From Hidden Brain Media, I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is my unsung hero,

stories where one person reached out to help another in a time of need.

I would like to thank my unsung hero. I do not know her.

He just pulled up a chair and we talked I'd say for about...

I can't even express to you how much you've changed my life.

Today's story comes from Carl Goldstein. His unsung hero was his piano teacher, Alice Shapiro.

When I was 12 years old, I had been studying with a family friend who I was very close to and she decided that I

needed a more demanding teacher. So my parents enrolled me in a music school and selected a teacher that was known to be very demanding.

And I began lessons in the first semester with that teacher who was Alice Shapiro.

Well, it turned out she was very demanding and I really didn't like that very much.

One time she said, you need to memorize that movement of the Beethoven

Sonata for next week. And my first reaction was, well, I don't know if I can do that. And she

snapped at me.

She said, well, if you say you won't do it,

you can't do it, then you won't be able to do it.

You need to do it.

And I want to hear it memorized next week.

I wound up just not really enjoying the lessons, feeling very uncomfortable, and deciding that I wanted to stop.

So I told my parents that I wanted to stop taking lessons, and they just agreed right away.

I said, I'll go on on my own or I'll take another instrument.

And at what would have been the next to the last lesson for the semester,

Alice decided that she had to say something and she said, you know, Carl, I really think you should keep taking lessons. You're not ready to stop you still need a teacher

...