The Daily Zeitgeist - Newsferatu 1/15: NY's Congestion Pricing, Israel Ceasefire, 'Severance', Trump's Deportation Bill

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

In this edition of Newsferatu, Jack and special guest co-host Caitlin Durante discuss NY's congestion pricing working?, the Israel/Hamas ceasefire deal, the return of 'Severance', Trump's deportation bill and much more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joel, the holidays are a blast, but the financial hangover, that can be a huge bummer. If you are out there and you're dreading the new statement email that reveals the massive balance that you may have racked up, well, you could use our help. That's right. I'm Joel. And I am Matt. And we're from the How to Money Podcast. Our show is all about helping you make sense of your personal finances so you can ditch

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Listen to Minnie Questions on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Seven questions, limitless answers. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. That's right, every Monday and Wednesday,

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but mostly Nosferatu. My name is Jack and I'm thrilled to be joined by today's special guest. Oh, it was Caitlin Durante! It's me! Katie Durante. That's one of my names. Definitely. Yeah, my father, Jimmy Durante. Jimmy Durante.

He was very old. And our son, Kevin Durant. The son that I forgot that I said that Jimmy Durante was my father. We have a kid together. Oh, my God. That's horrible. Things are falling apart. Well, we're breaking news on this one.

All right, Caitlin, thank you so much for joining us. This is the episode where we tell people what is trending right now on Wednesday afternoon. We'll start with like a good one because there's not a lot of them to go around. Congestion pricing is working. We talked at the time that it was being rolled out, that it felt like something out of like another era or like another country, like a, a small progressive policy that is like kind of common sense is meant to positively affect people's lives. Like it's done on behalf of people instead of corporations.

And this is happening in America, in America, in New York city, which is a big one. Yeah, that's one of the big, that's one of the big ones. I think I got to double check my Wikipedia, but I think New York City, one of the big ones, is a great city where you could open up a business and then planes could fly into the towers. That's that's also wow. Any given day. That's also any given day. That's what Eric Adams said about New York City, the city that he is the mayor of, about why it's a good city.

You never know what's going to happen. Big plot twist. You're just celebrating your business that opened and then 9-11. Anyways, this is a piece of policy that progressive politicians were fighting for for a long time, where basically they were going to charge people $15. They you know, via negotiation, it got pushed down to $9. The idea is to dissuade people from driving their cars into New York City, a thing that they do repeatedly for some reason, even though I can't think of a worse hell. I've done it a couple of times in my life. It is a fucking nightmare.

The scariest experience I've ever had driving in Manhattan. Yeah. Yeah. I pulled out of a car rental place in Manhattan. Like my first time ever driving in Manhattan, I had to rent a car and like go somewhere outside of the city, pulled out in like the thirties and somebody immediately laid on their horn and like screamed by me at 50 miles per hour, giving me a finger. I was like, wow, I was like second one. They're like, fuck you. I was like, all right. Anyways, you know, it's not only a policy that is designed to positively impact

people's lives, uh, in a way that like could potentially be seen as like damaging to commerce and corporations who sell cars at the very least, but pushing back against cars and car culture, which is, uh, simply not done in these United States. Simply not. Yes. So of course tons of freak outs. We covered them last week when this was being rolled out. There's a guy who was basically like democracy is dead because I can't drive nine blocks

to work. And like the defector like looked into the drive that he was talking about and it's like the most it takes as long to walk the distance and it's like a beautiful walk through central park and he's like the most, it takes as long to walk the distance. And it's like a beautiful walk through central park. And he's like, Oh, Does one like parking costs a bazillion? Like, why would you even New York is one of the few cities in the US that is actually set up where you can get around without a car. Yeah. So we're just like car brand gum brand. Like we just like, we don't, we, we, we want it, we don't care about the consequences, but anyway, like, I guess there are some

consequences like $9 that, uh, do impact people's decisions. Uh, because despite the freak out, the law went into effect and the results were kind of immediate and startling. There's all sorts of videos of people being like, this is Manhattan on Thursday afternoon. And it's just quiet. The areas that were under congestion pricing saw a massive drop off in traffic. The city quieted. The buses, now it makes sense to take the bus, pricing saw a massive drop off in traffic. The city quieted the buses like all.

