Eager to succeed in her Physical Chemistry class, Shaniece Mosley is thrown off by a professor's attempt at a compliment, and Lelemia Irvine struggles to get through his PhD program as he's constantly told that his identity as a Native Hawaiian is incompatible with academia.

Feeling like a loser after he fails to graduate on time with his degree in materials science, Len Kruger accepts a dinner invitation from a cult, and after young Jehovah's Witness Emmanuel Garcia loses his faith, he finds a new purpose at a neuroscience conference.

Sean Bearden has never been interested in education, but when he's incarcerated at the age of 19, he finds a passion for physics, and when Victoria Manning decides to get a cochlear implant, she fears losing her identity as a deaf person.

When Eva Bloom struggles to have an orgasm, she turns to research, and Dasha Kelly Hamilton thinks of a creative way to teach her daughters about sex.

As a kid, Samy Kamkar discovers his superpower -- hacking, and when Jordan Bush's father-in-law-to-be is diagnosed with cancer shortly before her wedding, she finds a creative way to help him attend.

Avi Caspe and his mother, Ariel Detzer, reckon with what the label of "autism" means for their family, and when Paulette Steeves' son is given 2 years to live, she searches for a way to keep him alive.

Catherine Macdonald always wanted to study sharks, but her first time tagging them in the field doesn't go as planned, and when Michelle Tong visits home after her first semester of medical school, a stranger presents an ethical dilemma.

When science journalist Katherine Wu interviews a scientist about a new facial recognition algorithm, the conversation turns more personal than she expected, and hurricane Katrina gives Mary Annaise Heglar a new perspective on both her grandfather and home state.

Teaching sixth grade science becomes much more difficult when Xochitl Garcia's students start hypothesizing that fire is alive, and when journalist John Rennie is assigned to cover an entomological society event where insects are served as food, he sees an opportunity to face his fear of bugs.

When Ph.D student Ali Mattu's girlfriend tells him she is moving to New York City, he has to make some tough decisions about where home is, and Arlo Pérez Esquivel struggles to define his boundaries with his father while he is pursuing his education in another country.