David Murdock: Josh Gates has my dream job
OK, I’m not really thinking of giving up my teaching gig, but a man named Josh Gates has my dream job.
Gates is a television personality who currently hosts a program titled “Expedition Unknown” on the Travel Channel.
Before this program premiered back in January, Gates was most famous for hosting “Destination Truth” for five years on Syfy Channel. He also published a cool little book along the way, “Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter.”
Both “Expedition Unknown” and “Destination Truth” follow a similar format. Gates presents the gist of a famous legend and then takes off to the locale to see if there is any truth in it.
The main difference between the two shows is the exact nature of the legend. “Destination Truth” was about the paranormal, the supernatural, the cryptozoological, and the just plain weird.
Gates had a team with him in that show, and they went looking for just about every cryptid animals I’d ever heard of, and a lot I’d never heard of. They searched for Bigfoot, the Yeti, the Yowie, the Chupacabra, the Lizard Man, the Jersey Devil, the Orang Pendek, every lake monster imaginable and every sea monster unimaginable, and occasionally they went ghost hunting.
And they looked at all the variations, too. Bigfoot here and Bigfoot there, for example, and Bigfoot everywhere Bigfoot has ever been seen.
The team Gates had was fairly fun, and many of them went on to host their own shows. Jael de Pardo and Erin Ryder have appeared on several other shows, for example. The team always had good chemistry and was enjoyable to watch.
Now, I’ll watch paranormal shows all day, but I like some better than others. They’re really going to have to show me something for me to believe what they’re talking about, to be honest.
Most paranormal shows do not. There will be a noise, and the hosts will claim that it’s something paranormal when it plainly is not. I’ll never forget the time one of my favorite ghost hunting shows tried to pass off a cat meowing as the voice of a little girl ghost calling for help.
Come on, guys! Just because you cannot explain it does not make it paranormal.
The difference between most paranormal shows and “Destination Truth” was the sense of humor. Gates obviously wasn’t taking a lot of it seriously and was slyly humorous about the whole thing.
He was honest enough to look into a paranormal claim, and that show is one of the few actually to produce some solid evidence of something. I still disagree with their interpretation of the footprint they found, but I cannot deny that they cast a strange footprint in plaster.
Gates’s new show is far better. “Expedition Unknown” follows him as he investigates more legitimate mysteries by himself.
The premiere episode was about Amelia Earhart’s disappearance, and he’s done episodes on Captain Henry Morgan’s lost gold, the legendary Incan city of Paititi, and the Amber Chamber, a Russian masterpiece missing since World War II. He even did a wonderfully riveting episode about a legend in Virginia, the Beale Ciphers.
The best part of both of his television shows are the inevitable scenes of Gates’s “getting there.”
There always are shots of Gates in the airport, trying to find lost luggage, or Gates trying local cuisine or trying on local attire. There always are long segments showcasing Gates’s obvious delight as he navigates other cultures and explores the sites.
The last episode, for example, was about the disappearance of the Mayan Empire, and significant portions of the show featured Gates at a Mexican Day of the Dead celebration and Gates talking to Mexican archaeologists while they dived in cenotes, caverns filled with water containing Mayan artifacts.
His book is a good read, too. In stark contrast to other “companion books” to television series, Gates’s book reads more like a personal adventure journal and contains a significant amount of explorations he’s undertaken that were not shown on the television show.
He receives my highest praise for a book of that kind — I really feel I got to know the writer.
In short, I enjoy watching just about any show that Josh Gates stars in. He seems friendly and curious about the world, and he wants to film it and show it to you, like a buddy telling you about his latest adventures. I wish more television shows realized that viewers really want to like the people they’re watching on television. It would save us from a lot of useless reality shows.
If you’re listening, Josh Gates — there are several stories of lost treasures in Alabama. I would really like to see an episode of “Expedition Unknown” filmed in Alabama. We are fully capable of losing your luggage and feeding you exotic cuisine like barbecue.
Come down here during the week of the Iron Bowl, and you’ll get all the local culture you care to film.
David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden (Ala.) State Community College.