Cultural Legacy of Amanita Muscaria

Lawrence Millman is an adventurer, writer and mycologist.  He is the author of many books, including Northern Latitudes, Lost in the Arctic, A Kayak Full of Ghosts, Fascinating Fungi of New England, Mushroom Apocalypse, Giant Polypores and Stoned Reindeer and most recently Fungipedia: A Brief Compendium of Mushroom Lore. His work has also appeared in Smithsonian, National Geographic Adventure, the Atlantic Monthly and Sports Illustrated. He has won numerous awards and has been anthologized in the Best American Travel Writing three years in a row.  Lawrence also holds a Ph.D. in Literature from Rutgers University. He has made over 30 trips to the Arctic and Subarctic during his adventuring career and was a fellow of the prestigious Explorers Club. In his travels he discovered a previously unknown lake in Borneo, and had a mountain named after him outside Tasiilaq in eastern Greenland.  Today we talk about shamanism in the arctic, the use of the psychoactive amanita musica or fly agaric mushroom in those traditions and the connection to the modern Santa Claus myth.