Arts & Life

His story begins a decade ago in Brooklyn, where he grew up fighting in New York's public housing before discovering another kind of power. After three felony convictions and time served at Rikers Island, Lemon Andersen didn't have many places to turn except to his words. Now he's a Tony Award winner with a rave-reviewed one-man show called County of Kings.

He spoke with weekends on All Things Considered guest host Jacki Lyden about his life and the new independent documentary film about it, called simply, Lemon.

Thornton Wilder's Our Town is widely considered to be a classic American play: It puts plain-spoken lyricism on an empty stage with a story as simple as life and death.

It's almost certain that during this NFL season, you'll see a player from a place that's called Muck City.

There are five graduates from Belle Glade, Fla., in the NFL right now. Belle Glade, on the shore of Lake Okeechobee, is surrounded by black soil, also known as the "muck" that's renowned for growing sweet corn, vegetables and sugar cane.

Over the past generation, Belle Glade Central High School has sent 30 players onto the NFL. The school is proud of that record, but it may have come at a cost.

A young mother sets sail from Ireland after the potato famine to meet her husband in Canada; two gold prospectors seek their fortune in the frozen Yukon; a slave poisons his master and the master's wife escapes with him.

David Mitchell's epic philosophical novel Cloud Atlas was widely considered unfilmable — even by its author — when it came out in 2004. That's because the book's ornate structure, with stories nested inside stories across five centuries, seemed too complicated to be taken in quickly in a movie. But those complications were what attracted The Matrix's Andy and Lana (nee Larry) Wachowski, and Run Lola Run's Tom Tykwer to the project. Turning complexity into cineplexity is kind of what they do.

We've been looking at how technology has totally changed what it means to watch television or a movie. One of the biggest changes has been in demand — people want a baseball game — on their smartphone, wherever they are, right now. They want to pull up a video and stream it — on their laptop or phone, immediately, with no wait.