The Cowboy Philosopher

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Today's episode begins in a subterranean labyrinth. It's 2018, and we're below the streets of Washington, D.C. I've come here in search of clues.

So here we are in Deck 50 in the stacks of the Library of Congress. I'm opening a door that's marked Door 20.

My guide through the Library of Congress's massive collection is a tall, shaggy man. His name is Steve Winick. He looks a lot like Hagrid from Harry Potter, which seems about right for someone with the title of folklorist. Steve has already led me through a maze of low-ceilinged stacks, across a small bridge, and into a tiny elevator where the floor numbers go up as we move down. Finally, we arrive at our destination.

And in here, We find row upon row of collection boxes on the shelves, and I'm looking for this collection, which is numbered AFC 1979-008.

Steve pulls from the shelf a cardboard box.

Nobody's really used this collection very much, so it's simply, you know, been there waiting for, for you, really.

The author of this collection is Richard Riley Shepard, A small-time crook and con man who died in 2009. I've been tracking Riley Shepard for a few months. My assumption is that there's nothing of significance in the box. But I'm about to discover that the story I thought I was reporting is not, in fact, the full story. The story that's about to unfold before me is a story of obsession. Its power, its beauty, and its costs. This week on Hidden Brain, we bring you a classic episode about the peculiar life of a man named Riley Shepard. He was a musician and writer who spent decades on a single grand project. Whether that project was a great quest or a great folly, that is for you to decide.

He he was a genius, I think.

He just was a compulsive liar.

Quite a master.

Scott, Hickey free.

He was getting out of town before he was being tarred and feathered.

I got to get this done.

They all hated my guts, so I said, "Well." Support for Hidden Brain comes from Planet Visionaries, professional climber and environmental advocate Alex Honnold. Planet Visionaries, a podcast spotlighting the people tackling climate challenges with real hopeful solutions. Throughout season 6, Alex brings together extraordinary changemakers for powerful conversations about grit, determination, and the power of hope to fuel our fight for a better future. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

Quick question. Do people come to you for answers at work? Maybe you're managing projects, training new hires, or just the one everyone relies on. That's leadership. Through UVA Darden's Part-Time MBA in Rosslyn, we help professionals like you turn real-world experience into recognized leadership credentials without stepping away from your career. Whether you work in healthcare, education, government, or business, this is how you take the next step. Learn more at darden.virginia.edu/ptmba.

Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. I stumbled onto the story as I was contemplating an episode not about obsession, but about fallen heroes. I'd asked hidden brain listeners to share examples from their own lives. One of the messages—I hope I did this right—was from Stacia Shepherd Silverman. She said her fallen hero was her dad, Riley Shepard, whom she still loved.

I want to say that I had a great relationship with my father. He was totally cool in many ways and a great cook, totally into—

When we talk, Stasha tells me that as a young girl, she idolized her dad. She has memories of those days that feel like tiny sparkling gems.

My earliest memory of my dad is sitting on his lap and him smoking his cigar, and he would make cigar smoke rings for me.

Stacia would watch them, transfixed, as they rose in the air before her.

I thought the smoke rings were magical.

There was a lot that was magical for Stacia back then. She still remembers their little apartment in Hollywood with the Siamese cat and the cat hair and the hardwood floors. She remembers how much she loved that her dad was around all the time.

He didn't have a regular job, and he would sit in the middle of the living room, usually, wherever we lived, and he would type. So he was working on things. He was working on a I didn't know what, but I would sit under his desk sometimes while he typed away, and we would talk in between the pages, and he would tell me things about show business.

They were in their own little bubble— Riley in his late 50s and his little daughter— typing, talking, just being together. Sometimes, if Riley had a little money, he'd take Tasha out to eat at their favorite Hollywood hotspot, a restaurant called the Brown Derby. It was a place where Riley could rub shoulders with famous people, charm them with his warm Southern accent, and impress his daughter on their way home.

You know, the Hollywood stars were all around us. We could walk up the street, and my father would tell me about movie stars when we walked. He seemed to know everything.

Stasha was certain that her dad was something of a star himself. Sometimes he'd tell her about his musical career as a successful promoter, singer, and songwriter. Occasionally, he might even sing the song, his song. I'll have a blue Christmas without you.

I'll be so blue.

He told me, and he told everyone, that he wrote the song Blue Christmas.

It wasn't true. Billy Hayes and Jay Johnson wrote Blue Christmas. The person who made it famous? Elvis. If Riley had written Blue Christmas, money might not have been so tight for the family.

I was told constantly that we were artists. and that there were artists and there were ordinary people, and we were artists.

Stasia eventually learned about her dad's most important artistic endeavor— not a song, but a writing project.

The Encyclopedia of Folk Music. And that was supposedly his life's work. And it was vast.

I mean, there were boxes there, huge boxes of volumes of indexes and To fund its creation, Riley solicited money from investors, some of whom he convinced to pour thousands of dollars into the project. Sometimes investors and bill collectors would call to ask when they were going to get paid.

He used to get on the phone with all kinds of people and Say, you didn't get the check? What? The post office? He would constantly rail against the post office. So as a little girl, I also became very militant against the post office. I also would rail against the post office. And if I had a pen pal or a friend that I was writing a letter to, I'd always write on the outside of the envelope, you better deliver this letter. You know, I was like enraged with the post office that they wouldn't deliver letters because I just thought they're constantly throwing my dad under the bus and not mailing his checks.

For many children, there is a moment when a curtain pulls back and parents are revealed for who they are— imperfect beings with flaws and failings. But for Stacia, The father she saw when the curtain opened was hard to recognize. It happened one day when she was 12, hanging out at home.

And the phone rang. So I picked it up. I said hello.

The caller demanded to speak to her dad. Stacia said he was out.

His voice was shaking, and I could tell he was elderly. And He just sounded like a mean old man to me. He scared me. And he told me that my father took his life savings. The phone is in my ear and he's saying, your father's a crook. Did you know that? Your father is a crook.

How Stasia responded to that phone call when we come back. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Quick question: Do people come to you for answers at work? Maybe you're managing projects, training new hires, or just the one everyone relies on. That's leadership. Through UVA Darden's Part-Time MBA in Rosslyn, we help professionals like you turn real-world experience into recognized leadership credentials without stepping away from your career. Whether you work in healthcare, education, government, or business, this is how you take the next step. Learn more at darden.virginia.edu/ptmba.

Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In 1946, Riley Shepard released a cover of the hit song Atomic Power. It was inspired by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Oh, this world is at a tremble with its strength and mighty power.

Riley was a rising talent. He had dark good looks, a soft Southern twang, and the guitar skills to make a go of it. He signed with various labels. He seemed like he was headed somewhere. But Riley Shepard never achieved stardom. Instead, his life took a series of detours. Music researcher and writer Kevin Coffey tracked Riley down many years ago. Riley at the time was 89. I'm Riley Shepard. Kevin was interested in preserving the stories of old-time country western performers. He thought Riley might be worth profiling.

Von Horton, is he playing steel on a lot of your records? Von Horton played steel on all of them.

The conversation they had over a crackly phone line was friendly and nostalgic and full of insider names most people wouldn't recognize. And his—

Roy's wife was Played piano, lily heart.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Gradually, Kevin pieced together Riley's backstory. Richard Riley Shepard was born on a farm near Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1918. He dropped out of school in the 5th grade and decided to try his luck at singing. It was a heady time for music in the region. Groups like the Mayners Mountaineers were popularizing what was then called hillbilly music. Riley started out playing songs in minstrel shows. Soon, he told Kevin, he was getting gigs with hillbilly groups like the Dixie Reelers.

