The Cowboy Philosopher

Summary

Hidden Brain – "The Cowboy Philosopher" (May 11, 2026)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Hidden Brain, hosted by Shankar Vedantam, explores the tangled legacy of Richard Riley Shepherd: a once-aspiring country musician, self-styled "Cowboy Philosopher," and the obsessive architect of an unpublished Encyclopedia of Folk Music. Through interviews with Shepherd's family, friends, and folklorist Steve Winick, the episode examines themes of obsession, deception, the blurry line between genius and folly, and—intertwined with these—how secrets shape families and ourselves. It culminates with a broad discussion (with Harvard psychologist Leslie John) on the psychological science of secrets, why we keep them, and what they cost us.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Dual Life of Riley Shepherd

• Opening the Box (00:00–02:13)

  • Shankar Vedantam is guided by folklorist Steve Winick into the depths of the Library of Congress to uncover an obscure archival collection: the life's work of Riley Shepherd.
  • Shepherd is introduced as both a "genius" (Steve Winick, 02:13) and a "compulsive liar" (Stacya Shepherd Silverman, 02:13), laying out the episode’s central tension.

• Family Memories vs. Reality (04:37–10:27)

  • Stacya Shepherd Silverman (Shepherd’s daughter) recalls an enchanting childhood—smoke rings, tales of showbiz and creative identity.
  • Over time, cracks showed; Shepherd falsely claimed authorship of "Blue Christmas" and other exploits. Financial instability was constant, with frequent demands for money from investors and phone calls from bill collectors.
  • The curtain is shattered when Stacya, at age 12, takes a call from an elderly man accusing her father of theft:

    "Your father's a crook. Did you know that. Your father is a crook?" (Stacya Shepherd Silverman, 09:44)

• A Rambling, Reinvented Life (11:58–25:09)

  • Shepherd’s biography unfolds: a North Carolina farm boy, he becomes a minor star in 1940s country-western, touring and performing as "the Cowboy Philosopher," using multiple pseudonyms (Dr. Richard Riley Shepherd, Dicky Free, Dixon Hall, etc.).
  • He’s both charismatic and unreliable—signing with multiple labels, spinning tall tales, and deceiving both colleagues and women. Even private life is shaped by his deceptions (lying about sterility, fathering children he’d deny).
  • Eventually, he leaves the music business, relocating from Chicago to Hollywood to the small town of Porterville, CA, chasing a new passion: his Encyclopedia of Folk Music.

• Father, Hustler, and Genius—A Daughter's Reckoning (21:21–28:39)

  • Stacya describes the aftermath of learning the truth. Her love for her father battles with her new understanding of his actions:

    "He glamorized the life of being a grifter…he was a con man. It’s even hard to say that out loud." (Stacya Shepherd Silverman, 26:13)

  • Despite everything, there remains nostalgia, complexity, and grief, especially as Shepherd enters his final days.

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The Monumental "Folly": The Encyclopedia

• Library of Congress – Reframing the Project (32:06–35:41)

  • Shepherd’s encyclopedia is revealed to be monumental: 43,000 titles, cross-referenced and indexed by hand over decades.
  • Steve Winick is awed:

    “So he’s got 43,000 individual sheets or…an enormous number of cross references within this book that he had to do by hand...” (Steve Winick, 35:09)

  • Shepherd’s work far exceeded what any single person was expected (or even able) to accomplish, even though he had little formal education or resources.

• Recognition and Rejection (39:23–41:14)

  • Shepherd attempted to have his work published, or purchased by the Library of Congress, but was repeatedly rebuffed due to cost and perhaps a lack of institutional vision:

    "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 six weeks. As I am, as they say in the country music field, flat busted." (Shepherd, 39:54–40:40)

• Legacy and Friendship (44:30–48:01)

  • In his later years, Shepherd forms deep friendships, notably with Ted Enslin, who helps him with the encyclopedia, appreciating it as a labor of love.

