Lauren J. Young

Science Journalism

Science Friday

Lauren J. Young is a digital producer at Science Friday. She crafts and edits pre- and post-show content for ScienceFriday.com so that listeners can get their fill of science stories throughout the week. Among the cool things Lauren has done as a journalist is hold a honeycomb frame filled with bees while standing on the roof of the Waldorf Astoria; cradle a rose hair tarantula in her hands; and re-watch the movies from the Alien franchise to “research” a creepy carnivorous plankton species. Before joining the SciFri team, Lauren wrote for Atlas Obscura. There, she learned that the Victorians came up with odd inventions for nearly every aspect of daily life and that there are still many wondrous places yet to be explored in the world. Lauren hails from an ever-growing rodeo town in the San Joaquin Valley of California. She studied biology at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Even though the nearest beach was just a 20-minute drive from campus, she preferred working at the library and cultivating microbes in the lab. She’s got a knack for badminton (she was a high school champion) and an impressive collection of Pez dispensers. While receiving her master’s degree in science journalism from NYU, Lauren interned at IEEE Spectrum and Science Friday. She was thrilled to reunite with the team.

a field of pale green sagebrush in front of a mountain range at sunset

Tom Koerner/USFWS Mountain-Prairieon Flickr (Public Domain)

The American West's sagebrush sea is rapidly vanishing

Once considered a rangeland weed, this plant is the cornerstone of America’s desert ecosystems

Lauren J. Young
a mars rover being worked on in a lab by scientists in white clean suits

 Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 

How the age of Mars rovers began

Perseverance is the fifth rover to land on the Red Planet. NASA scientists remember Mars Pathfinder’s Sojourner—the 90s experimental endeavor that started it all

Lauren J. Young
A pair of Marsh fritillaries (Euphydryas aurinia) mating, male left and female right,

Charles J Sharp on Wikimedia Commons

Mating plugs and other weird butterfly sex habits

Male butterflies want monogamy. Females, not so much.

Lauren J. Young
a woman doing yoga on a waterfront

Photo by todd kent on Unsplash 

Cervical mucus is an unsung indicator of women's health

This amazing hydrogel is also your vagina's gatekeeper, protecting you from pathogens

Lauren J. Young
Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis, a type of hadrosaur, a duck-billed dinosaur.

James Havens via NSF

Did a mass extinction help dinosaurs dominate the Earth?

These fossil hunters want to solve the mystery

Lauren J. Young
The setting sun highlights a dusty haze that lingers in the San Joaquin Valley.

Lauren J. Young

A shapeshifting fungus lives in the dust. It's infecting across the American West

Valley Fever is mild for some, but for others it's deadly. And it's spreading as the climate warms

Lauren J. Young