From a very early age, Davin Martin has been obsessed with space. In the summer of 2020, Devin made his dream come true completing a summer internship at NASA and working directly on the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover. Watching the rover successfully launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida was a huge triumph for Devin, but his journey hasn’t been easy. He has had to face adversity, including racism, along his journey.

Chander Payne had a life changing moment in his high school cafeteria (how many of us can say that?). He noticed his fellow classmates didn’t have access to healthy foods like fruit and vegetables - so he decided to grow them himself. Chander started an urban farm at his high school, growing fresh fruits and veggies right where they were needed the most. That project soon blossomed into a full-fledged organization called Urban Beet (www.urbanbeet.org/), creating urban farms in other schools...

The summer before her freshman year of high school, Kyla Guru discovered a unique passion for cybersecurity at the NSA GenCyber Camp. It was there she discovered that 90% of cyberattacks were due to human error. To combat this problem, Kyla founded Bits N’ Bytes Cybersecurity Education (https://www.bitsnbytes.us.com/) whose mission is educating and equipping people with the cybersecurity skills they need for the future. In addition to giving speeches and holding workshops, Bits N’ Bytes also...

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and schools closed, high school junior Zachary Siegel found himself with a lot more time on his hands. He used that free time to explore his passions (like computer programming), but quickly realized this was also an opportunity to share his passions with others. So he founded The Youth Passion Project (https://www.youthpassionproject.org/). It’s a platform for high school students to teach classes to young learners about the things they are most passionate...

When Hannah Lucas was 15 years old, she developed POTS, a medical condition that caused her to faint without warning. The anxiety around her condition combined with bullying and harassment from her classmates led Hannah to fall into a deep depression, culminating in an attempt to end her own life. During this incredibly low moment in her life, Hannah had an idea: What if there was a way to immediately alert the people around her that she was not ok? Aided by her tech-savvy brother, Charlie,...

While studying abroad in Japan, 16-year-old Luna Abadia saw the effects of climate change first-hand. Typhoons were getting stronger, snow becoming rarer, and traditional crops were no longer able to grow. This inspired Luna to act. She entered a speech competition and wrote about the importance of combating climate change. Her speech got a lot of attention and Luna became a national finalist. Realizing the power her voice could have, when Luna returned home to Oregon, she founded the...

When he was 11 years old, a volunteer trip to a center feeding the homeless and hungry in San Francisco opened Kiran Sridhar’s eyes to the devastating effects of hunger and food insecurity. After a lot of research and even more hard work, Kiran’s drive to eradicate hunger led to the creation of his online platform, Waste No Food (http://wastenofood.org/). It's a simple concept: farms, restaurants, cafeterias, hotels, and grocery stores post excess food on the site. Aid groups and charities...

When 16-year-old Neil Suri went on a hiking trip to California, he witnessed firsthand the devastation caused by forest fires. The image of the charred mountainside inspired him to look deeper into wildfires - how they start, and how they burn out of control. Through his research, Neil discovered the way we detect forest fires hasn’t changed all that much over the years. And that traditional methods are expensive and out of date. So Neil got to work and invented a completely new, affordable...

Very early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, 18-year-old Avi Schiffmann recognized people needed a quick and easy way to get accurate information about the spread of the disease. So Avi put his computer programming skills to use and created nCoV2019.live - one of the world’s very first coronavirus trackers. The site quickly became an invaluable resource to millions of people all over the world and earned Avi the title of 2020 Webby Person of the Year - presented by Dr. Anthony Fauci himself.

15-year-old Anisha Musti isn’t your average teenager. After she lost her great-uncle to Parkinson’s disease, she was inspired to do something to help others. Using the power of quantum computing, Anisha created a revolutionary technique to detect Parkinson’s disease based solely on the sound of a person’s voice. Now, Anisha runs a non-profit organization whose mission is to teach young people about the power of quantum computing. You can learn all about it at qmunity.tech.

When Ananya Sridhar was 12 years old she heard about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Despite being 2,000 miles away in California, Ananya decided to act. Not only did Ananya invent a new, affordable way to test for lead contamination in water, she figured out how to identify the communities that are most at risk. To learn more about Ananya’s work or to volunteer to test the water in your own community, go to www.waterbyneptune.com.

Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to change the world? From creating a robot that can sniff out plastic in the ocean to coding an algorithm that detects Parkinson's disease, our host Danni Washington sits down with inventors, entrepreneurs, and explorers to hear the stories behind their amazing discoveries. Oh, and there’s one more thing: they accomplished all of this before they turned 18. You’re never too young to change the world. New episodes every Thursday, wherever you get...

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