Feeling isolated in her new job as a particle accelerator operator, Cindy Joe finds comfort in her unconventional pet, and Patrick Honner starts to doubt his lifelong love of math when grad school becomes a lonely experience.

Writer Matthew Dicks is startled to learn that his dog is in surgery -- and that he agreed to it the night before, and climatologist Simon Donner misses the ride to his field site in Madagascar, and must find his way there on his own. 

Science communicator Anthony Morgan receives an invitation to be vacuum-sealed to the bottom of a helicopter -- for science, and as a medical student, Elorm Avakame befriends a patient who is dying from alcoholism.

Comedian Josh Gondelman is threatened with a lawsuit after he reviews a new sexual enhancement product, and neuroscientist Heather Berlin and rapper Baba Brinkman try to use science to figure out if they belong together.

On her first day working in the Obama White House, microbiologist Jo Handelsman receives some bad news, and after a confrontation with a student, math teacher Sage Forbes-Gray begins to question whether she's the ally she thought she was.

Science educator Charlie Cook experiments with coming out to students, and marine biologist Shayle Matsuda adapts to his new identity as a transgender man while on assignment in the Philippines.

Journalist Arielle Duhaime-Ross finds common ground with an Alaskan community struggling with climate change, and Costa Rican ecologist Marco Quesada sees a new side of his country when he travels to Chira Island.

After her father, a well-known intellectual, passes away, neurobiologist Eva Higginbotham tries to live up to his academic standards, and Nisse Greenberg travels home to care for his father after a brain injury.

Writer Alison Smith reconnects with her estranged father after he develops Alzheimer's disease, and science journalist Peter Brannen mourns the loss of his mother while studying the earth’s biggest mass extinction.

Growing up, Moni Avello struggles to understand her younger sister, who has Asperger's syndrome, and for Morgan Givens, the onset of puberty feels like an alien invasion.