♪ JULIAN BENBOW: Everybody always tells you when you're young, "Like, go, you got to go see the world, man."

And I was always like, "Have you seen the world?"

(laughter) JEFFREY FOUCAULT: The thing that happened next had something to with dignity and something to do with luck and something to do with grace.

RENATA SANCKEN: We had driven two hours into the state of Kentucky to go on a ghost hunt at this state park, so we kind of hoped that something here was haunted.

(laughter) WESLEY HAZARD: Tonight's theme is "Wanderlust."

ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you.

Thank you.

At some point or another, I'm sure you've all had the feeling of every fiber in your mind, body, and soul of, "I got to go."

And you just hit the road.

Other times, you might be feeling more or less comfortable, but your mind still can't shake that thought of, "What if?"

And maybe you stay put, or maybe you take the plunge.

And if you do, maybe you just uproot everything, scorched earth, brand new life, different places, different faces, or maybe you just go away for a couple days and come back to what you know and love.

Whatever the case, that thought, that feeling, that urge that we all have from time to time, that whisper of what might be out there, I find that it always pushes us to our best stories.

♪ BENBOW: My name's Julian Benbow, I'm from Richmond, Virginia.

That's the first thing I tell everybody, because it's the most important thing.

I work for "The Boston Globe."

It's a great paper, great history, great institution.

So many people writing so many important things, and I'm kind of, like, fortunate enough to kind of be in the room, you know what I mean, so... And what kind of writing do you do?

I write about sports for the "Globe."

I've been doing it for like... 12 years now.

You are a writer, you write regularly, that's one art.

Did you feel that this was a lot different, you know, versus a story that you might put in the paper?

No, I mean a lot of what I do is taking stuff around me, like, and putting it on paper.

But you still just talking to people every day.

The coolest part about what I do is I get to talk to people all the time.

Like, the hardest part about what I do is trying to reflect what they say and the cool parts about what they say and the cool parts about their lives in the best way.

That's the challenge.

So, this is your first time telling a story in a setting like this, and I just have to ask-- what are you hoping to get out of the night?

You know, what are you really looking forward to, and what are your concerns?

I think the experience is cool, first and foremost.

And I think the only reason I really do this, to be honest with you, is again, just to get thoughts out of my head.

You know what I mean?

So, hopefully I can say something that is important and it is funny, and people can connect to and relate to, and if I did that, then I did what I was supposed to do.

The theme tonight is "Wanderlust."

How do you feel that your story relates to that?

In a backwards way, right?

Because, like, everybody gets excited about seeing this world.

You know how the world works now, you go on Instagram and somebody's in Dubai and Hong Kong in the same day, you know what I mean?

And everybody's got 500 likes for it.

It was like, how'd you manage to do that?

But I think it's really cool, no matter where you go, to be perfectly okay where you are, you know what I'm saying?

Like, where you're from, the people you care about, the people you love, the place that made you.

You can go wherever you want in this world, but those are always going to be the most important things.

Everybody always tells you when you're young, like, "Go, you got to go see the world, man.

"You got to get out there.

The world is yours."

And I was always like, "Have you seen the world?"

(laughter) You can have it.

You can have it.

I'm a firm believer in the idea that it is perfectly okay for the world to be as big as the city you came from.

I'm from Richmond, Virginia.

North Side, to be exact.

And I grew up in a duplex on Lamb Avenue.

Me and my mom up top, my grandma down bottom.

The North Side part is important, because I don't know how much you know about Richmond, but Richmond is split, north and south, by the James River.

North Side one side, South Side the other side.

And if you're from either part, going to the other side is like going to the moon.

Like, legitimately, it's only 20 minutes, but it's so far that people never go.

And if you're a North Sider and trying to go to South Side, it is guaranteed that you have said the words, "All the way over."

Example: "Yo, my car broke down."

"Where you at?

"All the way over South Side?

(laughter) You ain't got AAA?"

