Morning Brew Daily - NYC’s Congestion Pricing Actually Working? & Companies Want Ivy-Leaguers Again

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Episode 751: Neal and Toby chat about one year’s worth of data of NYC’s congestion pricing. And so far, it looks pretty promising. Then, companies that opened their doors for applicants coming from all over have reverted back to seeking those coming from elite colleges, thanks to a slower job market. Also, Americans, particularly Gen Z, would rather pump some iron than do cardio. Meanwhile, Toby dives into the trend of a shrinking love for pizza across the country. Finally, a quick wrap of final headlines for the day!  Check out https://www.rubrik.com for more  Join us for MBD’s Trivia Night! https://mbdtrivianight-jan2026.splashthat.com/ Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note⁠⁠⁠  Watch Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many employees can't afford a hefty medical bill that pops up out of the blue, but it happens. And employees who are financially stressed are, understandably, more likely to be distracted at work, costing their employers greatly in lost productivity. Luckily, AFLAQ plans help with out-of-pocket expenses not covered by health insurance and can be offered at no direct cost to businesses. Learn more at aflac.com slash morningbreedaley. That's aflac.com slash morning brewdaily. show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today for 2026, cardio is out and weightlifting is in. Then has America reached peak pizza? Oh, the horror. It's Tuesday, January 6th. Let's ride.

Good morning. New Year, more trivia. After a bunch of hugely successful trivia nights in 2025, we are running it back this year with the first MBD trivia of 26, one week from today, Tuesday. State the 13th in Manhattan. If you can't make it or want to get a taste of the brain busting to come, I'll give you a question now and reveal the answer at the end of the show. Here is the question. There's only one U.S. state whose east and west borders are almost entirely formed by rivers. Can you name the state? Well, I know it's not Colorado because those borders are much too straight. You know what, Neil, some of us just woke up and don't want to have to do. with that. So I'll deal with the logistics instead. As Neil mentioned, trivia is one week from today at

a sweet bar in Midtown. If you want to participate, head to the link in the show description or go check out our Instagram story. We'll also post the sign up there. So head to the link. Send it to your smartest friends. And I guess start studying American geography. We will see you all next week. And now a word from our sponsor, Rubrik. Neil, AI agents remind me of trying a new recipe full of confidence and zero awareness of how badly things can go, one wrong step, and suddenly you've ruined your whole meal. Or in this case, your entire data workflow. And that's why you're not a professional chef, Toby. And that is fair. That's why a rubric agent cloud exists. It's the only platform that lets you monitor, govern, and rewind your AI agents so they don't accidentally

torch anything important. It gives you full visibility into every action lets you set guardrails, quantify risk, and if something goes sideways, you just rewind in minutes. If your business relies on AI agents, you need the ability to monitor, govern, and rewind their actions. Right now, our listeners get exclusive early access to Rubric Agent Cloud. Head to rubric.com. That's rubr-b-r-k-com, rubric.com. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of best. Both worlds.

Get the Unreal College deal, everything you need, to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 premium and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th, terms at AKA.m.m.S. College PC. The city's congestion pricing celebrated its first birthday yesterday and so far, so good. The scheme, the first of its kind in the United States, seems to be achieving its main goals, fewer cars, less traffic on roads, raising money, and more people on public transit.

Let's rewind to January 5, 2025, when the Big Apple embarked on its most audacious experiment since the Corona. Cars entering the main business district of Manhattan entering below 60th Street would be charged $9 between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. The controversial program was met with pushback from many residents, sued a bunch of times by New Jersey, and President Trump vowed to end it, but so far, courts have found it to be legal. And having survived its first year, congestion pricing has a lot of wins it can celebrate. The first and most important is the cars. There are a lot less of them in Manhattan. About 11% of the vehicles that had been entering the business district have evaporated since the toll launched, equivalent to 27 million fewer cars in total, or 73,000 a day.

That's helped juice public transit ridership. It's sped up commute times for people who are still driving in. It's improved traffic speeds for buses, all without hurting the local businesses inside the zone, which was a primary fear. Toby, first, LaGuardia's glow up and now congestion pricing is New York City figuring out how to do infrastructure. This is one of the great, you know, shining examples of a policy that did exactly what it set out to do because the goal was to, you know, make the streets of Manhattan a little bit more tenable to navigate. if you are a taxi, if you are a car, and it's to raise money for the transit system, and it seems like it accomplished every single thing

it's set out to accomplish. I do want to dive into the commute aspect and the fact that there are fewer cars. What does that mean for commuters? It means that you're going a lot faster. Lincoln Tunnel speed increases are 51% faster. Queens Midtown Tunnel, 24% faster. Manhattan Bridge is moving 29% faster.

