Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story
“Subway Takes” is the TikTok version of the “Tonight Show”: wholesome, relatable comedy, even if some episodes do acknowledge the existence of opioids and dick pics. The premise is exactly what it sounds like. The host, Kareem Rahma, sits on a New York subway and asks, “So, what’s your take?” The guest slings a take—“The internet rocks,” for example, or “Naps are the most disgusting thing”—and Rahma responds, right away, with “A hundred per cent agree” or “A hundred per cent disagree.” (There is no in-between.) They talk into microphones that are disguised as MetroCards, because why not? Sometimes the guest is a celebrity; sometimes the guest is a normal person; sometimes, this being the New York subway, a stranger lunges into the shot, interrupting the interview, and Rahma rolls with it. The actor Cate Blanchett asserts that “leaf blowers need to be eradicated from the face of the earth.” The comedian Ramy Youssef maintains that all people are fundamentally good, even Benjamin Netanyahu and George W. Bush. The musician David Byrne thinks that New York bikers should learn better street etiquette. The genre is “vertical video”—clips made for your phone, posted to Instagram or TikTok. They may shoot for an hour or longer, but each social-media clip is cut down to about two minutes. This is often enough time for Rahma to change his mind from a-hundred-per-cent agreement to a-hundred-per-cent disagreement, sometimes more than once.
Rahma mostly eschews politics—a rare level of restraint these days, when Joe Rogan is grilling the F.B.I. director and the Nelk Boys are interviewing foreign heads of state—but he’s made a few exceptions. In June, the show featured Zohran Mamdani, whose take was “I should be the mayor.” Rahma agrees. Mamdani had appeared on “Subway Takes” once before (take: “Eric Adams is a terrible mayor”), as well as on Rahma’s other online show, “Keep the Meter Running,” which also has a simple premise: Rahma hails a cab and tells the driver to take him to the driver’s favorite place in New York, which usually ends up being a restaurant. He really does keep the meter running while they talk and eat, and he really pays the fare at the end of the night—sometimes as much as eight hundred dollars.
Last fall, when Kamala Harris was running for President, her campaign contacted “Subway Takes” and asked if she could appear on the show. Rahma had two questions. The first: could he ask her, on camera, about Gaza? (He opposed the Israeli military campaign, which the Biden Administration supported.) The answer to that was a flat no. The second question: what was her take going to be? The Vice-President, he was told, would argue that it’s rude to take your shoes off on an airplane. That sounded interesting. The Secret Service wouldn’t let them shoot on the subway, but the Harris campaign flew him to Pittsburgh, where they set up to film on her campaign bus.
What happened next was like a spec script for “Veep,” or a potted nonfiction allegory about how the Democrats remain undefeated at shooting themselves in the foot. Harris’s campaign advisers decided that her original take—one that sounded authentic, because it was something she actually believed—might make her seem snobby. Instead, they proposed two safer, focus-grouped options: anchovies taste good on pizza, and “Bacon is a spice.” Rahma, recounting the saga on a Forbes podcast earlier this year, said that he found the former insipid and the latter “confusing and weird”—not to mention a bit tone deaf, given that, as a Muslim, he doesn’t eat bacon. When he tried to steer her away from “the bacon thing,” he was overruled. The resulting footage was so bad that he and the campaign mutually agreed not to release it.
Recently, Rahma and I met at a coffee shop in central Brooklyn, then walked through Prospect Park. We talked about his burgeoning content empire, his run-in with Andrew Cuomo, and “Or Something,” a movie he co-wrote and co-stars in, which is out this weekend. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
One promise I made to myself was that I would not interview you on a subway. Another was that I would not start the interview by saying, “So, what’s your take?”
[Laughs.] That’s really kind of you.
Instead of “So, what’s your take?,” I’m gonna ask: So, what’s your job?
Hmm. You know, I used to call myself a comedian. I also used to call myself a media entrepreneur. I also used to call myself a “comedian and media entrepreneur,” which had a nice ring to it. But now I just say I’m an entertainer. I think that the broader you can make it, the more people will understand it.
