As we welcome in the New Year, we eagerly anticipate a fresh roster of IDEAS programs to inspire new ways of looking at our world and understanding it. From the phenomenon of the ‘27 Club’’ to exploring literature from Labrador, to social media influencers who push their intellectual pursuits, join host Nahlah Ayed to find out what our producers are cooking up for the 2026 season.

Kritika Vashishtha has been pursuing a cure for jet lag and it's possible she's found the answer. The Canadian aerospace engineer recently invented a variety of light that fools human bodies into switching time zones while aboard an aircraft. She shows two IDEAS producers around her laboratory inside an airplane to explain how the process works. Kritika plans to direct her discoveries towards making space travel easier on astronauts.

*This episode is part of our series Ideas from the Trenches, which showcases fascinating new work by Canadian PhD students. It originally aired on April 29, 2024.

If we weren't so used to having books, we would think of them as a "miracle." That's how historian Irene Vallego

views what she says is humankind's greatest and most influential invention: the book. "With their help, humanity has undergone an extraordinary acceleration of history, development, and progress," she tells host Nahlah Ayed. Vallego has traced written texts back to their earliest origins and she's written a book of her own, Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World.

When Darren Hamilton began university, he was shocked to find that there were no Black music courses and Black music professors. He grew up singing spirituals every Sunday in church. Now at the University of Toronto, Hamilton teaches Gospel Choir, U of T's first credit course in Black gospel music. Students of all backgrounds and ages come to learn and sing songs rooted in faith, freedom and joy. He says he started the course because he wanted Black music to be valued in music education, and he wanted Black students to have a music class

where they "feel they belong." *This episode originally aired Feb. 29, 2024.

If you think you've never heard Jerry Granelli play drums — you likely have. Think of a comic strip holiday special and an iconic soundtrack: A Charlie Brown Christmas. Jerry was 22 years old when he became a member of the Vince Guaraldi Trio, the jazz band behind the popular 1965 album. His long career was legendary, accompanying many of the greats like Mose Alison, Sly Stone and The Grateful Dead. Producer Mary Lynk was lucky to meet with Jerry on the eve of his 80th birthday for a wide-ranging conversation. The gifted composer and jazz giant died in Halifax in 2021. *This episode originally aired on December 21, 2020.

Handel’s Messiah is one of the best-loved pieces of Christmas music. Only it was meant for Easter. But it draws on far more from the Old Testament than the New. There are more surprising facts about this 18th-century masterpiece that IDEAS explores with Ivars Taurins, founding director of the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir who has conducted Messiah over 200 times, and veteran CBC Radio broadcaster Robert Harris. In nine movements, they reveal the hidden treasures of Handel’s celebrated work. *This episode originally aired in 2015.

The nativity story that Christians believe is that God took the form of a baby named Jesus who was born to save the world and bring about an enduring peace. So what happened? Did we miss it? And what happens next? These are questions Trappist monk Thomas Merton grappled with in his own meditation on the Christmas story. His version "The Time of The End is the Time of No Room" was published in 1966. At the time he called it a sober statement about the climate of our time, a time of finality and fulfillment.

In an era of political polarization, and fatigue from ongoing crises, education scholar Kari Grain argues hope is vital. It's not something you have, it's something you do. Grain says "critical hope" in action is an abiding belief that transformation is not just possible, but crucial. So how does water play into hope? The author explores how hope can come from three areas: teachers, critical thinking and biomimicry, the practice of observing how nature functions in order to solve human problems. Grain reimagines hope as something that can move like the four habits of water: bending, pooling in deep places, going underground, and persisting. In this way, hope is fluid enough to forge new pathways forward.

Kari Grain is a professor at the University of British Columbia in the Faculty of Education, where she leads the Masters program in Adult Learning and Global Change Program. She delivered the University of Prince Edward Island’s 2025 Shannon K Murray Lecture on Hope and the Academy.