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.