Shankar Vedantam

And I said, well, I know, but what are you going to do with them?

Ted never did anything with them.

He was old and suffering from dementia.

Instead, he just relived his friendship with Riley.

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

You left me for somebody new.

And he just enjoyed Riley.

He enjoyed his friendship.

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, Stasha 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.

In the conversation near the end of his life, Riley Shepard doesn't sound bitter or frustrated.

He sounds like a man still doing what he loves, honoring the music he had learned as a boy, trying to preserve it.

In fact, he told Kevin, there were still plenty of songs and music that were left in him.

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.