Phil Kaye is a Japanese-American poet and filmmaker and co-director of “Project Voice,” an organization that partners with schools to bring poetry into the classroom. He shares one of his poems, “Surplus,” for a brief but spectacular take on his grandfather, Cheerful Al, and the limitations of "traditional masculinity." Kaye's latest book Date & Time is available now.

Author, journalist and professor Walter Isaacson has delved into the lives of influential figures ranging from Leonardo da Vinci to Ada Lovelace. He believes that those who thrive at the intersection of arts and sciences are the ones who will become a part of history. Isaacson shares his Brief but Spectacular take on what’s it’s like to write about people.

Telling a person's story is not unlike being a biologist, says Jay Allison. "You go out in the world and encounter actual life and you collect it...and you bring it back and you study it and then you figure out how to present it," he says. Allison, an independent journalist who produces the Moth Radio Hour and founded Transom.org, shares his Brief but Spectacular on finding stories.

There's a cascade of dire problems that can occur even if you're only in jail for one day, says attorney Robin Steinberg. The CEO of The Bail Project -- a national organization that pays bail for tens of thousands of low-income Americans at risk of pretrial detention -- gives her Brief But Spectacular take on disrupting the money bail system and turning the tide on U.S. mass incarceration.