I'm on my way to glory, I shall not be moved. I'm on my way to glory, I shall not be moved. Just like a tree—

By the early 1940s, Riley had moved to Chicago. He toured with other hillbilly musicians and did comedy and acting work. He also began cultivating his image as a cowboy crooner. As he created this new persona, he gave himself a catchy moniker: the Cowboy Philosopher. Where did you come up with that?

Because I know you were calling yourself the— I didn't come up with it. Gene Autry came up with it. Oh, did he? Because I found an ad from Way back in 1945, and you were already using it back then, so— A genius came up with that crap.

To top off his fancy new title of philosopher, Riley grew a dashing mustache and began scheming up fresh ways to get into the spotlight.

The Cosmopolitan Church presents Dr. Richard Riley Shepard.

This is Tasha again. A few years ago, she found one of the old flyers that advertised her dad's lectures.

Dr. Richard Riley Shepard, author, historian, world traveler, philosopher, in a series of educational lectures.

The world traveler and philosopher was prepared to discuss a variety of important topics.

Saturday, October 10th, God, Man, and Science. Saturday, October 17th, Marriage, Sex, and Family. Saturday, October 31st, Democracy and Capitalism. Saturday, November 7th, Origin and Growth of Fascism.

Even as he sought to make a name for himself with his educational lectures, Riley was still churning out songs at a frenzied pace, often releasing a new record every month. But Kevin says Riley wasn't reliable. He'd signed with one record label, and while his contract was still in force, he'd sign with another. He'd often use different stage names or pseudonyms with different labels.

Icky Free was one of the names I used.

Icky Free?

Icky Free, and that was on—

For a time, Riley was able to make it all work, in part because he did have a little star power. He'd done well with Atomic Power and later had another catchy tune titled Cowboy.

I got me no home, I got me no wife. I've been a cowboy for all of my life. I guess I like being free. My horse, my saddle, and me.

Riley recorded it under the name Dixon Hall.

I looked out the window and I saw a thing called Hall's Clothing, a big sign. And then Art Dixon came in, and so I said, well, Dixon Hall, that sounded okay.

This was how Riley operated. He played fast and loose. He also worked as an agent, getting music labels to sign new artists.

You see, I tell them, what do you think a publisher is? He's just a businessman. He wouldn't know a hit song to crawl out from under his desk and beat him on the leg.

He sold songs to these executives with a combination of bluster and hype. This role allowed Riley to capitalize on one of his greatest strengths. He was a born salesman. He once boasted that he could have started his own religion.

Read about Sioux City Sue, which was written by Dick Thomas.

Sioux City Sue, da dee oh da dee doo dee.

Your hair is red, your eyes are blue.

I swapped my horse and dog for you.

Recorded by him on a small label. And he brought it to me, and I said, "If you do what I tell you, you'll make a lot of money." And he did. I got him seven thousand dollars advance and seven cents a copy—the biggest money ever paid for a hillbilly song. Ah, I bet in those days.

Riley was also a hustler in his personal life, where the consequences of his actions. were more serious. Marian Kamenik knows this well. She was adopted at birth. As an adult, she searched for and found her biological mother. From her, Marian learned that her father was Riley Shepard. Marian's mother had met him while working as an actress in Chicago. And she said he was very charming, very good-looking. He played the guitar and he sang. And I guess she was kind of smitten with him.

And—

She got pregnant. That, she told Marian, wasn't supposed to happen. He told her he was sterile. And from what I understand, he told every woman he was with that he was sterile. The world will never know the real Whatever he'd achieved in the music industry, it was all winding down by the early 1960s. By then, Riley had picked up and moved on to the West Coast.

Guilty heart, oh guilty heart.

He first went to Oregon and then to California. He told Kevin he gave up the music business so he could turn his attention to a new project, an encyclopedia of folk music. But Kevin thinks years of lying and cheating and breaking contracts had simply caught up with him. He made it sound like he, he did these moves for different purposes. I think usually he was getting out of town before he was being tarred and feathered.

Guilty heart, oh, guilty heart.

It's perhaps fitting that the place Riley landed for the next chapter of his life was Hollywood. Tinseltown was shiny and bright and full of the kind of transformative stories that Riley loved. He arrived there with his common-law wife and his young daughter, Stasia. For a while, he thrived in his new role as Riley Shepard, family man. But like most things in Riley's life, it didn't last.

Your father is a crook.

After all these years, Stacia still fixates on the memory of that old man's telephone call. Stacia says it was a turning point in her relationship with her father. That night, she confronted him.

Right when he walked in the door, I was like, you know, screaming at him, you're a crook, you're a crook. And he looked at me like he turned white and he was shocked. And he argued, we argued, we fought. I don't remember the exact words, but I remember he stormed out. And he went out to his car, and he sat there and smoked, and he didn't come back inside for a long time. He would just— that's what he would do when he was mad. He would go out into his car and pout.

But the next morning, Riley did what came naturally to him. He turned on the charm. He tried to smooth things over. He made Stacia pancakes. He told her the encyclopedia was going to make a lot of money and that his investors would get paid. Stacia wanted to believe him.

Well, you know, I loved my dad, and he was very apologetic and sweet. And you, you want to believe your parents. And also, he was very good at convincing.

Stacia didn't know how much money her dad owed, but she got the sense he was constantly evading creditors. She tells one story of calling home to get a ride.

And when my dad picked up the phone, he was pretending to be a Chinese man. He was pretending to be— used this accent that, like from Breakfast at Tiffany's, that horrible, you know, was it Mickey Rooney? Anyway, terrible. But I knew it was him. You know your father's voice. I'm like, Dad. And he was like— Hung up on me.

Riley took every shortcut he could to make a buck. For a time, he wrote porn under the pseudonym Zachary Quill. One of his books, Glowing Heat. Stasha says her mother told her that Riley had worked out a formula.

She said, "Oh well, Dad used to." get all these cheap novels, and then he would write porn scenes, and he would have typists insert the porn scenes in these crappy novels and resell them.

This was Tasha's life. Things were always off-kilter, confusing. She remembers another time when they had to flee their house before the landlord came, probably because Riley hadn't paid the rent.

We got in this rickety old truck with all our stuff jammed in it. And my father's Encyclopedia of Folk Music was in there very carefully packed. Those were the biggest boxes that we took. And all our other stuff was just kind of strewn in this truck, and it wasn't very well packed. And when we were driving down the highway, I remember this, it was so weird. You know, people were pointing at us and trying to get our attention, and we were like— I mean, I remember my mother They're being like, why are they waving at us? And then realizing, oh, our stuff is flying out. Like our slim belongings that we had pared down from selling almost everything else, those things were flying out. Not the Encyclopedia of Folk Music, but my clothes and what few things.

By the late 1970s, the family had settled in Porterville, California, a town on the western edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Riley spent his days working on his encyclopedia and, to Stacia's mind, swindling everyone he could. It all ended when Stacia was 18. That year, 1983, Riley Shepard did what he had done many times before. He disappeared.

He told my mother, who he had been with for whatever, 23 years, that he was taking a short trip to Los Angeles. But when she woke up in the morning, she realized that he had taken way more than what you would need for a short trip. And he never came— he did not come back.

