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.