It took just 10 minutes to flip a switch in Ariel Levy’s body and mind to make her into a mother. The journalist was on her final major overseas reporting trip, in rural Mongolia, when her pregnancy ended prematurely and she gave birth in her hotel to a son who did not survive. Levy gives her Brief but Spectacular take on miscarriage and our inability to control Mother Nature.

Terry Gross, host of NPR's Fresh Air, is famous for her interviews that probe into the lives, loves and work of notable people. What would she talk about if her interviews were more about her own life? Her love of classic character actor Charles Laughton, the musical "Sweeney Todd" and her husband Francis. Gross gives her Brief but Spectacular take on interviewing.

Books “make people who are not like us more human,” says Lisa Lucas, executive director of the National Book Foundation. She grew up loving books and their ability to make readers more empathetic to unfamiliar ideas and characters, even when all the reading is done in our bedrooms by ourselves. Lucas gives us her Brief but Spectacular take on how books can connect us to one another.