look at the death of this scientist last year.
And that was the start of my investigation, an investigation which has carried on now for 23 years.
They had a dead man and months to go before he could be taken anywhere. So his body was held effectively in a freezer and finally they decided to make a coffin for him and have a ceremony and bury him in the ice. and then at the end of the winter, dig them up again and ship them back to Christchurch.
Their plan was just to have him sent back to Australia with no investigation, no follow-up. No, why did this man die suddenly at the South Pole? And it would have remained a mystery for all times, except a New Zealand coroner based in Christchurch, who was actually an Antarctic buff, heard about this and said, well, hold on a second. I'm going to intervene here.
And a New Zealand police detective was assigned to do an investigation. Here's the interesting thing. When the New Zealand coroner and the New Zealand police officer intervened, the US authorities complained vociferously. You know, South Pole is our territory. Why are you doing? What's your jurisdiction?
They complained and tried to put pressure on the New Zealand government to stop the entire thing. This is the man's employer. This is the National Science Foundation. Why would they be preventing a proper investigation into the death of one of their scientists at the South Pole? Absolutely extraordinary.
When the toxicology was done in Christchurch, shockingly, it was discovered he had died of methanol poisoning.
Showing 1–20 of 46 · page 1 of 3
Next →