You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the

podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.

It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.

What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism

and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.

And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject

you might not even have thought you were interested in.

Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,

you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.

Thank you for downloading the Life Scientific from BBC Radio 4.

Today's guest has arguably collaborated with more scientists than anybody in history.

How's that for an opening line?

But it's true, you see, over a million citizen scientists have now taken part in projects inspired by his idea for crowdsourcing the Galaxy

identification program, Galaxy Zoo.

When not dividing his time between Oxford and Chicago as a professional astrophysicist, he also

finds time to work on and co-present The Sky at Night on BBC television. Indeed in some ways he could be

described as the late Patrick Moore's prodigy. He's comfortable mixing with

rock stars, media types and academics alike. Here's Chris Lintots. Chris welcome to the life

scientific. Thank you I should say you have to pick your rock star so I'm not I can't

mix with all of them. Not all I see you're... When it comes to astronomy would you say we are now living in a golden age?

I think we are. I used to be very jealous of those who were a little bit older who'd

experienced the golden age of space exploration,

...