Joseph Patrick Santagato (born February 25, 1992) is an American YouTuber and podcaster. He is a co-host of the podcasts The Basement Yard and Other People's Lives.
Joe Santagato was born and raised in Astoria, Queens, New York, United States. He is of maternal Irish descent and paternal Italian descent. His mother, Elizabeth, was a public school secretary and his father, Joseph, was a firefighter for the New York City Fire Department. He has three older siblings, Thomas, Shannon and Keith. Thomas is a former Team USA athlete and national skeleton champion, and Keith had a gaming YouTube channel from 2015 to 2017 with over 100,000 subscribers.
Santagato attended the St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School, Louis Armstrong Middle School, and St. Francis Preparatory School. Santagato later attended Queensborough Community College but dropped out, instead working as a pizza delivery boy and waiter while growing his YouTube channel.
Santagato began to produce video content at the age of 13, focusing on short movies, sketches and song parodies. He joined YouTube after a suggestion from a friend to post videos online, using the moniker "SantagatoTV".
Santagato has credited comedians like George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Robin Williams as his major comedic influences. He has also named Jenna Marbles as an early influence on his YouTube channel.
Before pursuing YouTube full-time, Santagato worked as a producer and editor for American online news platform Elite Daily, as well as appearing on MTVâÂÂs Guy Court. At this time, Santagato had a YouTube channel titled "SantagatoTV" and a popular self-titled Vine account. In May 2014, he renamed his YouTube channel to the current "Joe Santagato". His Vine account went inactive in 2016 when Vine permanently ended uploads.
In 2016, Santagato collaborated with actor and wrestler The Rock in their YouTube show titled Rock The Promo.
In August 2016, Santagato helped to create the Hasbro board game Speak Out in which players recite phrases with a dental retractor placed in their mouth while other players try to guess the phrase which is being said. The game is based on Santagato's Watch Ya' Mouth series. Santagato worked with Hasbro to help promote the game on their social media. Hasbro has also released Speak Out: Joe Santagato Edition, which contains phrases written by Santagato, and is more explicit than the original version. Santagato is also a promoter of Hasbro's Hearing Things board game, based on Santagato's Whad'ya Say series, in which headphones are placed on one player's ears, and another player recites phrases while the first player guesses the phrase based on lip movement.
In 2021, Santagato and Dybec launched a new trivia party game called Pay The Price. Their kickstarter amassed over $120,000 from over 3,000 backers. In 2022, Santagato and Greg Dybec released an everything-bagel hot sauce with Heatonist through their brand, Secret Handshake Food Co. Santagato also has a podcast with Dybec titled Other People's Lives, which has 339,000 YouTube subscribers as of March 2026.
In 2015, Santagato created a weekly podcast titled The Basement Yard. Initially hosted solo, comedian Danny LoPriore joined as co-host in 2018. LoPriore left the podcast in 2020 to pursue other ventures, and SantagatoâÂÂs childhood friend Frank Alvarez subsequently joined as co-host. As of April 2026, The Basement Yard has 1,300,000 subscribers on YouTube and 114,000 supporters on Patreon.
In 2024, Santagato and Alvarez began a tour of The Basement Yard doing live shows. In 2025, they launched another set of shows titled "From the Basement to the World".
On March 16, 2026, The Basement Yard won Best Overall Ensemble at the 2026 iHeartPodcast Awards, where it had also been nominated for Best Comedy Podcast.
Santagato maintains a close relationship with several of his childhood friends, many of whom have appeared in his videos, most notably Frank Alvarez, who has co-hosted Santagato's podcast The Basement Yard since 2020.