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You can't identify a hero from the outside. You might not suspect that Jon Meis, the Seattle Pacific University student who has been described as private and gentle, would tackle and subdue a gunman Thursday, inspiring others to help hold down the attacker until police arrived. Would those other students have acted if Meis had not?

Also yesterday, a man in Pennsylvania ran from his house in pajamas and flip-flops, and pulled an unconscious woman from a car in flames. Why did he do this? He could have called 911. He could have knocked on a neighbor's door and debated what to do. But he simply acted. Why?

And a man in Minnesota jumped 30 feet from a cliff into the St. Croix River to save a drowning 11-year-old boy.

All of these situations, which happened within days of each other, required immediate action. For a life to be saved, there was no time to wait for rescuers. So these people stepped up, at the risk of their own lives, for people they did not know.

When questioned, recurring themes run through the answers of heroes. "I didn't really think about it," "I don't think of myself as a hero," "I was just focused on what needed to be done."

Their remarks are usually humble, usually speak of automatic reaction. Many, such as Meis, don't even want to speak to the media.

Researchers Selwyn Becker and Alice Eagly said in the journal American Psychologist that heroism is not only noble risk-taking, but also something selfish, a way to ensure status.

They are the scientific researchers, but my gut tells me that most heroes are not out for selfish glory or status. They just seem somehow wired differently. Furthermore, I believe that many people have a little bit of hero inside them, and sometimes all it takes is one person to get the ball rolling, as was the case in Seattle, where a gunman had already killed one person, wounded two others and was in the process of reloading.

I don't think heroes have time to weigh the morality of their actions at the time. I suspect their values are already so deep-seated that they automatically act on them when faced with a morally challenging situation.

Psychiatrist Deane Aikins says heroes often cultivate social bonds before and after the crisis. While this is true in organizations like the military or police, and exemplified many times in feats on the job, what about those everyday heroes — the ones who act for the benefit of strangers?

I love all heroes, because any time a human being does something good, I rejoice. But to me, these humans are the ones who give me faith in humanity, the world, God, the universe and everything.

The other day, I witnessed a bad motorcycle accident. For a second, the world just froze. People sat in their cars, stunned. Nothing happened for about 30 seconds. Then, one man got out of his car and rushed over to the motorcycle rider. Soon, a woman rushed over with her cellphone. Then another person ... and another. The rider was soon surrounded: one person down on the ground with him, one directing traffic, one on the phone.

That first man was a true hero. And then the woman became a hero because of the first man. And then they were all heroes.

By the time I was able to make it to the scene of the accident, I drove up next to the first man and asked how I could help. "We got it," he said, clearly shaken. "You're a hero," I said. He looked at me, confused. "Why?" And then he walked off to the task at hand.

Today is D-Day, and while we remember the lives of many heroes on that day, and read plenty of stories that honor them, and while we continue arguing about whether Bowe Bergdahl is a hero or a villain, I want to take a moment.

I want to honor the heroes for whom there are no days of honor, no ceremonies, no medals, no recognition. These heroes are all around you, and they are complete strangers. They won't reveal themselves until something very bad is happening. And then you will see something amazing. You will see the very definition of humanity.

Laurel Dalrymple is an editor and writer for NPR.org.

It's time for your quick rundown of the week that was in technology and culture.

ICYMI

Tech's Gender Gap: Getting women to join and stay in technology company ranks is a well-documented issue; a few incidents this week probably didn't do much to help the problem. Chicago's Techweek apologized for using provocatively posing women in a party invite after losing big names and a sponsor. Also this week, a slide showed up at a tech conference in Europe, in which a developer compared a software framework to a whiny girlfriend.

John Oliver's Rant: Our most popular post on All Tech this week featured comedian John Oliver's 13-minute takedown of cable Internet providers. He explains net neutrality and ends with an impassioned call to comment on the FCC's site.

The Big Conversations

One Year Since Snowden: What hath Edward Snowden wrought? Aarti Shahani brought us a look at winners and losers since the first revelations of the NSA's widespread surveillance, what the former government contractor calls "indefensible collection activities." Snowden himself told Brian Williams his actions in spilling so many intelligence operations were harmless, but over on Lawfare, Benjamin Wittes doesn't buy it.

Apple in Homes and Health: At its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple's bigwigs unveiled the company's new iOS8, OS X Yosemite (following a theme of California-place names) and its forays into building centralized hubs for your fitness and health data, and separate central platform for an Internet of Things smart home.

Curiosities

Quartz: Netflix's Video Error Message Is A Clever Attack On Cable Companies

Netflix is upping its battle with the cable giants by telling consumers why their video connections are choking.

Seattle Times: Google Confirms Yakima Loon Balloon Crash

One of the company's test Wi-Fi balloons went down.

BBC: Garage Owner Fakes Google 'Murder' In Edinburgh Street

Two years after a pair of guys faked a murder for the Google car's cameras, authorities got word of it. Good thing this wasn't a real killing.