    “He was funny…‘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.’” (Steve Enslin, 45:34)

  • After Shepherd’s death, the encyclopedia passes through hands—never published, but preserved; Stacya herself buys a copy secondhand:

    "Well, it's weird to see the whole thing and how much work he actually put into it..." (Stacya Shepherd Silverman, 48:40)

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Genius, Obsession, and the Cost

• A Monument Unfinished (49:51–50:43)

  • In a late-life interview, Shepherd doesn’t sound bitter; he continues writing and believes the work is unfinished:

    "I'm writing one now...called 'the older you get, the more it's going to cost to do the things you did when you were young.'" (Riley Shepherd, 50:10)

  • Vedantam notes how society oscillates between praising and scorning consuming obsessions, depending on the outcome.

• Online Legacy and Continuing Mystery (52:29)

  • After initial broadcast, Stacya donates a version of the encyclopedia to the Internet Archive; it's now available online.
  • She remains unconvinced her father was a genius, but admires the scale of his secrets and the mystery he leaves behind.

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Secrets: Psychological Implications

Segment: What Secrets Do to Us (56:03–96:40, selected highlights)

• Why We Keep Secrets (60:10–61:36)

  • With guest psychologist Leslie John, the episode transitions to a broader exploration of secrets: why we keep them, how they hurt us, and their physical/psychological toll.

    "Our minds immediately go into what would go wrong if I said the thing…people don't go further unless you prompt them to." (Leslie John, 60:24)

• The Cost of Secrecy (61:48–62:12)

  • Holding secrets is associated with poorer health, anxiety, rumination, and strained relationships.

    "...all kinds of negative health outcomes...physiological stress markers..." (Leslie John, 61:48)

• Listener Stories Illustrate Wide-Ranging Impact

  • Claire’s minor, long-held embarrassment (62:27–63:49):

    “For nine years, I couldn't look...in the eye because I just, you know, I wasn't sure if they saw the video…” (Claire, 62:27)

    • Leslie John: “Yes, it was haunting her. And then in the end, it was moot.” (64:16)

  • Emma’s secret identity and liberation (67:38–68:36):

    “I was born in 1956...I realized that I wished I'd been born a girl...This went on for almost 40 years, until 2014 when my wife suggested...I knew I had to come clean...” (Emma, 67:38)

    • John: "If you have an identity that is core to who you are...it’s important that some people know." (68:48)

  • Dean’s shame over infidelity (71:31–72:21):

    “It was so shameful that I would compartmentalize it like it was like a different person.” (Dean, 71:31)

    • John: "That is a really hard thing to deal with because...we like to think of ourselves as...faithful...but then there's this thing we did..." (71:31)

• Why We Sometimes Shouldn't Tell All

  • Sometimes disclosure is more for the teller’s relief than the listener’s benefit; the ethics of disclosure are explored. (72:21–73:35)

• Family and Collective Secrets (77:27–80:26)

  • The segment covers generational shame and secrecy—e.g., a German listener grappling with his grandfather's Nazi-era actions.

• When Secrets Bond Us (90:51–93:15)

  “I love secrets. I love listening to secrets. I love having secrets...” (Tracy, 90:51)

  • John: “About half of people...have enjoyed keeping a secret. [...] It really enhances intimacy.” (90:51)
  • Secrets as shared “electricity” in relationships and organizations.

• The Case for Strategic Oversharing (94:23–96:40)

  • John reflects on how systematically sharing—appropriately—can enhance relationships and facilitate intimacy.

    “...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...treat me with kid gloves because he knows me but he can't read my mind.” (Leslie John, 94:53)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Obsession’s Legacy:

  “When they succeed…we hail the obsessions that built the monuments of this world. When we count the collateral damage…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.” (Shankar Vedantam, 50:43)

• On Deception and Love:

  “Well, you know, I loved my dad. And he was very apologetic and sweet, and you want to believe your parents. And also he was very good at convincing.” (Stacya Shepherd Silverman, 22:36)

• On Genius and Perseverance:

  “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.” (Steve Winick, 41:34)

• On the Weight of Secrets:

  “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.” (Dean, 71:31)

• On the Smallness of Secrets in Perspective:

  "For nine years, I couldn't look...in the eye because I just, you know, I wasn't sure if they saw the video…And then this last summer, I finally came clean...and nobody cared at all after nine years of being so self conscious." (Claire, 62:27, 63:49)