Now it makes sense to take the bus, which was kind of part of the idea along. Cabs became a functional thing. But miles and hour in New York, we had to like get to a meeting quickly. And we took a cab and it took 45 minutes to go like three blocks. It was bonkers. Yeah, it was so wild.

It was like, all right, we should be getting out to walk. Anyways, there are stats that are saying the number of cars entering those parts of the cities that are under congestion pricing have fallen by anywhere between 7.5 and 18.5%, which is like kind of right in line with like what their goal was. So yeah, New York will become more livable because they got this one piece of legislation through. I thought it already cost like $8 if you wanted to drive into like Manhattan. Yeah, they're whole specific to like various tunnels and stuff. But this is like an additional, more expensive thing for just like being there.

And they like just take a picture of your license plate and then send you the bill. So, I don't know, maybe people are just like freaked out by it and only for now, they're just avoiding it, in which case, like maybe it gets crowded again. And then people start using it again, but then they start paying a bunch of money that is going to go towards improving the public transit. So I was going to ask what they're using these $9 per person. So it's all the fun public transit.

Okay, that's nice. It's nice, like all around, like a very simple idea that like might be on the list of like 100 ideas that would make this city better and like 99 of them of course are immediately shot down by like the fucking commerce department or whatever but they got one through they got their one through so congratulations to New York obviously the big news of today is that it appears there is a ceasefire deal between Israel and Palestine, a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas following mediation with a phased approach that will have Hamas releasing some hostages in exchange for Israel releasing

what the mainstream media calls Palestinian prisoners, but are just also, you know, hostages being held by Israel. And then the rest of the hostages will be released in exchange for more prisoners and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. But just on the way out with a ceasefire imminent, Israel decided to go on a rampage while they still could and targeted a residential block in what was described as one of the bloodiest and most difficult nights for the Gaza Strip. And there's no shortage of those. They killed 62 Palestinian citizens and injured 253 more in the 24 hours leading up to the ceasefire news.

Nicole Soule-Northam Yeah, plus, I mean, as people have pointed out, there's absolutely no guarantee and it's actually probably unlikely that Israel will actually obey the ceasefire if this deal does go through, which different officials in the government of the imaginary state of Israel are trying to block. So there's that. And even if it does go through, Israel has a history of not obeying a ceasefire and still dropping bombs and inflicting violence against Palestinians. So we'll see. And as many people are pointing out, a ceasefire is like the first step. There's so much to do beyond this and the siege and the occupation. Basically there's many steps beyond this. I think a lot of people will be like, oh, ceasefire. Well, we can be...

Adam And Justin. Lauren Henry Right. But no, there's much to do from this point on. This is only the beginning. Adam Yeah. This is trying to get back to a situation where Israel was still, you know, had snipers targeting citizens for just peacefully protesting by the border. So yeah, it's obviously, uh, you know, there, there are some aspects of it that feel like they could be good news, but, uh, definitely just keeping an eye on it for sure.

Proceed with caution. Proceed with hope. Yeah, that's right. Oh, and there's also just some polling that suggests that, like, YouGov, for instance, like some of the mainstream polling places are surveying some of the people who stayed home and didn't vote for Harris that had voted for Biden and being like, what was that all about? And the number one most common reason that they gave was because she wouldn't break with

Biden on Gaza. So just like for all the people who are like, that's crazy. To even suggest that she might break with Biden on Gaza. Doesn't seem like it. Seems like, yeah, seems like a, one of those straightforward, common sense things that would have made people be like, oh, cool. But maybe like that is a leader who has a sense of humanity at a time when everything's in crisis. That might be something we need.

All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. 2025 is bound to be a fascinating year. It's going to be filled with money challenges and opportunities. I'm Joel. Oh, and I am Matt. And we're the hosts of How to Money. We want to be with you every step of the way in your financial journey this year, offering the information and insights you need to thrive financially. Yeah, whether you find yourself up to your eyeballs in student loan debt, or you've got a sky-high credit card balance because you went a little overboard with the holiday spending,

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You can find us on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. And we're back and Severance is coming back. Caitlin, do you ever, did you ever watch Severance? I only saw the pilot and then I was like, I'm, I'm busy. I have movies to watch. Why would I be watching television when there's so many movies? Thank you.

