Hey, I'm Linda Holmes. I'm here with Stephen Thompson of NPR Music. Hi, Stephen.

Hey, Linda.

Also with us is Glenn Weldon of NPR's Culture Desk. Hi, Glenn.

Hey, Linda.

Also joining us is our friend Barry Hardiman, senior editor at NPR Investigations.

Thanks for being here, Barry. Hi.

So we are sharing some very sad news today. We're so sorry to have to share with you

that our panelists and our friend Petra Mayor, who was an NPR books editor

and a treasured fourth chair for us died suddenly on Saturday of what's believed to be a pulmonary

embolism on today's episode of NPR's pop culture. Happy hour.

We wanted to take some time to remember Petra. Petra was 46.

She had been at NPR for more than 20 years. She had most recently been working on the

culture desk, but she also directed and produced for NPR radio shows. She's one of those people

who's had like half the jobs at NPR.

If you followed the wonderful growth of NPR books in recent years, a lot of that was Petra.

She worked on the summer reader polls, which are one of those massive projects that everybody

loves that you can't always see all the enormous amount of work that go into them.

She was instrumental in developing the book concierge, which is so beloved, which same thing.

She edited book reviews. She brought in new critics. She was also, I think, the main voice

of NPR books on social media. Boy, she had a ton of passions, romance fiction, science

fiction, Dr. Who, the great British bake off, her cats, her friends, her family. It is a

lousy and awful loss. Glenn, you and I have talked about how instrumental Petra's interest

...