Joe Santagato climbs Mount Scoville with Doctor Mike in Hot Ones Game Night's premiere
The first episode of the new hot-sauce board game show passed 490,000 views in eleven hours, more than forty times what a First We Feast video usually draws in a full day.
First We FeastStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 742,970 views a day, 43 times a normal first day on this channel (17,164).
Doctor Mike | Hot Ones Game Night
First We Feast has added another branch to the Hot Ones family tree, and the first episode is moving fast. "Doctor Mike | Hot Ones Game Night" had close to half a million views eleven hours after it went up. That is more than forty times the channel's usual first day.
This is not a Sean Evans interview. The new series is a board game, hosted by Joe Santagato of The Basement Yard podcast. He and his guest roll dice and work their way up a board called Mount Scoville. On each step they choose between answering an uncomfortable question and eating a very hot wing, with The Last Dab, the show's best-known sauce, waiting near the summit.
The first guest is Doctor Mike, the family medicine physician whose medical videos made him one of the internet's best-known doctors, and who is billed in the description as its favorite "hot doctor."
The comments read like a list of favorite scenes. Many viewers point to the moment Doctor Mike insists no organ starts with the letter K, and to a sudden shout of "Habanero Heights." Others talk about Joe leaning in to bite a cookie. A large share of the comments is about the host himself: how naturally he runs the game, and whether the easy back-and-forth will last with guests he does not already know.
The premiere did not arrive alone. Short clips of Doctor Mike numbing his mouth before the game and calling "The Pitt" the most accurate medical show went up alongside it, while a new Hot Ones with Mikey Madison was scheduled for the following day. That came only days after Willem Dafoe's wings carried the channel, as we reported here.
Published on Trari
What viewers say
5:43 “there’s no organs that start with k!” Kidneys Dr. Mike. Kidneys start with k 😂
@kayceeteppo5649See it on YouTubeDr. Mike randomly yelling Habanero Heights 😂😂😂
@valoriemckenna1016See it on YouTube9 minutes in and I gotta say, Joe, you’re a natural. Game show hosting looks good on you. So proud!
@Tajah8145See it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
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- Channel
- First We Feast
- Subscribers
- 15,800,000
- Channel views, pace per day
- 6,975,993 (on a normal day: 4,817,569)
- Video published
- September 30, 2026
- Video views so far
- 493,623 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 742,970
The numbers
For a channel whose videos usually build slowly over their first day, this premiere started at a very different pace.
💡 Test your knowledge
Who hosts the original Hot Ones interview show?
Sean Evans has hosted Hot Ones since it began on First We Feast in 2015, asking each question over a progressively hotter wing.
