Rita Rigano always had a complicated relationship with her mother, and it becomes even more fraught when her mother’s dementia worsens, and in the midst of writing her PhD dissertation, Jordyn Rice embarks on one last road trip with her mother, who is dying of lung cancer.

Thomas Dixon and Rachel Robinson manage to build a friendship, despite not remembering the exact moments they shared.

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

Determined to become an academic, Rajyashree Sen must take on a broken system to secure a spot in a PhD program in Vienna, and Josh Barber dreams of studying fish, but when his father goes to jail and his mother is diagnosed with breast cancer, he’s left to care for his nine younger siblings.

When Mark Pitzer gets splashed with methyl cyanide, he turns to his new girlfriend in hopes of comfort, and hoping to impress his scientist date, Adam Selbst plans the perfect outing: the Central Park Squirrel Census.

Climate scientist Kim Cobb is exploring a cave in Borneo when rocks begin to fall, and neurobiologist Lyl Tomlinson is startled when he's accused of stealing cocaine from his former lab.

After living with a stutter all her life, Sara Street thinks coding might be the solution to her communication problems, and electrical engineer Anna Fox longs to share her work with her family, but struggles with how to explain it.

Neuroscientist Lauren Vetere is excited to see if real life will mimic science at an interfaith event, and growing up as a devout Jew, Fred Gould’s relationship with God is shaken by existential philosophy and science.

As a teenager, Mark Pagan worries that having an old dad is affecting his social development, and curious about his DNA, Christopher Rivas takes his father on a journey to the Dominican Republic to learn about his family history.