Fresh Air Weekend: Conductor Marin Alsop; Poet Ocean Vuong

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

Conductor Marin Alsop talks about the joys and challenges of leading an orchestra: Alsop talks about the rejection she faced on the way to becoming the first woman to lead a major American orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony. She's now the subject of a new documentary, The Conductor.

'Tokyo Vice' offers a stylized tour of Japan's criminal underworld: HBO's new eight-part series follows an American crime reporter who intends to take Japanese journalism by storm — but first must learn how to navigate the churning opacity of 1990s Tokyo.

Poet Ocean Vuong sifts through the aftershock of grief in 'Time Is a Mother': Vuong's new collection of poetry was inspired by his mother's death from breast cancer. His 2019 novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, followed a boy who, like Vuong, is an immigrant from Vietnam.

You can listen to the original interviews and review here:

Conductor Marin Alsop talks about the joys and challenges of leading an orchestra

'Tokyo Vice' offers a stylized tour of Japan's criminal underworld

Poet Ocean Vuong sifts through the aftershock of grief in 'Time Is a Mother'

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