Like, I mean, it's hard to understand, but that's just a Richmond thing.

Even getting on highways is kind of a journey, right?

Like, when I was a kid, like, I didn't learn, like, the numbers on exits until I was like 22, I just knew the streets, you know what I mean?

So when me and my mom would get on the highway, I started driving, she would always see the sign that said "Washington, D.C." And she would say, "Don't you take me all the way to Washington, D.C." And I was like, "You know we're just going to Walmart, right?"

(laughter) So, you got to... think about how weird it was the first time I got on a plane, man.

I was 18 years old.

Just about...

I was about to go... it was a week before I was supposed to go to college, and I had this trip planned to go see my big brother in Ohio.

Now, the problem is, I didn't ask my mother if I could go.

I told her I was going.

When I told her, she assumed... she just treated me like I was talking about some imaginary plane and some imaginary friend.

She kind of brushed it off.

But then, the day of the trip came, and I'm packing my bags up, putting my stuff in my bags, I'm ready to go.

And I asked my mom, walked up, she's like, "What you doing?"

I was like, "I'm ready to go to Ohio."

She's like, "How you going to get to the airport?"

And I was like, "You going to take me, right?"

She was like... (laughter) And I could tell by the look on her face that, you know, she said it without even saying a word.

She's like, "Oh, you think you're grown?

How you going to get there?"

And I was like, I was like, "You know what, you're right.

I'm 18, I'm going to do what any adult would do."

I went downstairs and... talked to my grandma, that's what I did.

(laughter) And grandma helped me get a taxi to get to the airport.

I went all the way out to Ohio.

And I'm probably going to be the only person you meet in your life that talks about Cleveland like it's New York City.

(laughter) Like, I got off the plane, I felt like I was in Times Square.

All the buildings looked like the Empire State Building, they were really Wawas.

All the cars looked like... all the cars looked like Mercedes-Benzes, they were Kias.

But it was just so cool to be in, like, a new place and see this place I had never been.

But the weird part was that, you know, once I got there, me and my brother did the same things we always did when were in Richmond.

We just played video games, watched basketball, and ate chocolate chip cookies.

Like, that's really the time we spent.

When I got back, though, I knew I had to brace myself, because I was still in trouble.

And I didn't know how bad it was going to be.

I walked in the house, my mom's sitting on the couch, and all she does is stare in silence.

And I don't know if you've ever seen a sniper rifle... (laughter) but that stare was like a red dot on my chest.

And that silence was like a trigger.

And I was like, "Oh, man, I am in for it."

I just go to... well, you can't do anything, I just went to sleep.

Next day, I wake up, things are going to be better.

Red dot, still there.

Next day, I wake up, red dot, still there.

It's Wednesday, red dot's still there, and I don't know how long you have to go with a red dot on your chest to realize, "I need to start making arrangements."

(laughter) I needed to figure out what I was going to do if my mother never spoke to me again.

(chuckles) And you've got to understand, like, it's not, like, man, me and my mom talked every single day for 18 years, that was my role... that was my best friend and my tag team partner.

So, this was a very strange occurrence.

And I was supposed to be moving to college, man, I need to talk to somebody.

She had the microwave ready, the refrigerator ready, you know, all the stuff you move into college.

And we also had this one trunk that my grandma gave me.

It was a white trunk.

Paint was chipped on it, you could see the blue underneath, because it had been painted over, and the game plan was always to paint this trunk the colors of the school I was going to, Virginia Commonwealth University.

But I wasn't there to paint it, and we weren't talking after.

So at some point I decide, "You know what, I got to leave.

I got to get out of here."

Just to break the silence, this is maddening.

And I left on a Friday, came back from wherever I went, and the trunk that was painted white... was painted black and yellow.

And we never talked about it at all.

But in that moment, I knew everything was okay again.

And I also realized that she was never mad.

She's a single mom, I'm her only kid, and this was the first moment when she realized her son was stepping out into the world.

