Contacts
Info
The Blue Hour is a conversation – a dialogue about life, literature, science, philosophy and everything in between.
Episodes & Posts
Episodes
Posts
27 OCT 2026 · In this episode of The Blue Hour, Farha Guerrero speaks with Dr. Marco Marra, University Killam Professor at UBC, Distinguished Scientist at BC Cancer, and one of Canada's leading pioneers in genomics and precision cancer medicine. From his contributions to the Human Genome Project and the sequencing of the SARS coronavirus to his pioneering work in personalized cancer medicine, Marra's career spans an extraordinary period of scientific discovery. An Officer of the Order of Canada, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and inductee into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, he is also a recipient of the National Killam Prize in Health Sciences and the Canadian Cancer Society's Lifetime Contribution Prize. In this retrospective conversation, we explore his life's work, the remarkable transformation of genomic technologies, the challenges of translating scientific discoveries into cancer treatments, and his vision for the future of medicine. Recorded live in person at CiTR 101.9 FM, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. The Blue Hour with Farha Guerrero October 27, 2026 Full interview transcript: https://thehourisblue.com/blog/
21 OCT 2026 · What do we owe one another in our everyday interactions? And why do even brief encounters with strangers matter? In this episode of The Blue Hour, Farha Guerrero speaks with Dr. Kimberley Brownlee, Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Political & Social Philosophy. Her research focuses on loneliness, belonging, social human rights and freedom of association, examining fundamental questions about our social needs and our moral responsibilities toward one another. She is the author of two books: Conscience and Conviction: The Case for Civil Disobedience (2012) and Being Sure of Each Other: An Essay on Social Rights and Freedoms (2020), both published by Oxford University Press. Her more recent work includes On the Ethics of Interacting (2024) and Interactional Equality (2026). In this conversation, we explore her research on our fundamental need for human connection, drawing on her book Being Sure of Each Other, her public lecture discussing its ideas, and her article On the Ethics of Interacting. From ordinary encounters with strangers to questions of loneliness, vulnerability and belonging, the conversation considers what follows, morally and politically, from recognizing that human beings are profoundly social creatures. Recorded in person at CiTR 101.9 FM, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Full interview transcript: https://thehourisblue.com/blog/
13 OCT 2026 · In this conversation, I speak with Sally Otto, University Killam Professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of British Columbia, Fellow of both the Royal Society of Canada and the United Kingdom’s Royal Society, member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. We discuss the possibilities and limits of evolution through three recent research studies: the evolution of cross-tolerance to metals in yeast, population decline where genetically different populations meet, and the changing status of imperilled species in British Columbia.
6 OCT 2026 · In this conversation, I speak with Dominic McIver Lopes, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and University Killam Professor at UBC. In a dozen books and around eighty articles, he has offered new conceptions of aesthetic value, art, and the relationship between art and technology, especially new information technologies. He advocates for pluralism about artistic and aesthetic value and is currently writing a book about value pluralism in the global history of philosophy. Our conversation centres on one recent article: "AI Art and Artists: What They Are, What They Could Be, What They Should Be," published on March 8, 2026 in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. We discuss what AI art is, whether an AI system could ever qualify as an artist, and what these questions reveal about creativity, agency, artistic value, and the place of human beings in art.
30 SEP 2026 · In this conversation, I speak with Dr. Jasḵwaan Bedard, a Haida language educator and advocate from G̱aw Tlagée, Massett, Haida Gwaii, and Assistant Professor in the Indigenous Languages Program in the Department of Linguistics at Simon Fraser University. Jasḵwaan’s work centres on X̱aad Kíl, the Old Massett or Northern Haida language, and on immersion, pedagogy, translation, transcription and language learning guided by Haida community, laws and values. Jasḵwaan prefers the term language strengthening rather than language revitalization. As she explains, Haida languages have always been living. Her work is concerned not simply with preserving a language, but with learning it, speaking it, teaching it and strengthening the relationships between language, community, land and ways of knowing. Recorded live at the CiTR studio on September 30th, Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, our conversation moves through X̱aad Kíl itself: its sounds and structures, the challenges of learning an ancestral language as a second language, translation, immersion, and the knowledge and relationships carried through language.
