The History Hour
The History Hour
BBC
4.4 • 913 Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2021
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The hunt to find the Jamaican drug lord wanted for extradition to the United States, the six men trapped in a simulated space ship for a year and a half, the mother of the Swedish welfare state, the New York drag scene of the 1990s and a classic cold war chess match which was much more than just a game.
With Max Pearson
(Jamaican police on patrol after a frenzy of gang and drug violence in Kingston, May 24 2010. Credit: Anthony Foster/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism. |
| 0:08.9 | In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero? |
| 0:16.1 | Simply doing your job, being a decent human being. |
| 0:20.0 | A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by |
| 0:23.1 | their own light and that light is to be recognized by others. The long history of heroism with me, |
| 0:28.6 | Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC |
| 0:34.8 | World Service with me, Max Pearson, where we pulled together |
| 0:37.5 | first-hand accounts of events which have shaped our world as uncovered by the Witness History |
| 0:41.9 | team here on the BBC World Service. Let's meet the team for this week, starting with |
| 0:46.4 | Bethan. Hello, I'm Bethen Head, and this week you'll be hearing from me and a program I made |
| 0:52.4 | on Paris's Burning, which dives into the thriving drag culture in the |
| 0:58.3 | 1980s in New York City. That sounds sparkly. Louise Hidalgo, familiar voice to regular listeners. |
| 1:05.1 | What have you got for us this week? Hi, Max. Well, I've been looking at the life of this remarkable |
| 1:09.9 | woman called Alvimir Dahl, |
| 1:11.9 | who came up with many of the ideas that led to the setting up of the Swedish welfare state |
| 1:16.3 | back in the 1940s, and she also won the Nobel Peace Prize. |
| 1:20.5 | And Alex? |
| 1:21.7 | Yes, it's Alex last year, and I've got a story about a lockdown from hell |
| 1:26.2 | when six blokes were sealed inside a fake |
| 1:29.1 | spaceship on earth for 18 months to see how people might cope if they were cooped up for a mission |
| 1:34.5 | to Mars. Looking forward to all that. Those stories coming up in the next hour. But we start in Jamaica, |
| 1:40.9 | where Bob Howard has been discovering what happened when a drug lord, with all sorts of |
... |
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