Composer and artist Samora Abayomi Pinderhughes wants to make music that makes listeners live differently. Pinderhughes gives his Brief but Spectacular take on his responsibility as an artist.

Nicole Dennis-Benn says she never could have become a writer if she had stayed in Jamaica -- that took living in the U.S. and encouragement from her wife. But returning to the land of her birth, she was confronted with all of the things she had run away from, yet also with the desire to tell the real stories of the people behind the fantasy. Dennis-Benn gives her Brief But Spectacular take.

Anna Deavere Smith, actor, playwright and activist, says she has been trying to become America, word for word. By conducting interviews and creating a narrative, she aims to make a current problem come alive. Deavere Smith offers her Brief but Spectacular take on listening to people.

When you actually hear a journalist grappling out loud with a story they're covering, it changes the news consumer's relationship with that journalist and that story, says Michael Barbaro of the New York Times. Barbaro gives his Brief but Spectacular take on his podcast, The Daily.