Hay Festival Querétaro 2023 – Science

Angela Saini is a British scientific journalist and radio presenter, as well as a writer whose work has been acclaimed and translated into 14 languages. Her penultimate book, Superior: The Return of Race Science, was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and named Book of the Year by Nature, the Financial Times and the NPR programme Science Friday. On this occasion she presents The Patriarchs, an audacious, radical book that unearths the roots and history of how this system of domination arose for the first time in societies and spread around the world, from prehistory to the present. Saini offers a hopeful narrative bringing to bear the many possible human agreements that question the old stories of inevitable male supremacy, and reveals that these stories are an element that is constantly changing within systems of control. She will talk to Eduardo Becerra.

Event in English

Andrés Cota Hiriart is a biologist, zoologist and writer. He has written books including Cabeza ajena, Faunologías, El ajolote. Biología del anfibio más sobresaliente del mundo and Fieras familiares, and has come close to all kinds of animals in their natural habitats, travelling to some amazing places around the world, like the Galapagos, Borneo, Sulawesi and the island of Guadalupe. At this event, Cota will focus on a wonderful creature from his native Mexico: he will start out with the iconic axolotl and move onto the ajolote of Queretaro state, which is not so commonly mentioned. During the event, he will share images and excerpts from his books.

Naief Yehya (Mexico) is an industrial engineer, fiction writer, essayist and cultural critic. The author a various novels and works of non-fiction, his work has been translated into Italian, English, Arabic and French. He contributes regularly to the Mexican newspaper La Razón. El planeta de los hongos is a cultural and social history of mushrooms, particularly hallucinogenics, and LSD. His approach is not only scientific, but also based on experience and literary non-fiction. Not quite a manual for consumption or a guide for collectors, this is an exploration of the relationship between “magic” mushrooms and humanity, and their potential to open the mind. In conversation with Abel Martínez Hernández.

Naief Yehya (Mexico) is an industrial engineer, fiction writer, essayist and cultural critic. The author a various novels and works of non-fiction, his work has been translated into Italian, English, Arabic and French. He contributes regularly to the Mexican newspaper La Razón. El planeta de los hongos is a cultural and social history of mushrooms, particularly hallucinogenics, and LSD. His approach is not only scientific, but also based on experience and literary non-fiction. Not quite a manual for consumption or a guide for collectors, this is an exploration of the relationship between “magic” mushrooms and humanity, and their potential to open the mind. In conversation with the academic, podcaster and writer Andrés Cota Hiriart.

Andrés Cota Hiriart is a biologist, zoologist and writer. He has written books including Cabeza ajena (2017), Faunologías (2015), El ajolote. Biología del anfibio más sobresaliente del mundo (2016) and Fieras familiares (2022), and has come close to all kinds of animals in their natural habitats, travelling to some amazing places around the world, like the Galapagos, Borneo, Sulawesi and the island of Guadalupe. At this event, Cota will focus on a wonderful creature from his native Mexico: he will start out with the iconic axolotl and move onto the ajolote of Queretaro state, which is not so commonly mentioned. During the event, he will share images and excepts from his books.

Angela Saini is a British scientific journalist and radio presenter, as well as a writer whose work has been acclaimed and translated into 14 languages. Her penultimate book, Superior: The Return of Race Science, was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and named Book of the Year by Nature, the Financial Times and the NPR programme Science Friday. On this occasion she presents The Patriarchs, an audacious, radical book that unearths the roots and history of how this system of domination arose for the first time in societies and spread around the world, from the prehistory to the present. Saini offers a hopeful narrative bringing to bear the many possible human agreements that question the old stories of inevitable male supremacy, and reveals that it is an element that is constantly changing within systems of control. In conversation with Javier García del Moral.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Julieta Norma Fierro Gossman is an astronomer, a member of the Academy of the Language, and a leading popular scientist. She also lectures at the Faculty of Sciences, researches with the Institute of Astronomy, and is General Manager of Scientific Communication at UNAM; she is also the former Director of the Universum museum. She has written hundreds of articles and over 40 books of popular science, telling the story of astronomy, the nature of the solar system... She has been recognised for her work with honorary doctorates, UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science, and an invitation to join the Mexican Academy of the Language.