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 recognised by others. The long history of heroism with me,

Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. Thank you for downloading this edition of More or Less from

BBC Radio 4. Here's Tim Harford. Hello and welcome to More or Less from BBC Radio 4, here's Tim Harford.

Hello and welcome to More or Less. This week, our special review of the year through the excellent, extraordinary, eccentric numbers of 2012. And who better to start the program

than one of the BBC's most excellent, extraordinary, and some might say eccentric presenters.

I'm Robert Paston, the BBC's business editor.

My statistic of the year was given to me by Jean-Claude Trichet.

He's the former president of the European Central Bank.

And he told me about the 80-20 ratio for Europe and the 20-80 ratio for the United States.

In Europe, roughly speaking, banks provide 80% of the finance needed by businesses and households,

whereas in the states, banks provide only 20% of the finance required by businesses

and households. Why does this matter? Well, it tells us a huge amount about the crisis

in the Eurozone, and it also tells us a huge amount about why the economy of Britain and many of the economies of Europe

in general have singularly failed to recover since the great crash of 2008, whereas although the

American economy isn't off to the races, it has grown rather more strongly than the European economies. So let's explain

the significance of being so dependent on banks. When banks are weak, when they have a shortage of

capital, which is palpably true of many Eurozone banks, and arguably, according to the

Governor of the Bank of England, true of British banks,

...