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Smart, who was held captive for nine months at age 14, describes the 2002 ordeal in a new memoir called My Story. She's now an advocate for children's safety education and says "the best punishment" she can give her abusers is to move on with her life and be happy.

Jhumpa Lahiri's new novel, The Lowland, is on the long list for the National Book Award and the shortlist for the Man Booker. Critic Maureen Corrigan says Lahiri should start making room in her trophy cabinet; The Lowland is a beautiful tale of a family transformed by political violence.

Bo Burnham got his start in comedy on the Internet rather than in clubs. He found fame on YouTube and parlayed millions of views into a thriving career. Now, he's turned to the printed page with Egghead: Or, You Can't Survive on Ideas Alone, a collection of comedic poetry modeled on Shel Silverstein.

Brothers Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru take an exhaustive look at how the NFL has dealt with allegations that playing football can lead to brain damage. They say the NFL has repeatedly avoided tying football to brain injury, even as it has given disability payments to former players with dementia-related conditions.

Phyllis Chesler met Abdul-Kareem — a young, wealthy Muslim — in college. They fell in love, got married and, in 1961, traveled to his native Afghanistan together. There, Chesler soon found herself a virtual prisoner — an Afghan wife with no rights. An American Bride in Kabul is her memoir of that experience.

Alexis Ohanian is co-founder of the popular social news site Reddit. His new book, Without Their Permission, tells the story of the site, from startup to Internet giant.

Acclaimed British author William Boyd was tapped last year to write the latest James Bond novel. The new book, called Solo, takes 007 on his first trip to Africa. Boyd says the Bond of the novels is quite different from the Bond on the screen — and that he sees a definite overlap between spies and novelists.

Back in 1973, Erica Jong was tired of the silent, seething housewife, so she introduced a new kind of female protagonist: one who loved sex and wasn't ashamed to admit it. Jong joins NPR's Susan Stamberg to talk about hook-ups, Fifty Shades of Gray, and of course, the "zipless f - - - ."

Ready, get set, go! Let's compare a sperm whale plowing through the ocean to a human sperm plowing through a glass of water: The whale barely notices the water it's in; the sperm — oh, gee — it's got a problem. How it solves that problem — being much closer to the size of the water molecules around it — is ... well, masterful.

William Masters and Virginia Johnson became famous in the 1960s for their research into the physiology of human sexuality. In Masters of Sex, biographer Thomas Maier explores the duo's research methods, which for years remained shrouded in secrecy. Originally broadcast July 30, 2013.