Music, the Moon and Migration 

with Chris Lintott and Steve PrettyTogether, Chris and Steve are Universe of Music: a collaboration exploring where science and sound meet. Across the day, they’ll range from the origins of the Universe to its far future, via music, listening, nature, space, and some of the stranger corners of human curiosity.

They’ll be joined by special guests from the Natural History Museum, marine science organisation Cefas, Norwich Astronomical Society, and writer and poet George McKay.

Steve will also be recording parts of the day for Steve Pretty On the Origin of the Pieces, his podcast for the musically curious.

Professor Chris Lintott is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a Research Fellow at New College. His research ranges from how galaxies form and evolve, to using machine learning to find the most unusual things in the Universe, to predicting the properties of visiting interstellar asteroids. He founded the Zooniverse citizen science platform, which has enabled more than two million volunteers to contribute to scientific research, and wrote about it in his first book, The Crowd and the Cosmos. His latest book is Our Accidental Universe. Chris also presents the BBC’s long-running The Sky at Night.

Steve Pretty is a musician, composer and presenter whose work explores music, listening and curiosity across live performance, broadcast and digital media. He is the host of the acclaimed podcast Steve Pretty On the Origin of the Pieces, and the bandleader of Hackney Colliery Band, described by The Times as “reinventing the brass band format for the 21st century”. 

Alongside his work as a performer and podcaster, he composes for screen, stage and unusual cross-disciplinary projects, often involving collaborating closely with scientists as well as musicians. 

His work is driven by a fascination with how sound helps us make sense of the world, from the deeply human to the cosmic.