Fresh Air Weekend: Michael Fassbender, Mushrooms

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:

Michael Fassbender: Portraying An Addict's 'Shame': In the past year, actor Michael Fassbender has played a mutant villain in X-Men: First Class, psychoanalyst Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method, Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre and a sex addict in Shame. He discusses several of these roles, as well as his part in Inglourious Basterds.

El Rego: A Singer From Benin With Soul And Funk: For many years, the search for unknown or forgotten soul singers has dug deeply into music archives. But surprises still turn up. Music critic Milo Miles says this year's best discovery is a West African singer and bandleader named El Rego.

The Man Who Studies The Fungus Among Us: Botanist Nicholas Money's book Mushroom takes readers inside the world of the fungal organisms that appear overnight on lawns, are occasionally poisonous and appear in everything from Alice in Wonderland to some lifesaving medications.

'A Separation' Of Hearts, Minds And Ideas In Iran: The Iranian film A Separation won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film on Sunday. Critic John Powers says the remarkable film takes viewers inside a country that is far more complicated and fascinating than news headlines indicate.

You can listen to the original broadcasts here:

• Michael Fassbender: Portraying An Addict's 'Shame'
• El Rego: A Singer From Benin With Soul And Funk
• The Man Who Studies The Fungus Among Us
• 'A Separation' Of Hearts, Minds And Ideas In Iran

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.