♪ MELISSA FERRICK: And I see him, Bob Dylan.

I'm thinking, "What am I going to say, what am I going to say?"

And I'm going, and then I just walk by him, and I go, "Hey."

(laughter) AKSHOBH GIRIDHARADAS: It was nightfall, we didn't have a map, and we had lost sense of where the camp was.

So we're, like, "Okay, let's erect a tent in the middle of nowhere."

SUZANNE KETCHUM ADAMS: My brother pulled the car over to the side of the highway, and he started yelling at me, "Well, why don't you drive, and I'll hold onto the ram?"

WES HAZARD: Tonight's theme is, "Road Trip."

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

Thank you.

HAZARD: Is there anything more exciting than the first part of a road trip?

It's just infused with this incredible potential.

Until, maybe, you run into a wall of traffic, or you blow a tire, or you find out that you've gone two hours in the wrong direction off a wrong turn you didn't even know you made.

Either way, no matter what road you find yourself on, I think we all will come to realize that if you just keep going, you will eventually run into a story worth telling.

♪ FERRICK: My name is Melissa Ferrick, and I've been making independent albums for 27 years now.

I'm an associate professor at Berklee College of Music, and I'm currently in graduate school at Harvard.

HAZARD: What tends to bring you the most joy these days?

Is it the writing, the performing, storytelling, teaching?

FERRICK: Well, I think right now, learning new stuff at grad school.

I only did two years when I was young at Berklee College of Music.

I quit when I was 19 and moved to New York.

For the music, you know?

So I sold everything I had, I did the classic New York move, you know, lived in a four-story walk-up.

But it was, like, very 20, you know, that's what you do.

It's, like, you want to live on the edge.

One of the people that works over at HUGSE, the grad school over there, said, "What would it look like if your artistic practice shifted?"

And I had never thought about that before.

It was almost like someone, for the first time in my life, gave me permission to do something different than play the guitar and write songs.

HAZARD: And is this the first time that you're telling a story like this as not part of your musical act?

FERRICK: Yes.

This is the first time I've ever just told the story, so...

HAZARD: How are you feeling?

FERRICK: I'm nervous, yeah.

I'm nervous, it's different.

I just hope to be able to look out and see people smiling and laugh a couple of times.

That's, like, such a great feeling as a performer, 'cause you're enabling people to relax.

That's what makes a good show, even when I'm playing music.

If people are able to forget about their own lives, even if it's just for a brief moment, that's something I'm able to give them, so...

I'm here to tell you the story tonight about the time that I opened for Bob Dylan, solo.

It was October 1992.

I had just turned 22 years old.

And I had also just signed a seven-album deal with Atlantic Records, and I was living at home with my mom and dad, who were so proud of me that it was almost unbearable.

(laughs) So I'm from Ipswich, Massachusetts, which is about an hour north of Boston.

And my dad was a middle school teacher there for forever, and everybody knew my dad.

His name's John.

And my mom, really popular family, and really great people.

And my dad was downtown one day getting a coffee, and this guy who teaches over at Endicott College, which is in Beverly, about a half-hour away... (audience members cheer) There you go.

He's a friend of my dad's, he was, like, "Oh," you know, "Hey, John, good to see you."

He's, like, "Hey, what's going on?"

"Oh, I hear a lot about your kid these days."

My dad's, like, "Yup, you do."

And this guy's, like, "You know, Bob Dylan's on his 30th anniversary tour, "and we've got him coming to Endicott College to play, "right here in Beverly.

Do you think Melissa would want to open up that show?"

(laughter) And my father says, without a beat, "Absolutely."

Now, I'm not there, okay?

So he's now my agent.

So he says, "Absolutely," and then the promoter guy from Endicott goes, "That's great, but listen, there's one hitch.

"And that is this, "that I've been informed by Dylan's people that no one-- "and they mean no one-- opens for Bob Dylan solo.

So she has to find a band."

My dad goes, "No problem."

He comes home, he's crying.

"You're not going to believe it, Andi, you're not going to believe it."

My mother's, "What's going on, John?"

He says, "I got Melissa the gig.

I got her a gig opening for Bob Dylan."

My mother starts crying, they're hugging each other.

They had tickets to Woodstock, but they didn't make it, so, like, this was, like, the dream.

Now, I'm, like, the golden child.

My sister's, like, "Whatever."

So I'm standing there, I'm, like, "You're talking about me.

I'm right here, what's going on?"

