While Adam Met is best known as a member of the band AJR, off-stage, he's a climate scholar, advocate and founder of the nonprofit, Planet Reimagined. "The music industry and entertainment industry broadly is so good at building fan bases. All of these tactics that the music industry has mastered can be applied to how we can build better social movements," Met says. Met shares his #BriefButSpectacular take on building engaged fan bases for social causes.

Yuval Noah Harari highlights a recurring tension in human progress: the gap between what we understand and what we continue to do. He points to technologies such as nuclear weapons and advanced AI as examples of systems humanity is capable of building, even while fully aware of their potential risks if mismanaged. At the core of this reflection is not a dismissal of human intelligence, but a warning about inconsistency—how knowledge does not always translate into collective caution or restraint. Human history often advances through both insight and oversight, innovation and unintended consequence. The question remains whether awareness will eventually outpace momentum. 🎥 Credit: @briefbutspectacular 🌐 Follow @portaltoascension to explore mindful growth and the art of presence #ai #future #technology #ethics #humanity #philosophy #awareness #society

“Foster parents are one of the most important roles of child welfare,” says Kaitlyn Davis. Davis, a social worker in Oklahoma, drives close to nine hours round-trip to meet face-to-face with foster children under her care. The long drives are due, in part, to a chronic shortage of foster families — especially in rural areas. Long-distance placements are stretching a child welfare system that aims to help youth navigate sudden loss of homes, schools, friends and pets. Yet, the placements matter, Davis says. "If we don't have placement for these kids, they are in the office, they go to shelters, they go into group homes,” she shares in her #BriefButSpectacular take. “So we really have to have foster parents that are willing to step up and take these kids that are dealing with trauma and just need somebody to love on them." "It's a whole new identity, going to a new foster placement on hard days," she later added. "I always go back to think about my family and think about what kind of worker would I want them to have if I was in that situation – just because, I mean, this could happen to anybody."

"I thought about who lives in these kind of communities, these underserved communities,” artist Edgar Ramirez says. “When I see signs of exploitation and people being taken advantage of, there's this urge to want to just yell out or rip something up, and my space, my art, allows me to do so without judgment." Ramirez transforms predatory loan posters into striking paintings that highlight the realities of his Los Angeles-area community. "My community and the people that I have shown this to have responded in a way where they're acknowledging it,” he says in his #BriefButSpectacular take. “I hope my art helps people question what's around them."

A new children’s library inside the visitors’ center of the Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles is giving kids a place to read and learn during the long waits to see their loved ones. A grandmother and her grandson share their #BriefButSpectacular take on connecting through reading.

"They deprived me of a childhood that I never had. Yes, I’m angry," Holocaust survivor Reva Kibort told us in 2018. "But, at the same time," she said, "I'm also very happy that I'm here in America and for the opportunities that I had." #HolocaustRemembranceDay #BriefButSpectacular

Minnijean Brown-Trickey is one of the original members of the Little Rock Nine, the teenagers who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Now in her 80s, she visits schools and community centers to deliver living history lessons. "What makes me interested in interacting with young people is because I know who I was, and I value that in young people," Brown-Trickey told us for #BriefButSpectacular. "I just want them to know that they are capable of so much and that they don't have to tolerate things the way they are."

“Crow people have been a big source of inspiration for the work that I make,” multimedia artist Wendy Red Star, who grew up on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana, told us for #BriefButSpectacular. “Finding out their name and who they were and where that photograph was taken and the context of that. Being an artist, making art, culturally, it is so important. It's what we're remembered by,” Red Star added. “I need to make art. And if I don't make art, then I'm not fundamentally me.”

David Kelley is no stranger to design. He created IDEO, a global design and innovation company, in 1978 before founding Stanford’s d.school. He worked on 53 projects for Apple Computer, including the design of the mouse for the company’s computers. “I realized that my purpose in life was figuring out how to help people gain confidence in their creative ability,” Kelley told us. “Witnessing somebody realizing they're created for the first time is just a complete joy,” he added. He shared his #BriefButSpectacular take on his design journey and his mission to help others discover their creative talents.