Every artery into Manhattan has sped up. And what that's done is because there are fewer cars entering Manhattan, there are also fewer cars surrounding and clogging the highways that are funneling in. So even places outside of New York City proper are saying, I'm zooming around more because there's just less people in general. So I don't know how far out that extends. Are we talking like Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts? But what it is basically saying that commuters are benefiting a lot, even if you aren't living directly within the city limits. And what about the business in Pennsylvania? This was a huge fare.

So below 60th Street, you got Times Square, you got Flatiron District, you got all of these places that a lot of people go to and a lot of businesses that were there and were wondering whether there was going to be a lot of not just traffic drying up, but foot traffic drying up to their businesses. And there was a lot of worry there, which was completely understandable. Well, the president of Times Square Alliance, Tom Harris, said he's seen no negative impacts to local businesses. He said, we're thrilled.

We have not seen negative impacts. It seems like it has been absorbed. And overall, visits to the Central Business District are up 3.4% from 2024 to 2025. And that is bigger than the boost across the entire borough of Manhattan, which was 1.4%. You can also look at another data point, which is restaurant reservations on OpenTatal. We're up inside the zone as much as the rest of Manhattan. So it seems like people were still entering the congestion zone below 60th Street, whether it was by car or by bus or by subway or any other form of transit. Now, of course, there is pushback to this policy. Some of it

is pushback that data can't necessarily capture the New York Times, talk to some of their readers and their complaints were that I am making fewer trips to Manhattan. That means sometimes I'm avoiding doctors and medical care inside the city. I'm going to fewer social events there as well, feeling like their worlds, quote, got smaller. So there are people that say, I'm not showing up in that data necessarily because I'm just not showing up. at all in that district. And it is fascinating, too, if you go and look at some of these charts, you do see, you know, people are, there's a spike in entries right before the congestion pricing kicks in,

and there's a spike in entry and exits right after it, you know, ends. And so you are seeing people's behavior change because of this, which is exactly the point of a policy like this, but some people are saying, like, hey, I am doing fewer things because of this policy. And sometimes that doesn't show up necessarily in the data that everyone is celebrating. And I'm also paying $9 to enter. And I'm still waiting in traffic. And, you know, it's easy to look at these numbers and say, oh, you should be speeding through these tunnels.

But oftentimes you're still waiting in traffic. So, you know, this is the start of a major experiment. And if you're looking at this thinking, yeah, I don't live in New York City. I live in Chicago. I live in Los Angeles. Like, this doesn't apply to me. Well, Kathy Wilde, who's the president of the partnership for New York, which is a big business lobby in New York City. She's been taking calls from a bunch of other cities, including Los Angeles, trying to implement

congestion pricing. Brain in Florida. Come on. It's too crowded down there. A lot of snowbirds. Moving on, turns out it does matter where you went to college. After embracing the idea that talent could come from anywhere, companies are reverting back to their old recruiting tactics,

focusing on a small number of elite institutions to source their workers. According to a survey of 150 companies from Various Insights, 26% are recruiting exclusively from a short list of schools up from 17% back in 2020. Part of the reason is in-person work is a lot more prevalent now, so companies are focusing on local candidates in attending on-campus events closer to their offices as an antidote to the thousands of AI-generated resumes online job offers can usually attract.

That's a notable reversal from the pandemic era when employers leaned on virtual events to reach dozens of campuses and emphasized that they were after people not pedigree. Diversity-driven programs have also taken a hit. McKinsey recently removed language from its career, page that said, we hire people, not degrees, and employers who cite diversity as a priority for school recruiting selection fell to 31% in 2025, down from nearly 60% in 2022.

