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Connections
Connections

Rochester hot sauce company on 'Hot Ones'

By Evan Dawson,
Megan Mack, Julie Williams
Published March 20, 2025 at 4:39 PM EDT
Four men sit at a table covered in bottles of hot sauce: a man at left foreground has short dark hair and a grey beard and is wearing glasses, a blue plaid button-down shirt and beige pants; a man at right foreground has short dark hair and is wearing headphones, a navy hooded shirt, jeans and sneakers; a man at left background has short brown hair, a brown beard and is wearing headphones, glasses, an army green jacket and red t-shirt with white lettering; a man at right background has short grey hair and is wearing headphones, glasses, a black blazer and a grey t-shirt with a red logo.
Gary Pudup
/
WXXI News
(foreground) Vince Press, (background) Gino Fanelli and Gene Olczak on "Connections with Evan Dawson" on Thursday, March 20, 2025
A smiling man with short dark hair wearing a blue button-down shirt and a grey blazer. He is holding a pair of eyeglasses. The word "Connections" appears on the left side of the photo in vertical letters.
WXXI News

"Hot Ones" is a YouTube megahit, with hundreds of millions of views and legions of fans who want to see celebrities try to sit through an interview while eating the hottest sauces on the planet.

One of the hot sauces featured multiple times is from a Rochester company: Karma Sauce, an unlikely business success. Bill Murray is the latest celebrity to rave about Karma Sauce on the show.

This hour, in an homage to "Hot Ones," we see if we can handle the heat. Spoiler alert: this could be Evan's last show.

Our guests:

Connections
Evan Dawson
Evan Dawson is the host of "Connections with Evan Dawson." He joined WXXI in January 2014 after working at 13WHAM-TV, where he served as morning news anchor. He was hired as a reporter for 13WHAM-TV in 2003 before being promoted to anchor in 2007.
See stories by Evan Dawson
Megan Mack
Megan Mack is the executive producer of "Connections with Evan Dawson" and live/televised engagement programming.
See stories by Megan Mack
Julie Williams
Julie Williams is an associate producer for "Connections with Evan Dawson" and is also the office administrator for radio, news and technology and operations. She started at WXXI in 2019 and has been working on Connections since 2022.
See stories by Julie Williams