For more than a year, Stacia had no idea where he was. Eventually, she found him living about an hour away in Fresno. They reconnected, but everything had changed. She now saw him for exactly who he was.

He glamorized the life of being a grifter. He glamorized the life of being a con man. That's what I understand now, that he— he was a con man. It's even hard to say that out loud. He was, though.

For years, Stacia felt torn between her distaste for Riley's behavior and her love for the dad who made her smoke rings and took her to the Brown Derby. By the mid-'80s, Stacia had left Porterville. A few years later, Riley returned to the town and played the role of the old cowboy musician. Stacia mainly stayed in touch by phone as the years passed. One day in 2008, she got a call. Her dad had taken a fall in his home.

And he ended up in the hospital after being alone on the floor for days. And I called him and he goes, honey, I know I'm gonna die. But he was so sweet. I can't talk about that, but he said he loved me and that he was proud of me. It was like Beautiful.

Riley rallied and moved to a nursing home. When Stacia visited, he seemed agitated.

And he goes, you don't, you don't know what it's like in here. I thought he meant the nursing home because 3 beds, the guy had the TV on, it was loud. I go, what, the nursing home? He goes, no, you don't, you don't know what it's like in here, in here. And he was pointing to his head. And I go, what? What are you talking about? He goes, I'm, I'm, I'm flashing back on all the things I did. And I did some bad things.

Stacia tried to comfort him. But in retrospect, she wishes she'd asked a question.

What bad things? Tell me about those. What were the bad things? Maybe if you tell me about them, you'll feel better. Because I'm wondering what, what all he would have told me. But he lived for a little bit in the nursing home. That was the last time that I visited him.

After Riley died, Stasia wanted the world to remember her father correctly.

So she made sure His obituary included not just his real name, but all the pseudonyms he was known to use: Dick Scott, Hickey Free, Clem Hawley, Johnny Rebel, Dixon Hall, Gene Gilmore, Dick Gleason, Paul Lester, Richard Alexander, Albert Riley, Joe Graham, Richard James Hawk.

After Riley died, Stasha had his body cremated. For a long time, she carried his ashes around with her. She'd scatter a handful here or there, which seemed fitting for a drifter.

Oh, I never can forget on that day when first we met. I was never nearer heaven in my life.

There wasn't much in the Riley Shepherd estate. Stasia packed up some of his letters, a cookbook he'd written for her, and various other papers. But his life's work, the encyclopedia he'd been toiling over all those years, he'd left that to someone else. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Quick question, do people come to you for answers at work? Maybe you're managing projects, training new hires, or just the one everyone relies on. That's leadership. Through UVA Darden's Part-Time MBA in Rosslyn, we help professionals like you turn real-world experience into recognized leadership credentials without stepping away from your career. Whether you work in healthcare, education, government, or business, this is how you take the next step. Learn more at darden.virginia.edu/ptmba.

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And in here we find row upon row of collection boxes on the shelves.

By the time I got to the basement of the Library of Congress, I figured I knew everything I needed to know about Riley Shepard. He was a crook, a con man, a bad husband, an unreliable father. So as folklorist Steve Winick pulls out the Richard Riley Shepard collection from the stacks, I'm not holding my breath.

Nobody's really used this collection very much, so it's simply, you know, been there waiting for, for you, really.

Up in his office, Hagrid, aka folklorist Steve Winick, Spreads out the papers from the Richard Riley Shepherd collection on a table. He picks up a letter.

The date of this letter is September 7th, 1976.

More than four decades ago, Riley wrote this letter to the Registrar of Copyrights. Stasia was 11 years old.

So he was working on things. He was working on. I didn't know what.

In the letter, Riley asks for the forms he'll need. To copyright and encyclopedia. He adds a long postscript.

He says, perhaps someone in the Library of Congress would be interested in the following. Over the past 16 years, I alphabetically indexed more than 43,000 titles of songs, including published versions and variants in English, French, Spanish, etc., all of which have enjoyed a folk-type tradition within the borders of the United States and Canada.

All the titles, he continues, have been alphabetically cross-indexed and cross-referenced with the titles of books they appeared in, along with the editors and publishers.

Each reference is clearly coded so that practically every folk song relative to the United States, plus all its known versions and variants, can be easily located. You may be interested to learn that the 43,000 titles are clearly the outgrowth of only 4,000 songs, texts, and tunes.

He ends the letter this way: I know only one thing.

I am the only person in the world with this amount of cross-indexed, cross-referenced musical material. Unfortunately, I do not own or have access to a computer in which to feed the information. Perhaps the Library of Congress can offer suggestions?

Riley wanted to get his encyclopedia to a wider audience. The chief archivist at the time wrote back and offered the names of potential publishers. He also said he'd like to see some of Riley's work. So Riley sent in the samples that the Library now holds. In a follow-up letter, Riley explained how his indexing system worked.

Each title is followed by the first line or lines of the song and/or versions thereof, and this by the source. Example: Goose Hangs High, the Civil War ballad. It deals with Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania and the Battle of Gettysburg.

As Steve Winick sifts through the materials, he slowly grasps the enormity of the project.

So he's got 43,000 individual sheets or 2 sheets of paper, however long it takes, that he's got to then sort into 4,000 categories And then in addition to that, he has to cross-reference each of those with all of the places that they've been published. So there's an enormous number of cross-references within this book that he had to do by hand without the ability to electronically associate one item with another.

What Riley Shepard had been working on since 1960 was a monumental accounting of some 200 years of American folk music. It involved a search of nearly every available documentary source. Riley had obtained rare books at great expense, including many that were out of print. He had collated thousands of songs and organized them according to their provenance, discovering common roots and pathways that linked different musical traditions together. Since he did not have a computer— almost no one did at the time— He did everything by hand, cross-referencing song lyrics and musical notations and historical footnotes. Crazy as it sounds, the entire system lived largely inside his own head. By the point he wrote to the Library of Congress, he had spent nearly 2 decades trying to put down on paper what was in his head, even as his life fell apart around him and many of his closest friends and relatives came to think of him as a crook.

At the time, as far as I know, no one had attempted something this ambitious in terms of indexing all the songs in America.

Riley Shepard, a man with a 5th-grade education, an occasional writer of porn, a con man and hustler, had attempted to create something that would require years of effort by a team of PhD archivists The fact of the attempt, I think, is actually a significant fact in the history of folk song scholarship in the United States.

And it's actually something almost nobody knows about. I wouldn't know about it if you hadn't brought it to my attention. And, you know, I've studied this for quite a number of years.

I asked Steve to choose a song and explain how Riley had classified it. So he opened Volume 3, ran his finger down pages filled with typewritten entries.

So, this is Hallaway Joe, which is a sea shanty, and it says, this is a short drag or short haul shanty. It was taken from British sailors and Americanized, which means political references were eliminated from the text. American sailors preferred to concentrate on girls. For example, the British sailors sang, Louis was the King of France before the Revolution, but Louis got his head cut off, which spoiled his Constitution. American sailors had more important things to sing about and changed the words to, once I had a German girl, but she was fat and lazy. Then I had an Irish girl, she damn near drove me crazy. The shanty dates back to around the second half of the 18th century, though only in England. In the USA, it dates back to the years following the War of 1812. For other English and American versions, see the works listed below. And then he gives a long list of books in which this song appears.

And he actually gives you the music for the song as well?

For many of the songs he does, yes. He does have music for Haul Away Joe as well.

How does the tune of this song go? Do you remember it?