It all adds up to students from outside of course schools, once again finding themselves in danger of being overlooked and college choice once again functioning as a gatekeeper. Neil, this is how the job market went for a long time. Looks like we're reverting back to the This is spooky for those of us who didn't go to a quote unquote elite institution. William Chistester III, who was directing entry-level recruiting at companies like Target and Peloton, said that most companies are now recruiting from only up to 30 American colleges out of about 4,000. And he said, if you fall outside of those two categories, God help you. So that is a little scary for the thousands, hundreds of thousands of entry-level workers or potential entry-level workers.

who are not at these elite colleges and are looking at these potential employers that are very much narrowed the scope of who they're hiring for a bunch of different reasons. I think the employer would say that we're not necessarily focusing on elite institutions only. We're just focusing on regional institutions that make sense for our business. GE appliances said that, hey, we're only recruiting from these 15 or so schools because that's where our office is located and we have seen that Gen Z on a whole tends to be less likely to want to relocate. Companies as a whole are less likely to pay relocation costs these days. And as in-person work starts to rev up again, it does make sense to only attend events at schools that are

near your actual headquarters. Look at what McKinsey did. So they put this after George Floyd's murder and the big DEI push of 2020 and 2021, McKinsey had this on their website. They go, we hire people, not degrees, and had this big push to hire people from quote unquote non-core campuses. They have since removed that from their website, but their own internal data found that hires from non-core campuses often perform better than those from core schools. So last year, McKinsey hired from about 80 schools. But certainly when you're looking at the unemployment stats for those who just graduated, it's quite alarming because it is going up. Go back to June 2020, 2020. The unemployment rate for recent college grads was 4.3%.

Zoom ahead one year. That's 4.6%. go ahead to June 2025, it's 4.9%. And then now in September 2025, it is up to 5.8%. So it is a tough job market out there. And you know what this reminds me of is we read a previous piece from the Wall Street Journal that talked about how college towns are kind of seeing the end of a boom era for them. And I'm talking about mid-sized college towns like McComb, Illinois, versus, you know, these larger state schools are doing very well. And these used to be, you know, these very economically vibrant places because, you know, people would go to college there, employers would hire them,

and you have like these vibrant college towns dotting America. Now we are seeing almost power laws in effect where the biggest public schools are doing very well. The elite institutions are doing very well. But these kind of middle tier colleges, no national employers are going and sending representatives to their event, as, you know, this piece showed. And so now you are seeing enrollment fall and you're seeing that in 75% of these cities, economic growth stalled and was low. than in the decade prior because areas reliant on higher education that aren't, you know, these top schools are suffering right now. Moving on, gyms across the country are busier than a trader Joe's on a Sunday as people

try to get a jump on their New Year's resolution of getting in shape. But when you go to the gym, and I know all of you do, you'll notice some glaring differences from a few years ago. The squat rack has a line out the door while the treadmills are collecting dust. It's part of a sweeping change in how people are working out. Specifically, they are replacing cardio with weightlifting, and it's causing gyms to make a major pivot. In an interview with the New York Times, the CEO of Planet Fitness, one of the biggest gym chains in the world, so that her locations are reducing the amount of cardio equipment so that half of the gym floor would be dedicated to strength,

and the other half devoted to cardio. If you scrolled on social media recently, you won't be surprised. A slew of influencers have been promoting building muscle mass and half. housing protein as the key to a healthy life, sideline runs and other forms of cardio that long-dominated fitness culture. And it seems us sheeple are being influenced. Since 2021, Google searches for cardio workouts have declined on average by 3% each month, while interest in strength-focused routines has climbed 6%. Toby, this weightlifting craze seems to present a huge opportunity for gyms if they're willing to embrace it. It's working for planet fitness as well, this embracing of

strength equipment. Revenue was up 13% in its most recent quarter. Its share price is up 30% over the past five years. So it does look like, you know, Planet Fitness doesn't jump off the page as some company that is killing it in, you know, the fitness obsessed area that we're in right now. But they looked at the data because you, gyms do have data on this. They do look at which machines are collecting dust and which machines are being used. And it was just overwhelmingly and clear that, you know, people want to get swollen these days. And I think that reflects, if you do go to the gym, that absolutely plays out in front of your eyes. You can't get a bench.

