Dear Jeremy, you're right, that verb can be tricky. In your English sentence "the men" is both the logical and the grammatical subject of the sentence. In the correspondent Italian sentence, "gli uomini" is still the logical subject, but grammatically it has the role of an indirect complement. In other words, "gli uomini" has to be preceded by the preposition "a", while the verb has to be put in its singular form. For example: Nell'Italia del Sud, AGLI UOMINI PIACE fare gli eroi. A LORO PIACE aiutare e risolvere i problemi. You used the pronoun "gli", remember that the Italian personal pronoun, when it's used as an indirect complement, can have two forms. I usually call them "long" and "short" form, where the long form is used to put some extra focus on the pronoun. A ME (long) / MI (short) A TE / TI A LUI / GLI A LEI / LE A NOI / CI A VOI / VI A LORO (it has a short form but is not that common in contemporary Italian)

Hi Jeremy, the use of the verb 'piacere' is different from 'to like' in English. In English you say: 'I like this book', where 'I' is the subject and 'book' is the object. In Italian we say something like: 'This book pleases me', that is 'This book' is the subject and 'me' is the object. So the verb is conjugated according to the subject, that is 'this book': 'questo libro piace A me' or 'questo libro mi piace'. Note that there is an indirect object. When the subject is an activity, we use the infinitive: "I like drinking", "mi piace bere" (that is 'bere piace a me'). So, talking about your examples, 'the men like to be heroes' can be translated: 'agli uomini piace essere eroi' (subject: 'essere eroi', verb: 'piace', indirect object: 'agli uomini'). Similarly, 'they like to help with everything' can be translated: 'a loro piace aiutare in tutto', oppure 'gli piace aiutare in tutto'. Hope this can help!