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Notable Topics by Timestamp

• Riley Shepherd’s Early Music Career & Persona – 13:24–17:19
• Stacya’s Childhood and Awakening to Truth – 04:37–10:27
• Shepherd’s Deceptions and Escapes – 16:05–25:37
• Analysis of the Folk Music Encyclopedia – 32:06–37:12, 39:23–41:54
• Obsession, Genius, and Costs – 41:54–50:43
• Psychology of Secrets: Why & How They Hurt Us – 60:10–73:35
• Family and National Secrets (Holocaust, Faith) – 77:27–88:45
• Secrets as Social Bond, Building Trust – 90:51–93:15
• Should We Overshare or Not? – 94:23–96:40

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Tone and Language

The episode maintains the signature Hidden Brain balance of investigative curiosity, empathy, narrative richness, and explicit acknowledgment of life’s complexities. Speakers’ authentic voices are preserved—Stacya’s mixture of love and ruefulness, Steve Winick’s scholarly awe, Riley’s own drawl, and Leslie John’s measured, pragmatic warmth.

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Conclusion

"The Cowboy Philosopher" illustrates the sometimes tragic, sometimes awe-inspiring power of obsession, the ambivalence of familial love, and the strange legacy of secrets. Riley Shepherd’s life was both a cautionary tale and an unheralded act of scholarly devotion—a reminder of how messy, human, and unpredictable the pursuit of meaning can be, and how families and individuals wrestle with what should be hidden and what should be revealed.

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For more:

• Riley Shepherd’s Encyclopedia of Folk Music is now on the Internet Archive (see show notes).
• Next week: Listeners share their own stories of self-disclosure and its repercussions.

Transcript

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Steve Winick]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

My guide through the Library of Congress 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 ceiling stacks, across a small bridge and into a tiny elevator where the flow numbers go up as we move down. Finally, we arrive at our destination and

[Steve Winick]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Steve pulls from the shelf a cardboard box.

[Steve Winick]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

The author of this collection is Richard Riley Shepherd, a small time crook and con man who died in 2009. I've been tracking Riley shepherd 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 Shepherd. 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.

[Steve Winick]

He was a genius.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

I think he just was a compulsive liar.

[Steve Enslin]

Quite a master.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

Scott Hickey Free.

[John (Listener)]

He was getting out of town before

[Shankar Vedantam]

he was being tarred and feathered.

[Steve Enslin]

I gotta get this done.

[Riley Shepherd]

They all hated my guts, so I said, man.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Support for Hidden Brain comes from Lily. On this show, it's fascinating to discuss the unseen forces shaping the human brain. Consider conditions like Alzheimer's disease, where changes in the brain may develop up to 20 years before noticing symptoms. Talk to your doctor to understand your potential risk factors for dementia due to Alzheimer's disease and ask for a cognitive assessment. Visit brainhealthmatters.com for more information and resources. Support for Hidden Brain comes from adt. Imagine you finally have a day off when your phone buzzes a window's been broken at home, you're miles away in one second, everything can change. ADT security systems help keep your home safer with 24. 7 monitoring, they're professionally installed and keep watch from day one. Don't wait to prepare for an emergency. When every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com or call 1-800-ADT ASAP. Support for Hidden Brain comes from LinkedIn. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money, and momentum. A good hire? They can help grow your business. LinkedIn's new hiring pro screens candidates for you, so instead of sorting through applicants, you spend time talking to only the right ones. Get started by posting your job for [e-mail] HB terms and conditions apply. 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 Stacya Shepherd Silverman. She said her fallen hero was her dad, Riley shepherd, whom she still loved.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

I thought the smoke rings were magical.

[Shankar Vedantam]

There was a lot that was magical for Stacya 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.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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, 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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 takes 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 and impress his daughter on Their way home,

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Stasia 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.

[Riley Shepherd]

I'll have a blue Christmas without you. I'll be so blue.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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 things he was working on in books.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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 Stacya, the father she saw when the curtain opened was hard to recognize. It happened one day when she was 12, hanging out at home.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

And the phone rang, so I picked it up. I said, hello.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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?

