Josh Bernstein Set To Take Viewers Into the Unknown

Are You Ready?

Set your TiVo for an adventurous thrill ride as Josh Bernstein jumps into the deep end and brings viewers on an adventure of mystery, riddles, great empires, deadly sport, secrets, and the never before seen process of mummification from one of the world´s most primitive tribes.

Into the Unknown with Josh Bernstein kicks off the much-anticipated return to television by ex-Digging for the Truth host Josh Bernstein. Viewers have waited with baited breath while Josh has traversed the world to bring them his new show on his new network, Discovery Channel.

With his voracious appetite for knowledge, travel, cultures, and the desire to educate, Josh has traveled from the Arctic Circle to Bulgaria to Timbuktu and back again in just a year´s time. He has flown 121,390 miles, taken 80 planes, spent 200 of the 365 days of the past year abroad, and filmed for 109 of those days. From the hottest climate he was in, Upper Egypt, with a temperature of 116 degrees Fahrenheit, to the coldest, at the Arctic Circle in minus 25 degrees, luckily he knows how to pack for the adventure. Josh still has a sense of humor about all the travel, and like Mark Twain once said, " If you love what you do, you´ll never work a day in your life", and Josh loves what he does.

It´s taken Josh so long to get back on the small screen simply because it takes time to cover the globe. With pre-production, research, and scheduling travel for just one part of an episode in Peru, it took ten hours to fly to Lima, than another three-hour flight, followed by another ten hours on horseback just to get to the ruins of the Chacapoya.

The best experience Josh has had filming so far? In Papua, New Guinea, where he got to watch as the Anga tribe performed their secret and centuries-old mummification ritual in his presence; now that´s getting the scoop. Josh wants his viewers to take away the fact that there is a whole world to explore, and he wants the "aha" moments. Some will ask, "How is this show different from Digging for the Truth?" To that, Josh says that although there is some digging, his new show will have a much broader palette; examples of which are the episodes in Papua , New Guinea, Kenya and the US Southwest that deal with current issues. "This is a 360 kind of series", he says.

Josh´s wanderlust began when he was growing up a city kid in New York, and he was always interested in other cultures. His love then was the American West. He explored the boundless cultures that make up New York City, traveling on the subway to get to little-known places and organic markets, and getting out to the country. Josh still splits his time between his yurt in southern Utah and an apartment in New York City. He thinks about things like climate change, global heritage, and spiritual experiences while filming.

Josh has his own view and feelings about climate change--that it threatens the fabric of our world, people, animals, cities, and the wonders left behind by ancient cultures. Not only the environmental changes which cause the degradation, but time, neglect, and mismanagement. Eco-tourism is also becoming a problem, and Josh says, "It is a sensitive issue. We must find a balance that allows people to appreciate the world´s ancient wonders without compromising their continued conservation".

The spiritual and profound came when Josh watched as an old man told his sons how he wanted them to mummify him when he died as he himself mummified a member of the tribe who had passed on.

With all this travel through fifteen countries, 64 travel days, 200 days without his own bed, one might think Josh would relish finally just hiding in his yurt for awhile, but that is not so. Josh loves his job, loves the travel, and feels at home in many of the countries he travels to, partaking of its culture, foods, languages, and diversity. He is endlessly fascinated by it all and says, "The world truly is just awesome," and if he could travel back in time to solve just one of the ancient mysteries, he would go to 2580-2560 BC. "I would watch the Great Pyramid being built".

Into the Unknown with Josh Bernstein begins airing August 18th at 10pm EST/PST on Discovery Channel. This is one of those don´t-miss shows, which are few and far between on television today.