Last month, on vacation at a resort in Jamaica, I’m in the pool. I like to strike up conversations, to entertain myself. So I see these three average—well, above average, in terms of weight—white old dudes. I love old people, so I swim up to them, and I’m just, like, “What’s up?” And they’re, like, “What’s up, man”—really nice, like usual. And we start talking about what each of them do. “I’m a taxidermist.” “I’m a retired cop.” And then it got to me. I was, like, “I’m an entertainer.” And they go, “Oh, cool.” They get it.
Even the phrase “content creator”—I think it’s funny because everyone’s a content creator. You’re literally a content creator. I’m sorry. I hate to say it.
I hate it, too, but it’s true.
Talk-show host, podcaster—it’s all one thing now.
This is part of what interests me. But, first, walk me through how you got here.
So I came to New York at age twenty-five. I’d always wanted to move somewhere, but my father passed away when I was young, so I stuck around Minnesota, where I had graduated with a degree in journalism with an emphasis in advertising. I didn’t have high hopes for myself. As a young person growing up Egyptian in Minnesota, there was not really a sense of hope or urgency to do anything. I come from a humble background. My mom’s a day-care provider. My dad was a failed entrepreneur. So there wasn’t much to latch onto.
This was [around 2012], a time when we were idolizing startup founders and startups in general. I’d open a book and or a magazine and it would be, like, “The guy from TOMS Shoes is rich.” “Mark Zuckerberg is rich.” And I was, like, Cool, that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna go to New York and just get rich.
I started applying for jobs, and I miraculously got a job at Vice, which—I didn’t know what it even was. A friend of mine was, like, You should apply to Vice. I go to vice.com, and I’m, like, “Is this a porn website? I don’t understand.”
In fairness, Vice was confusing.
[Laughs.] It was, and it got more confusing.
Were you living in Williamsburg, and part of what they used to call the hipster thing?
I don’t know if I was hip. I was definitely made fun of for being fresh off the boat. It was, like, gentle bullying. Like, “Why are you longboarding to work?” And I’m, like, “Well, everyone else is skateboarding,” and they’re, like, “Yeah, but longboarding is for losers.”
This is why no one was sad when the hipster died, because it was so insufferable.
It was insufferable, but it was also funny, and I also pushed back. If somebody was, like, “Yo, we love the new Chief Keef album,” I was, like, “I think this music sucks.” I’ve since grown to love it, but at that point I was, like, “I like meaningful things.” I was all about J. Cole. Vice was all about Chief Keef.
Because it’s cringe to care about things.
But I just decided that I was gonna always be cringe. I just embraced it.
What was your job?
I was the associate director of global marketing, which is probably not a sound job for someone who’s twenty-five and has never worked in media before. My boss was maybe twenty-seven. My first week or two he’s, like, “We have a big campaign for Intel, and we need to do a media buy.” I’m, like, “Cool. What is that?”
Anyway, I did a really good job. I got really good at it really fast. And I did really start liking video, which I wasn’t super interested in before that.
I was the first person to go from Vice to the New York Times. I was essentially helping launch Times Video. Their video unit at the time was embedded clips of the news, and they were, like, “We need to make shows.” So that’s when I started experiencing content development, audience development. I was the first person to publish vertical video at the Times, the first person to launch a Snapchat channel, the first person to have two desks—one on the business side, one in the newsroom.
Eventually, my network felt strong, my experience felt strong, and then that’s when I did what I set out to do originally, which was to start a company and try to get rich. Which I failed at, because I was chasing the moment. Fully distributed content, no website. I was at the whims of the platforms, which worked for a little bit, and I made a ton of money, and then all the money disappeared on me.
Then I had, like, a mid-life enlightenment during the pandemic. My brother was in the hospital about to die. I was in Minneapolis because of my brother, and then George Floyd happened, and that was in my home town. I hadn’t spent longer than seventy-two hours in Minneapolis for ten years. And then all of a sudden I’m there for an indefinite amount of time. And I throw myself into the social uprising and give it my all, because it was a way of coping with grief—I couldn’t go to the hospital at all. My mom is literally crying and praying every day for twenty-four hours a day, and I’m feeling like this “Garden State” character, back in my home town.
But instead of the Shins, it’s Black Lives Matter.