[Shankar Vedantam]

How stasia responded to that phone call. When we come back. You're listening to hidden brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for hidden brain comes from Lily. On this show, it's fascinating to discuss the unseen forces shaping the human brain. Consider conditions like Alzheimer's disease, where changes in the brain may develop up to 20 years before noticing symptoms. Talk to your doctor to understand your potential risk factors for dementia due to Alzheimer's disease and ask for a cognitive assessment. Visit brainhealthmatters.com for more information and resources. Support for hidden brain comes from Sleep Number. Life changes. Your mattress should too. Sleep number's new collections are designed for personalized comfort that evolves with you as your body, health and lifestyle change. You can adjust firmness anytime for lasting support. It's the everything on sale memorial day event from Sleep number. Every bed and base is on sale now. Visit a sleep Number store near you or learn [e-mail]. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. In 1946, Riley shepherd released a cover of the hit song Atomic Power. It was inspired by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[Riley Shepherd]

Oh, this world is at a tremble with its strength and mighty power they're sending up to heaven to get the brimstone fire.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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 shepherd 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. Kevin was interested in preserving the stories of old time country western performers. He thought Riley might be worth profiling.

[Riley Shepherd]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Riley Shepherd]

And Roy's wife played piano. Lily Horton. Oh, really? Yeah.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Gradually, Kevin pieced together Riley's backstory. Richard Riley shepherd was born on a farm near Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1918. He dropped out of school in the fifth grade and decided to try his luck at singing. It was a heady time for music in the region. Groups like the Manors Mountaineers were popularizing what was then called hillbilly music.

[Riley Shepherd]

This world is not my home I'm just pacing through Strangers in my home Are far beyond the blue where many friends has left me and has gone on before and I can't feel at home in this world anymore Riley started

[Shankar Vedantam]

out playing songs in minstrel shows. Soon, he told Kevin he was getting gigs with hillbilly groups like the Dixie Reelers.

[Riley Shepherd]

I'm on my way to glory I shall not be moved I'm on my way to glory I shall not.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Riley Shepherd]

Where did you come up with that? Because I know you were calling yourself the 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 Gene came up with that crap.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

The Cosmopolitan Church presents Dr. Richard Riley Shepherd.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

Saturday, October 10th. God, man and. Saturday, October 17th, marriage, sex. Saturday, October 31st. Democracy and capitalism. Saturday, November 7th. Origin and growth of fascism.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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 sign with one record label and. 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.

[Riley Shepherd]

Dicky Free was one of the names I used. Dicky Free, Hickey Free.

[Shankar Vedantam]

And that was all for a time. Reilly 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.

[Riley Shepherd]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

Riley recorded it under the name Dixon Hall.

[Riley Shepherd]

I looked out the window and I saw a thing called Paul's Clothing, a big sign, and then Art Dixon came in Dixon Hall. That sounded okay.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Riley Shepherd]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Riley Shepherd]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

Red, your eyes are blue.

[Riley Shepherd]

I swapped My Horse and Dog, 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 $7,000 advance and 7 cents a copy. The biggest money ever paid for a Hill Filly song. Oh, I bet in those days,

[Shankar Vedantam]

Riley was also a hustler in his personal life, where the consequences of his actions were more serious. Marion Kimmenick knows this well. She was adopted at birth. As an adult, she searched for and found her biological mother. From her, Marion learned that her father was Riley Shepherd. 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 Marion, 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.

[Riley Shepherd]

The world will never know the real, the reason why I said we're through.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Riley Shepherd]

Guilty heart oh, guilty heart he first

[Shankar Vedantam]

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 did

[John (Listener)]

these moves for different purposes.

[Shankar Vedantam]

I think usually he was getting out of town before he was being tarred and feathered.