She wasn't dropping me off at college, she was dropping me into the world.

And the world is a scary place.

You find that out when you get older.

I would take Richmond over anywhere in the world, every day.

Just don't ask me to go over South Side.

(laughter) (cheers and applause) HAZARD: Julian Benbow, let him know!

Fantastic story.

♪ SANCKEN: My name's Renata Sancken.

I'm originally from Illinois, and I moved to the Boston area about a year ago.

I work as a teen services librarian in Andover, Massachusetts.

I also co-host a podcast called "The Worst Bestsellers," where we read bad books.

When did you realize that storytelling was an important part of your life?

I went to grad school for library science, and one of the optional classes that you can take for the library degree is storytelling.

At first, I was really nervous to take storytelling, I thought it would be a challenge, because I'm sort of a shy person, but as I got into the class, I realized that I actually liked it, and people seemed to like my stories.

What is it about storytelling that really appeals to you?

A lot of my stories actually are about, like, bad times.

What keeps me going through a lot of unpleasant times is just sort of the thought, like, "This is going to make a really funny story later."

So I think having that kind of lens to look at my life through is valuable, of being able to decide how I want to frame these events that have happened to me or that I have done.

As my friend Molly and I drove through the state park campground, I pointed out the mini-golf course and said, "Hey, I bet that mini golf course is totally haunted."

And we both laughed, because a haunted mini-golf course is kind of a ridiculous idea.

But the truth was we had driven two hours into the State of Kentucky to go on a ghost hunt at this state park, so we kind of hoped that something here was haunted.

Molly and I became friends in college over a shared love of "so bad they're good" movies, like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," and we discovered that that same aesthetic could be applied to "so bad they're good" life experiences.

(laughter) And we took a lot of road trips around the Midwest to places like the Creation Museum, which has life-size dioramas of the Garden of Eden, showing Adam and Eve living side by side with dinosaurs.

(laughter) So when we heard that you could go on a ghost hunt in Big Bone Lick State Park, we knew we had to go.

Now, Big Bone Lick State Park is a real park.

It's in Kentucky.

It's so named because the remains of wooly mammoths, which are famously big-boned creatures, were found there.

And then a lick is the term for when there's salt in the ground, the animals will come and lick.

So... so it's a totally reasonable thing to name your haunted state park, Kentucky.

So we went to the welcome center to meet up with our fellow ghost hunters, and at that point we realized that there are not a lot of ironic ghost hunters.

Everyone else was deeply committed to ghost hunting.

They all seemed to do this just about every weekend.

They were all extremely familiar with the ghost hunting equipment, stuff that I had only seen, like, on "Ghostbusters."

(laughter) Stuff like the EMF meter that measures the electro- magnetic frequency in the air, and then, like, it beeps if there's a ghost, I guess.

All the way on down to the most low-tech piece of ghost hunting equipment, which is just a pendant.

Any kind of necklace-- you might not know this-- any kind of necklace you can hold out straight in front of you and ask a yes or no question, and the ghost will spin the necklace clockwise for yes or counterclockwise for no.

Or there's a breeze in the room, we have no way of knowing.

(laughter) So we divided up into groups, and Molly and I ended up with the pendant group, which was fine for us, because that seemed the easiest to learn.

(laughter) And we all went up to the first stop on our ghost hunt, which was an old settlers church in the park, and we start asking questions.

And it gets awkward very quickly.

We're an all-white group of ghost hunters in Kentucky, and they start asking questions like, "Did you die in the Civil War?"

"Were you a slave?"

"Were your parents slaves?"

Stuff that's just kind of awkward to ask via necklace, in my opinion.

(laughter) So they started picking up on our... on my friend Molly's and I's side-eyeing them, and they realized that they had been hogging the pendant, so they asked if we wanted a turn.

And my friend Molly, who's so smart, said no.

(laughter) But I took the pendant, and I asked the ghost, "Do you like pizza?"

