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Yo-Yo Ma's new album, Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet, celebrates the transcultural music of the ancient trade route that connected East and West. Ma talks with Scott Simon on Weekend Edition Saturday, and plays some music from the album. (17:49) (The CD is on the Sony Classical label).

Jockey Jimmy Winkfield was the last African American to win the Kentucky Derby, 100 years ago this year. For Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR's Howard Berkes reports on Winkfield's legacy and the history of African Americans in horseracing.

Writer Alec Wilkinson is the author of new memoir, My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell (Houghton Mifflin) about his relationship with writer and editor William Maxwell. Maxwell was fiction editor for the New Yorker from 1936-1976 and worked with such authors as J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, John Updike, Eudora Welty and scores of others. Maxwell was the author of a number of novels, including Time Will Darken It, and So Long, See You Tomorrow, as well as several short story collections. He died at the age of 91 in August 2000. Wilkinson is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and has been there since 1980. He's the author of several books including, Midnights, Moonshine, and Big Sugar. We'll listen to a rebroadcast of a 1995 interview with Maxwell (3/29/95), and to an interview with Alec Wilkinson shortly after Maxwell's death (8/4/2000).

Puzzle master Will Shortz quizzes one of our listeners, and has a challenge for everyone at home. (This week's winner is Jeanne Jagdeo from Houston, Texas. She listens to Weekend Edition on member station KUHF in Houston.)

At 17, Jesse Jean was a failing student in danger of falling victim to Washington, D.C.'s, street crime.

An expert in climate change research, Paul Mayewski led the National Science Foundation's Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2. The project extracted ice cores chronicling 100,000 years of climate history. Mayewski, with co-author Frank White, writes about their expeditions in the new book, The Ice Chronicles: The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change (University Press of New England). Mayewski is also co-director of the Institute of Quaternary and Climate Studies at the University of Maine.

Turns out Ray Magliozzi of Car Talk has a secret passion for bonsai and magnolias in addition to carburetors and exhaust systems. On Morning Edition Ketzel Levine of Talking Plants takes us on a tour of Ray's Massachusetts garden. Hear excerpts of their rainy-day conversation and view a collection of photos online.

In the close-knit village of Oakwood, Ohio (population 742), residents are reeling from a financial scandal involving one of their own -- a banker who is accused of embezzling tens of millions of dollars. All Things Considered host Robert Siegel visited Oakwood, and reports on the community's crisis of trust.

Science fiction writer Sheri S. Tepper is the author of over a dozen novels including, The Fresco, The Family Tree, Grass and her newest, The Visitor. (Harper Collins).

If Cole Porter and George Gershwin provided a soundtrack for the city, then Hoagy Carmichael was the voice of America's heartland. A new Carmichael biography and song collection — both called Stardust Melody — lead a resurgence of interest in the prolific songwriter's work. Sing along Wednesday on All Things Considered