RadioActive

It started with an argument.

Marcus McGuire, 17, asked his mom if his girlfriend could come over to the house. His mom said no and Marcus remembers his mom referring to his girlfriend as a "broad."

Marcus says he snapped.

He started yelling and before long it was World War III. Marcus's mom eventually kicked him out of the house.

Lighting a few candles may not seem like a big deal. But for RadioActive youth producer Dulce Saucedo, lighting candles one night when she was 15 years old meant losing her family's home in Seattle's South Park neighborhood. Dulce, now 16, shares this meditation on the night when she lost everything she owned.

When my house burned down I knew in that moment that my life was going to change. That everything wasn't going to be the same anymore.

RadioActive youth producer Evan Adams is a junior at Garfield High School in Seattle. He is stressing about taking the SAT because he wants to get into the college of his dreams, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But MIT requires high SAT scores, and Evan struggles with tests. He shares his story.

Right now at school I get OK grades — I'm working to get all As. But I have pretty much failed every major test since the beginning of sixth grade despite the countless hours I have spent studying for the tests.

Laura "Piece" Kelley is a Seattle hip-hop artist, poet and educator who encourages young people to create music that expresses their lived experiences. A self-described single mom, high school dropout with no college education, she's worked with household names such as Drake, T.I., and KRS-One, and she once read a poem for the Dalai Lama himself.

Manu Tuito'elau, 18 years old, was running late to history class at Evergreen High School, just south of Seattle. It wasn't his first time.

Manu's teacher called him out for being late. Manu didn't want to put up with it, so he started to walk out of class. That's when he remembers hearing his teacher say that it was always Manu and his people that scored low in class. He also remembers his teacher asking, "How come you couldn't do as well in my classes as you do on the field?"

Maga Barzallo-Sockemtickem, 17, has been battling leukemia since she was 15 years old.

Before being diagnosed, Maga would do anything that let her run, especially play soccer.

Then one day, Maga felt weak and had to lean on a bus stop near her school. She found out she had a rare form of leukemia.

The fall 2012 RadioActive students just completed their eight-week workshop where they learned how to make radio stories for the first time. In this podcast, we're featuring several of their incredible stories about triumphing over tough times:

• A 15-year-old girl accidentally burns her house down. Now she's trying to pick her life up from the ashes. She shares her deeply personal story.
• A teenage girl loves to care for children with cancer at Seattle Children's Hospital. But the help goes both ways — she has a rare form of leukemia herself.
• A high school teacher tells a Samoan student that he's only good at football. The student channels his anger at that teacher into a documentary about the stereotypes Samoans face.

"Car on, radio off, and paddle shift ready to go, okay, lets go!"

In this month's podcast, RadioActive's very own Anne Kane takes a ride in a Lamborghini to uncover the relationship Lamborghini has with the University of Washington.

High school students Max Hutton and Sarah Rosenthal are your hosts.

RadioActive's Halle Bills takes a look at the high school tradition of hazing or "froshing." Froshing happens at high schools across the country. It is an initiation process where incoming freshmen are humiliated as they start the school year.  A source in our Public Insight Network helped make this story happen. 

Jane Wong never got to decide what she wanted to be when she grew up: her parents decided for her. “They decided that I would go into medical school,” she told RadioActive’s Kamna Shastri. “They decided that for my brother too. That was from when I was little, so I’ve sort of grown into the idea.”