I said bitchily. Yeah. Hey, I, you know, I liked this movie. I just wish it took three weeks to watch. Yeah. No thanks guys. I actually really liked this movie. I just wish it took three weeks to watch. Yeah. No, thanks guys. I actually really liked this one. But it seems like a good show. Yeah, it is like one of the rare.

I think it's one of my favorite streamers of the past. I don't know how many years, but it was cool. It's definitely like a mystery box thing that I've yet to see one of these land, you know, lost your mileage may vary on lost, but I didn't think it ended particularly well. Well, that's ridiculous. It ended perfectly. Are you a big lost head? Not really.

I did see the whole series back in the mid to late 2000s. No, I think that it ended poorly, but I really liked the time travel season when they like go back to the 70s and Hurley's trying to write the screenplay to Star Wars before George Lucas can. That's kind of the thing I remember from Lost. That's amazing.

That is wild that that is something that happens in Lost. That is a plot point of Lost, yes. That's great. So, Severance, good show. They have season two coming up, and the reason we know that, because there's, like, this just seems to be a thing that happens with streaming is like, they'll do a good season one, and then it's like hard to know when the next season is happening because it just blends in with all the other seasons of the new seasons and new shows and you know how to find the

one that is like good out of the thousands that are bad. There's too much content, too much content, but they did. So Apple's strategy around the streaming content to this point has seemed to be largely They thought they're supposed to like keep it a secret. It seems like when they like had a good show. They're like don't Any one but this time they were like what if we did something where like people actually kind of found out about the show. And so they did a publicity stunt where they had a group of actors working inside a glass cubicle in Grand Central Station, which you're thinking how many people walk past that cubicle? 12, 13? Well now that, now that New York City has instated this, this, you know, congestion,

congestion pricing, those numbers probably skyrocketed to like 40 people at least walked by, um, dozens. But then there's also, and I don't know if you've heard about this, cause this is your first trending episode, but there's also this thing called social media where like people, so they have cameras on them and they took cameras that people then looked at on the social media and so then it went viral. The thing that was really wild about it was at some point those

workers got switched out for the actual cast of the show. You got to just watch Adam Scott and Britt Lauer and Zach Cherry sit there working at their little cubicles right there in front of you like it was like a little person's zoo. And people seem to really enjoy that. Which again, everybody a little bit surprised since Apple is famous for quote, under marketing shows. Yeah. Well, they're too busy stealing resources from the Congo. So I guess that's true.

They're doing instead. They only Apple is only five people and they have a very busy to do list. I do miss publicity stunts like this to promote entertainment of some kind. I like my favorite example is the Blair Witch project. Yeah, were they Three people yeah, I don't remember the website was the way they put the website up being and like people were like wait They were basically like yeah, this this is a documentary that's coming out and those people really died right and

Everyone believed it because no one had, there was no like internet etiquette back then really cause there was 99 and people didn't really know how to fact check on the internet and they like, you know, you were able to withhold a lot more information back then. I feel like documentary coming out. It's called Blair Witch Project. And then everyone was like, Oh my God, that this is real.

And those people really died. And it was so effective at marketing the movie that it made like a zillion times its budget back. I know it was also just well done. That movie was to me still one of the scariest movies ever made. That final shot with the guy where he's standing in the corner really fucked me up. I still remember where I was and how I felt and it was horny. No, it was very scared. You were pissing in your pants.

I was pissing in my pants. A writer, J.M. McNabb pointed out that this is similar to a stunt done by office space. Uh, when that movie was coming out in 90, whatever that year was 98, where they hired a guy to work inside a glass cubicle in Times Square to promote that movie. And then a billboard had his email and phone number so people could contact him for advice. Um, and nobody noticed, nobody did anything. It says email, www.officeguy.com. That's not an email address. That's true.

It reminds me, I love, that's another thing I love about, you know, movies from this era is like, if you go back and watch the first Mission Impossible movie, it's like the email address is something like ethan.com or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's the email address. Yeah, they don't even have the ad symbol in there. The ad symbol or anything. Yeah.

Yeah, it's great. When they do a search on the web and it's always zero results until they like find the right name. It's like, no, they like find the right name. It's like, no, that would just be a million results of something that you had to then look through anyways. Don't even get me started. Caitlin on this movie. Internets. I swear to God, God dang it. Things sucks. Movie internet.

