Your time starts now. You're about to listen to a BBC podcast. Absolutely right. So you might like to know that the BBC makes loads of other podcasts. Really? Wow. Many of them are very funny. Which I think means... A hatful of ha-hars. And energy. Even if we do say so ourselves. I agree 100% of us. Find them all on BBC sounds. Just tell us a joke. Come on, tell us a joke. Tadus!

I'm on Tadass! Even if we do say so ourselves. I agree 100% with us. Find them all on BBC Sounds.

Just tell us a joke, come on, tell us a joke, tell us a joke, come on tell us a joke.

Just search comedy on BBC Sounds.

I'm really looking forward to getting stuck in.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

I'm Rory Stewart, and I want to make an embarrassing admission.

I grew up wanting to be a hero.

I wanted to be like Alexander the Great.

I wanted to achieve magnificent things, and I wanted to die,

sacrificing my life for a noble cause before I was 30.

And it took much later experiences in the Middle East and in politics to

finally knock this hero worship out of me. But I'm still fascinated by ideas of heroism.

She died when she was only 34 years of age trying to develop a plan to go to the front of the war.

She had some pretty crazy ideas like parachuting nurses down into the front.

Ideas which have been at the heart of our culture and which have fascinated many young people,

particularly young men throughout time.

Was this the most noble thing that you could ever possibly do in the face of De? Or was this a lost course, an appallingly

destructive bit of histrionics? Ideas which have been questioned in every age. Was he a hero even to his own

times in the sense of moral standing? Absolutely not.

In my new series from BBC Radio 4, I'm taking in the long sweep of history, from Achilles.

Achilles was a brute to Zelensky. Why don't you wear a suit? I want to ask what a hero is.

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