[Laughs.] And then I got separated from my wife, and my whole life just became a different thing overnight. I’ve never, ever in my entire life thought about what I want to be when I grow up, or what I want to do, or what I’m even good at. Who do I want to be? Do I want to leave a legacy?
So I took a real, honest look at my life, and I was, like, if money were not an issue, what would I want to do that I think I would be good at? And I was, like, You know what? I’ve always been a magnet. People seem to gravitate toward me. I’ve been invited to a lot of weddings, and I’ve been a groomsman in many, many weddings—I think that means something.
I was, like, I’m just gonna be a comedian. And then I just chased it as quickly as possible. I tried to jam ten years of work into five years, because I was thirty-three at the time, which felt old—now I’m thirty-nine, which feels older—and I just felt like I had to prove that I was good, fast.
It’s interesting that you say “magnet.” Because being magnetic—that is a real thing, and it’s a thing that only certain people have. If you think about Jimmy Fallon, for example, I wouldn’t say that his skill is being a comedian. I would say that his skill is being a really good host. So did you think: talk-show host? How did you arrive at that?
I was doing as much as possible. I was doing selfie videos, I was writing tweets, I was doing TikToks, I was writing sketches.
Then this guy Adam Faze said, “Hey, I have some money to make some shows. Do you have any ideas?” I said, “I do have some ideas. One’s been sitting in my Notes app for a long time. It’s called ‘Keep the Meter Running,’ and the premise is simple: I hail a cab and tell them to take me wherever they want.” He said, “Cool, let’s make it.” My father used to be a taxi-driver for, like, three or five years, and he passed away, and I always found myself gravitating toward older men as father figures.
I think it was Stavros Halkias who said that it’s your excuse to meet every immigrant dad in New York. Cabdrivers are just an amazing group of people.
Yeah. They’re a well. They all have side hustles, and they’re weird side hustles. One guy has a one-man show. One guy is a folksinger. One guy has a gold-mining operation in Ghana. One guy has a well in his village that he goes to for three months out of the year and makes custom water bottles for events. They’re all incredible stories. And I’ve never cast one. I just hail the cab.
So if it doesn’t work out, you just don’t use it?
They all work. I’ve done twenty episodes. All of them have been published. A lot of them have said no, but the ones that say yes have something to say.
Before starting “Keep the Meter Running,” my friend Andrew and I started a company. That company also failed, because we were doing premium long-form scripted podcasts. I was, like, “Why don’t we do something that is the exact opposite of what we’ve been doing? Let’s literally do a podcast where it’s only ninety seconds.” And my friend Andrew, my co-founder, was, like, “The cab thing worked out for you. Would you hate the idea of putting it on a subway?” I go, “I’m indifferent to it. We need a place to shoot anyway. We have no money.” And that became “Subway Takes.”
In the first episode, my friend Anthony, who’s also a cameraman on the show, talks about vertical video being the bane of society. And I go, “A hundred per cent disagree.” Because we live in a polarized culture where there’s no gray area. You can’t be a maybe. So this is a fun way to disagree and agree about the dumbest things in the world. I kept saying, “Dumb show for smart people.”
A guy came on yesterday and said, “Smoking is actually O.K.” And I go, “A hundred per cent disagree.” My dad died from lung cancer. And then people in the comments, some dumb people are, like, “He obviously hasn’t read the research.” I’m, like, “Shut the fuck up. He’s doing a bit.”
It’s funny that that was your first vertical video on “Subway Takes,” and “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first MTV video.
That is really cool. I never thought about that.
Do you find that everyone has a take?
Everyone has a take. Oftentimes, people are, like, “I want to be on your show so bad, but I don’t have a hot take.” And I always go, “It doesn’t have to be hot.” In fact, the more mundane it is, the better.
I was wondering what my take would be, and I was thinking, because we were at a coffee shop, that mine would be “Decaf coffee is a perfectly legitimate coffee order.”
One hundred per cent disagree.
To be clear, I order cold brew every morning. Regular cold brew. But caffeine is a very serious drug.
Caffeine is good.
Caffeine is good, but what if you don’t want more of it?
