  Massive stars and supernovae (SNe) have a huge impact on their environment.
Despite their importance, a comprehensive knowledge of which massive stars
produce which SNe is hitherto lacking. We use a Monte Carlo method to predict
the mass-loss rates of massive stars in the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram (HRD)
covering all phases from the OB main sequence, the unstable Luminous Blue
Variable (LBV) stage, to the final Wolf-Rayet (WR) phase. Although WR produce
their own metals, a strong dependence of the mass-loss rate on the initial iron
abundance is found at sub-solar metallicities (1/10 -- 1/100 solar). This may
present a viable mechanism to prevent the loss of angular momentum by stellar
winds, which could inhibit GRBs occurring at solar metallicities -- providing a
significant boost to the collapsar model. Furthermore, we discuss recently
reported quasi-sinusoidal modulations in the radio lightcurves of SNe 2001ig
and 2003bg. We show that both the sinusoidal behaviour and the recurrence
timescale of these modulations are consistent with the predicted mass-loss
behaviour of LBVs. We discuss potential ramifications for the ``Conti''
scenario for massive star evolution.