So Dad goes, "I got you the gig, you're going to open, "it's the Endicott College show, it's his 30th anniversary, "it's going to be great, but the only thing is, kid, you got to find a band."

And I was, like, "Oh, awesome."

I have never played live with a band before, ever.

I'm only 22, but mind you, I thought I had been playing for a long time, so, um...

So I called up my alma mater, Berklee College of Music.

I found a couple of musicians, we rehearsed for, like, five days.

We got about five or six songs down.

We felt like we were ready to go.

Boom, day of the show, October 30, 1992, I'm opening for Bob Dylan.

Me and my mom leave from Ipswich, head to Beverly.

Dad comes from the middle school, the band comes up from Boston.

We meet, we're at the tent.

It's freezing out.

There's 4,000 people lined up outside the tent, and you can hear Dylan's band sound checking.

And I'm walking in, and we walk through the tent, and I see him-- Bob Dylan.

There he is, he's walking right towards me, and he's got a zipped-up hoodie on and the hood over, and I'm thinking, "What am I going to say?

What am I going to say?"

And he keeps walking towards me, and I still don't have it, and I'm going, and then I just walk by him, and I go, "Hey."

(laughter) And he went...

I didn't get a "hey" out of him.

So we get into the dressing room, I'm all excited, and the dressing room is full-on five-star, it has everything: every kind of coffee, every kind of tea, the deli platter, like, important cheese like brie.

And so it's very exciting for us, so we're sitting there, we're very excited to play, and the dude that got me the gig, the dude from Endicott comes in, and he goes, "John, can I talk to you for a second?"

And now my stomach dropped, because I'm, like, "I know there's something wrong."

So my dad goes outside, talks to the guy for, like, two seconds, comes back and he goes, "I got really bad news.

"Dylan, he's canceled the show.

I mean, like, Elvis has left the building."

He actually said that-- I didn't just make that part up.

"Elvis has-- the show can't happen, it's not going on."

I was, like, "What are you talking about?

Why?"

My father says, "Well, we've been informed "that Dylan has a stipulation in his contract "that it has to be at least 68 degrees in the venue for him to perform."

And I'll grant him this, it was very cold that night, maybe 58, you know, 62.

But still, I was, like, "Come on," you know?

But he didn't want to play, so in the very moment that we all realized we weren't going to get to play this gig, we also realized that we were the only five people that knew this, and that the 4,000 people didn't know this yet, and we needed to get out of there, like, right away.

So me and mom look at each other, and it was, like, this instant mother-daughter thing, and we start packing up the back of her Rabbit with everything from that dressing room, and I mean everything.

The brie, the deli platter, the cups, right?

The Coke, the bubbly water, the coffee, the coffee filters, the little honey bear, the little tiny packets of mayonnaise, the little tiny packets of mustard, we're throwing... She's, like, "Get it in the car, get it in the car."

And we leave, and we go back to Ipswich, the band drives back to Boston, my father's, like, rummaging around drinking more coffee than he should.

And when we get inside the house, me and my mom, we walk in, and the phone is ringing, and we're, like, "That's weird."

I put the deli platter down, I answer the phone, and it's my dad, and he's screaming, "The show's back on, the show's back on!"

I'm not even joking, I'm not even making this up.

"The show's back on, get back in the car, get over here."

So I hang up the phone, I'm screaming at my mother, "We got to go back!"

She's, like, "What are you talking about?"

We get in the car-- 15 minutes flat, my mom, driving a Rabbit like 75 miles an hour down Route 1A, pulls behind the tent, and I get out of the passenger car, and I'm right by the side door of where you go onto the stage, and the promoter's standing there, and he's yelling at me.

"Get on the stage, get on the stage, there's no time for the..." I remember, he's, like, "There's no time for the band, there's no time for the band!"

And I was, like, "Good thing, man, 'cause the band already left."

So I walk on the stage, and I've got my guitar, all the lights are on, I can feel the heat on the back of my head, because they're trying to warm this tent up for Dylan.

So all the lights, there's 4,000 people, I can see every single one of them, and in the back row, they start crowd-surfing this guy.

And then I notice that there's a stretcher being wheeled down with the EMT people, and I'm up playing my folk song.

And I'm, like, "What's going on, everything okay?"

And they're, like, "Yeah, everything's fine."

They put the dude on the gurney, and they wheel him back out.

And I finish playing, so I was, like, "Whatever."

