I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism.

In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero?

Simply doing your job, being a decent human being.

A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by their own light,

and that light is to be recognized by others.

The Long History of Heroism with me, Rory Stewart.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

Music.

The It's 320 nautical miles about 650 kilometers from Johannesburg to Tuvalu airport.

And we've been flying now for just over an hour.

And where we are now

it's much emptier

more desert it's just this

haze sitting across the land

but you can definitely feel

that you're coming up to the boundaries

of the Kalahari and an entirely different

experience

and an entirely different experience.

The extraordinary things about lions is you hear from time to time that they're endangered,

you know, there's a worry about them.

But the fact is you put lions in an environment where they are happy

...