All right. And finally, the Lack in Riley Act is advancing in the Senate. It is a bill that would make it so that any immigrant accused of a crime would face like basically mandatory federal detention. So it's basically going to be a tool to engage in mass deportation at a statewide level, like the Trump administration's policy of just, you know, trying to deport anybody. But the reality is that it like creates for every immigrant in the country, like every citizen has like near absolute power over them because all the citizen has to do is

accuse them of a crime and they go to jail. Like this is not, it's not saying that they face mandatory sentencing if they're convicted of a crime. It's if they are arrested for a crime. Oh my gosh. So that they're not entitled to, you know, a fair trial, anything like that. It's just none of it. They go to jail for being accused. So yeah, it's like robbing people completely of due process. It's like hard to even really get your mind around how bad it would be.

But yeah, to quote the LA Times, it would require immigration agents to take into custody people who have been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting and would override the current discretion afforded to federal officials to prioritize the detention of people with violent criminal records. It's just, if you are an immigrant, you go to federal prison, federal jail, you're put into custody.

It's just like understanding like how abusers work and like how abusive America can be in general. Like giving this much power to anyone over any other person is just going to be going to... Scary. Yeah. This is fascism. Yeah, it's fascism. It's straight up like no punches pulled.

No, like this is just fascism. You just claim somebody Shoplifted something and there they go horrible. Yeah, it's bad Pete Hickseth who everyone was like, whoo-hoo Trump fucked up nominating that guy now the word I'm seeing about his Senate hearing is Unscathed he made it through unscathed. So just an update on a previous story where I was like, I don't know if it's going to be, everyone was like,

this guy's about to get fucked up on a national stage. He was not, uh, he weathered the grilling to emerge largely unscathed. The guy who was cartoon alcoholic. Yeah. I mean, what do you expect for, you know, someone with power and privilege and money? Of course they- That's what happened. Yep. That's, that's how it works. Yeah. Well, Kaitlin Durante, what a pleasure having you. Where can people find you, follow you, all that good stuff?

First of all, pleasure's all mine. Second of all, you can follow me on Instagram, I guess. I don't even care anymore. You can come to upcoming Bechtelcast shows, the details for those are on Linktree slash Bechtelcast. And then you can also listen to that podcast if you must. I hope you do. If you must. If you must. And then, yeah, I don't know, what else? I teach screenwriting classes sometimes. There's information about that on my website, caitlindurante.com. Although right now, I just started a new semester at Caitlin University. So-

Caitlin University, spin-off of Santa University. No, not a spin-off from Santa University. This is an actual university where you can take- This is, yeah, this is an accredited- Credited? Ivy League school. So- What the hell? Why not? So yeah, come and get your master's. Come and get a PhD. credit is Ivy League school

So yeah come and get your masters come and get a PhD that's a higher degree than I even have I don't know how It works, but that's how it works at Caitlin University. Anyway, you can yeah check out all that stuff of mine Why can people follow you? Who gives a shit? We will link off to Miles's families go fund me Actually, and they redirect to a Spreadsheet so many people donated and you know supported them that they're now Suggesting some other families that you can give to which is really nice. That's wonderful. So go go check that out

We will link off to that in the footnotes in the episode description of this. And that is going to do it for today. We're back tomorrow with the whole last episode of the show. Until then, be kind to each other, be kind to yourselves, get your vaccines, get your flu shots. Don't do nothing about white supremacy. And we will talk to you all use our help. That's right. I'm Joel. And I am Matt. And we're from the How to Money Podcast.

Our show is all about helping you make sense of your personal finances so you can ditch your pesky credit card debt once and for all, make real progress on other crucial financial goals that you've got, and just feel more in control of your money in general. You know it. For money advice without the judgment and jargon, Listen to how to money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Catch Jon Stewart back in action on The Daily Show and in your ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. From his hilarious satirical takes on today's politics and entertainment to the unique voices of correspondents and contributors, it's your perfect companion to stay on top of what's happening now.

Plus, you'll get special content just for podcast listeners, like in-depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. is returning for another season. We've asked an entirely new set of guests our seven questions, including Jane Lynch, Delaney Rowe, and Cord Jefferson. Listen to Mini Questions on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Seven questions, limitless answers. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries

are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B. As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join in the conversation.

Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.