Josh> Well I think a laymen’s definition of, you know, a laymen’s definition of cryptozoology is the study of or the search for unknown creatures. And I actually, in some ways, think that Destination Truth has over time served the show better as a title because we really don't just do monsters anymore. You know, when we started the show it was really about being, you know, a show that could complement Ghost Hunters and that would go out and look for more creatures, more biological-based stories. But over time we've realized that, you know, the real heartbeat of the show, I think, is that it’s a real travel adventure show at its core. And so we have realized that there are great stories other than creatures including the paranormal, including phenomena and curses and things like that that definitely fit the mold for our show. So I think that Destination Truth I really think serves the show well because it really is more than anything about travel I think.
MediaBlvd> Can you give us a preview of the some of the things that you’re going to be looking at or going after this season?
Josh> Absolutely. You know, Season 3 we really sat down at the end of Season 2 and asked ourselves, you know, what can we do to raise the bar from the second season which was not just, you know, really successful but which we felt, you know, covered a lot of really interesting places in the world. And we came up with some really interesting stories so we’re going to do the world’s first overnight paranormal investigation in King Tut’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. We’re going to be doing our first US investigations. We have a great story out in the, you know, frontier of Alaska and also in the swamps of Florida. So we'll be kind of, you know, book-ending the US and doing two stories here. We've never done a
US episode before. We spend an entire night doing an investigation at the ruins of Chernobyl in the Ukraine which is a really sort of high-stakes episode. And we have an extraterrestrial episode in the deserts of Chile. We’re going to be doing some stuff in the Amazon. We'll be spending part of the season in South America. And then we'll be returning, you know, we sort of wanted to kind of - through-lines of the show season after season is that we always do a sort of big story on Big Foot or one of the sort of, you know, Sasquatch stories. And so we’re going to be continuing our Yeti story we did in Season 2 which was in Nepal by doing a one-hour special in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan which was a great episode and a really beautiful country for us to showcase. So it’s going to be a really exciting season. We’re really looking forward to it.
MediaBlvd> Can you talk a little bit about the process? There are a lot of things out there that are pretty cool that you might want to investigate but how do the ideas come up and then once you have an idea just what is the process for going about going after it?
Josh> Well, you know, we have a couple of different thresholds that we try to meet for the stories. And I think the first threshold and the most important one is we want to look for stories that people are having some sort of current encounter with. We want to talk to people that are having a recent experience, you know. There are great stories all over the world that are folkloric and mythological that aren't really topical anymore. And we want to go and talk to people that are having a genuine and authentic experience because that’s a mystery, right? If you can find credible people that have been shaken up by something whether or not there’s a monster there or whether it’s a mistaken identity of some sort of known animal you have a mystery on your hands. And that’s really what we want to do is we want to travel to places where we can get our hands dirty and roll up our sleeves and try to investigate these really interesting stories. And then once we have a story that meets that criteria we want it to be someplace exotic, and often those two things go hand in hand. You know, we want to take our viewers to parts of the world that they don't get a chance to see everyday. We have primarily stayed out of very industrialized nations. We've stayed out of Western Europe for the most part. We've stayed out of America for the most part. And we try to go to places that are, you know, for lack of a better term, off the grid. You know, places like
Bhutan where most people just have never had a chance to see. And if we can meet those two criteria, find a great story with great eye witnesses in a really interesting place then more than likely we'll be buying a plane ticket.
MediaBlvd> What is your filming season like? What months are you actually out on the road traveling doing this stuff?
Josh> It is completely erratic. And you can, you know, it is like we will go - the Syfy will order bizarre numbers of the show and then we spool up the machine and we go and we get everything ready and then we go film that number and we come back. And then, you know, sometimes we have a long break and sometimes we have a short break. And then we'll go film another set. You know, we just filmed nine, before that we filmed seven, before that we filmed seven, before that we filmed six. I think we’re talking about going to film another six. And so it kind of depends on the order. But to do the nine that we just did took us three months in the field. And that is - that’s one of the, you know, tricky parts of the show is that it’s not fast to make because the places we’re going to are far away and the stories are often - well even once you get to the country in question you've got to track and hike and, you know, take Jeeps and planes. And so, you know to do six episodes takes us about two months. To do the nine that we just did took us about three months. And it depends where the episodes are, you know. Bhutan is an incredibly remote country and so that dictated that to film that episode we really spent almost two weeks there filming. So some stories take a lot less than that.