29 SEP 2026 · In this conversation, I speak with writer Stella Harvey about her newest novel, Disruption, a story set in a fractured future shaped by pandemic, environmental damage, political division, surveillance and fear. At its centre is Kitianna, a young woman whose desire to write, ask questions and understand what lies beyond the wall surrounding her world gradually becomes dangerous. Through her story, the novel explores the tension between freedom and security, and what people may be willing to surrender in order to feel safe. We also talk about Stella’s own life as a writer and literary mentor. Born in Cairo and raised in Calgary, she later made her home in Whistler, where she founded the Whistler Writing Society and served for twenty years as Artistic and Executive Director of the Whistler Writers Festival. She retired from that role in 2022. She has mentored writers through Simon Fraser University’s Writers’ Studio and is the 2026 Whistler Writer in Residence. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in literary journals, newspapers and on CBC Radio. She is the author of four novels: Nicolai’s Daughters, The Brink of Freedom, Finding Callidora, and Disruption.
15 SEP 2026 · In this conversation, I speak with Dr. Leigh VanHandel, Associate Professor of Music Theory at UBC’s School of Music, whose research brings together music theory, music cognition, rhythm and meter, the relationship between music and language, and the ways we teach and learn music. Leigh began university as a science major, intending to pursue genetic engineering, before returning to the music that had been such an important part of her life growing up. Her path eventually led her to music theory and the emerging field of music cognition, where her interests in music, psychology, language and science could come together. Her research asks how music works, how we perceive and process it, and how our experience shapes what we hear. Her current work explores how we perceive and process tempo, what makes rhythmic patterns seem complex, and whether our native language can influence the way we perceive that complexity. She is also the editor of *The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy*, which received the Society for Music Theory’s Outstanding Multi-Author Publication Award in 2022. At the centre of her work is a deceptively simple question: how does music work, and how do we understand it?
8 SEP 2026 · In this conversation, I speak with Hrishabh Srivastava, a PhD student in Astronomy at the University of British Columbia and a member of the Euclid Strong Lensing Science Working Group. Originally trained in materials engineering and data science at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Hrishabh transitioned into astrophysics, where his research focuses on strong gravitational lensing, dark matter and the enormous quantities of astronomical data being produced by the Euclid Space Telescope. Earlier this year, he was a finalist in UBC’s Three Minute Thesis competition with *Probing Dark Matter with Nature’s Magnifying Glass*. His research explores how the gravity of a foreground galaxy bends and distorts light from a more distant galaxy—a consequence of Einstein’s theory of general relativity—and how these rare gravitational lenses can be used to investigate the distribution of otherwise invisible dark matter. He is developing a method using Zernike polynomials to identify the geometric features of strong lenses in Euclid images, providing a simpler and more interpretable alternative to computationally intensive deep-learning methods. We discuss what dark matter is—and what we still do not know about it—how gravitational lensing allows astronomers to investigate something they cannot see directly, and how the Euclid mission could dramatically expand the number of known strong gravitational lenses.
27 AUG 2026 · In this conversation, I speak with Dr. Patrick Boudreau, a postdoctoral fellow at the Montreal Behavioural Medicine Centre and Concordia University, about the psychology of climbing and our experiences of physical activity in nature. We discuss flow and other psychological states associated with excellent performance, why outdoor climbing can feel psychologically different from climbing indoors, and the role that nature, uncertainty and exploration may play in the climbing experience. We also talk about the mental preparation required for demanding outdoor adventures and Patrick’s ongoing research comparing the psychological effects of physical activity in natural and indoor environments.
25 AUG 2026 · In this conversation, I speak with Federica Mingolla, one of Italy’s most renowned climbers, about climbing, freedom, ambition, motherhood, and the ways our lives and identities continue to evolve. Federica is an Italian professional climber, alpinist and mountain guide. Born in Turin in 1994, she began climbing as a teenager and went on to build a career spanning sport climbing, multi-pitch routes and alpinism. She is now based in the Aosta Valley, where she works as a mountain guide. She also holds a degree in Sports Science and is an athlete for La Sportiva and Petzl. Our conversation moves between climbing and life beyond it: instinct and uncertainty, ambition and compromise, becoming a mother, and remaining open to change. Federica describes herself as being in a state of “perpetual evolution,” an idea that became one of the threads running through our conversation.
The Blue Hour is a conversation – a dialogue about life, literature, science, philosophy and everything in between.
Information
| Author | CiTR & Discorder Magazine |
| Organization | CiTR & Discorder Magazine |
| Categories | Society & Culture |
| Website | - |
| thebluehourcitr@gmail.com |
Copyright 2026 - Spreaker Inc. an iHeartMedia Company
