Arts & Life

Goldenseal I

Montana Public Radio | By Beth Anne Austein

Published September 6, 2014 at 5:00 AM MDT

There's a persistent urban legend concerning the herb, goldenseal: take it before a urine test and you'll get false-negative results for a variety of recreational drugs. Disappointingly for those who try, goldenseal won't mask drug residues in the blood. The idea came from Stringtown on the Pike, a novel published in 1900 by plant pharmacist John Uri Lloyd. In the book, goldenseal causes a false-positive result for strychnine poisoning.

(Podcast: The Plant Detective, 9/6/14)

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Beth Anne Austein

Beth Anne Austein has been spinning tunes on the air (The Folk Show, Dancing With Tradition, Freeforms), as well as recording, editing and mixing audio for Montana Public Radio and Montana PBS, since the Clinton Administration. She’s jockeyed faders or "fixed it in post” for The Plant Detective; Listeners Bookstall; Fieldnotes; Musicians Spotlight; The Write Question; Storycorps; Selected Shorts; Bill Raoul’s music series; orchestral and chamber concerts; lecture series; news interviews; and outside producers’ programs about topics ranging from philosophy to ticks.

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