Orange is the New Black has always been a bit of a head fake.

Creator Jenji Kohan has admitted she uses the story of WASPy prison inmate Piper Chapman to draw TV audiences into stories about the types of women who rarely take centerstage in more mainstream fare: a transgender woman, an older Russian woman, poor and undereducated black and Hispanic women and the mentally ill.

That process continues to wonderful effect in the show's second season, as we learn more about the history behind a wonderful collection of characters stuffed into a federal women's prison. In particular, character actress extraordinaire Lorraine Toussaint cuts a blazing swath through this year's batch of episodes, as an O.G. who lands in the prison and has serious history with Danielle Brooks' longtime inmate Tasha "Taystee" Jefferson.

But one of the best revelations in this year's Orange is the changes in Taylor Schilling's Piper Chapman. Finally, we're past the obvious jokes about a too-polite, middle class girl who insists on acting like she's at some horrible summer camp; as this season unfolds, Chapman gets a little tougher and learns to live with the awful consequences of her decisions.

That doesn't come until she makes the worst choice of all, rooted in her inexplicable connection to the woman who helped put her in prison – Laura Prepon's bisexual drug runner Alex Vause.

Through much of the first season, you couldn't help wondering why Chapman cared so much about someone who used her so badly; by the end of the second season's first episode, we see exactly where that trust leads her. The show being what it is, it's no place anyone would want to go if they had a choice.

On one level, Orange is a tragicomedy about society's fallen, from the poor and mentally disturbed folks filling up the prison to the working class schlubs who have to guard and care for them. These are people mainstream media often avoids in its rush to sell viewers on aspirational dreams or escapist fantasies.

But as we watch the prison's black inmates learn with some surprise exactly where their urethra is – of course, it's Laverne Cox's transgender Sophia Burset who has the facts at hand – we see how tightly a lack of education and knowledge are wrapped up in the circumstances which have led these women here.

Of course, we also get lots of juicy backstories. Another one of Orange's neat tricks is the show's flashbacks to inmates' pre-incarceration lives. In the second season, we see the sad childhood of mentally unstable Crazy Eyes, the domestic violence past of head cook Gloria Mendoza and the surprising history of a German-speaking lesbian military brat who we come to know as Taystee's sometime oblivious running buddy, Poussey Washington.

One of the best backstories falls to Taystee, who was taken in by Toussaint's Yvonne "Vee" Parker when she was young. As Vee returns to the prison, she has dreams of uniting the black inmates into a gang who will control everything, threatening the odd sense of harmony in this fictional prison.

Another wonderful side benefit of Orange's approach is the running room it gives to ace actresses like Toussaint and Kate Mulgrew, who plays a Russian powerhouse with her own tangled history regarding Vee and the old days behind bars. Elsewhere in TV land, these ladies would be exiled to playing judges and grandmothers; here, they stand at the center of the action, making moves which will affect the future of the prison.

Tough as prison life is depicted here, Orange does avoid the harshest tones. The show's abusive guard, George Mendez (played by Pablo Schreiber with a gloriously bad porn star-style moustache), was put on leave last season; there seems to be little threat of rape or harsh violence among the inmates in the second season's early episodes.

Instead, we are treated to the show's second level of meaning, which weaves a tapestry of stories around a collection of lost souls. These are people cursed with bad luck, awful decisionmaking skills, crushing addictions, hopeless life circumstances or all of the above. And watching them still, somehow, struggle to find meaning in lives bound to such a hopeless place is compelling in ways Kohan's previous series, Weeds, never managed for me.

I was on the board that handed Orange is the New Black a Peabody Award this year, for offering stories which made hip television consumers care about the kind of people who normally never get on their radar screens.

To find that the second season takes that tactic even further, offering new sides to characters we already thought we knew while serving up new ones with even better backstories – well, that's an amazing achievement for a show which set the bar incredibly high in its first season.

So I suggest heartily binge-watching the 13-episode second season that Netflix released online this morning. There might be no better examination of what it means to be lonely and trapped in the fallout of a hard life on television today.

The Robinson family of Dallas started out pretty excited about their new insurance plan under the Affordable Care Act.

Nick Robinson had turned to Obamacare after he lost his job last summer. He had been working as a youth pastor, and the job included benefits that covered him, his two young daughters, and his wife, Rachel, a wedding photographer.

Nick says he wasn't too nervous at first, because everyone was healthy. Then, he recalls, they found out Rachel was pregnant.

"It's one of those times where you hear the news and there's this immediate sense of joy and excitement like, 'Yay, a new kid. That's awesome!' " he says. But they were also concerned. "What are we going to do? How are we going to pay for this? This is intense."

Nick found a new job fairly soon, working as an account manager in retail sourcing. But the small firm did not offer health benefits.

Planet Money

How One State Convinced Its 'Young Invincibles' To Get Health Insurance