I just finished watching the final episode of Daily Planet with Jay Ingram, and it made me more than a little nostalgic. ( OK, so maybe the title is a little too dramatic, but in my opinion this show deserves it!).

 For those of you who live outside of Canada, let me start by explaining this show a little. Way back in 1995, when no one had really heard of the Discovery Channel, long before the creation of popular shows like Mythbusters or Dirty Jobs, an idea was formed for a nightly TV show which would feature only stories about science and technology. It would feature the daily news from a scientific perspective, and segments about chemistry or physics or mathematics taught by (mostly) university professors who had the ability to explain leading research to the average public. And well known Canadian science journalist Jay Ingram was chosen to host it. This was the first TV program anywhere in the world to attempt such a task. (On a personal level, this show premiered just as I was preparing to enter the University of Victoria as a Physics & Mathematics Honours student.)

Over the years I would watch almost every day.  It was this show that introduced me to the writings of Dr. Joe Schwarcz who would go on to write numerous books on chemistry in everyday life (I learned more chemistry in his books than from a full year of undergrad chemistry courses). It was on this show that I first saw some of the great physics demonstrations that I would later use myself in teaching and tutoring, demonstrated by physicists like John Swain and Jearl Walker. Even when I became too jaded to watch traditional television news programs, I always trusted Jay Ingram and his colleagues on the Daily Planet to give me honest reporting on a variety of important and interesting topics.

I always remember an editorial segment that Jay Ingram gave on this show, after the media had received a lot of criticism for reporting on events that caused a lot of unnecessary panic - like a common plastic possibly raising the risk of cancer by a fraction of a percent or discovery of an asteroid that had a one-in-a-million chance of eradicating all life on Earth. He argued that it would be wrong for scientists and the intelligentia to censor what the public needs to know, and that it would be equally wrong for the media to decide what people need to know. No one has the right to keep information hidden and secret. He quite rightly argued that the responsibility lies with the members of the public themselves to understand the research being reported (at least on a cursory level) and to decide for themselves if it is important or not. I have quoted this editorial many times over the years, because it is the only time I have heard someone on a major television network say bluntly that people need to educate themselves, think for themselves and not rely on someone else to tell them what to do!

But I digress...

After 16 years of Daily Planet, Jay Ingram in retiring. He has done so much for the scientific and technology community and in my opinion, he has helped to make science accessible to the masses. He is deserving of all the numerous awards he has received for his good work, and I hope he has a very good retirement. And of course I also hope that the show continues to educate and entertain now that he has passed the reins to others...