MediaBlvd> For someone like me, who sits behind a desk most of the day, your job seems like a dream job, and the kind of thing I’d love to do on vacation. What do you do when you’re - in your off time, I mean, do you sit down and read or book or what?
Josh> You know, it’s funny. Yeah, I mean, I spend a few months when we get back from the show working in post and helping to put the show together. And then I spend a few months before we leave prepping the show. So it’s become a real full time, you know, job for me. But the weird thing about me is I'll come back and I'll take a week and get, you know, reoriented to Los Angeles and, you know, somehow decide that Las Angeles is normal, right? And then in pretty short order though I start looking at the map and trying to figure out where I feel like going. I get kind of antsy quickly and I like being on the move. So I think for me the way that I relax is weirdly to keep traveling.
MediaBlvd> That’s awesome. I love to hear that. Is there anything or anyplace, any - I don't know, maybe, mystery that you haven't investigated yet even on the upcoming season that you really want to do at some point?
Josh> Yeah for me, you know, for me it’s a lot - it’s often about locations. And I think, you know, when I look at the globe the places that I'm most kind of gravitated towards along with places like Southeast Asia is I'm really kind of intrigued by a lot of these small Pacific island nations. And they’re really hard to get into the show because some of them are very difficult to get to. And they’re difficult to build into a route. Because when we film the show we typically bounce from location to location. And so there are a couple of great stories or many great stories in the Pacific from, you know, Polynesian curses to cursed or haunted islands. There’s shipwrecks, there’s - there’s all sorts of, you know, sort of amazing things that are just sort of, you know, floating out there in the middle of nowhere. They’re just hard to get to. So I certainly would love to figure out a way to, you know, maybe we do a season where we take the show on a boat and we go around the Pacific or something.
But that’s a part of the world that I really want to kind of dig my hands into.
MediaBlvd> Your crossovers last year with Ghost Hunters were great! It was kind of like Buffy and Angel crossing over or something, with two of my favorites combining. Is there going to be more of that this year?
Josh> There is. You know, I'm actually appearing in a Ghost Hunters episode. I think that the episode that I'm in is occurring the night we premiere. which is the ninth. And so I'm actually in a Ghost Hunters episode that night and then we actually - there’s a little bit of crossover this season when Rob and Dustin from Ghost Hunters International are going to be appearing in one of our episodes. We actually brought them down to the jungles in the Amazon in
Peru and had them come out on a creature investigation with us. So, you know, I appeared in an episode of Ghost Hunters International last year and did a ghost hunt with them and this was a great opportunity to bring them into our world and put them on a creature hunt. And so that’s a great episode. And then you'll also be seeing Steve and Tango as well as Jason and Grant in a few episodes where we actually to go them and have them take a look at our evidence from our paranormal episodes. And since their, you know, seasoned at what they do, get their take on our evidence. So that’s a great way to kind of, you know, do the Flintstones meets the Jetsons routine on the show.
MediaBlvd> I’m totally looking forward to those episodes. What do your friends and family think about your job and what you do? Do they understand this and just what do they think about this great gig you've got there or great boondoggle where you get paid to go to all these really, really cool places?
Josh> I mean everyone is really supportive of it. You know, my family have been great about. My dad traveled for much of his career. So I think for him it feels like a, you know, something that’s really natural. And they, you know, they know that I'm a guy who loves to travel so, you know, I'm sure they'd rather see me getting paid to do it than bleeding out my bank account to backpack and bum around the world. So, you know, and in terms of my friends they've of course been really supportive as well. It’s difficult, you know, I find myself now spending five to six months of the year overseas making the show. So that’s difficult. You know, it’s hard for me to keep up correspondence the way that I would like. But, yeah, everybody that I know has been terrific about it. And I've really become close with the crew as well. You know, you really work with them in such close quarters that I've made great friends on the show as well.
MediaBlvd> All right well thank you again so much for this and I'm definitely really, really looking forward to the show and especially the Ghost Hunters/Destination Truth crossover. So best of luck and thank you.