When I was a little boy, it's so my mother told me, way haul away, haul away Joe. That if I didn't kiss the girls, my lips would all grow moldy. Away, haul away, haul away, Joe.

I have to say, the impressive thing is you closed the book as you did that. This was all in your head too?

It was.

In 1979, 3 years after his first letter, Riley got in touch again with the Library of Congress. He said he'd been unable to find a publisher.

And so he writes, dear Mr. Hickerson, in case you don't remember, I have enclosed a photocopy of your letter to me dated July 8th, 1977. First, I want to thank you for your suggestions and the addresses of possible publishers. I followed up. No funds are available for a work such as mine, though they are interested in what I have done and would appreciate a copy of the Folk Song Finder and Index. It is a voluminous work, so I can understand the reluctance of a publisher to undertake the expense of its publication. So here I am, back to you again.

It was an act of desperation.

If you were— are serious about the library reaching some agreement with me, I am ready to proceed. My problem is this: I don't know what to ask for in terms of financial remuneration to myself. I do know that I cannot ask as much as I have spent in terms of time, work, and money, but I would like to recoup at least some of my own expenditures, if not payment for my work and time. In fact, I must recoup some of what I have spent because I have already signed a lease on a small farm and house in Porterville, California, and expect to move there in approximately 6 weeks, as I am, as they say in the country music field, flat busted.

Riley never got what he was seeking.

What he was asking was A significant outlay of money that I just think the library couldn't afford at the time or couldn't, you know, apportion to that project. Because, as he says in the correspondence, in addition to these volumes, there are 54 other volumes of this book.

54 other volumes. After nearly 2 decades of painstaking work came the final indignity.

Yeah, I think he was an early casualty, you might say, of the, the switch from published books, that is paper books, to computer documentation. And he's aware of this, I mean, because he talks about how it would be great if he could put this into a computer.

Would you say that Riley Shepard was a genius?

He was a genius, I think. I mean, it's very impressive to see the amount of work that he did on this. And he also had that sort of crazy perseverance that you have to have. So, you know, that's a whole other kind of genius.

Here is a really amazing part. Riley continued to work on the encyclopedia for the next 25 years.

I mean, it is the case that since he would have sent this to the library in 1979, a lot more versions of traditional songs were published. So if he were trying to keep this book complete, he would have to continue to update it year after year.

One of the interesting things is I'm not sure his family actually fully understands what he has done. When I spoke with his daughter Stacia, She just thought her dad was sort of obsessed with this project that never seemed to go anywhere, that never seemed to end, that just grew infinitely. And, you know, over the years she in fact heard from people whom he had borrowed money from and taken money from, and, you know, her impression of her dad is not a very positive impression. And in some ways, speaking with you, I get a different picture of this man.

Well, I think that all scholars, and particularly folk song scholars, have something of the Riley Shepherd in them. We would like to spend all our time and all our life immersed in the texts and tunes of folk songs. We just can't manage it because we have lives. And so the amount of yourself that you're willing to give to that might vary for different people, but we certainly have sympathy for someone who gave so much of himself to it. I don't know if you're familiar with the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep. He's the person who popularized the term rites of passage. And van Gennep wrote a piece called The Research Project, or Folklore Without End. And it was about a person who decided to write the definitive work on the evil eye. And he went to his carrel in the library and he began getting all the books about the evil eye, and he compiled all of the references that he could find, and he took it to his advisor, and his advisor says, this is a great start, but there's still other cultures, and there's, you know, ancient Greek and Roman sources that you should look at. And so he goes back and he works on those, and this continues for years and years, and eventually this man dies at his carrel in the library, and nobody quite remembers what he was doing there.

And that's kind of the impression that you get of But it turned out there was someone next to Riley in his final days as he labored away in his carrel. Before he collapsed and was sent to the hospital, Riley was living in a small house.

On, on D Street in Porterville.

He was in rough shape. I thought, you know, he's a little bit But Steve Enslin, a Porterville native, says once you got to know Riley, he grew on you. It was Steve's father, Ted, who really knew Riley. Ted was a retired insurance agent and former Porterville mayor. Steve says his dad and Riley bonded over a shared love of music.

They would just sit and listen to country western music, the old country western music, not the Not the new stuff.

They were friends. They were also business partners.

They wrote songs together. They recorded a few songs together.

Mainly, though, they worked on Riley's encyclopedia. Ted saw the genius in it.

They, they spent hours and hours and hours just collecting all the material and then categorizing it.

Steve says Riley was still consumed by the project.

Well, he had music spread all over. I mean, he had tables and chairs and floor and everything, and he'd have this music spread out, and he was trying to get it in some sort of a chronological order and by the artist. He was trying to get the artist with the song, and he would have the song And then he would have the artist. And so he would try to cross-reference all of those. So it was a labor of love, I'll tell you that. But he was, he just, no, I haven't got time for that. I don't want to eat. I just, I got to get this done. This is important. And so he would just, he was funny.

Steve and his father both felt they were in the presence Riley Shepard was, was a master.

He, he did a lot of things, but he was quite a, quite a, quite a master.

Steve's father willingly gave his time to the project, and he gave money, plenty of it. Steve says after Riley died, Stacia got in touch. She was concerned that her dad had conned his dad. But Steve says the money wasn't important.

The money doesn't mean anything as far as— I saw the enjoyment that it brought to my dad.

Riley left his life's work, the Encyclopedia of Folk Music, to his friend Ted Enslin. There were 40 boxes. Ted stored them in his old insurance office, and that's where they sat for years.

I kept asking Dad, you know, what are you going to do with these, Dad? What are you going to do with these? And he says, he says, they're worth a lot of money. And I said, well, I know, but what are you going to do with them?

Ted never did anything with them. He was old and suffering from dementia. Instead, he just relived his friendship with Reilly.

After Reilly died, my dad had a little little record player in his office, and he would put on a lot of Riley's country-western music.

It was fun while it lasted, but it didn't last long. You left me for somebody new.

And he just enjoyed Riley. He enjoyed his friendship.

Darling, I still believe in you. Won't you please come back? No, I'll love you to the end.

When Ted Enslin died, Steve gave the encyclopedia to another man in town who happened to be a country music songwriter. Other copies are also floating around. Not long ago, Stasia says a couple who'd invested in Riley's encyclopedia got in touch. They were willing to sell their copy to her For $500. She bought it. She says it's huge.

Well, it's weird to see the whole thing and how much work he actually put into it. Because after I realized how much my father fabricated on various things from, you know, he just was a compulsive liar. Sometimes he would make things up and I couldn't figure out why. Why did you lie about that? Why didn't you brag about the songs you actually wrote? Why did you say you wrote Blue Christmas or whatever? And so I became kind of jaded, and I began to think that maybe the whole project, the encyclopedia, was not even worth thinking about at all. I loved my dad, but I kind of rolled my eyes whenever I thought about these projects because so much So much smoke and mirrors around it.

Won't you please come back? You know I'll love you to the end. If you don't come back, my broken heart will never mend. It was fun while it lasted, but it didn't last long. You left me for somebody new.

In the conversation near the end of his life, Riley Shepard doesn't sound bitter or frustrated. He sounds like a man still doing what he loves, honoring the music he had learned as a boy, trying to preserve it. In fact, he told Kevin, there were still plenty of songs and music that were left in him.

