A man tries to figure out how he feels about his life and acting career.

Following a messy breakup, an MIT graduate and a PhD student at Indiana University separately talk about the problems in their former relationship in two spliced-together conversations, exploring conflicts surrounding language, intimacy, commitment, and intellectualism.

When a middle-aged woman goes on a hike with a man she is seeing, a mastiff attacks the man. The woman wonders whether the dog or the relationship itself is the bigger danger.

An accomplished but ineffectual columnist searches for fulfillment, until a death in the family causes him to question the family he took for granted.

An artificial intelligence technician is called into a pistachio farm in the San Joaquin Valley to investigate the mysterious recent malfunction of the farm's AI fleet.

A professor tries to convey to his students the magnitude of the most perfectly crafted poem ever written in the English language: “Lycidas.”