Did you know that there's a lab under the subway?
Jack Klein is thinking about simple, realistic solutions to a better MTA.
Hello everyone. This just in: Feed Me got a quote from the J.Crew team about their A.I. catalog images, which
first covered in their newsletter this morning.Today’s letter also includes: an interview with Jack Klein, the man tracking subway temperatures; Madhappy thinks female football fans want bows on their hats; you’re all going to be thrilled about Elle’s new advice columnist; and students are paying tuition with OnlyFans income.
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A few nights ago, my husband walked over to my desk and showed me a video on his phone screen. It was of a man named Jack Klein using a device called an AirBeam monitor (you can buy your own for $199, he borrowed his from a library in Greenpoint) to measure the air quality in the Broadway-Lafayette subway station.
The levels of PM2.5 (harmful particles in the air that then can get into your lungs) were 55-60 in the subway, and about ten when he walked upstairs. That underground number is considered “unhealthy” on the U.S. EPA scale.
In another video he uses a Kestrel thermometer ($139) to measure the temperature difference between a subway car on a late summer day (77°F) to when you walk off the train into a station (105°F).
The gadgets and information and data are all part of Jack’s larger project: New York Lab. I have a fondness for people who invest in props for their front-facing camera work. From an entertainment standpoint, the meters and thermometers this guy is bringing to his videos draw me in: I want to know how fucking hot the subway really is, and how dirty the air is around New Yorkers while they’re making out or drinking coffee on the train.
I called Jack this morning to find out more about what he’s trying to do with this whole project, and how he thinks about building a cooler, cleaner subway system. It’s refreshing to speak to someone who is building an online presence with a mission to educate and change. After speaking with Jack, it sounds like it might even be possible through the presentation of data. I also just think collecting data about something other than ourselves (I’m not talking about Oura rings) is cool and more of us should be curious about how soil pH affects hydrangea color, or the correlation between font choice and book sales.
When you posted that first TikTok, that was your first time doing front-facing camera posting, right?
Yeah. I posted a TikTok last August with a digital thermometer gun, going around and pointing it at objects in the subway stations. That was the first time putting my face on TikTok and Instagram. I'm not a massive fan of social media.
What made you do that? I always wonder what makes somebody finally press post.
I think I'm just very curious, especially when it comes to why things are happening in a city the way they do. Last summer I was commuting from Ridgewood to Hell's Kitchen basically every day for work and obviously I was impacted a lot by the heat. One day it just popped in my head, like: I could go and measure these things. I don't think it's been done before. I had an inkling that people would resonate with it, and obviously they did.
Are you from New York?
I've been in New York since March 2024. I grew up in Columbus and then I went to school in Chicago. I studied computer science and Chinese studies and I lived in Shanghai for a year after that.
“The MTA and New York State have tons of open data sets on things like turnstile usage and WiFi in stations. But then there's no data about how much it floods or heat and humidity or air quality. It's a very split and polarized issue.”