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.