The new Fear Factor reboot has been keeping viewers on edge, and no one knows fear better than Fear Facts host Dr. Zach Sikora, who spoke to PopCulture.com about the social series.
Fear Factor: House of Fear premiered on Fox in January, and with it came the companion social series, Fear Facts.
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Each week, Dr. Zach dives into the physical and psychological responses that drive contestants’ actions and decision-making as they take on their fears. It’s a pretty interesting analysis, and the psychological aspect is something that first caught Dr. Zach’s eye when he was first starting out in the medical field.
“In my doctoral training, I did some rounding at a hospital that specialized in obsessive compulsive disorder and other anxiety disorders, and that really was my introduction into the field of fear and treating fear,” he explained. “And I went ahead and through some more training and through my own research in my doctoral program, researched obsessive compulsive disorder and some of the other anxiety disorders. And so it kind of became a focus of my clinical practice over the course of the last 14 years. That kind of segued out of the blue into being a consultant on Fear Factor when the producer, Kevin Lee, sort of called me out of the blue.”
While Dr. Zach got a call to join Fear Factor: House of Fear, it was not to do Fear Facts. He initially joined the reboot in its casting phase to help determine whether candidates’ fears were authentic. So how did being a consultant turn into a weekly social series?
“I was kinda working behind the scenes and helping with the casting process, which was super fun and really stretching me out of my comfort zone in terms of just building new skills and stuff like that,” Dr. Zach shared. “But they pitched this idea of trying to incorporate some more scientific facts and just a different element to the show that could kind of be a companion piece to it. And so we sort of took a risk and put something together, and it turned out that people liked it.”
Since its launch in January, Fear Facts has generated over 3 million cumulative views across seven episodes. Fear Factor has been keeping viewers on the edge of their seats for 25 years, so it’s not so surprising. People are still loving how terrifying Fear Factor can be, and Dr. Zach thinks it comes to the “universal nature of fear itself.”
“And in general, I think people are interested in psychology. They’re interested in psychological aspects about why they react certain ways, why they feel certain ways,” he explained. “And so I’m hoping people are sort of tapping into that interest. And, while Fear Factor is an entertainment show, I think this season is also bringing a different element to it, where it’s providing some education and a different element to the show that’s never been there before. And so I think that people are really appreciating that and are really drawn into that educational piece. And again, I think they’re seeing a mirror of themselves and, hopefully, feeling empowered by the Fear Facts videos.”
With Fear Factor: House of Fear coming up on its final episodes of Season 1, Dr. Zach will be coming up on the final episodes of the Fear Facts social series. But rest assured, there will be plenty of interesting analysis and facts in these upcoming episodes, and some terrifying challenges in Fear Factor: House of Fear. New episodes of House of Fear air on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Fox, while new episodes of Fear Facts drop on Fridays at 12 p.m. ET across Fear Factor’s social media pages.