(laughter) Which I thought was a reasonable and inoffensive question if you're trying to determine what years this ghost was alive.

Was it there before Italians came to Kentucky, or after?

We'll find out.

But they... no one else thought this was a good question, and I lost my pendant privileges for the rest of the night.

(laughter) But it was actually fine, because there was nothing else I wanted to know.

(laughter) So then, shortly after that, we moved on to the next stop on our ghost hunt, and it was the mini-golf course that we'd seen earlier.

And it turns out that this mini-golf course had been built around an old settlers graveyard, which is where I want to be buried.

(laughter) I don't think that we had any meaningful interactions with ghosts anywhere that night, but we had a good time, and we went back to our tent, had a nice, restful sleep, completely undisturbed by pizza-seeking ghosts.

And in the morning, I got up and went out to start a fire, so we could make breakfast.

I am a former Girl Scout, so I had everything we needed for the fire, like matches, and firewood, and a copy of "Dianetics" by L. Ron Hubbard.

(laughter) Which is one of the foundational texts of Scientology.

I had had to read it for a podcast episode about it.

It's not so bad it's good, it's actually just terrible.

(laughter) So I wanted to burn it and get rid of it.

But what I hadn't taken into consideration was that it's a pretty small campground, so people kept coming out of their tents and their campers, looking over and seeing me burning a book.

(laughter) And they kept coming over one by one with these very concerned expressions and asking if I'm okay, what book is this, do I just want some of their firewood, can they help me.

And not one of them looks reassured when I tell them, "Oh, no, I'm just burning 'Dianetics'."

(laughter) And I realize, as I watch these people go back to their tents with very suspicious looks, that they were all going to go home and tell their friends about me the same way I was going to go home and tell everyone about those ghost hunters.

And at first, I was a little troubled, I'll admit, but then I thought about how much fun I was going to have talking about the ghost hunters.

And I decided I should just embrace it and just be the haunted mini-golf course that I want to see in the world.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) HAZARD: That was great.

Please keep it going, so funny!

Renata Sancken, Renata Sancken.

♪ FOUCAULT: My name is Jeffrey Foucault, and I grew up in the Midwest in Wisconsin.

I'm a professional touring musician, and I've been on the road about 20 years, and I have...

I want to say six albums of my own songs that are out in the world.

How did you come into music?

You know, what caught the, you know, that you had to have the bug?

The thing that led me to music was my parents.

And my dad was a guitar player-- is a guitar player-- and he would come home from work, and he would be tired.

And one of things that he would do is sit down and pick up his guitar, which would lean over in the corner of the living room, off the kitchen.

And he'd go in there, and he'd pick up the guitar, or maybe he would sit down at the piano, and he would play a little bit.

And he would get this look on his face, and it was not a look that I would see any other time.

it was almost as if he was a different person.

And my mom, when she would sing along with, you know, the turntable or whatever, same thing.

There was another person that wasn't present the rest of the time, or if they were, they were in the background.

And I was curious about those people.

How are you approaching this, what you're about to do, tonight?

Have you ever told a story without, you know...?

No, and I am scared out of my mind.

The last time I stood up in front of anybody and I was not holding onto a guitar was at the wedding of a guy that I lived with in college, and I was the best man, I had to give a speech.

And that just about made me ill all day, thinking about it.

We train ourselves to do the thing, right?

"It's your job, you're the one who's going to get up onstage, and you know how to do that one thing."

The lights are off in the room, but the lights are on you, and you can't really see very well, and you go out there, and you learn how to do it.

And when you change any one variable in there, it becomes just as nervous-making as it was.

In June of 2006, I played what seemed to me to be an almost perfect show at a very nearly empty bar in Des Moines, Iowa.

It was a hot day, with the kind of flat, wet, oppressive heat that the Midwest gets in exchange for the wind-chill factor.

And I went to the Des Moines airport, and I picked up my friend Eric Haywood, a pedal steel and electric guitar player of some note.

