Terry Gross

The Crown, the endlessly enticing Netflix drama about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, is now entering its fourth season.

Food science writer Harold McGee's new book Nose Dive is about how smell is essential to our sense of taste, why things smell the way they do and the ways different chemicals combine to create surprising (and sometimes distasteful) odors.

Eleven years ago, when she was 24, Katherine Standefer was working as a ski instructor and a climbing teacher in Jackson, Wyo., when she suddenly passed out in a parking lot. She later learned that she has long QT syndrome, a genetic heart condition in which the heart can suddenly quiver instead of rhythmically pumping blood. Standefer chronicles the ways her condition and the implanted defibrillator changed her life in the book Lightning Flowers. Looking back, she feels particularly grateful for her present health.