The Blue Hour

CiTR & Discorder Magazine
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The Blue Hour is a conversation – a dialogue about life, literature, science, philosophy and everything in between.

  1. 4d ago

    AI Art and Artists: A Conversation with Dr. Dominic McIver Lopes

    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.

  2. Sep 30

    Strengthening X̱aad Kíl: Haida Language Immersion with Dr. Jasḵwaan Bedard

    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.

  3. Sep 29

    Stella Harvey: The Writing Life and Her New Novel, Disruption

    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.

  4. Sep 15

    Dr. Leigh VanHandel on How Music Works — and How We Understand It

    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?

  5. Sep 8

    Hrishabh Srivastava: Probing Dark Matter with Nature’s Magnifying Glass

    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.

  6. Aug 27

    The Psychology of Climbing — Patrick Boudreau on Flow, Performance and Nature

    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.

  7. Aug 25

    Perpetual Evolution — A Conversation with Federica Mingolla, One of Italy’s Most Renowned Climbers

    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.

  8. Aug 11

    Why We Climb: Sophie Alexander on Identity and Belonging

    In this conversation, I speak with Sophie Alexander, a Master’s student in Kinesiology at the University of Victoria, whose research explores the relationship between climbing, physical activity, identity development and belonging. Sophie Alexander is a Master’s student in Kinesiology at the University of Victoria, where her research examines how climbing, social experience and a sense of belonging can influence physical activity and identity development. Our conversation centres on climbing as something more than physical exercise: how it can shape identity, confidence and connection, and how the social environment surrounding a sport can influence whether people feel that they belong and want to remain physically active.

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About

The Blue Hour is a conversation – a dialogue about life, literature, science, philosophy and everything in between.

Information

  • Creator
    CiTR & Discorder Magazine
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    162
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright CiTR & Discorder Magazine
  • Show Website
    The Blue Hour