Lylla Younes’ work has had an impact. Her work mapping cancer-causing industrial pollution in Louisiana for ProPublica helped lead to a plastic manufacturer’s permit to be suspended. She’s written about oil spills, hazardous waste and a tanker off the coast of Yemen that’s poised to cause an environmental disaster.

She’s now a staff writer at Grist, a nonprofit telling stories at the intersection of climate and justice. In this episode, we chat about her path to data and environmental journalism, her work as an investigative reporter and all the intersections environment stories contain.

Lylla’s project she mentions is called “We Were Not Allowed To Mourn.” It tells the stories of New York’s Arab and Muslim community after 9/11 and can be found here.

“I think the best stories, the ones that I want to tell myself, often have an eye for both the very close view and the local and that specific instance, and also the larger systemic forces at play, and are able to kind of balance those two perspectives.”

Guest: Lylla Younes, staff writer at Grist.

Jacqueline GaNun is a senior majoring in journalism at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. She is also majoring in international affairs in the School of Public and International Affairs and minoring in French.