Alexandra Schwartz

3 days ago | businessandamerica.com | Alexandra Schwartz

Now the fauna stirs and molts. From Wakefield to Tottenville, members of the native population emerge from hibernation to sun themselves on stoops and benches. Winter coats are stuffed deep into too-small closets. Construction crews rumble every neighborhood. Playgrounds shriek to life; teen-agers bump backpacks and kiss on street corners. The city, forever in a rush, adjusts its pace, remembers how to stroll, to saunter.

1 week ago | newyorker.com | Alexandra Schwartz

April in Paris has nothing on May in New York. Spring happens to the city as everything happens here: not at all, then all at once. The forsythia skims the crosstown buses as they swerve through Central Park, and the daffodils dare dogs, from every tree bed, to do their worst. Magnolias unfurl their petals to flaunt their fancy two-toned manicures. Cherry trees blush all over town.

3 weeks ago | newyorker.com | With Vinson Cunningham |Naomi Fry |Alexandra Schwartz

Download a transcript. Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You ListenSign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter. For nearly as long as we’ve been waging war, we’ve sought ways to chronicle it. “Warfare,” a new movie co-directed by the filmmaker Alex Garland and the former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza, takes an unorthodox approach, recreating a disastrous real-life mission in Iraq according to Mendoza’s own memories and those of the soldiers who fought alongside him.

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Alexandra Schwartz

On a recent afternoon, the actor Michael Gandolfini ascended an escalator to Whitehall Terminal to take the twelve-thirty ferry to Staten Island. Packs of tourists mingled with commuters and a few stray pigeons in the waiting hall. “It’s popping, always,” Gandolfini said admiringly.

1 month ago | newyorker.com | With Vinson Cunningham |Naomi Fry |Alexandra Schwartz

Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You ListenSign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter. Gossip, an essential human pastime, is full of contradictions. It has the potential to be as destructive to its subjects as it is titillating to its practitioners; it can protect against very real threats, as in the case of certain pre-#MeToo whisper networks, or tip over into the realm of conspiracy.