The Creator of “Subway Takes” One Hundred Per Cent Disagrees

“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.