You can't get a squat rack these days, mainly because it is just in vogue right now to prioritize that aspect of your health. And why do you think it's in vogue? Is it the protein craze? Is it the building muscle mass? Could it have something to do with GLP1's? And, you know, one in eight Americans

have taken one of these medications, and a big focus of that is retaining muscle as you lose weight. That is absolutely part of it, GLP1 drugs. But then I also do think there's almost, demographic movement happening because Gen Z grew up as probably the first generation that saw their parents going to the gym pretty regularly. In the past, you know, gym culture was not necessarily a thing. It was more for like a fringe bodybuilding type thing. But now, you know, millennials and their parents and Gen Z and their parents have had kind of this multi-generational

push of going to the gym. Like strength training is just a part of a healthy lifestyle these days. So I do think that there's sort of a demographic element at play here that you can't overlook. And it's really adapt or die for fitness companies. Peloton released a Strength Plus app last year. Peloton was mainly known for it spikes and other cardio equipment. But now it says its customers are doing almost as many muscle building workouts as its cycling routines. For some companies that didn't adapt, they have died. Bowflex filed for bankruptcy in 2024. It got more than 46% of its revenue from cardio products, and its sales plunged by 25% in the six-month period ended September 30th. So people are looking for strength training.

They are not looking for cardio, and companies are either on the right side of history or the wrong side. And I'm looking at you, Neil. Looks like you're on the right side of history right now. I love seeing you hit the strength training. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with a story about pizza. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills, starting at 100. $179, like the next grill

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When's the last time you had some pizza outside a cheeky little drunken slice days, months? On today's edition of Toby's trends, we're exploring that chilling question, has America reached peak pizza? According to an investigation by Wall Street Journal's Heather Haddon, fewer people than ever are indulging in pizza. Pizza is now ranked six amongst different cuisines by U.S. chain sales, down from its usual second place spot it held throughout the 90s. It's been passed by by coffee shops and Mexican chains of late. and it's affecting chains of all sizes. Pizza Hut and Papa John's both explored sales at some point over the last year, while mid-sized chains like Blaze are also closing locations.

Part of the issue is that pizza got expensive. What used to be a cheap and easy way to drum up a family meal, suddenly got pricey with $20 pies increasingly becoming the norm. Plus the rise of delivery apps means pizza now has to compete against every cuisine imaginable available at the tap of a button, rather than the random menus your parents stashed in a giant. junk drawer. Now, Neil, don't get me wrong, pizza is still popular with chains bringing in $31 billion in 2024. On any given day, one in 10 Americans are opting for a slice, but it's no longer the

unshakable pillar of American diets it once was. Actually, Toby, I'm shook right now. I mean, but then you look at the stats and you're like, yeah, maybe we have reached peak pizza. There are fewer locations now than there were in 2019. Pizza Hut has had eight consecutive quarters of sales declines. California Pizza Kitchen. My beloved CPK was sold back in December for $300 million. That is far less than the $470 million it was sold for back in 2011. So perhaps you are right, but I am shook right now. It is interesting because I do think the expanded competition via delivery apps is the main story here. Because think about your youth. When you say, what should we have for dinner and you don't feel like cooking? The pizza place was like the only place

that really delivered. Now you can go on Uber Hits, you can go on DoorDash, and you have literally every single option available to you. So now pizza is competing against all of those options as well, as well, you know,

the slot bowls from the slot bowl purveyors, you, the fine dining establishments that do takeout. It is all mismashed into this thing that pizza maybe pales in comparison to. What? Don't say that, Toby. What are you saying?

That is what I've, personally, I've say that, absolutely, I got pizza, you know, pizza is always there for me, but it does look like the data, if you are a Papa Johns or you are a pizza hut, you're closing locations, you're seeing sales fall, you are seeing people

going after value-driven meals more. Domino's is the only pizza chain that is doing well right now because they've kind of focused on alternative menu items, but also on these pretty insane deals. So I think value, it's the story we talk about on every single story. Value, affordability, feeling like you're getting bang for your buck still drives a lot of people's consumption happens. Yeah, I think it's optionality and I think it's also priced. The national average of pizza of a cheese pizza is now nearly $17, which I don't know. If you're in New York City, it can go $30 to $40 for a large pizza. Like, it is insane. So I think people are also balking at the price of how expensive pizza has gotten. And did you catch the Wall Street

