Welcome to Recharge, a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. See more editions and sign up here. Help me, the man pleaded with the travel agent. My country, Kuwait, has just been invaded, and I need to change an airplane ticket for job interviews. The travel agent, risking his own job if he were to help, took the leap and made magic happen for the traveler by changing the ticket—and also opened his own wallet to give that stranger $80, a gesture of selfless support. In the nearly 30 years since that fleeting moment, that traveler—scientist Mahmoud Ghannoum—got the job, settled into the United States, and has become the world’s leading microbiome (gut bacteria, probiotics) researcher. But he never got to thank the travel agent who’d showed self-sacrificing kindness and helped make the rest of Ghannoum’s life happen.