Fresh Air

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Li’s teenage sons both died by suicide six years apart, Vincent in 2017 at age 16, and James in 2024 at age 19. Her Pulitzer-Prize winning 2025 memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow, chronicled the loss of her sons and her effort to go on. Her new novel is about two piano prodigies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It’s called Music Against the Night. She spoke with Terry Gross about the “abyss” of sadness, finding comfort in piano and writing. 

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In his new action thriller, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, Mahershala Ali plays a devout Muslim father and hit man whose life is upended when he suddenly has to care for his children on his own. The role brings together a lot of what has shaped Ali as an actor, including an attraction to characters who live in morally complicated places. He spoke with Tonya Mosley about why the script blew him away, filming Moonlight, and his childhood.

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Prine, who died in 2020, would’ve turned 80 this weekend. A five-day event in and around his native Chicago is underway, including a tribute concert. The beloved folk singer-songwriter spoke with Terry Gross in 2018 about how throat and neck surgery affected his voice, getting discovered by Roger Ebert, and his songwriting process. 

Film critic Justin Chang reviews the new film Fjord.

The audio version of this story incorrectly states that John Prine’s song "Sam Stone” is about a Korean War veteran. In fact, it is about a veteran of the Vietnam War.

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Ryan has spent decades pressing presidents for answers. She talks about access, power, race and how asking questions put her in President Trump's crosshairs. She spoke with Tonya Mosley about her book, Notes on a Blacklash.

Also, TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new CBS legal drama set in Silicon Valley, Cupertino. 

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New York Times military and Pentagon reporter Greg Jaffe says Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has disproportionately blocked promotions of Black and women senior officers, and he’s also been purging the military of transgender people. “Usually Secretaries of Defense do everything they can to protect the military from our divisive politics and those culture wars,” Jaffe tells Dave Davies. “Hegseth was really the first Secretary of Defense I've seen in my lifetime who invited that into the Pentagon, and made it a central plank of his identity and leadership.”

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