Mahershala Ali poses for photographers in June 2025 in London. Millie Turner/Invision/AP hide caption

Millie Turner/Invision/AP

Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from the past, as well as new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors and musicians, and it often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:

Mahershala Ali is still hungry as an actor: "Let's fail on camera until we find it": Ali plays a devout Muslim family man, who also happens to be an assassin in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. After decades in the business and two Oscars, he says he has less fear as an actor.

Writer Yiyun Li lost both of her sons. When words fell short, she turned to music: Li won a Pulitzer for her memoir about the suicides of her two sons. In her new novel, Music Against the Night, she writes about two young prodigies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

You can listen to the original interviews here: