Meet our New Intern: Hedy Yang
Hello LOE listeners!
My name is Hedy, and I’m one of the interns at LOE this spring. I’m a senior in my final semester at Brandeis University, where I’m majoring in economics and environmental studies and minoring in journalism. I am honored to join such a passionate group of people that continually renew my belief in the goodness of the world.
Growing up, I often felt like the outdoors weren’t for me — that the way my family engaged with the natural world was ‘wrong,’ or that I was unworthy to be granted access to outdoor spaces. My family didn’t have the time nor the disposable income to allow me to participate in the outdoor excursions that, I believed, embodied what it meant to ‘know’ nature. Being outdoorsy, to my family, meant simply taking a walk in our neighborhood. I was embarrassed at the way my dad picked wild scallions and dandelions off the side of the road to bring home and cook.
In a way, interning at LOE is a full circle experience because it was an LOE segment that helped me understand that there is no inherently wrong way to 'be outdoors.' In that episode, CJ Goulding spoke to Steve about how he wears his treasured Jordans — shoes we don’t typically think of as being ‘outdoorsy’ — while hiking, as a way of establishing place for Black youth in environmental spaces and calling attention to the systemic exclusion of certain communities from the very places they helped steward. This episode, among other experiences, shaped my personal belief that everyone has an inherent right to access and engage with the environment in whatever ways work best for them. Walking in our neighborhood or picking weeds was the entry point for my family’s engagements with nature, and there was nothing wrong with that — particularly for my parents, who had immigrated to a new country where little was familiar.
More importantly, the LOE episode also showed me the power of a well-told story. My journalism career had already started in high school when I joined the school paper, but it was never something I took seriously. At this time, I was also becoming increasingly aware of climate change and the work of youth activists like Greta Thunberg and the Sunrise Movement. These two factors helped spur my growing interest in environmental journalism by showing me how a well-reported story can allow people to make sense of their own experiences and document critical progress.
This took off when I got to Brandeis in the fall of 2022, where I was befuddled by how little sustainability and climate coverage there was in the school papers, when there was so much happening in that realm. I joined the school paper and primarily covered the environment and climate from 2022 to 2024. Reporting these stories have been some of my most meaningful journalistic experiences, not just because they inform the student body, but also because they combat a type of institutional amnesia that can slow necessary change: Documenting the evolution of policies and practices over time proves to students that their demands for change can lead to something different, because it has happened in the past.
All that leads me to my work with LOE today, a role that I applied for because I was interested in venturing into the world of audio journalism. In the past few weeks, I’ve developed an appreciation for the way audio brings you closer to the people in the story, whether it’s an activist describing how important an issue is to their community, an academic sharing their research, or a journalist explaining their reporting.
I also appreciate LOE’s commitment to making this knowledge accessible to all as a public radio program. I believe it’s not just the environment itself that everyone has a right to access, but the knowledge around it as well. Only when we are equipped with the information we need can we begin building a future that prioritizes inclusion and collective flourishing. And maybe that awkward kid who takes walks with her family in her neighborhood after a dinner of wild scallion pancakes that she secretly loves — despite being embarrassed by how her dad obtained those scallions — can realize that these are valid ways of connecting to the environment, too.
Hedy Yang
LOE Intern
