Sing for Science featuring Patricia Cornwell and Avi Loeb

Sing for Science is an award winning, Top 10 Music Interview Podcast on Apple’s charts where musicians talk about science with scientists, scholars, and science journalists. Past episodes include Korn leader Jonathan Davis and science writer Mary Roach on mortuary science, SIA and sex therapist Alex Katehakis on attachment theory, Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo and Python creator Guido Van Rossum on coding, and dozens more that engage science-curious fans of music like no other podcast. 

The show is hosted by New York musician Matt Whyte, whose credits include composing for Netflix’s Tiger King, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, and fronting the mid-aughts band Earl Greyhound. Matt cites his participation in a Pete Seeger memorial concert at New York City’s Joe’s Pub as the podcast’s inspiration; it was there that he became acutely aware of the breadth of issues to which Pete applied the power of song in his pursuit of change.

In 1990, Patricia Cornwell sold her first novel, Postmortem, while working at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia. An auspicious debut, it went on to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity Awards, as well as the French Prix du Roman d’Aventures — the first book ever to claim all these distinctions in a single year. Growing into an international phenomenon, the Scarpetta series won Cornwell the Sherlock Award for best detective created by an American author, the Gold Dagger Award, the RBA Thriller Award, and the Medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters for her contributions to literary and artistic development. Today, Cornwell’s novels and iconic characters are known around the world. Beyond the Scarpetta series, Cornwell has written the definitive nonfiction account of Jack the Ripper’s identity, cookbooks, a children’s book, a biography of Ruth Graham, and three other fictional series based on the characters Win Garano, Andy Brazil, and Captain Callie Chase. 

Cornwell continues exploring the latest space-age technologies and threats relevant to contemporary life. Her interests range from the morgue to artificial intelligence and include visits to Interpol, the Pentagon, the US Secret Service, and NASA. Cornwell was born in Miami. She grew up in Montreat, North Carolina, and now lives and works in Boston.

Abraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University and a bestselling author (in lists of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, L'Express, and more). He received a PhD in physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel at age 24 (1980-1986), led the first international project supported by the Strategic Defense Initiative (1983-1988), and was subsequently a long-term member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1988-1993). Loeb has written 9 books, including most recently, Extraterrestrial and Interstellar, as well as over a thousand scientific papers on a wide range of topics, including black holes, the first stars, the search for extraterrestrial life, and the future of the universe. Loeb is the director of the Institute for Theory and Computation (2007-present) within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and also serves as the head of the Galileo Project (2021-present). He had been the longest serving chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy (2011-2020) and the founding director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative (2016-2021). He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. 

Loeb is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) at the White House, a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies (2018-2021), and a current member of the Advisory Board for "Einstein: Visualize the Impossible" of the Hebrew University. He chaired the Advisory Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative (2015-2024) and served as the Science Theory Director for all Initiatives of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. In 2012, TIME magazine selected Loeb as one of the 25 most influential people in space and in 2020 Loeb was selected among the 14 most inspiring Israelis of the last decade. In 2024, Loeb was ranked number 3 in publication record and impact of research among all astronomers worldwide over the past 5 years by ScholarGPS.