I'm writing one now. I've got it called The Older You Get, the More It's Gonna Cost. To do the things you did when you were young. When an old man's in love, he just thinks he's in clover. He's not cooking with gas, he's just warming it over. It goes on like that.

Songs and novels are filled with stories about people with great obsessions. We have strong opinions about such people. When they succeed, when they produce the Taj Mahal or Hamlet or the iPhone, we hail the obsessions that built the monuments of this world. When we count the collateral damage that people with obsessions leave in their wake, especially when those obsessions only produce the unreadable tome on the evil eye, Or an unpublishable encyclopedia on folk music, obsessions start to look like folly. Trouble is, you usually do not know whether an obsession is a great quest or a great folly until it's over. Shortly after this episode first aired in 2019, Stacia shared a version of her father's encyclopedia with the Internet Archive in San Francisco. It's now available online. We have a link to it in the show notes. More recently, we reached back out to Stacia And she said she remains skeptical of the idea that her father was a genius. What she does know is that he was a man of many secrets. She's discovered even more pseudonyms that he used over the years and many more details about his relationships with women. But it's likely none of those revelations were as shocking to her as that first phone call she received all those years ago.

Your father is a crook.

Across that crackly phone line, those words, your father is a crook, must have landed like a thunderclap. Learning that your parent is the villain of someone else's story is painful. Secrets like this can cause deep ruptures in families. Now, the secrets that most of us hold are not this weighty, but even small secrets can be a heavy burden. Not long ago, We heard from a listener named John who's been carrying a secret like this. When he was in college, John studied abroad in Ethiopia. He lived in a small town teaching English to high schoolers. One of John's brightest students would hang around him a lot. This student was fascinated by the United States and hungry to learn what it would be like to live there.

And ultimately, I realized he wanted to go to America. And he wanted me to be his conduit and maybe sponsor to going to America. And so this, as a, you know, 18, 19-year-old, uh, put me in a precarious situation because I felt like I was in no position to sponsor somebody and wouldn't even know where to start. I told him that I would, I would look around. I'd ask around for opportunities or other people that could help him. But it put me in a position where I didn't know what to do. And, and I, you know, it made me uncomfortable that he was— had sort of thrust this responsibility on me. I kind of started to prefer other— hanging out with other students and other, other people. when I could.

John felt bad about avoiding his student, but he didn't know what else to do. This came to a head when John and a few friends decided to take a weekend vacation.

I made sure not to tell him this because I, I just didn't want him tagging along. I knew that he would be sort of in my ear the whole time and sort of ramping up this responsibility that he had placed on me. So when he asked me when we were leaving from the, the, the bus station, I lied. I told him that we would, would be leaving at 6:30 in the evening, when in fact we were going to be leaving at 5:30. So I kind of figured This is the best way to get out of this. Uh, the problem is that he was, uh, pretty keen and asked around and found out that we were in fact leaving at 5:30. So when I got there to meet with my friends and get on the bus, sure enough, there he was. And he came along and we, we had a good time. There was a little bit of that, uh, uneasiness about the whole situation. Obviously I felt horrible about lying to him, but it was a secret that I kind of kept to myself from the others. Obviously, my, my friends wondered why he was there, but they didn't know that I had tried to keep him away from it by lying to him, and I felt really, really bad that I had done that.

John has ruminated on the lie for years. He's sharing it for the first time with a Hidden Brain audience. From the outside looking in, his secret might seem trivial. Sure, maybe he could have been kinder or more forthcoming with the student. He could have said that he wasn't in a position to help. Why has this secret weighed on him so heavily? Well, I think it's because I'm a person who And for so long. After the break, stories and questions about the secrets we keep and the harm they can cause. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Instagram. Instagram Teen Accounts' automatic protections limit who can contact teens, the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Teens are automatically placed into Teen Accounts. Teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. Learn more about Teen Accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.

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This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Recently, I heard a shocking statistic. 80% of people lie to their doctors. 80%! Doctors promote our well-being. They bear witness to our tales of pain. They heal us when we are sick. You would think we would be fully transparent with the people trying to help us. I learned that statistic from Leslie John. She's a psychologist at Harvard University and the author of Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing. We talked with her on 2 recent episodes of the show. They were titled Keeping Secrets and Coming Clean. Today, Leslie returns to the show to respond to listener comments and stories about the costs of keeping secrets. Leslie Kean, welcome back to Hidden Brain.

Thanks so much for having me.

Leslie, in our interactions with other people, we spend a lot of time weighing how much of ourselves to share with them. Why is it that so many of us avoid revealing ourselves to others?

That's the million-dollar question, right? So there are many elements to this answer. The number one, I think the most obvious answer, is that we're scared. For good reason. So our minds immediately go into, what would go wrong if I said the thing? And we worry about rejection and embarrassment and conflict and loss of status. And these are all valid concerns. But there's a problem here because if you think about how to make a good decision, you don't want to just think of the risks of doing the thing, right? You want to also think of the risks of not doing the thing, among other considerations.

Hmm.

But again and again, when I give people different, what I call disclosure dilemmas, the first thing they go— they very naturally come up with the risks of revealing. And those risks are valid. But the problem is people don't go further unless you prompt them to, unless you say, OK, what about the risks of not revealing? But the other thing that you said that was really key in this question is this word, the default. Why do we default? We default to silence so naturally, we don't even realize we're doing it.

Right.

In your research, Leslie, you found that keeping a secret can negatively impact our physical and mental health. Describe for me very briefly some of these costs.

Yeah, so many studies have shown that holding secrets is associated with all kinds of negative health outcomes. It's associated with depression and anxiety. It's associated with physiological stress markers. It's associated with greater rumination, with poorer relationships. So lots and lots of negative consequences.

Many secrets that we keep often center on regrets that we have, maybe a time that we lied or stole, Or cheated someone. Here's a message we received from a listener named Claire.

So about 9 years ago, I was alone on a close family friend's property, and I really had an urge to pee. So I popped a squat, and mid-pee, I look up and I see a security camera on their property pointed right at me. And I was so concerned, you know, what would they think when they saw the video? They didn't even know I was in the property. It was just super embarrassing. And so for 9 years, I couldn't look the— this was my friend's parents— either of them in the eye because I just, you know, I wasn't sure if they saw the video and what they thought and what they were wondering. So for 9 years, I kept this a secret and I didn't tell anyone in my family about it. And then this Last summer, I finally came clean and told my parents about why I felt so uncomfortable around their friends, and they just looked at me. They couldn't understand why I was telling them this, what they thought was a completely pointless story from 9 years ago, which had been haunting me for almost a decade. No one Nobody seemed to care. I told, you know, my friend about it, and nobody cared at all after 9 years of being so self-conscious.

So Leslie, clearly this secret was a much bigger deal for Claire than it was for her parents and her friend. What's interesting is that this story echoed what we've heard from several other listeners. The distress that we feel about our secrets is often wildly disproportionate to the reactions of others, including our quote unquote victims. Why is it that our secrets have this outsized impact on us?

Yeah. Oh, Claire, I feel for you. The word, it was haunting her. Yes, it was haunting her. Then in the end, it was moot. I was hoping she'd say that they got a good laugh out of it at least, or maybe they still have the footage and They could laugh about it. But it sounds like it was not even— she didn't even get laughter, but she did get relief, I think, in the end. And I think one of the reasons why they often affect us more than it ends up being to the person we reveal them to is because, for one, we're so used to keeping things inside. And so we actually don't have the data that disproves this belief that it's a big deal, right?

