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Bay Curious - The Eccentric Personalities Behind Sunnyside Conservatory

Mary Balmana grew up in San Francisco and has driven down Monterey Boulevard near the Glen Park neighborhood hundreds of times. She often notices a large, beautiful Victorian building tucked between the houses and apartment buildings that dominate the block. And she's wondered, what's the story with it? How did such a grand building end up in such an unassuming spot?


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This story was reported by Katrina Schwartz. Bay Curious is made by Christopher Beale and Olivia Allen-Price. Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED.


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Social Science Bites - Steven Pinker on Common Knowledge

There is a value to shared knowledge that tends to go unrecognized because it's so ubiquitous. Nonetheless, experimental psychologist Steven Pinker explains in this Social Science Bites podcast, common knowledge underlies things like paper money, governance, and even coral reefs.

And common knowledge, he makes clear to host David Edmonds, "does not have its ordinary sense of conventional wisdom or an open secret or something that everyone knows, but rather something that everyone knows that everyone knows, and everyone knows that, and everyone knows that, and so on, ad infinitum."

Possing that shared knowledge – and the knowledge that others share that knowledge – creates the conditions for coordination, and thus action beyond what an individual could achieve. That's the reason, he says, "that autocrats fear common knowledge of the regime's shortcomings is that no regime has the firepower to intimidate every last citizen."

Pinker, the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, details his understanding of the virtues and vices of common knowledge in his most recent book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. The book, his 13th, continues his streak as one of the most publicly recognized of public intellectuals, including recognition as one of Foreign Policy's "World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals" and Time's "100 Most Influential People in the World Today." He is also only the second (so far) returning guest to Social Science Bites, having addressed violence and human nature in a 2012 podcast.

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Headlines From The Times - Paramount-Skydance to Own Warner Bros. Discovery and Fire Safety Violations Keep Moreno Valley Mall Largely Closed

After more than two months of tug-of-war for Warner Brothers Discovery, Netflix is dropping the rope and clearing the way for Paramount Skydance to take over one of Hollywood's most iconic studios. Meanwhile, more fallout after the FBI raided Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho's home and office on Wednesday. And from flood watch to heat warnings, Southern California is rounding out February with more extreme weather. After a series of winter storms pummeled the Southland earlier this month, damaging roads and flooding businesses, a high-pressure system is sending temperatures 15 to 20 degrees above normal. In business, the majority of Moreno Valley Mall remains closed after city officials found hundreds of fire safety violations, and Trader Joe's issued a nationwide frozen chicken fried rice due to potential glass contamination. Read more at https://LATimes.com.

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Marketplace All-in-One - How government uses “surveillance as a service” to collect data

We create digital breadcrumbs all the time — when we buy something online, when we post on social media, and even when we look up directions on the internet. This is data generally collected by private companies — but how and when should the government be able to access it?


There have been lawsuits filed recently against the Department of Homeland Security over its collection and use of consumer data. Jeramie Scott, senior counsel and director of the Surveillance Oversight Program at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, explains how the government collects data about us.

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The Daily - Celebration and Mourning: Inside an Iran at War

The United States and Israel continued to strike Iran with missiles for a second day on Sunday, destroying more power centers of the Iranian regime and, according to rights groups, bringing the civilian death toll over 100. Iran responded with retaliatory attacks.

At the same time, all eyes were on the Iranian government and the millions of citizens who have long opposed it.

Farnaz Fassihi, who covers Iran for The New York Times, brings us the view from a pivotal moment inside Iran.

Guest: Farnaz Fassihi, the United Nations bureau chief for The New York Times. She also covers Iran and how countries around the world deal with conflicts in the Middle East.

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Photo: Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.


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World Book Club - Laurent Binet – HHhH

Harriett Gilbert welcomes the French author Laurent Binet to the World Book Club studio to answer your questions about his acclaimed novel HHhH.

The book tells the story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, and the daring mission carried out by Czech resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Prague. At the same time, Binet places himself into the narrative, obsessively questioning how history should be told, where fact ends and fiction begins, and whether a writer ever has the right to blur that line.

Recorded in front of a live audience at The American Library in Paris, Laurent will be answering your questions about blending history and fiction without betraying the truth, why he chose to make himself writing part of the story itself, and how storytelling is an attempt to confront, or make sense of, the darkest moments in history.

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The Daily Detail - The Daily Detail for 3.2.26

Alabama

  • State Senator Larry Stutts offers 2 bills to address problems within AL prisons
  • A bill that limits screen time for children in public schools heads to Governor's desk
  • AL Senate passes bill regulating Marine patrols and random safety inspections
  • 3 people arrested Monroe county for violating election law with absentee ballots
  • Jury selection begins today in trial of Ibrahim Yawed in the murder of Aniah Blanchard
  • Recall for Dupray steam cleaners due to faulty boiler bursting and causing burns
  • 3 US  Service members are confirmed dead following airstrikes in Iran
  • President Trump vows revenge on the loss of life, says operations continue
  • Iran now working to choke off oil transport in the Strait of Hormuz
  • A War Powers Resolution to be offered this week in the US House
  • Deadly shooting occurs in Austin TX with possible terroristic ties to Iran
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What A Day - Trump’s Dangerous Gamble In Iran

Over the weekend, the U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes that reportedly hit more than 2,000 targets across Iran. In response, Iran struck sites across the Middle East. What, exactly, is the United States doing in Iran, especially now that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed? Nahal Toosi, senior foreign affairs correspondent and columnist at POLITICO, lays out what’s likely to happen next and why it matters.

And in headlines, Senator Lindsey Graham insists regime change is not the goal in Iran, Democrats mostly oppose the war (with some notable exceptions), and someone struck it big in a prediction market gamble on when the U.S. would strike Iran.

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