Beka Ntsanwisi is a community leader who is helping older women in rural South Africa stay active and healthy. After her own cancer diagnosis, she started a soccer league with a mission to introduce women over 50 to the sport. “We have more than 250 teams,” Ntsanwisi said. “The mission of the team is for us to live healthy and longer because, by exercising, it helps us a lot.” Hear her #BriefButSpectacular take on, in her words, “empowering the soccer grannies.”

Kayla Stuart, a Tennessee-based urban forester and program director of Tree CPR, wants her students to, in her words, “understand how important it is for us to be stewards of the vegetation in and around” where we live. “Trees provide protection for us, and sometimes we forget that they can cool cities up to 20 degrees,” she told us in her #BriefButSpectacular take. Tree CPR is a program that seeks to create healthier, stronger communities as climate change escalates. “You can tell which neighborhood is more vulnerable just by looking at how their vegetation is managed,” Stuart said. “A lot of times, those communities that are more vulnerable and have historically faced discrimination tend to have lesser quality tree canopy.”

“Society spends a lot of time thinking about how to get people off of the streets and back into housing. And our program thinks about how to prevent people from finding themselves in those circumstances in the first place,” Dana Vanderford of Los Angeles County’s Homelessness Prevention Unit told us for #BriefButSpectacular. Vanderford, along with social workers like Fred Theus, work together to prevent homelessness before it happens by using AI-driven data. The information identifies people at risk of losing their homes, allowing the Homelessness Prevention Unit to step in to offer personalized support.

“You're watching this today, you're probably looking at it on a mobile device. And you're very fortunate to be able to do that, that you have streaming capability to be able to watch something like a video where Indian Country still does not have this access,” Tribal Broadband Bootcamp founder Matthew Rantanen told us. He co-created the Tribal Broadband Bootcamp with Christopher Mitchell in direct response to tribes calling for information, access to funding and resources around broadband. In his #BriefButSpectacular take, Rantanen shares how his experiences helped shape his decadeslong work expanding broadband internet access in Indian Country.

NEW PBS @NewsHour Classroom Daily News Lesson — Hear from one principal on why service to the community is a critical part of education. #sschat #briefbutspectacular loom.ly/jYfY3wo

Joseph Martinez, the principal of Carpenter Community Charter School in Los Angeles, tells us that he's game for whatever it takes to engage his students. "There is no job that is above or below me, if that's cutting the grass or if that's picking up trash," he says. "I hope that they see that everybody has to pitch in, that they have to participate in order for their community to thrive." In his #BriefButSpectacular take, Martinez makes the case for why public education remains a smart investment.

At the end of this Thanksgiving weekend, hear from Anixia Davila from Salinas Valley, California — a region known as the “salad bowl of the world.” Davila led her high school's chapter of Future Farmers of America, an organization that has more than 1 million students participating nationwide. She shares her #BriefButSpectacular take on what she’s learned about leadership, responsibility and community through farming.

Sometimes, the right learning environment can change everything. For Courtney Irwin, that place was Rancho Cielo, a youth development center in Salinas, California. She shares her #BriefButSpectacular take on finding your place.

After a childhood accident left her with a permanent disability, Tiffany Yu took up the cause of building and advocating for spaces where people with disabilities can thrive. "Disability pride is everything," @ImTiffanyYu says. "It is the way that a disabled person asserts their sense of worth and value in a society that tells us that we should feel shame about who we are." #BriefButSpectacular

Micaela Connery, inspired by her cousin Kelsey’s experiences, co-founded a movement led by people with and without disabilities to reimagine housing for all. "Most of the time, when she faced barriers and lack of opportunity, it wasn’t anything to do with her," she tells us. "It was to do with the way places and spaces and experiences were designed without a consideration of her." Watch her #BriefButSpectacular take on building an inclusive, disability-forward community with @thekelseymore

How can people across different generations come together to solve problems? That's what CoGenerate, a nonprofit that brings together older and younger change-makers, sought to answer during a recent gathering. Watch this #BriefButSpectacular take on the power of intergenerational communities.