Hemingway's Picasso

Steve Kough lived many lives. He was an NFL journeyman, a male model, and one of the most well-connected smugglers in 1980’s Miami, the “Drug Capital of the World." Kough collected many souvenirs from his adventures, but his most treasured bounty – a beautiful ceramic, crafted by Pablo Picasso and gifted to Ernest Hemingway at the author’s Cuban home, the Finca Vigia... or so the story goes. Lost during the Cuban Revolution, the artwork resurfaced when Kough took it as a payment for drug run financed by the notorious Pablo Escobar.  Kough passed away in 2018, passing the piece down to his son, Stevie, a skateboarding hippie growing weed in California. Stevie feels he needs to complete his father’s mission – of selling this piece and telling Steve’s cinematic life story. So, is the Picasso authentic—or a fraud? Was Steve Kough a big talker or a real deal smuggler? Does any of that matter or is this a story of aspiration, legacy, and difficult love? Tune in on Monday’s starting on October 18th to find out!  This is a Somethin' Else production in association with Vespucci.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Steve Kough was a lot of things: an ex-NFL player, model, drug smuggler, art aficionado, Miami’s heart-throb, and a father. His unfiltered and brazen thirst for excitement mixed with a family history of crime was a cocktail for a wild life. On a cocaine drug run to Cuba in 1989, Steve winds up with a Picasso ceramic tile that once belonged to Ernest Hemingway. The piece is apparently meant to go to Pablo Escobar in lieu of cash, but due to political complications in Cuba, Steve gets to keep the piece. Steve’s son, Stevie now holds the treasured piece that represents all the incarnations of his father. The question is, do we believe the story? This is a Somethin' Else production in association with Vespucci.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

During Steve’s short career on the football field he has a run in with his old buddies in the Detroit Mafia who lure him on his first trip across the border to Mexico.  Steve’s son, Stevie reveals what life was like as the son of a drug smuggler in Miami.  This is a Somethin' Else production in association with Vespucci.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Steve deals with the consequences of his arrest from his drug run in Mexico. He moves to Miami to chase his dreams of football stardom, and ends up exploring what else the city has to offer. But then, he gets an angry call from his mother.  Meanwhile, Steve’s daughter, Jamie, uncovers what it was like to have a father like Steve, the good and the bad.  This is a Somethin' Else production in association with Vespucci.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Who was Hugh Hefner? Liberator of sexuality, bizarre playboy or something more sinister? In this season, journalist and author Amy Rose Spiegel looks at his complex story through the eyes of the women who knew him best, delving into Hefner’s rise to power and investigating the dark side of the brand. What can the story of Hugh Hefner and the rise and fall of Playboy tell us about sex and power, then and now? A Somethin' Else production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After being released from prison in 1984, Steve tries his luck at getting a normal job.  But when his past kept catching up with him, Mustafa Hamshaw, AKA Joe Pegg, gives him a chance of a lifetime.  Steve meets a Miami Dolphins cheerleader, Patron, one night on the dance floor, and they elope quickly thereafter.  After a whirlwind romance, a less-than-perfect marriage followed, and soon Steve would realize he might need to make one last, big run to try to get out of the game and save his family.  This is a Somethin' Else production in association with Vespucci.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

During the 1-900 number craze of the Nineties, one company provided the vast majority of phone sex. American Telnet was an empire founded by the man who called himself “The Telephone Pimp.”  He ran the company “like General Motors” and got filthy rich doing it. But for the (mostly) women who answered the calls and delivered fantasies 24-7, it was a different story.  The powerful stigma against sex work was always lurking just beneath the surface, until it threatened to tear apart the whole company.  Hosted by Tina Horn (Why Are People Into That?), OPERATOR is an eight-part series about big ambitions, Shakespearean-level corporate backstabbing, men and women at the cutting edge of a technological revolution...and on the front lines of a sexual one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Leah attempts to understand how Hemingway could have ended up with a Picasso ceramic by examining the relationship between these two important figures.  She goes through the work Steve Senior already went through to establish the piece’s provenance, or the history of its ownership. And she makes some discoveries of her own.  This is a Somethin' Else production in association with Vespucci. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The consequences of Steve’s actions as a father and drug smuggler have lasting effects on his loved ones.  Stevie, his son, recounts an altercation he had with his father when he was 18, and how it set his mental health to spiral out of control.  He spends the next 10 years of his life distancing himself from his father’s Miami and the heavy burden of Fred and Betty.  Steve’s old girlfriend, Lourdes, comes back into his life 30 years later, during his last and final years. But then, Steve receives a phone call that threatens to put an end to their love story.  This is a Somethin' Else production in association with Vespucci.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Once Stevie hears about Steve's cancer, he brings his dad to Temecula, California to battle his illness together. Jamie tries to help, but can't figure out her place with her father and brother. Then, she learns an upsetting truth about what was in Steve’s will.  We speak with art specialists at Sotheby’s and Christies in London who deliberate on the authenticity of the piece and give their expert opinion on whether or not Fred and Betty is a real Picasso.  This is a Somethin' Else production in association with Vespucci.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We speak to Antony Penrose, the son of artists Lee Miller and Roland Penrose. He and his parents spent summers in the South of France with Pablo Picasso, one of the most recognized artists of the 20th century. Picasso was warm with Antony and other children, but the famous artist showed a very different side to adults, especially to his lover Françoise Gilot.  This is a Somethin' Else production in association with Vespucci.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ernest Hemingway was embraced by many Cubans as Papa, the everyday man who lived in the iconic seaside estate, Finca Vigia.  He wrote some of his most masterful novels in Havana, Cuba - and lived quite the life there, too.  But Cuba is rarely highlighted or even remembered in Hemingway's biography. Fidel Castro saw the importance of Hemingway as a writer and political tool.   In this installment, Norberto Fuentes, the legendary Cuban journalist and author in exile, discusses Hemingway’s life and legacy in Cuba.  This is a Somethin' Else production in association with Vespucci.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices