Hey there, it's micro in this is the way I heard the only podcast the curious mind with a short attention span. I've been thinking and rather than sell the incredibly valuable piece of real estate that precedes the unforgettable story. You're about to hear too many of my loyal sponsors this month, I'm going to keep it for myself, so that I might suggest to you with great humility that you consider giving my book as a Christmas present. Like the story you're about to hear the book is called the way I heard it and modesty aside, I don't think you'll find a more appropriate gift out there. The reviews are excellent. It's an official New York Times best seller and everybody

tells me they hear my voice in their head when they read it now. I don't know if that's that's good thing or bad thing, we're weird thing, but it's definitely something go to micro, dot, com, slash book, that's micro, dot, com, slash book, there's still a few autographed copies left if you'd like one just click on autographed copy stuff it in a stocking rapid and brown paper, or slap, a bow on my giant face and give it to somebody love or like, or somebody just simply feel obligated to buy gift for either way it's at micro dot com, slash book. This is the way I heard as fundraiser go this one lack the star power of a celebrity telephone as well as the glamour of a Hollywood gala. For starters, there were no cameras, no red carpet and no Allister's on hand. Justin

known pianist at a twelve year old, aspiring ballerina named ETA, the venue was also modest,

a makeshift stage in the study of doktor voters, home and the little dutch town of Belt and the audience just a few dozen wealthy patriots who had come to watch the recital. Of course they weren't as wealthy as they had been six months earlier, but they were still patriots and they still had a few guilders despair for a worthy cause, and tonight the cause was indeed a worthy one. Eta took the tiny stage and smiled at the crowd she composed herself and nodded to the pianist who quietly tapped out a selection from Beethoven's creature of Prometheus for these fund razors. It was best to stick with Bach or Beethoven. Mink is, and Mendelson were wonderful, but a pianist caught with sheet music by a jewish composer would not be playing the piano for very long, not envelop anyway, not in nineteen, forty one

Always the audience was enchanted at a moved with grace and beauty completely inconsistent with a skinny twelve year old, no one cared that are costume, had been fashioned from an old curtain or that she danced in someone else's worn out slippers. No one cares that In her mind, ETA was dancing applauded from Swan Lake at London's Albert Hall, quietly imagining the enthusiastic applause from a much larger audience at a relished these flights of fancy, because when the music stopped, she knew she'd be back in occupied HOLLAND, where there was nothing to eat, but bread made from tulips and grass the pianist if his spinal cord at a struck, her final pose and no one applauded. She walked to the edge of the stage and took her bow

an absolute silence at the recitals, where at a danced, no one ever clapped for fear of drawing unwanted attention from the Nazis. Instead, they pantomime their ovation While smiling broadly and nodding with great enthusiasm, The soundless show of gratitude continued as a hat was passed around into which guilders were dropped. Precious guilders used by the dutch resistance to help repel the Nazi invaders.

Of course, Nazis are notorious for resisting resistance and over the next few years the cost of dutch defiance would be steep at his brother would be arrested and sent to a labour camp. Her uncle Otto would wind up in a ditch with dozens of other innocent citizens shot dead by the Nazis, but nothing compared to the horror of the Haug inventor. In the winter of nineteen, forty for food and fuel supplies were cut and young ETA had a front row seat to starvation. On a mass scale, twenty thousand civilians were systematically star.

Did that many children, many others froze ETA survived, but she never forgot by the time the Netherlands were liberated. The sixteen year old, dancer Wade less than ninety pounds. The Haug inventor had left ETA, malnourished anemic jaundiced as matic and profoundly weakened. Her dreams of becoming a prima ballerina would never become a reality, but her dream of standing before an audience. They could express its appreciate nation without reservation. That was still very much alive as well a new desire to save the world's children from the horrors of hunger, or at least try in the years that followed at his quest, took her all over the world. On a kind of perpetual fundraising tour the generated more guilders than any one thought possible.

Along the way she found her way onto a number of stages, each a bit more elaborate than the makeshift platform in doktor voters study: Eventually, at a found, the audience she'd always dreamed of reaching an audience that could express it gratitude without fear or reservation and audience that did so time and time and time again, ETA Van Hamstrung only lived to be sixty three, but when she died in Switzerland in nineteen ninety three, there wasn't much left on her to do list. There was an Oscar.

Mantle along with an Emmy and a Tony and a Grammy. There was also an iconic little black dress from what many still call her greatest performance of all time, but those closest to her knew that nothing could compare with the presidential medal of Freedom awarded to her by President George Hw Bush for her tireless work as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, not bad for the skinny kid from Belgium, it was never properly applauded for fighting the Nazis, but brought the whole world to its feet by being the one and only Audrey Hepburn anyway. That's the way I heard it.