I walk off the stage, I don't even know, I think I played three songs, and there was a guy at the bottom of the stairs, and he looked at me, and he goes, "Great job, kid."

And I was, like, "Thanks.

Do you work here, or...?"

He goes, "No, I'm Ian, I'm Dylan's drummer."

And I was, like, "Oh, cool."

So two years later, I'm in Glastonbury, England, playing the Glastonbury Festival, touring that album I had moved to California to make, and that year at Glastonbury, headlining, was The Pretenders, Radiohead, and Jackson Browne.

This was not a bad gig to get.

And I played that gig, and all the lights were dimmed, and I played a full set, and I did an awesome job.

No one had a heart attack, that I know of, no stretcher got rolled into the front.

I finished that set, and I walked off the stage, and there was a guy standing there, and it was Ian Wallace.

He also played drums for Jackson Browne.

And he looked at me, and he said, "I remember you.

You're the one who got to open for Bob Dylan solo."

(laughter) (cheers and applause) ♪ GIRIDHARADAS: I'm Akshobh Giridharadas, I'm originally from India, but prior to this, I was based out of Singapore as a broadcast journalist.

When I get up to give a speech or tell a story, I tell myself that, "This is six minutes that's just yours."

Even if something happens outside the world, no one's going to interrupt for these six minutes, so... You don't get people's time and attention these days, and for six minutes, it's purely yours, and I think that's golden, so I think I'd enjoy this a lot more.

HAZARD: And for you, how does your story relate to the theme tonight?

GIRIDHARADAS: I think sometimes you have to travel far away from home to realize some of the values you learned at home.

You were raised with these values, to be humble, to be, you know, hospitable, to be kind to others, and you are, but sometimes you see it in front of you through other people, you know?

And at the same time, I love traveling.

As someone with itchy feet, I feel that only when you travel more do you get richer.

It's ironic.

You need to invest more in travel to be richer.

And just being out there in the wilderness, just where your thoughts and your words and your visions just all come to bearing, you know?

They say some of the greatest stories are written when they're on the road.

♪ I grew up in Bombay, India, on the west coast.

Being able to go to a new place outside India was enchanting.

Getting immersed in the historic tales, the cultural fables, I enjoyed it.

To my friends, I'd seen more places outside India than in India.

So I became known as NRI: non-reliable Indian.

(laughter) Which is true.

Even until today, I regret to say I haven't seen the Taj Mahal, but I've seen the Great Wall of China.

So naturally, when this friend of mine said, "We're going to take a road trip," I said yes.

It didn't matter that, you know, I didn't know four out of the five people on the trip.

It didn't matter I didn't know the logistics.

It didn't even matter I didn't know how to ride a motorbike, because half the journey was on motorbikes.

I just said, "New place, why not?"

We were going to Manali, a place in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh.

This was hometown to the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan monks.

It epitomized tranquility of sorts.

So I had spent 48 hours on an uncomfortable train journey from Bombay to Delhi, another ten hours from Delhi to Manali, escaping 120-degree heat of summer.

But I'm, like, "Hey, if you have to get to Heaven, you have to live a hard life."

And when I got to Manali, it was heaven.

It was beautiful mountains, mystic rivers-- not the one in Boston.

(laughter) Forests, tranquility all around.

And then, I realized: India has 1.25 billion people, but yet we're a minority in this town, that's a hard thing to achieve.

There are more Israelis in the town than Indians.

I couldn't read half the signs in Hebrew, and I felt illiterate for that moment.

I had to ask.

I asked this Israeli backpacker, "Why are there so many of you here?

"Don't get me wrong, I'm glad tourism works for everyone.

"You learn more about a country, it's great for the economy.

But it seems half of Tel Aviv has come here-- what's up?"

And he says, "You don't realize how good you guys have it.

"Three years on the battle line, fighting for your life?

"Manali is heaven on Earth.

"The food's full of spice, the weather's nice.

The grass is greener on the other side."

In this case, the "grass" was greener on the other side.

Because Manali was sort of like India's Amsterdam.

Each cafe had its various samples.

Bob Marley would have a hard choice choosing between cafes.

But of course, our main journey was going up on motorbikes to one of the Himalayan mountains.

It was our own Everest summit.

This is the part I dreaded.

I held onto my friend tightly as I sat on back.

As our tires went over stones, there felt a bottomless abyss, reminding us that death is just one wrong turn away.