Drink Diet Coke.
What if I want the taste of delicious coffee? What if I want my favorite beverage in the world without a fucking heart attack and manic episode?
It doesn’t taste the same.
What if I just want to have some milk in my coffee, go to sleep, and have a nice time? Why do I have to have the methamphetamine?
I think that’s a nice dream, but—
It’s not a dream, it’s scientific reality!
It’s not thirst-quenching.
It’s a nice taste.
Why not have a digestif?
See, here’s the thing—I actually don’t care at all, but I think disagreeing is more interesting than agreeing. I’m just trying to make the conversation better. Because otherwise it would be, like, “Men shouldn’t use the internet,” and I go, “A hundred per cent agree,” and we’re done. But if I put myself in the place of: I’m a man. I’m gonna be fucking angry about this.
Then you have a point of view.
I’m not always playing myself. My opinions on the show are not actually—there’s no journalistic integrity. Somebody called me a journalist once. A journalist called me a journalist, on Twitter. And I go, “I’m literally an idiot. I’m a jester. For you, as a journalist, to call me a journalist is an insult to you.”
Theo Von has had hours of access to the Vice-President and the President of the United States. I don’t think that makes Theo Von a journalist, but does it give him some kind of—responsibility is a heavy word, but you can understand why there are people who are, like, “You’re sitting with J. D. Vance, why don’t you ask him a fucking real question?”
Yeah, I have thought about that. Because I generally say no to most people. I think the difference is a lot of these podcasts are built on talent.
Talent meaning which guests you can book?
Yes. And that was a big discussion in the beginning of “Subway Takes.” “How do we make it bigger? We need to book more talent.” I go, “No, you don’t understand—the talent doesn’t matter.”
What matters is the actual meaning of the word “talent,” not the euphemism for celebrity.
Yeah. It’s just not names. [But each episode of Von’s show] is built on a big name. I don’t know what his process is for booking guests, or what his motivation is for booking guests, and I don’t know how he or any of these big-name podcasters—is he a comedian or is he a podcaster? I don’t even know if he does standup. In general, he’s an entertainer, right? I consider him in the same bucket as me.
It’s a really interesting case study. I mean, he’ll have J. D. Vance on, and then he’ll also be, like, “Gaza is a genocide.”
I don’t know if he has politics. I think it’s issue by issue. Maybe he is not recognizing his power. I think also the scrutiny that comes with establishing yourself as a liberal or a Democrat is a lot more stressful than establishing yourself as nothing, or as right-leaning. Maybe in his heart of hearts Theo Von is a fucking matcha-carrying Democrat, but he doesn’t want to have that level of criticism and scrutiny and this watchful Big Brother eye.
What kind of scrutiny are you thinking of?
Let’s just use Joe Rogan as an example, because he’s the biggest one. He’s, like, “I talk to everyone,” and his politics are really confusing, because he’s, like, “I like Bernie, but I’m voting for Trump”—but whatever, because he’s not a leftist. He doesn’t care if people are mad at him.
I see what you mean. He doesn’t have to be a member of good standing in the tribe.
Sometimes I’m, like, Shit, maybe they were right back then, [when people said that] you shouldn’t talk about religion or politics, unless it’s to your close personal friend. I grew up hearing that, but not understanding what it means. Who’s arguing about religion? Maybe back then they were. Like, in the nineties, you’d be, like, “I’m Jewish,” and somebody would be, like, “That’s the wrong one”?
I always thought of it as doctrinal debates within Christianity.
Oh, I don’t know anything about those people.
Like, “you have to be baptized in this way at this age.”
Oh, so maybe that was a Christian rule.
Yeah, Jews argue about everything all the time. That rule would never stand with us.
That’s so fucking funny.
So this is where I want to talk about Zohran Mamdani, and also about the Kamala Harris thing. Because the fact that guys like Theo Von slid so easily from “I’m apolitical” to “Oh, I’m obviously MAGA”—the fact that that was the default path for them is a huge problem for the country, and it’s partly how we arrived on the doorstep of authoritarianism. What happened with Harris on your show—sounding focus-grouped, not coming across as authentic…
It’s literally “Veep.”
