Featured
Weiji Ma grapples with the pressure of living up to his child prodigy reputation as he grows older, and Chia Lin's meticulously structured life is upended by a chance encounter with a swarm of bees outside her lab.
Kimberly Babiarz sets out to fight human trafficking, only to discover that one of the biggest obstacles is the lack of reliable data, and after years of therapy, Denise Cai believes she's moved beyond her trauma—until her family notices patterns she can't yet see.
Growing up in the fifties and sixties, Jenice Matias senses there's more to her mother's occupation than she understands, and D.B. Firstman has always known their body is different, but at the age of thirty, they make a discovery that changes everything.
After years of helping others safely navigate glaciers, Monte Montepare suddenly finds himself at the mercy of one and Jessica Lee Williamson's OCD fixates on a single question: how will she die?
While teaching a summer school math class in Texas, Justine Ang Fonte realizes that many of her students have never received even the most basic sex education and Guilherme Lichand uncovers a flaw in Brazil’s education system that leaves thousands of children with invisible disabilities unidentified and unsupported.
Michelle Lanuza has her sights set on a career designing communication systems for airplanes, yet each new opportunity comes with the same obstacle: her immigration status, and for Saba Banaian, the opportunity to study biomedical engineering in the United States comes with a painful cost: she can't return home to Iran for five years.
Feeling isolated in her new job as a particle accelerator operator at Fermilab, Cindy Joe finds comfort in the friendship of her unconventional pet, and Patrick Honner starts to doubt his lifelong love of math when graduate school becomes a lonely experience.
Keren Landman always wanted to be a writer, but her family didn’t see it as a practical career — so instead, she went to medical school, and when Adithi Ramakrishnan gets to college, she only sees two career paths ahead of her: medical school or scientific research.
As a teenager, Mike McFadden realizes one part of his body isn’t developing like the other boys his age, and Ricky Ortiz believed that to be a good husband, father, and provider, he could never show weakness.
Cooper Joslin is determined to get a hysterectomy to finally stop the debilitating symptoms of endometriosis but all the doctors won’t seem to let them make decisions about their own body, and as a PTSD survivor, Adrianne Frost assumes her dissociative episodes are simply part of living with trauma.
When the children’s TV show host Carly Ciarrocchi is assigned a scuba diving episode, she’s forced to confront a lifelong fear of the ocean, and growing up, Darcie Little Badger was wary of the ocean. But when she takes an oceanography class in college, she begins to question her fears.
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.
When Bailey Swilley’s dad goes into cardiac arrest, she watches her mom care for him and starts to reevaluate what love really looks like, at rock bottom, Pam Stepansky turns to her dad for support with her alcoholism.
When everyone in Rich Tackenberg’s family is diagnosed with celiac disease, he’s forced to confront a terrifying possibility: life without his emotional support carb, and during the pandemic, Aditya Surendran sets out to conquer making a 36-hour baguette.
After a pregnancy loss, Annie Tan channels her grief into rescuing an injured mockingbird, and Kibby McMahon is convinced she can will her way into pregnancy, but her body refuses to follow the plan.
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.
Gwendolyn Napier is left heartbroken when harsh Atlanta weather destroys the trees planted to honor her family members, and Bimini Wright looks back on her childhood spent aboard a research boat, studying tuna alongside her larger-than-life fisherman father.
As a child, Brittany Munson dreams of growing up to be a whale trainer, and as a marine scientist focused on living creatures, Maya Santangelo is convinced that diving to explore an old whaling shipwreck in the Antarctic will be boring.
After three generations of women in her family develop Alzheimer’s disease, Mary Jo Pollack enrolls in a study that could reveal whether she’s next, and when Sabrina Samuel is diagnosed with a brain aneurysm and told to wait a year before surgery, she must choose between living in fear or embracing the time she has.
As a lonely teenager searching for connection, Christopher Moncayo-Torres turns to an unlikely disguise—a giant Clifford costume—in hopes of bridging the gap between himself and the world around him, and JP Flores has always been the family’s “smart kid,” a role that becomes his armor in college—until the pressure of living up to that identity begins to crack.
After witnessing toxic fumes pouring from a nearby factory, Virginia Kilgore decides to take action, and while working in Delhi, Sai Krishna Dammalapati is baffled by how unfazed people seem by the city’s severe air pollution.
When wildfires erupt in Los Angeles, Tracy Drain’s work on the Europa Clipper mission is suddenly at risk, and as a child, Victoria Dinov lives through a historic wildfire that stays with her long after the ashes settle.
While researching flood risk and insurance costs in California, international student Hannah Melville-Rea is shocked by just how unprotected many people are, and Patricia Schuba is determined to stop coal and waste pollution from contaminating the groundwater in Labadie, Missouri.
While filming a wildlife documentary, filmmaker Mae Dorricott begins to notice just how profoundly human activity is shaping animal behaviour, and for Christy Marsden, climate change always felt like a distant threat until a patch of ice brought it sharply into focus.
Alison Williams' blossoming passion for chemistry is sidetracked by a professor's thoughtless comment, and climate scientist Sarah Myhre becomes embroiled in conflict after speaking out against a senior scientist's problematic statements about climate change.
Learning a modern version of her childhood Indian dances puts Sumitra Mattai’s brain and body to the test, and when people doubt that dance can empower girls to pursue STEM careers, Yamilée Toussaint sets out to prove them wrong.
After feeling betrayed by the very systems meant to protect her, Karen McCaffrey chooses to become the advocate for survivors she once needed herself, and in her twenties, Mary Cyn endures a string of gynecological problems, and the lack of compassion she encounters in medical settings motivates her into changing how medical students learn patient care.
Being half Navajo and half white, Carissa Sherman turns to genetics to better understand her identity. As she questions where she belongs, her hair becomes a quiet but powerful marker of how she sees herself, and growing up, Ria Spencer believed “good hair” meant long hair but when a medical condition forces her to shave it all off, she’s challenged to rethink what that belief really means.
As a science teacher, Mamoudou N'Diaye was supposed to have all the answers, but he struggles to explain being Black in the USA, and Rhonda Key fights to be taken seriously by her white co-workers and students when she gets a job at a middle school.
Graduate student Angelique Allen doesn’t fully understand the strong connection she feels to the 2015 animated film Home, and growing up in segregated 1950s Baltimore, Ken Phillips learns early who society says he can’t be.