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Deep within every one of us lies a hot take. “Ghosting is fine,” “Abolish wifi on airplanes,” or “We should throw all chiropractors in prison” — whatever it may be, we all have a pet peeve, a controversial opinion or a firmly held belief we’re confident no one else has thought of yet.
Kareem Rahma has heard more than his fair share of them. Like, a lot more. As the host of the popular internet talk show Subway Takes — which has racked up almost 52 million likes on TikTok, and gone similarly viral on Instagram and YouTube — he’s solicited over 300 such grievances so far. The premise is simple: Rahma and a guest ride the subway, chatting into microphones that are clipped to MetroCards. The guest offers their hot take, Rahma decides whether he agrees or disagrees, and then the defending and debating begins.
In the two years he’s been doing it, he’s never had to ask anyone to be on the show. It turns out even hard-to-pin-down public figures like Kamala Harris (who ruffled feathers behind the scenes by changing her take from “you shouldn’t take off your shoes on airplanes” to “bacon is a spice” on the day of shooting without telling anyone) are champing at the bit to ride with Rahma and fire off their take.
“When you think about booking a podcast or any sort of show where there are guests, I think that one of the most challenging aspects of that is to have a pipeline of talent,” Rahma says. “And I think Subway Takes has established itself so firmly that now that part of the job is actually pretty easy because it’s all inbound. We’ve never done any outreach to book a guest.”
The sheer volume of people interested in appearing on the show has allowed Rahma and his Subway Takes crew to be extremely selective when deciding who will hop aboard the train with him. It has also enabled him to expand the series into a recently launched longer-form video podcast called Subway Takes Uncut where the conversation can extend beyond the third rail, both literally and figuratively. The 38-year-old host isn’t at liberty to provide details at the moment, but he says there are currently “two other formats that tie into the Subway Takes universe that I’m really excited to bring out.”
Whatever form it takes, the rapport between Rahma and his guests is vital, which is why you’re never going to see social media influencers or, frankly, anyone else he’s not interested in talking to appear on the show — no matter how famous.
“The way that I like to think about the booking and essentially the curation of the guests is in the same way that maybe a magazine or a newspaper would think about doing editorial coverage,” he explains. “It’s not an exact science, and it’s not an exact art. It has nothing to do with social media followers. It has nothing to do with clout or fame. It is really more so based on like a vibe and an aesthetic and a fit — and then also ultimately at the end of the day, the take.”
As it stands now, the breakdown of guests is, by Rahma’s estimate, roughly 50% comedians, 30% indie entertainers in adjacent spaces (actors, musicians, filmmakers, etc.), 10% “regular people” and 10% celebrities. When it comes to the latter, that percentage is set in stone.
“I think one out of 10 episodes should be a celebrity and can be, and I think I deserve that. But I think that, to me, is the limit,” he says. “There’s never going to be a day when that show is like Fallon or something.”
“I think the beauty of the show, I saw this on a comment once — it was like, ‘It’s so beautiful that one day you see a girl who’s living in her parents’ basement trying to make feature films independently, and then the next day it’s John C. Reilly.’ And I think that juxtaposition is magical, and it’s also serendipitous, and it’s fun. I think it’s a good mix.”
Filming on a crowded subway can be a logistical nightmare, celebrity guest or not, so Rahma tries his best to avoid rush hour and selects trains based on which ones he thinks will be the least congested. He does have guests submit their takes to him in advance, but only so he can go back through the show’s deep catalog of episodes and make sure there are no repeats. (And, he stresses, he never actually decides how he’ll react to a take until the cameras are rolling.) Although, there are certain topics that people gravitate towards: dogs, dating and New York City are the three biggest recurring themes he’s noticed.
Subway Takes isn’t Rahma’s only project centered around public transportation. In 2022, he launched Keep the Meter Running, a series where he’d hop into a cab, tell the driver “Take me to your favorite place, and keep the meter running,” and share a meal with them there. It’s like if instead of traveling the world, Anthony Bourdain focused exclusively on New York City taxi drivers.
The show was a heartfelt, lovely showcase for a group of people — the majority of whom are immigrants with fascinating backstories — who so often are ignored by the customers they shuttle from place to place. Rahma calls it “one of my favorite things I’ve ever done in my life.” But, he says, eventually it became too difficult to produce, and Subway Takes was born.
“I was only able to do like an episode a month, max, because it is so long,” he explains. “The edit is long. The timeline is long. It’s just hard. It’s expensive. I pay for the meter and the meals and everything else that we do. So it came a time where I was like, I really like doing this kind of short-form unscripted content, but I need something that is more of a repeatable format that I can do more often, that I can post more often and that can keep the engine going.”
Ultimately, the most important theme in Rahma’s work isn’t transit. What drives everything he does is the lost art of carrying on a conversation with a stranger. New Yorkers have a reputation for being stone-faced and locked into their own little worlds on the subway, whether they’ve got their face in a book or their eyes glued to their phones. Subway Takes, Keep the Meter Running — none of it works without Rahma’s willingness and ability to strike up an interesting conversation with someone he doesn’t know. It’s something that comes naturally to him. So what’s the secret to, as Larry David would put it, elevating small talk to medium talk?
“That is something that no one will ever answer and no one will ever understand, including myself,” Rahma says. “For a long time, it was something that I didn’t believe was a skill. I was just like, anyone can do this. And then I quickly realized that that’s not the case.”
“I don’t know if it’s my voice. I don’t know if it’s my mannerisms. I don’t know,” he adds. “But yeah, there’s certainly something that is a magical sort of ingredient that some people possess.”
While his millions of followers know him as a quick-witted host, Rahma isn’t content to stay in that creative lane. He’s a comedian, a musician who performs with a band called Tiny Gun, a filmmaker who wrote and starred in Out of Order, a short that premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2022. He’s currently working on developing Keep the Meter Running into a longer-form show, and he co-wrote, co-produced and co-stars with Mary Neely in a feature film called Or Something, which most recently played at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival in early April. Rahma describes it as a “New York walk-and-talk about two strangers who are forced to spend the day together” who gradually open up “in a way that I think is only possible with a stranger.”
“Man, I just like making stuff,” he shrugs. “I really do. I am an entertainer. I think that is probably what may set me apart from the rest of the people that do short-form, unscripted, vertical video content. Not to say that they’re not artistic, but I think I look at everything as an entertainer and an artist first. None of my things are chasing virality. It just happens to be that they’re popular. But it’s not the reason that I’m doing it. I’m not in the pursuit of views and clicks and engagement.”
“Would I still do Subway Takes if it was a failure? Probably not, because I want people to see the work,” he continues. “Would I do Keep the Meter Running if it was a failure? Probably not, because I want people to see the work. To me, there has to be an audience. I want people to see the work. But virality is not something I’m focused on.”
And yet, virality is something Subway Takes has been able to achieve over and over and over. Where does that lead next? In true Rahma fashion, he’s not totally sure, but he’s got a million ideas.
“Maybe I’ll go on a live tour, if it feels like that’s the thing to do. If launching more podcasts is the thing to do, then that’s the thing to do. If having a TV show is the thing to do, then that’s the thing to do. If it’s a documentary, whatever, I don’t know. So I just keep the train moving, you know?”