Yeah.

And this is why I really think of revealing as a skill, as a practice, right? If you do it more, then you realize that you get feedback. You're like, oh, that wasn't such a big deal.

Yeah.

It's funny because I was thinking about a dear friend of mine recently. We've rekindled our friendship. We were roommates in college and she said to me, I have a confession to make. When we lived together, I was the one that ate the Oreos. And I was like, great, I didn't even remember this. But clearly, like, that was like the second thing she said to me. One of my favorite psychology studies and findings, it's called the spotlight effect, where we think that people notice what we do and care what we think and do more than they actually do, which maybe sounds cynical, but I think it's liberating. One of my best friends, the way he assuages me, he's like, nobody cares. So in this case, like there literally was a spotlight on her. It was a videotape. But she went down this road of like, think about it. Okay, so there's, there's this tape that exists. It's as if for that to be true, for them to have seen her, they'd have to have like watched all of the footage, right? Exactly.

Yeah.

And the study that it was a hilarious oldie but a goodie social psych study where they got— one of them was they had people wear Barry Manilow t-shirts, like big blaring Barry Manilow t-shirts, which I love Barry Manilow, but maybe they were like uncool or something then. And they forced them to wear it for the day and asked them how many people they thought would notice. And of course, people wearing it think everybody's going to notice and they'll be a fool, but really nobody notices. So we're really kind of self-absorbed in that way.

I'm wondering if the fact that Claire kept her secret for so long in some ways amplified it in her mind. In other words, the longer she kept it, the more she is thinking about it, the more she's ruminating about it, and the bigger it gets in her mind. But of course, it's not getting bigger in anyone else's mind.

Completely. Yeah, they kind of start to take— secrets start to take a life of their own and they compound each other. And one of the reasons is that they're in our head. When we're just thinking and cycling and ruminating in our head, we can make some really crazy logical leaps. But if we talk to a friend, then that friend can like help us to realize, oh wait, for that to happen, the person would have actually had to watch the video. And also, if they watched the video, would that have been so bad anyways? Maybe they would have Right, right.

So there are secrets that have to do with what we've done, but there are also secrets that get at who we are. Here is listener Emma.

I was born in 1956, assigned male at birth. When I was 4 or 5, I realized that I wished I'd been born a girl. Through elementary school, I fantasized when I went to bed about what it might like to be a girl. But I was certain that it was the deepest secret anyone could have, and I would never reveal it to anyone. I saw therapists for depression throughout my adulthood, but never fully disclosed these feelings. This went on for almost 40 years, until 20— early 2014, when my wife suggested that I return to therapy. This time I knew I had to come clean. It was so scary, and it took weeks to let it all out into the open. I started my transition in 2017 and have absolutely no regrets now living authentically as a woman.

So one thing that strikes me about Emma's story, Leslie, is that this is not about something that she did, but about who she is. Talk about the difference between those 2 things when it comes to holding secrets.

Yeah. I think that they point to kind of 2 motives to revealing, right? Something you did, the kind of feeling, maybe shame and concern about what the other person thinks if you reveal it, sort of interpersonal. But these kinds of secrets about your identity are more intrapersonal challenging, right? Because you're— you make you kind of question, what do I reveal of myself? And not, if I don't reveal this, am I being inauthentic? One way that I think about these things is if you have an identity that is core to who you are, but it can be stigmatizing, if it's really core to who you are, it's important that some people know, people close to you, because knowing, being known for who you are is incredibly important. but it also doesn't mean that you have to tell everyone. So you can be really selective about who you choose to share and not. And what Emma did here was beautiful in that Emma worked with her wife, she worked with a therapist. And it's also not— I also wanna highlight that disclosure is often, especially with these very hard, fraught ones, it's a process, it's a campaign, it's not a one-shot thing. And I think that also hopefully liberates people into thinking, well, if I didn't quite describe myself right this time, like, I will have another conversation. It's an ongoing interactive dialogue.

Hmm. Sometimes the secrets that we keep are so at odds with the person who we want to be, it can be very difficult to bear. Here's a message we received from a listener named Dean. I had several affairs. Without my wife knowing for the past few years. And it was so shameful that I would compartmentalize it, like I was like a different person. And I kept that from her until she found out. Then I told her about everything. So right now I'm in Sexual addiction recovery, trying to make things better for myself and for her. So Leslie, I can really hear the pain in Dean's voice. He used the word shameful to describe his secret. And this is a recurring theme that we heard and that you've explored. And a central reason, I think, that we try and keep things from others, we're worried about how they will judge us. If we come clean.

Yes, absolutely. And that's a completely valid concern. It's especially valid when it's the people that you're really close to and you love them and you feel like you've wronged them. This is kind of one of the hardest types of disclosures to make. He also hit on this, this point. He said, it's like I'm a different person. And that's a kind of self-dissonance that is a really hard thing to deal with because You know, we like to think of ourselves as faithful, kind to our spouses, but then there's this thing we did that is antithetical to that. And so then you're like, well, who am I? And he said compartmentalize, and that's kind of a coping mechanism, is to compartmentalize that, but it's not the healthiest of coping mechanisms.

One of the things that I think is interesting about secrets is why we're keeping them. Are we keeping them in our interest, or are we keeping them in the interest of someone else? Talk about that tension, Leslie.

Oh, that's exactly where my mind was going as well. I think that this is a core thing when thinking about whether to reveal a secret. What's your North Star? What's your purpose? Is your purpose— because sometimes we reveal secrets because we just feel so guilty and ashamed, and it's more to make ourselves feel better, to share the burden, than it is to actually grow from it. So, you know, think to yourself, is this something that I'm doing to alleviate burdens to myself? And if that's the case, is telling my spouse the right thing, or is that just going to impose the burden on her? Perhaps it's better to talk about it with a therapist then in that case, right? Whereas if your motive is to really understand your relationship better and what your goals are and how you relate to each other, Well, then that might be an integral way of starting such conversations.

When we come back, what happens when you learn that someone has been keeping a secret from you? You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Instagram. Instagram Teen Accounts automatic protections limit who can contact teens, the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Teens are automatically placed into Teen Accounts. Teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. Learn more about Teen Accounts at teenaccounts.instagram.com. and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Air France. Air France Business Cabin offers comfort throughout the journey with priority check-in, boarding, and lounge access. Onboard, enjoy menus from renowned French chefs, wines and champagne selected by a sommelier, and free high-speed Wi-Fi. When it's time to rest, settle into a fully adjustable lie-flat bed with added mattress comfort. The art of travel elevated, because Air France Business Cabin goes further in every detail to make your journey exceptional. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Keeping a secret can gnaw at you. Leslie John at Harvard University has found that it can harm our physical and mental health and damage our relationships. Leslie, I'd like to talk a bit about family secrets. Hanno is from Germany. The last time Hanno saw his maternal grandfather alive, his grandfather hinted that he had a shocking secret, that he was an officer in the Nazi forced labor service during the Holocaust, and that he had witnessed or even joined in the ethnic cleansing of Jews. Probably had been at least a witness to one of those burnings of wooden synagogues in Poland where members of the local Jewish community had been forced into and the house then put on fire over their heads. And he had been a So Leslie, Hanno went on to say how troubled he is by learning this secret. He now feels a terrible sense of responsibility for the actions of his family members, people who are long since deceased. Hanno is obviously not responsible for the actions of his grandfather. Would he have been better off not learning this terrible secret?

