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.

After watching a documentary about the moon landing, Kate Downey comes away with a love of all things Buzz Aldrin, and Richard French gets the call to work for NASA, fulfilling a dream that started with his professor Carl Sagan.

When online dating isn't working out for him, Tristan Attwood decides to analyze the data himself, and in search of a deal, Gastor Almonte ends up with an unmanageable number of condoms.

As a 16-year-old, Lily Be gets an unexpected education on the reproductive system, and Xavier Jordan discovers the party side of science at his first scientific conference.

After a car crash alters Emily Winn's life forever, she must relive the trauma when she testifies in a deposition, and black geneticist C. Brandon Ogbunu contemplates the role race has played in his academic career after he gets confronted by the police.

A chance meeting with a stranger on an airplane has a huge impact on Melanie Knight's life, and Joshua Adams-Miller has never seen college in his future, until he receives encouragement from an unexpected source.

After getting hit by a car, Ph.D. student Reyhaneh Maktoufi must navigate the recovery and paperwork as an immigrant from Iran, and when scientist Danielle Lee travels to Tanzania to study pouched rats, she finds she's more of an outsider than she'd expected.

Adam Selbst competes with tigers for the attention of his mother, and weighed down by the burden of leadership as she supervises the construction of a telescope, Erika Hamden finds comfort in an unlikely spot.