The snow-capped mountains in summer reminded us of the "Game of Thrones"-like winter that was approaching.

We were nervous.

But I couldn't say anything, I had to pretend to be strong.

Half an hour ago, I was laughed at for ordering bruschettas at a local restaurant.

(laughter) "Country bumpkins," I thought.

"And they make me sound like the idiot."

We stopped at a lake for a lovely photo shoot.

My friends got out for what I like to call a contemplative smoke.

The guy I was riding with perhaps smoked something a little too different.

How do I know that?

Because as he got on the motorbike, he forgot one tiny detail.

I wasn't on it before he sped off.

(laughter) So here I was, in the middle of this gorgeous lake setting, no one in sight.

"Don't panic," I said.

"You're just in the middle of nowhere with no one in sight, no cell phone connectivity, and it's getting dark."

Next thing I said was, "Help!

Help, help, help," as my echo rang through the mountains.

Ooh, car approaching.

I started waving like a crazy hitchhiker, then I'm, like, "Oh, not too crazy."

(laughter) "You want them to stop for you."

The car stopped, but before I could get in, my rider came back rushing, remembering he had left something valuable behind.

(laughter) Now, if I thought this was the worst of the journey, I was sadly mistaken.

It was nightfall, we didn't have a map, and we had lost sense of where the camp was.

And in India, you ask for directions like this.

This is 2007, pre-Google Maps.

"Take two left turns, take a right turn, there will be a shopkeeper over there, maybe he knows the way."

That's how directions went.

So we're like, "Okay, let's erect a tent in the middle of nowhere."

I'm being very generous by calling it a tent.

In reality, if this was a geometry class, this is a badly drawn isosceles triangle held together by a single rod.

(laughter) We were afraid it would fall on us and smother us in our sleep.

We had no food.

Limited water.

The only thing keeping us warm was this bottle of rum.

We reminded ourselves we hadn't eaten dinner, but there were howls out in the woods, which reminded me that something else wanted to eat dinner.

And as I was falling asleep, I heard a voice.

"Come up, we're waiting."

Oh, goodness me.

Horror-site camp stories are only fun when you're in your own bed.

(laughter) This time, I heard a woman's voice.

"Come up, food's ready."

I'm, like, "Oh, goodness me."

I woke up wondering if I was having hallucinations.

Two other friends did the same.

Unless hallucinations were telepathic, we pretty much were hearing the same voice.

We got out of our tent, a couple of villagers were waiting, holding lanterns.

They ushered, we followed-- we had no choice.

We entered the slums, some of the most dilapidated homes, but on the floor, they had plates lined up with rice and lentils.

We were shocked.

We looked at them, saying, "However did you...?"

They looked at our puzzled faces.

They're, like, "Every month, "we see a couple of idiot urban boys "who think they can come out here, camp in the wild, "and think they can survive.

It's our duty to feed you guys."

(laughter) And, well, we couldn't complain.

Six of us, in our ravenous state, ate up all the food.

We reach for our wallets to offer them something for the day's rations.

They said, "No way.

"It's our humility, it's our hospitality.

We cannot take money from you."

Just then I realized, I learned the profound meaning of hospitality, the rich values of hospitality, from people completely poor and destitute.

Just then, these people are not on any landmarks to visit in India, but yet, they're what make India rich: the innate value of humanity, the intrinsic value of compassion.

And as I walked out from that slum, and I walked back down to my tent, maybe this trip did serve as a metaphor.

As you climb an uphill task, when you're stranded in the middle of nowhere, and the lights go out, help can come from the unlikeliest of sources, even if it is from people who need your help most of the time.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) HAZARD: Akshobh Giridharadas.

Make some noise, what a fantastic story.

♪ ADAMS: My name's Suzanne Ketchum Adams.

I've lived in the Boston area for more than 35 years.

I work as a photo archivist, and I was a librarian before that, so I've always loved stories of all kinds, and I was a history major as an undergraduate.

HAZARD: And you're an archivist.

Can I ask what's your specialty?

Like, what do you work with, what kind of materials?

ADAMS: Well, I work with photographs, and actually, it's for an organization in Watertown.

We collect photographs that show the history and culture of the Armenian people.

And our founder has always interviewed the people who have donated the photographs, so the photographs have become a great way for people to tell their stories that they might not otherwise have done, and there are some really amazing stories.

HAZARD: What do you feel an audience gets out of hearing a story?

ADAMS: Well, I hope that it's the sense that they're not alone in some of the things they've felt.

