Daily Planet: The Ultimate Boo

Daily Planet: The Ultimate Book of Everyday Science captures everything that has made the enormously popular TV show Daily Planet great for the past 15 years: unusual, innovative people; technologies and inventions that you couldn't have imagined before you saw them; the extravagance of nature; the incomprehensibility of the universe; and even glimpses of the future.

Full-colour throughout, the book combines vivid images with the actual thoughts and words of scientists, adventurers, and inventors. The diversity of subjects is striking, but while some stories stand alone, most have subplots and spinoffs, and the reader is carried along from one to the other, sometimes in totally unpredictable ways. For instance, Jay Ingram seamlessly connects the dots between climate change, revealed mummies, ancient Egypt, and homebuilt pyramids, both stationary and mobile!

The book moves from the serious to the satirical, from planetary crises to Mars missions, from bartending robots to dolphins with prosthetic tails. In what other single volume could you read about robot female bower birds driving (real) males crazy or a one-man reconstruction of Stonehenge?

Daily Planet: The Ultimate Book of Everyday Science is all about ingenuity and the desire to know.

J ay Ingram has been the host of Discovery Channel Canada’s Daily Planet since it began in 1995. At the time, it was the only hour-long, prime-time daily science show in the world. Prior to joining Discovery, Jay hosted CBC Radio’s national science show, Quirks and Quarks, from 1979 to 1992. During that time he won two ACTRA awards, one for best host, and several Canadian Science Writers’ awards. He wrote and hosted two CBC Radio documentary series and short radio and television science stories for a variety of programs. He was contributing editor to Owl magazine for ten years, and wrote a weekly science column in the Toronto Star for twelve. Jay has also written eleven bestselling books, including The Daily Planet Book of Cool Ideas.

In 2009, Jay was made a member of the Order of Canada for his contributions towards making complex science accessible to the public – and for his leadership of future generations of science journalists. He has received the Sandford Fleming Medal from the Royal Canadian Institute for his efforts to popularize science, the Royal Society’s McNeil Medal for the Public Awareness of Science, and the Michael Smith Award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. He is a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Alberta and has received five honorary doctorates.