Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

Thanks for downloading the In Our Time Podcast.

For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co. UK forward slash radio for. I hope you enjoy the

program.

Hello in his poem Bright Star John Keats wrote Bright, would I were steadfast as thou art.

For Keats, the stars were symbols of eternity.

They were beautiful and ordered and unchanging.

Modern astronomy tells a different story.

Stars, like everyone else in the universe, are subject to change. The They create black holes and neutron stars and in the very beginning of the universe they forge the elements from which all life is made.

But how do stars keep burning for millions of years?

Why do they self-destruct with such ferocity?

And what will happen to the universe when or is it if they all go out?

With me to discuss the life cycle of stars is Paul Murden,

Senior Fellow at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge,

Phil Charles, Professor of Astronomy at Southampton University and Jan

Levin advanced fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics and

Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge.

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