[Riley Shepherd]

Guilty heart O guilty heart it's perhaps

[Shankar Vedantam]

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, Stacy. For a while, he thrived in his new role as Riley shepherd, family man. But like most things in Riley's life, it didn't last.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

Your father is a crook.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

Stasia 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.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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 I 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

We got in this rickety old truck with all our stuff jammed in it and my father's encyclopedia, 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 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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 Stasia's mind, swindling everyone he could. It all ended when Stacia was 18. That year, 1983, Riley shepherd did what he had done many times before he disappeared.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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. He did not come back

[Shankar Vedantam]

for more than a year. Stacy 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.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

For years, Stacy 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, Stasia had left Porterville. A few years later, Riley returned to the town and played the role of the old cowboy musician. Stasia 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

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

Stasia tried to comfort him, but in retrospect, she wishes she'd asked a question.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

After Riley died, Stacya 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.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

After Riley died, Stacy 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.

[Riley Shepherd]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

There wasn't much in the Riley shepherd estate. Stacy 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 vedanta. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Cash App. What if getting started with bitcoin didn't have to feel overwhelming? If you've been curious about bitcoin, but haven't made the jump yet, Cash App makes it easy. You can set up automatic purchases with zero fees or buy larger amounts, also with zero fees. Start small or go bigger. It's designed to be simple. Either way, for a limited time, new customers can get $10 added to their balance. Just use code CASHAPP10 when you sign up. And don't forget this part. Send at least $5 to a friend in the first two weeks. Terms apply. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Bitcoin services provided by Block Inc. Brand for additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures at Cash App legalpodcast. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive, where drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average. Plus auto customers qualify for an average of 7 discounts. Quote [e-mail] to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12 month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta and in here we

[Steve Winick]

find row upon row of collection boxes on the shelves.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Steve Winick]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Steve Winick]

The date of this letter is September 7, 1976, more than four decades ago,

[Shankar Vedantam]

Riley wrote this letter to the Registrar of copyrights. Stacy was 11 years old, so he

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Steve Winick]

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, et cetera, all of which have enjoyed a folk type tradition within the borders of the United States and Canada.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Steve Winick]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

He ends the letter this I know only one.

[Steve Winick]

I am the only person in the world with this amount of cross index, cross 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Steve Winick]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Steve Winick]

So he's got 43,000 individual sheets or two 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

What Riley shepherd 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 routes 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 two 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.

[Steve Winick]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

Riley Shepherd, a man with a fifth 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 and a small army of researchers.

[Steve Winick]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Steve Winick]

So, let's see. I saw one. This is Haul Away 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Steve Winick]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

How does the tune of this song go? Do you remember it? When I was a little boy it's

[Steve Winick]

so my mother told me Way, all the way all the way, Joe that if I didn't kiss the girls My lips would all grow moldy away all the way, all the way, Joe.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Steve Winick]

It was.

[Shankar Vedantam]

In 1979, three 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.

[Steve Winick]

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 8, 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

It was an act of desperation.

[Steve Winick]

If you were Are serious about the library reaching some agreement with me, I am ready to proceed. My problem is 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 six weeks. As I am, as they say in the country music field, flat busted.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Riley never got what he was seeking.

[Steve Winick]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

54 other volumes. After nearly two decades of painstaking work, came the final indignity. Rejection.

[Steve Winick]

Yeah, I think he was an early casualty, you might say, of the switch from published books, I.e. 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Would you say that Riley Shepard was a genius?

[Steve Winick]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Steve Winick]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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 Stacya, 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.

[Steve Winick]

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 von Gennep. He's the person who popularized the term rites of passage. And Van Genp 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 carol 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 Riley Shepherd.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Steve Enslin]

small house on D Street in Porterville.

[Shankar Vedantam]

He was in rough shape.

[Steve Enslin]

I thought, you know, he's a little bit disheveled.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Steve Enslin]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

They were friends. They were also business partners.

[Steve Enslin]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Steve Enslin]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

Steve says Riley was still consumed by the project.

[Steve Enslin]

Well, he had music spread all over. I mean, he had tables and chairs and floor and everything, and he had had this music spread out and he was trying to get it in some sort of a chronological order and by the. 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Steve and his father both felt they were in the presence of an extraordinary human being.

[Steve Enslin]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Steve Enslin]

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

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Steve Enslin]

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?

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Steve Enslin]

After Riley 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.

[Riley Shepherd]

It was fun while it lasted, but it didn't last.