I do like to talk about failure, and about things that we may be ashamed of, because I know that everybody has those things.

And I think it's a way of connecting with people when you can talk about some of your own failures.

That it will... that may not be the only thing, but hopefully there's something in the story that they will identify with-- it will spark some memory for them.

♪ I often had difficulty speaking up to my father.

And that was why, one Saturday morning, when I was 19, I found myself with my older brother, 150 miles from our home in Maine, loading a new ram into the backseat of a Chevy Vega hatchback-- a subcompact car.

Now, if you don't happen to be familiar with farm animals, a ram is a male sheep whose purpose on a farm is to impregnate the female sheep so that there can be new lambs.

Now, this particular ram was not very big.

It was a small breed, a Cheviot, probably didn't weigh more than 125 pounds.

He didn't have any horns, and I had no reason to be afraid of him.

He was just this long oblong of wool with four spindly legs sticking out beneath.

And it was those spindly little legs that had made my father decide that we would not bring the pickup truck, which might have made more sense, but bring the car, instead.

Because my father was afraid that the ram would slide around in the back of the pickup truck, and that he might injure one of those spindly little legs.

And my father had sent me on this errand with my brother that morning, because my father had other things he needed to do and he perceived that I did not.

(laughter) And actually, he was right about that, because I was home from college for the semester, and I didn't have a job, and I didn't have any studies, and so here I was.

Now, my role in this errand was supposed to be quite straightforward.

I was to sit in the front passenger seat while the ram was in the backseat, standing on the floor there, and my brother was to drive, and I was just to put an arm around and rest a reassuring hand on the ram's collar.

We didn't expect any trouble.

It was just to get him used to riding in a car.

(laughter) But this particular ram showed us very quickly how enraged he was at being confined in this small space and moving jerkily at high speed down a highway, having no idea what was going to happen next.

And he reacted by attempting to charge into the front seat, between these two bucket seats, heading straight for the stick shift and the radio.

So I used all my strength to pull him to the back seat, which was very awkward from where I was sitting, and he immediately lunged for the ceiling, dragging my knuckles over the dome light until it brought blood and breaking several fingernails.

At that point, I was shrieking, and my brother pulled the car over to the side of the highway.

And he started yelling at me, "Well, why don't you drive and I'll hold onto the ram?"

And I said, "Well, you know that I can't."

And this was the root of the problem.

Was that at age 19, I had tried and failed to learn how to drive a car.

And the... ramifications... (laughter) ...of that... were never more serious than they were at that moment, because I knew just how important it was to keep this animal off my brother so he could drive us safely home.

And I turned to my brother, and I said, "We need to get this ram sedated."

My brother seemed surprised, but he readily latched onto this idea.

And so we left the highway and drove to the nearest town, looking for a phone booth, because that's what you did back before there were cell phones.

In the phone booth, I thumbed through the yellow pages until I found veterinarians-- there were three of them.

I called one after another until one picked up.

I tearfully described our plight, and the vet agreed to meet me there when I told him where we were.

So 15 minutes later, he shows up, we ease the ram out of the car, he seemed very relieved to be standing on solid ground.

And then the vet plunged the syringe through four, five inches of wool into the ram's back end, and he started to-- the ram, that is-- started to droop immediately.

We lifted up the hatchback, hoisted the ram in on his side, and he was out cold within minutes.

We were very relieved.

So we thanked the vet, we paid him with whatever cash we happened to have in our pockets, and we started home.

And it was a very quiet ride home, the only sound being the snuffling and snoring of the ram in the back.

And hours later, we pulled into the barnyard, and my father came bounding out, eager to see this new ram who, he was very sure, would be raring to get into that sheepfold with those ewes, and instead, he sees this animal lying there, conked out.

"Well, what's the matter with him?"

my father said.

My brother got out of the car, and he said, "Dad, he was wild, we had to get him sedated."

My father said, "But he could get bloated lying there like that.

He could even die."

And at that point, I got out of the car, and I said, "Dad, that ram almost got us killed."

My father looked at me, he looked at my brother, and then I added, "Don't ever ask me to do anything like that again."

And he didn't.

Now, that ram was back on his game within an hour.

It took me a little longer to get on my game.

A while before I learned to steer my life in the direction I wanted it to go, and still longer before I actually learned to drive a car.

But that day, barreling down the highway with a wild beast inside, I learned that the first step is knowing when to put on the brakes.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