Journal article recently about what kids are into these days and what they're ordering at their parties? It's not longer pizza parties for birthdays. They want sushi. Like sushi has taken up the mantle as the thing that young people want to eat, which much of the chagrinate of parents, they're going, oh, pizza's too expensive. Now we got little tyrants, you know, wanting sushi for every single weeknight meal and every single birthday. So maybe sushi is taking up the mantle that pizza has long since lost. All right, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty to federal charges in their first court appearance in Manhattan, two days after

they were captured by the U.S. military in a shocking raid that sent shockwaves across the world. Maduro, who was accused by the DOJ of narco trafficking, told the judge he had been kidnapped and claimed, quote, I am innocent, I'm not guilty, I am a decent man, I am still the president of my country. It's likely he and his wife won't face a trial until well over a year. Meanwhile, oil-related stocks like Chevron and Valero climbed as investors placed cautious bets that the U.S. deposing of Maduro would lead American companies to enjoy the spoils of Venezuela's crude reserves the largest on the planet. In fact, stocks across the board were up big time yesterday showing that Wall Street doesn't really believe the Venezuela episode

will spiral into a larger geopolitical conflict. On the subject of Venezuela, someone made a very lucky or very informed bet about Nicholas Maduro. On Friday, a brand new account on the prediction market site, polymarket wagered $30,000 that Maduro would be out of office by the end of January. The very next day, Maduro was captured in the best. netted the trader $437,000. Because the timing looked too perfect, people started asking, did someone with inside government information just place that bet? It's hard to get a straight answer, which is why in the day since, Congressman Richie Torres is trying to shut down that possibility altogether. He's introducing a bill that would ban government officials from betting

on prediction markets if they have access to non-public information through their jobs. So a subplot to Venezuela is someone made a fortune with seemingly sensitive insider information. Now Congress wants to make sure that an insider can't do that again. We've seen this in every big story. There's the big plot. There's plot A, which is what happened. And then there's the B plot, which is what happened on prediction markets and all the controversy there. Finally, each new year means more historic works breaking out of copyright jail and entering the public domain,

where they can be remade into slasher flicks and other creative works. This January 1st, Betty Boop joined the public domain, as well as the first four Nancy Drew books, The Little Engine That Could, Georgia on My Mind, and a bunch of George and Ira Gershwin songs. Generally, works published or registered before 1978 retained their copyright protections for 95 years, which means this is the first time IP from the 1930s can be repurposed without permission. Toby, I can finally release my Nancy Drew Rock Opera to the world. Every year, these Duke lawyers kind of combed through the works that, entered the public domain and put together a list highlighting some major ones to look out for it,

like you mentioned. And this year, some of the films that enter the public domain come before the Hayes Code went into effect, which is the Hayes Code is this self-imposed studio guidelines that banned certain subjects, certain profanity, violence, nudity. It also banned lustful kissing. So these are movies made right before that went into effect. So the Duke lawyers were like, this is kind of a spicy year. Like, we have people kissing on screen in some of these movies. So this is what, you know, people get excited for if you're a copyright lawyer, is that we got a fun year when it comes, when we're talking about the Hays Code.

So it's funny to think about which IP that's been produced in the past 10 years will eventually enter the public domain at 95 years from now. And I should add a lot of experts in this field say 95 years is exceedingly long to have something in copyright jail and that putting something in the public domain actually extends its longevity, allows for preservation. So they're trying to change this law that was instigated by Disney, actually. So, you know, what are some things that you're thinking about in the past couple years that have been created that will eventually enter the public domain, Marty Supreme,

I'm thinking about Fortnite, Game of Thrones, Stranger Things. These are all things that were created originally, you know, in the past decade, and that eventually our grandkids will be able to enjoy the fruits of the labor of. You did a lot better coming up with characters that might, or the public domain, because the only thing I could think of, and this doesn't even count, is the Rizzler? The Rizler is a human man. That is not necessarily a character, but if that is something that you could eventually, you know,

copyright, hypothetically, could the Rizler be passed down from generation to generation? I hope he is. The first thing you thought you're like, who is a cartoon character from the past couple of years? He's a human child. And your first thing was the Rizzer. That is Toby's mindset, everyone. Okay, that is all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday.

Do you have your answer to the trivia question? The only U.S. state whose east and west borders are formed by rivers is Iowa. Yes, Iowa, Mississippi to the east and Missouri and Big Sioux to the west. There you go. If you want more, sign up for the trivia night in the show notes or on our Instagram. And for getting in touch with us, it's easy. Just send a note to Morning Brew Daily at morningbrew.com or DM us on Instagram at MB Daily. Let's roll the credits.

Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lou is our producer, our associate producers, our Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair and makeup is driving up to the best city for pizza in the entire country, New Haven, Connecticut. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show, Danielle. Let's run it back tomorrow. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th,

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