[Steve Enslin]

And he just enjoyed Riley. He enjoyed his friendship.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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, Stacy 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.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

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 it 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.

[Riley Shepherd]

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

[Steve Winick]

in

[Shankar Vedantam]

the conversation near the end of his life, Riley shepherd 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 in music that were left in him.

[Riley Shepherd]

I'm writing, I'm writing one now I'm God called the older you get, the more it's going to 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 just warming it over goes on like that.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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, Stacya 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 Stacya, 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'd received all those years ago.

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

Your father is a crook.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[John (Listener)]

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 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 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 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[John (Listener)]

I made sure not to tell him this because 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 bus station, I lied. I told him that we 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. The problem is that he was 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 had a good time. There was a little bit of that 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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 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 Quince. If you're trying to be more intentional about what you wear day to day, Quince can help with that. They've got pieces that feel easy, comfortable and still put together. The fabrics feel elevated and the fits are clean. Think 100% European linen shorts and shirts from $34, lightweight, breathable and comfortable. Everything is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're getting premium materials without the markup. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quins.com brain for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com brain for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com brain support for Hidden Brain comes from BetterHelp. May is mental Health Awareness Month, a reminder that whatever you're going through, you don't have to do it alone. From loneliness epidemics to anxiety and Sunday scaries to financial stress, right now Americans are struggling. And while most people believe that seeking out support is important, many still don't take that step. That's where BetterHelp comes in. With BetterHelp, you can connect with a licensed therapist who's there with you to listen, understand and support support you on your terms. Schedule sessions conveniently via the app and talk to your therapist by video phone or live chat. BetterHelp matches you with a therapist who's with you through life's ups and downs. Because no journey should be alone. Sign up now and get 10% [e-mail] hidden that's betterhelp.com hidden. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. 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 the Underrated Power of Oversharing. We talked with her on two 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 John, welcome back to Hidden Brain.

[Leslie John]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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?

[Leslie John]

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. So. 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, okay, 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Leslie John]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Hmm. 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.

[Claire (Listener)]

So, about nine 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 p. 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 nine 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 nine 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 nine years ago, which had been haunting me for almost a decade. No one seemed to care. I told, you know, my friend about it, and nobody cared at all after nine years of being so self conscious.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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?

[Stacya Shepherd Silverman]

Yeah.

[Leslie John]

Oh, Claire, I feel for you. The word. It was haunting her. Yes, it was haunting her. And then in the end, it was moot. Like it. I was hoping she'd say that. They got a good laugh out of it at least. Or maybe they. Maybe they still had the footage and they could laugh about it, but it sounds like it was not even. She didn't even give 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Yeah.

[Leslie John]

This is why I really think of revealing as a skill, as a practice. Right. If you do it more, then you realize you get feedback. You're like, oh, that wasn't such a big deal. It's funny because I was thinking about a dear friend of mine. Recently, we've rekindled our friendship. She. 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. Like, 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 literally 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? Like, yeah. And the study that, that. It was a hilarious oldie, but a goody 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 gonna notice and they'll be a fool, but really nobody notices. So we're really kind of self absorbed in that way.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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, you know, 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.

[Leslie John]

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 laughed.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Emma (Listener)]

in 1956, assigned male at birth, when I was four or five, 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 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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 two things when it comes to holding secrets.

[Leslie John]

Yeah. I think that they point to kind of two motives to revealing. Right. Something you did.

[Shankar Vedantam]

The.

[Leslie John]

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'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 want to 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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 it 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.

[Leslie John]

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, you know, 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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? Yeah, talk about that tension, Lesley.