So what do you think the Democrats’ problem is?
The Democratic establishment does not want to change politics. They just want to win. Or they want to lose. They’re O.K. winning and they’re O.K. losing, but they’re not O.K. listening to the people. I mean, it is remarkable that the working-class party is Republicans. And that Zohran, the scary communist socialist, is the alternative to the Republican working-class party, and he is villainized by the Democratic establishment.
The Democrats are afraid of their own people, whereas the Republicans are, like, “I’ll say whatever the fuck I want.” And then there’s Kirsten Gillibrand jumping on the bandwagon and being, like, “This guy promotes jihad.” It’s so weird to me. It’s also untrue. But it’s also just really weird. To throw it back in their faces: they’re weird.
There’s a lot more there that I want to ask you about. But we should also talk about your new movie.
Yeah, the movie is really special. It was written before “Keep the Meter Running” or “Subway Takes.” Which is funny, because the movie is a bunch of takes, and part of it takes place on the subway.
Yeah. At one point, you literally say, “One hundred per cent agree.”
So fucking funny. I don’t remember that, but that’s so funny. I think it’s a powerful story about a single-serving friendship. That’s what I call it. I had an experience once where I was at Joseph Leonard in the West Village, having a really bad day—maybe a bad weekend even, or maybe a bad week. And so I went there alone, brought a copy of the newspaper with me. It was a Sunday. And this old lady ended up sitting next to me, and we hit it off, and we ended up going to the MOMA together, spending the whole day together. We went to the Tea Room. Eight hours, ten hours. And then I didn’t get her number, and we never saw each other again. That’s what I call a single-serving friendship, and they’re beautiful.
I wanted to make a movie like “La Haine.” Do you know that movie? It’s a French film starring Vincent Cassel. It all takes place in one day.
So you want to be able to make Vincent Cassel movies, but you also want to be able to do vertical, short-form content.
Yeah. And I think you have to. There are a lot of people in my position that want to be movie stars. And there’s a lot of movie stars that want to—honestly, if I were Amy Poehler, would I want to make a podcast? Probably not. But there’s this thing where they want to be us and we want to be them. And so I’ve settled on the idea of, Well, I’m just gonna do both.
Amy Poehler’s podcast is called “Good Hang,” and that kind of ties it together. To be a politician, to be a celebrity, whatever—you need to be good at the thing you’re doing, but you also need to be a good hang.
Did you ever hear about the beer test?
“Who would you rather have a beer with?”
Yeah. That’s a good test.
Not very inclusive of Muslims, like a bacon take.
[Laughs.] True.
Also, Donald Trump doesn’t drink beer. George W. Bush doesn’t drink beer. But, still, that’s the person you would rather have a Heineken 0.0 with. George W. Bush used to be a party guy, and people like a party guy.
They really do. Cuomo could win if he was more of a party guy. But he’s a stiff.
I actually met him. I was at a party for the Tribeca Film Festival. I judged a category this year, and I ran into him. It was right before the primary. And he was like [Cuomo voice]: “What’s with the Mandani thing, anyway?” I go, “Dude, can I be frank with you? He’s young, and you guys are old.” I was trying to be nice, actually—that was the nice version.
You didn’t say he groped a bunch of women and killed a bunch of grandmas.
No. I didn’t. I was just, like, This is funny, he doesn’t know who I am. He probably thinks I’m a fucking busboy.
It was the day after the debate. I was, like, “Hey, I watched the debate yesterday. You did an all right job. Zohran did a great job.”
And he’s, like, “Yeah, but he doesn’t understand, New York City has two hundred thousand employees”—and in my mind I’m just, like, This is the fucking problem. Yes, it is a really hard job, but it’s not impossible. And guess what? You’re gonna do a worse job.
I started telling him, “We used to like young people in this country. Obama was young. Kennedy was young, but they shot him.” I said that to his face. Trump, Biden, Bernie. What the fuck is happening? Why is everyone eighty? I was, like, “It’s time for something new and cool and interesting.” And he was, like, “I’m not worried.” I was, like, “All right. I wish you the best of luck.” And then, two days later, I published the Zohran episode of “Subway Takes.” ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
