Men's Journal

Josh Bernstein, whose new show Into the Unknown airs on Discovery Photo credit: Courtesy of the Discovery Channel

The former host of Digging for the Truth is back with Into the Unknown, in which he travels the world in search of, well, anything he wants.

Interviewed by Josh Dean

You’re still a single guy, right?

Not as much by choice as by reality. It’s hard to start a relationship with this job. You need that period of time to get to know each other. It’s like, “Hi, I’m only here three days, and then I’m going away for a month.” She’s thinking, “Um, why would I do this?” I want to, though. I will, eventually.

You’re also still the director of the Boulder Outdoor Survival School. How involved are you?

I’ve been gone for 3 years. My field director and program director run the school but we check in regularly. I go in as much as I can. Right now, that’s maybe once a year.

When was the last time you slept in your Utah yurt?

I haven’t been in the yurt in a year. I mean, I’ve seen the yurt. I just haven’t slept in it. Two of my instructors got married there and I was the officiant — I married them. When I say I married them in Utah, people get weird.

Is the yurt actually comfortable?

It’s beautiful. It’s a 21-foot yurt with wood beams, a skylight, a real door and it’s five feet off the ground with stairs going up. There’s no plumbing — you have to walk to the outhouse or field office. But there’s electricity and phone. There used to be Internet. It’s nice; it’s carpeted. It has bookcases. The girlfriends that I have brought out there were ecstatic. My parents went out and said they would stay there. It’s as nice as any yurt can be.

You’re a born and bred New York City kid. What drew you to the West?

My father died and that became this catalyst for becoming a man and heading out west. I think this is what I like about the West: In the East people want to get things done by hiring people. In the West you want to get things done by doing it yourself. I like that DIY ethic. I like that people get their hands dirty and role up their sleeves and fix things. Here [in New York], if you can change your tire it’s amazing. As far as New York goes, as a teenager I did not love it. I didn’t appreciate the culture, the refinery of what I can appreciate now in my 30s. I think it’s nice now to go to museums and to meet people who are worldly and ambitious and intellectual. But out West you can have fun just being outdoors.

How did Into the Unknown come about?

I felt after three years of Digging that I wanted to expand beyond just archaeology. I was not as stimulated as I felt I needed to be. Discovery made me an offer to do a broader series that would be archaeology plus. There’s a difference in the mission statements of the two networks. The History channel is about history. Discovery channel is discovery. It’s about opening up the world through mystery and exploration and discovery. People who know me know that’s more me.

So what’s the premise?

It’s called Into the Unknown. It’s about learning, exploring, discovering. I can explore anthropology, archaeology, sociology — really any of the -ologies. As long as there’s a question, my job is to be curious enough to come back with answers. Or some good stories if I can’t get answers. We’re doing Life on Mars this season. In 2010, when NASA starts sending tourists into space for $200,000 a ticket, I want one. That’s the goal of this series: For me to be the intrepid explorer who provides a vicarious experience to the world. The world is awesome and I want to experience it and bring home stories for viewers to enjoy.

You originally pitched a green series to Discovery. How do you reconcile your green side with all this global travel?

I’m aware. I offset my carbon each year. Always have. I don’t have much consumption. I don’t have a car. I have an apartment that I’m in five days a month. I typically eat locally. When it comes to BOSS, we grow as much as we can — we have chickens, we have an organic farm. My personal truck, which I no longer use, drives on waste vegetable oil. But there’s no way to do an international series without flying. I would hope that the benefits of one small team traveling the world to educate Discovery’s audience offsets the environmental destruction,  but I don’t know. It’s a concern.

What do you make of the criticism of so-called “pop scientists” like yourself?

I’m not saying I’m a scientist — I love the sciences. For Digging, I was always telling people I’m not an archaeologist; I‘m just working with archaeologists to make the material hopefully fascinating and watchable. My job is to make the story work, to go the right places, ask the right questions, and hopefully tie it all up.