Oh, geez, that's such a hard question. I guess it depends how you define better off, you know? I think one of the things that makes this so hard is that Hanno does not have the opportunity to make more sense of it by speaking with his grandfather again. And I think that's—

Right.

...really the challenging thing, because when we have these hard truths in our history, and we learn about them, The way that we can metabolize them is by talking about them with the people who went through it, and understanding their perspective, and what it was like, and their motives, and how they think about it. That gives us some closure, some sense-making, some sense of certainty. It's incredibly therapeutic. And I feel sad for Hanno that he didn't have that opportunity. And so often, we think about these moments of revealing as a one-shot, right? But, like, we can go back to the person and— if they're alive and we can continue to engage in a conversation and ask them more questions because there will be a point where we're no longer able to do that.

In some ways, Hanno's story reminds me that there are some secrets that are actually held not by just individuals and not just by families, but by entire groups of people.

Yes, completely. And those are really interesting because they introduce this element of social pressure, right? It's like this unspoken thing that we all know, but we don't want to talk about. And then even if someone does want to say something, they feel like they can't because they assume that others also don't want to talk about it, right? This is this idea that, like, if nobody is talking about it, we assume that nobody wants to talk about it.

Hmm.

But what we can do in these situations is Try testing the waters, broaching the topic. So here's an example, not of a dark family secret, but like a friend of mine was just telling me this. She was at a meeting at work and they were sitting around a table and it was super frustrating. They weren't getting anywhere. And normally, like, you don't say that. You don't say it's frustrating. Like, people were just kind of grin and bearing it. And she finally, she said, you know what? I'm gonna say it. She said, I feel frustrated. And then as soon as she said that, everyone else said, oh my gosh, thank you. I feel frustrated too. Like, there was this collective relief and this collective bonding, and then they were able to move forward.

I want to stay with Hanno's story for a second. I'm struck by the fact that many Germans to this day, you know, still feel the shame of the Holocaust. Many keep secrets like Hanno's family does, but it's also striking that many Jewish Holocaust survivors prefer not to discuss the horrors that they witnessed or that they experienced. They don't talk to their friends and family about what happened. I'm wondering what this tells you about the nature of secrets, Leslie.

Yeah, I think that one reason we keep secrets is out of kindness and not wanting to burden people, right? Not wanting to burden people about the horrors one has experienced. And that's totally valid and fair and understandable. It's not always good to talk about the things that are bothering you. Sometimes if you talk about the things that are bothering you, you end up perseverating on them and thinking about them even more. So perhaps there's that reluctance too. There's been research on this. Holocaust survivors who have been able to make sense of what happened to them have much more positive outcomes. And I don't mean, you know, make it okay at all, but to kind of develop a deeper understanding of why this happened to them, All of the— understand their feelings throughout it, the complexities of it. The people who are able to process that and tell their story, they do so much better at moving on to the future and growing. But if we just kind of vent about it all, and the goal isn't kind of growth and narrative sensemaking, then that's not the good kind. I do think, though, that— I know this from data— that people think that they're going to be more of a burden than they actually are. And in fact, so often people are happy to hear your disclosures. I mean, you wouldn't be happy to hear a story like that, but you would feel, you would feel very close to the person because one, you understand them better, but two, they chose to confide in you.

Yeah.

How special is that?

When we come back, could keeping a secret ever be a good thing? You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Stripe. Stripe is built for whatever comes next, because scaling your business model isn't a set-it-and-forget-it thing. You want to test, iterate, and launch new pricing plans constantly. With Stripe Billing, you can easily experiment with new subscriptions and launch new usage-based and hybrid pricing models so your revenue model can change as fast as your product and market fit evolve. Reach new customers, expand globally, and keep revenue operations ready for whatever comes next. Stripe Billing powers any business model. It's built Stripe will support you no matter how much you scale with a network powering more than 1.6% of global GDP and the partner of choice for 86% of Forbes AI50 companies that have monetized to date. Learn how you can power any business model at stripe.com/billing.

Working as a dedicated Fidelity advisor, I always ask, what's important to you? I'll look at those priorities and goals alongside your full financial picture to build a comprehensive plan designed to help grow and protect your wealth. With proactive portfolio insights and an eye on taxes, I'm here to help you make the most of your money. I'm Laura Maxwell, and I'm a dedicated Fidelity advisor. Learn more at fidelity.com/wealth. Investment minimums apply. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC, member NYSE SIPC.

Support for Hidden Brain comes from U.S. Bank. With a U.S. Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card, You earn an unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. No quarterly activations, no categories to track, just unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. Visit usbank.com/smartlycard to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is U.S. Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions may apply. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Leslie John is a psychologist at Harvard University. She studies the science of secrets and self-disclosure— how much we share of ourselves and the benefits and costs of doing so. Her book is titled Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing. So Leslie, we talked earlier about how families or even nations of people can carry collective secrets And often this happens not through explicit discussion, but via the more subtle norms of a group. We heard from a listener named Philip. He grew up in an evangelical Christian community and would spend upwards of 70 hours per week knocking on doors to proselytize. But then one day when he was in his mid-20s, Philip realized he was actually an agnostic.

Now, that was difficult enough. But on top of that, the group I was a part of maintained a very strict set of rules around apostasy. if someone broke with doctrine, and excommunication if someone broke the rules. So, that is, I was at risk of losing my wife of 4 years, my family, my friends, my community, pretty much everything, if I spoke out or acted on my beliefs. So I didn't, for years. And I wound up suffering all All the side effects that Leslie John alluded to— psychologically, physiologically, socially, you name it. Um, but the desire for coming clean, so to speak, and having that sensation of it simply feels good just built up. I started confiding in a childhood friend about the problem.

Mm-hmm.

It felt really good to be able to express myself honestly. Mostly without judgment, but because this friend was around my age and female, it also constituted a breach of trust and the emotional commitment with my wife. It hastened the demise of our already shattered marriage, and we divorced in the summer of 2024. It was just a train wreck. Now that a little bit of distance has gone by, though, I can point to the things that I did wrong and say, okay, I learned something from that. But the thing that I regret the most still is the continuing to conceal my beliefs for as long as I did out of fear.

Leslie, what strikes me in Philip's story is that he was incentivized to keep his secret by his faith community, And this is true in a lot of settings, not just religious ones. Talk about the difficulty of fighting not just our own feelings of shame and remorse about a secret, but going against the norms and expectations of the communities to which we belong.

Yeah. I mean, it takes so much courage. Philip, you are so courageous. I admire you so much, and thank you for sharing your story. One of the things that's so hard here is because it goes against the norm, it feels like you are wrong, which makes it hard to validate yourself. And this is already a really hard thing to come to terms with, to really understand about yourself. So it kind of impedes self-learning. But the thing that really gives me hope is that Philip did find that ally, the woman he confided in. Now, he said he breached kind of a social contract of intimacy with his wife, But I think him saying that also, I could feel the realization that, well, you know, your spouse is someone, in my view, we should be going for total emotional intimacy, right? That means you can tell them anything. And if you're not at that stage or you're not working toward it, then I think that's something to take note of and you can make a change.

I mean, I believe his spouse was part of that same faith community. So in some ways, Talking about what was going on in his mind would have been a challenge to the faith community and to her.