[Leslie John]

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. And 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 gonna impose the burden on her? Perhaps it's better to talk about it with a therapist than 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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 Vedant. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Defender Even the boldest journey starts small with a single decision to go somewhere new. The Defender 110 is a vehicle built for those moments for drivers capable of great things whether they're headed toward uncharted territory or just a weekend away. The Defender 110 combines on road presence with off road capability. It looks tough because it is with an exterior engineered for durability. Inside capability meets comfort with seating for five and the option for seven plus refined finishes and thoughtful design. It's also packed with intuitive tech like 3D surround cameras with clearside ground view to help you navigate rough terrain and the next generation PIVI Pro infotainment system designed to keep you informed, connected and in control no matter the path. The Defender 110 is naturally capable, expedition ready and built for those ready to move forward. Explore the [e-mail] Support for Hidden Brain comes from Liquid IV. When you're on the go, staying hydrated is key to enjoying all that extra sunshine. And right now you can get 20% off your first order with code BRAIN at checkout. It's powered by Liv Hydrocycles, an optimized ratio of electrolytes, essential vitamins and clinically tested nutrients that turn ordinary water into extraordinary hydration. Liquid IV is always non gmo, vegan, gluten free, dairy free and soy free. Explore the delicious sugar free options like white peach, strawberry, watermelon and more. Stay hydrated while you're on the go this summer with Liquid IV Tear Pour Live. More go to liquidiv.com and get 20% off your first purchase with code BRAIN at checkout. That's 20% off your first purchase with Code [e-mail]. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. 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 part of the chain of command. 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?

[Leslie John]

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 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Leslie John]

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. 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, 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 bearing it and she finally, she said, you know what? I'm going to say it. She said, I feel frustrated. And, 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Leslie John]

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 to. 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 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 the, and the goal isn't kind of growth and narrative sense making, 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 would 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Yeah.

[Leslie John]

How special is that?

[Shankar Vedantam]

When we come back, could keeping a secret ever be a good thing? You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Support for Hidden Brain comes from usps. In business, there's no room for guesswork. That's why reliability is at the core of usps Ground Advantage. Each package moves through a secure nationwide network tracked from dock to door with affordable pricing and delivery you can depend on because knowing your logistics are handled lets you focus on everything else. Visit usps.com groundadvantage to start shipping with confidence. USPS Ground Advantage we mean business.

[John (Listener)]

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[Shankar Vedantam]

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 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.

[Philip (Listener)]

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 four 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 of the side effects that Leslie John alluded to psychologically, physiologically, socially, you name it. 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. It felt really good to be able to express myself honestly without judgment. But because this friend was round my age and female, it also constitutes 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Leslie John]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Leslie John]

Right. And so that he's self criticizing, he says he breached my wife. But in some ways, you could think of his non 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. And 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Right. I mean, he talks about this almost burning desire he had to come clean to get the secret off his chest. And 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.

[Leslie John]

And that's why I think like, really trying to, like, 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 like, if you can kind of start to put your finger on these things, then they become much more manageable and you, you kind of embrace the duality and complexity instead of hiding from it.

[Shankar Vedantam]

We also heard from some listeners who argue 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.

[Leslie John]

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 like, complete guardedness in like, 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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 have, 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?

[Leslie John]

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 300Americans recently, have you ever enjoyed Keeping a secret. And 49% said yes. So about half of the people. 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 my husband and I, when we have this shared understanding of something and we're at a dinner party and we just know that we're both thinking the same thing. Like, that's a beautiful, beautiful moment. And it really enhances intimacy because it's. It's the specialness of that person in 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. 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Leslie John]

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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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

[Leslie John]

Oh, I completely agree. Like, I would, I would not want a surprise party because I like the anticipation and the savoring and the, and I like to be able to control things. But yeah, that's so well put. It's interesting though, because when you, 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 didn't scare customers away. It enhanced trust and it, it increased customer lifetime because the customers like, trusted the bank more.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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.

[Leslie John]

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 going to tick off. This is really high tech. Okay, So I wake up in the morning, I roll over in bed. I say, hi, Collie. 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, we're just in the bathroom and already my little tally here is four to one. I could go on, but I won't. And, and so my point isn't that like 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, when I had these, when looking in the mirror. And now because I think about it more, I share more. And, and though that's a perfect example of where sharing is really a good thing to do because, you know, it's, 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, 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.

[Shankar Vedantam]

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 defense, 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.

[Leslie John]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy, Paul, Kristin Wong, Laura Kwerel, 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 [e-mail] iddenbrain or just click the link in our show notes for today's episode. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

[John (Listener)]

The Sprite Berry Blast is here. A crispy blue sprite with a dollop of cold foam. It's very, very good. One of many new drinks now at McDonald's.