Do you encounter resentment, though? People asking, shouldn’t a real archaeologist be hosting this?

I think initially people saw me and were resistant. But with the fifth or sixth hour of Digging, most people changed their tune. They said, “Now I get it. He’s not actually saying ‘I know this.’” I gave credit to everyone I could give credit to. I was still able to keep people interested in the storytelling, which is hard for academics. When you lecture, people tune out. I’m keeping it conversational. Now schools use that show as a teaching tool. We’ve been off the air for a year and it’s still out there.

Of all the travel for the new show, does one destination stand out?

I think Papua New Guinea stands out the most. It’s one of the few places on the planet where you truly feel that remoteness and isolation and primitiveness. There are over 800 cultures. Some of them, including the one I stayed with, have only very recently become westernized. First contact — that reality still exists in PNG. The tribe we visited was the Anga. They go back thousands of years, until the beginning of time. The elders over 60 still dress traditionally, but the younger people dress western. When the crew and I got there — seven of us — we were the largest group of white people ever to go into the village.

Do you feel guilty at all exposing these cultures?

There’s a distinction between first contact and what I was doing with the Anga. They know about the rest of the world. Their chief’s son speaks English. When I said, “I’m from New York,” he asked, “Which part?” When we first drew up this show I resisted first impact shows. There were story lines where I’d be the first person ever to go into North Wherever and contact these people. That’s not my expertise. I have no idea what the concerns are and I’m pretty sure there are a lot of them. But this is different. They invited us in.

You were filming mummification rituals, right?

They hadn’t done it in 50-plus years. The man who performed it last mummified his father and hasn’t done it since. Then missionaries said, “Stop, it’s bad.” He’s now about to die. And he was concerned that if he died before teaching his sons they would not mummify him. So he wanted to teach them, and we filmed it.

And you had a volunteer?

For many reasons, we used a pig. I personally wanted to use a human cadaver. But given the landscape of television today, that was not an option.

What did you think of it?

It was profound in ways I wasn’t expecting. If we’re trying to honor our dead, is cremation or burial better than mummification? The chief put his hand on his father’s mummy and said, “This is my father. I come up here all the time and sleep with him.” You know what? That’s wild. My dad died and I rarely go to his grave. And I don’t know if I would feel the same connection to a headstone as I would putting my hand on his shoulder. I don’t think it’s hygienic to have 250 million mummies floating around the U.S. But for a small nomadic culture it’s a helluva connection with the past.

Do you watch Man vs. Wild?

As a survival instructor, I watch Les [Stroud] and Bear [Grylls]. It’s going to end up in my courses and I want to know where people learned these things. And as a host I watch other hosts to see how they perform on camera.

Could you have hosted those shows?

I probably could have. I’ll be honest, these days I’m far better at running a survival school than guiding one. There was a time when I was much better physically, but I could probably hack it.

If your plane crashed in the Amazon, you’d survive?

I’d be okay. I could probably make it. I’d do better than most, let’s say.

What’s the bare minimum you’d need?

I’m an opportunist. I’ll take what you give me. The will to survive is the number one need. People with far less than others survive because they really want to, badly. It’s mostly a mental game. After about a day and a half the body stops having hunger pains, then it gets easy. If you’re used to eating, that’s the hard part. As long as you have water, you’re okay.

What else really stuck with you from the new show?

We investigated elephant attacks in Kenya. The last few years, elephants have been attacking people. One person was killed on the way home from church. More often, it’s late at night when elephants are grazing and people are coming home from bars. This was Kenya, but it’s happening in India, happening in South Africa. It’s a big problem.

It’s the uprising of the elephants?

There’s a definite correlation between the age of bulls today that are mature and what they witnessed when they were babies. This is in effect revenge. It’s fascinating to see that. Do they forget? How vengeful will they be 20 years from now?

You believe this?

I’m not the only one.

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