Think back to a time in your life when you were feeling low and a stranger noticed it and helped you.

Maybe this person reached out when no one else was watching, with no expectation of a thank you.

I put my elbows on one of the windows

and completely lost it, just sobbing.

A person came up, put their hand on my left shoulder and just left it there. No words, just presence.

He just stood with me. He stood there with me for maybe 20 minutes.

We didn't have any conversation, but he just said.

My first response was to say, no, no, I'm fine, I'm fine, I got this.

And she looked at me with the most assertive strong look on her face and said I'm helping you.

This is Shankar Vedantam. You may know me as the host of the Hidden Brain Podcast and radio show. I've been a journalist all my life, so I know that stories

where people help one another usually don't make the news.

As they say, if it bleeds, it leads. This is why, when we open social media or turn on the TV, so much of what we see is suffering,

selfishness and chaos. Small wonder, many of us feel despair.

My Unsung Hero is a new podcast designed to be an antidote to that despair.

It's meant to remind us of what the daily news fails to show us. The many ways people are brave, generous, and kind.

She took my hand and she leaned in forward real close to me and she said Tony Ludlow I expect greatness

from you and I had never heard anybody challenge me with that kind of thing in my whole life.

Each week we'll share a story about a moment when one person helped another in a time of need.

And we'll show you how these acts of heroism, some big, some small, transformed someone's life.

You could have done nothing, you could have just driven away.

So I would say thank you, thank you for saving my mother's life. Thank you for preserving her dignity.

You changed my life and it's probably impossible for you to know how many lives you've changed.

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