And we had a few hours to kill, so we drove around town, like you do when you're a musician on the road.

First, we went to the vintage clothing shop, and then we went to the vintage guitar store, and we played some guitars that we couldn't afford.

We had been on the road about a month prior to release a record in Europe, and we had traveled all over the continent, but for whatever reason, we had got some very nice traction and were very mildly and very briefly famous in the Netherlands, of all places.

It's worth pointing out that the Netherlands is a country of 17 million people that would fit in the state of Iowa a little over three times.

There are three and a half million people in the state of Iowa, and six of them came to our show in Des Moines that night.

(laughter) Bear with me.

Like I said, we had some time to kill, so we killed it.

And then we drove across town.

We located the club.

And we pulled into the municipal parking lot across the street, took a deep breath, and we got our courage up, and then we stepped out of the air-conditioned rental car, and we carried our guitars across the parking lot in what I would describe as sort of a radiant, sweltering heat that softened the asphalt.

You could probably see our footprints from the car to the club.

We got inside, and they said, "You're late."

And it turned out that the time that I had been told for the show and I had advertised was different from the time that the club had advertised with the result that, though we had just screwed around for about two hours, we had exactly enough time to sound check, very briefly, drink a few beers as fast as we could, because we were not going to have our supper, and walk onstage and play this show for six people who had not actually arrived yet at the show.

(laughter) You might think that the hard thing about playing a show in a large room with very few people in it is that you feel demoralized by the turnout.

But, actually, it's the palpable unease of the people in the room who actually showed up at the show, and the feeling that they're embarrassed for you.

(laughter) And because they're embarrassed, they're unlikely to have a good time, and we're all there to have a good time.

Bob Dylan said that dignity has never been photographed.

I think that's probably true.

But that doesn't mean that dignity doesn't exist.

And the thing that happened next had something to do with dignity and something to do with luck and something to do with grace, for lack of a better word.

You see, when you are a performer, you don't get to be yourself-- you walk out onstage, and you become a compressed version of yourself.

And if you tried to go out, night after night, and be completely undefended and wholly present, holding nothing back, in a very short time, you would be so burned out that you would have nothing left to offer.

It's probably true that it would also be boring for everybody.

What a performer does is distill experience into a character or a story, and when you walk out onstage, what you are is the conduit for a collective experience.

You're there to be the conduit for the expectations of the people in the room around you, their hopes and their fears and their joy and their desires.

And that sounds pompous, but the truth is the better you do it, the less it has to do with you.

So we kicked into the first song, and very short order, it was clear that something beautiful was happening.

A few songs in, we wouldn't even look at each other, because we didn't want it to go away.

We were playing beautifully, effortlessly, in a way that sometimes happens, a sort of rare magic.

And I don't want to get churchy, but what I would describe as a sort of ineffable elegance, or grace, came into that room, which is something that can't be earned.

We finished our set, and the show was over.

And we said hi to the people.

And we sold a few records, and we packed up our gear, and we went out, and we had a smoke in the alley by the club.

And we went out, and we threw our stuff into the rental car with the flashers on, it was parked out front.

And then we drove a few hours east on I-80.

And that was one night, and that was one show.

Now, let me tell you what I learned: It has to be enough to do what you do and do it well with some humility and an open heart.

That's how you leave room for grace to find you wherever you go.

And if it's not enough in an empty club in Des Moines, Iowa, it's not going to be enough anywhere, ever.

Thanks.

(cheers and applause) I get to play a really beautiful mixture of rooms.

I play performing art centers, and theaters, and festivals, and little tiny bars in towns that you never heard of.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

I like to play those little towns, and if I didn't have that balance, I would be a little bit frustrated, because you have to have all of those experiences in order to get a real sense of the balance of life.

I mean, on some level, people who do what I do see more of the country at eye level than anybody except somebody running for president, right?

We get to meet people and eat dinner at their house and... that's a pretty great way to understand what's happening in your own backyard.

ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