«So, what’s your take?» How did SubwayTakes become so popular and influential?

For some time now on social networks it has been quite easy to come across video interviews shot in the New York subway, but not only there, in which famous and non-famous people answer questions while speaking into a small microphone attached to a public transport card. This is SubwayTakes, a format conceived and hosted by American comedian Kareem Rahma, which in the space of a couple of years has become a very popular and widely followed project.

SubwayTakes has 1.3 million followers on TikTok, 1.8 million on Instagram and 840,000 subscribers on YouTube. Further strengthening the show’s notoriety has been above all the growing presence of very famous guests – who take part in longer video interviews collected in the SubwayTakes Uncut series. Over time, among many others, Rosalía, actress Cate Blanchett, director Spike Lee, the current mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz have appeared.

What people like about SubwayTakes

What immediately stands out about SubwayTakes is that the host begins every interview with the question «So, what’s your take?». The answers, on the other hand, are always very original – as well as deliberately bizarre and at times provocative, but this is precisely what makes the conversation so entertaining. Kareem Rahma in turn replies by immediately stating whether he is «100% in agreement» or «100% against». This element has characterized the program since its early days, but – despite the show having grown enormously over the years – other typical features of SubwayTakes have also been preserved, which in part explain why it has managed to become so iconic: for example, all guests respond – regardless of their fame – into a small microphone attached to the famous MetroCard, the traditional magnetic card used for years on the New York subway (which will be phased out by the end of 2025 in favor of a contactless payment system); likewise, the video interview continues to be recorded inside a moving subway car.

But the series also works because it adopts a much more fluid and less rigid storytelling approach compared to that of a traditional television talk show: it is perhaps precisely this characteristic, evident in many of the guests’ bizarre and unpredictable answers, that makes the format so appreciated. Another strong point of SubwayTakes certainly lies in the choice of guests, who are selected precisely because they are – a priori – bright personalities capable of “playing along”.

Where the show comes from

SubwayTakes was born with the idea of achieving a high-quality but very low-cost product, at a time when host Kareem Rahma and his partner Andrew Kuo could not afford to produce a podcast recorded in a studio. Today SubwayTakes is so famous that episodes have even been filmed on the subway systems of London, Paris and Berlin, among others, adapting the topics discussed to the local context.

SubwayTakes is not, however, the first successful program created by Kareem Rahma: in the past, the American comedian had for example worked on the well-received Keep the Meter Running, another video-interview format recorded in New York in which the host got into a taxi asking the driver to take him to their “favorite place”, keeping the meter running.