The Cowboy Philosopher

[0] This is Hidden Brain.

[1] I'm Shankar Vedantam.

[2] Not long ago, I found myself in a subterranean labyrinth below the streets of Washington, D .C. I'd come in search of clues.

[3] So here we are in deck 50 in the stacks of the Library of Congress.

[4] I'm opening a door that's marked Door 20.

[5] My guide is a tall, shaggy man named Steve Winnick.

[6] He looks a lot like Hagrid from Harry Potter, which seems about right for somebody with a title of folklorist.

[7] 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 go down.

[8] But now, we've arrived.

[9] And in here, we find row upon row of collection boxes on the shelves, and I'm looking for this collection, which is numbered AFC -1979, 0 .08.

[10] Steve pulls from the shelf a cardboard box.

[11] Nobody's really used this collection very much.

[12] So it's simply, you know, been there waiting for you, really.

[13] The author of this collection is Richard Riley Shepard, a small -time crook and con man who died in 2009.

[14] I've been tracking Riley Shepard for a few months.

[15] My assumption is that there's nothing of significance in the box.

[16] But I'm about to discover that the The story I thought I was reporting is not the story I am reporting.

[17] The story that is about to unfold before me is a story of obsession, its power, its beauty, and its costs.

[18] This week on Hidden Brain, we explore the peculiar tale of Riley Shepard, a musician and writer who spent decades on a single grand project.

[19] whether that project was a great quest or a great folly that is for you to decide he was a genius I think he just was a compulsive liar he was quite a master Dick Scott he was getting out of town before he was being tarting Kevin no I haven't got time for that I gotta get this done they all hated my gun so I said bullshit man I stumbled onto the story as I was contemplating an episode not about obsession, but about fallen heroes.

[20] I'd asked hidden -brain listeners to share examples from their own lives.

[21] One of the messages...

[22] I hope I did this right.