Right. And so that— he's self-criticizing. He says, he breached my wife. But in some ways, you could think of his not telling her as an act of kindness, because as we talked about a little bit earlier, sometimes when you share something with someone, it then becomes a shared burden, and it would have become a burden to her. So you can kind of play it both ways. These things usually are not black and white. I also thought it was interesting to me, the beautiful takeaway in the end of how he said, I regret having concealed it for so long. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard this. Being able to be who you are and feel known for who you are and reveal it is deeply intrinsically rewarding.

Right. I mean, he talks about this almost burning desire he had to come clean, to get the secret off his chest. It's almost like we have these competing forces within us, Leslie. We're a house divided when we have a secret because we have this desire to hide and this desire to reveal.

Totally. And that's why I think really trying to take the temperature down a bit and thinking, what are the risks of revealing? That's natural. But what are the risks of not revealing? And what are the benefits? And if you can kind of start to put your finger on these things, then they become much more manageable. And you kind of Embrace the duality and complexity instead of hiding from it.

We also heard from some listeners who argued that it's not necessarily a bad thing to keep your cards close to your chest. Listener David writes, sometimes we need to recognize that we don't need to know everything about a person to enjoy their company. And sometimes we need to respect that not everyone is comfortable sharing their secrets with us. While your guest may feel that we should share more, I would argue that we should be more tolerant of each other, and that tolerance will lead to more trust, and that trust will lead to more disclosure. What do you think of David's point here, Leslie, that we should focus more on tolerance and building trust rather than feeling pressure to disclose our secrets or demand that others tell us their secrets?

Oh, this is such an important point. Exactly. So the point isn't we should always share more. In fact, the people that reveal the most wisely, the best revealers, are the people that have the most disclosure flexibility. What that means is they have the widest range. They can go from total openness, baby, with their spouse to complete guardedness in a high-stakes negotiation. So it really is about having the range. Now, that being said, yes, I think that I keep discovering more and more benefits of being a bit more open a lot of the time. I think that we should have more tolerance and trust and empathy for people, 100%. And I also think that in a lot of situations, we should share more. In fact, one very powerful way of building trust is actually to share, to reveal sensitive information literally builds trust.

Hmm. A listener named Tracy called in to share that she thinks keeping a secret can be pleasurable. At the end of the day, I don't keep secrets, but I love secrets. I love listening to secrets. I love having secrets. When I got married, my husband said to me, you know, you love secrets. I just wonder, where does the love of secrets come from? And is that normal? Do other people feel this way? Thank you. So Leslie, can you tell Tracy if she is normal?

Tracy, you're normal. I bless you. I love this. It's such an important point. In fact, I asked people, I did a little survey and I asked the nationally representative sample of 300 Americans recently, have you ever enjoyed keeping a secret? And 49% said yes. So about half of the people.

Hmm.

And I love keeping secrets too, but there's a difference, right? There are different kinds of secrets. And the secret that comes to mind when I hear— listen to Tracy was these secrets of like kind of these moments of shared understanding and mind meld. Like for example, when My work husband, my bestie at work, we should kind of share the same sense of taste in ideas. And so when someone's presenting something and we think it's boring, like, we'll look at each other and we have this, like, lovely little delightful grin. Or, or my husband and I, when we have this shared understanding of something and we're at a dinner party and we just know this, that we're both thinking the same thing, like, that's a beautiful, beautiful moment.

Mm-hmm.

And it really enhances intimacy because it's It's the specialness of that person and that relationship. There's one of my favorite psych studies, another oldie but goodie, is they got them to play footsie with each other underneath the table. And they were having a conversation with other people there. And half of the people that were playing footsie were supposed to keep it a secret. And then they measured at the end, like, how enjoyable that task was. And it was the ones that played footsie that were charged with keeping— tasked with keeping it a secret that had the most fun, right?

So it's—

It's having this special thing together that can be very fun and bonding and beautiful.

I mean, I think this is also true at an organizational level. There are things that sometimes an organization or a company is trying to do, and it might be a trade secret. They might be working on something that is a joint project that the rest of the world doesn't know. And clearly, those are the kinds of situations that draw people together. So even if it's not an intimate relationship, A shared secret can bring people together.

Yes, I love that. I love that. It can be really motivating. And you can see even this, like, at a group level, keeping secrets, positive secrets, like a surprise party. Isn't it so fun when, you know, you're in on the fact that your friend is having a surprise 40th for their spouse, and then you're at the soccer field and you see the spouse and you see their friends and you all have these, like, furtive, lovely glances? It's just a really, really sparky, beautiful moment.

Yeah, I've often thought that the people who are enjoying the surprise enjoy the surprise more than the person getting the surprise.

Oh, I completely agree. Like, I would not want a surprise party because I like the anticipation and the savoring and I like to be able to control things. But yeah, that's so well put. It's interesting though, because when you mentioned companies and trade secrets, so it also made me think of work that I've done with my colleague Ryan Buell on how When companies reveal things, not trade secrets, not everything, but when they reveal surprising things, some of the benefits we see when people reveal things, we also see when firms reveal things. Like, we worked with this large credit card company in Australia where what they did was they decided to reveal the downsides of the credit cards, right? It's like anti-marketing. Like, hey, there's a high interest rate. So they did this for the credit cards. And what they found was that this actually, it didn't scare customers away. It enhanced trust, and it increased customer lifetime because the customers trusted the bank more.

Leslie says the same pattern often holds in our personal relationships as well. When we lean towards sharing our thoughts with others, it can increase the trust between us and the people we care about. The problem is, often we don't even realize all that we're keeping to ourselves. Leslie wasn't fully aware of the extent to which she was holding back Until she started paying attention and documenting this behavior in herself. She now keeps a list of the times she has revealed secrets and the times she has not.

I'm doing some little data collection here because I'm a nerd. I've got a column here that says said and a column that says unsaid, and I'm gonna tick off— this is really high-tech. Okay, so I wake up in the morning, I roll over in bed, I say, hi, Kali. What I don't say is, I slept really badly, and when I don't sleep well, I can't regulate my emotions. We go into the bathroom, we stand in front of the mirror, we're brushing our teeth. What I think to myself is, geez, I feel older than I thought I would at this age, and I'm 45. How come I still have acne? I think these things, but I don't say them. We're not even down in the kitchen yet. We're just in the bathroom and already my little tally here is 4 to 1. I could go on, but I won't. And so my point isn't that we should say all of the things that are in our mind. You don't want that. I don't want that. But rather, I think we should consider saying the things more. And before I started doing this for myself, I didn't even consider Saying, oh, you know, I thought I— the thoughts about my body or whatnot when I had these when looking in the mirror. And now, because I think about it more, I share more. And that's a perfect example of where sharing is really a good thing to do because, you know, if I share how I feel about myself, then my partner knows me better. And that's fundamentally intimacy building. If I tell them the practical thing that I slept crappily, Well, then he's going to know that the rest of the day he's got to like kind of treat me with kid gloves because he knows me, but he can't read my mind.

We can't read each other's minds. So should we follow Leslie's advice and share more of those bathroom mirror thoughts that we usually keep to ourselves? Next week, listeners share their stories of self-disclosure. and how other people responded when they revealed more about themselves. Leslie John is a psychologist at Harvard University. She's the author of Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing. Leslie, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

Thanks so much for having me.

Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querelle, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. If you love Hidden Brain, Brain, please check out our new YouTube channel. We have episodes for you about courage, choking under pressure, an overlooked tool to simplify your life, and so much more. You can find us at youtube.com/@hiddenbrain or just click the link in our show notes for today's episode. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

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