Josh Gates of “Expedition Unknown: Hunt for Extraterrestrials” Joins The Rich Eisen Show In-Studio

Expedition Unknown: Hunt for Extraterrestrials premieres tonight at 9:00 Eastern Time, 8:00 Central on the Travel Channel. And the man who is the host of that program, the very popular Josh Gates, is here on the Rich Eisen Show.

Good to see you, Josh.

Great to see you, man. Let’s unpack our story first, shall we?

It was 15 years ago, it was 2002, yeah, I met you in Times Square in New York City for the very first time.

That’s right, and I last saw you on the roof of Alcatraz. That was the last time, on the roof of an abandoned cellblock on Alcatraz Island.

And there’s the photograph of it. Yahoo and the rest of the winners of Beg Borrow and Deal, the ESPN I believe to reality show. I don’t know if it was on the biggie; I don’t remember. It was their first big foray into doing a big reality competition show.

Let’s be honest, it was our big first four. Yeah, it was the highlight of our careers, I think we can agree. And the worldwide leader is all together.

Yes, and the photograph of me with the rest of the winners— you and the trio of your compatriots.

Yeah, two teams of four that had no money, no identification. We took away your wallets and your cash in Times Square. Yes, sent you on some goose chase across the country first to complete a bunch of sports challenges.

Yeah, the idea was there was a list of 50 sports-related tasks, and whichever team could complete ten of them and make it to Alcatraz Island first would win the show. And I was the host of it.

Yes, I remember. It was like, okay, we’re gonna start it on such-and-such a day, come on down from Bristol. Yeah, so I did my stand-ups, to use the television term. Yeah. Then I met you and Kelly Zink, who wound up being a production assistant on the NFL Network. She helped launch the NFL Network years later.

That’s right. And Juliet, who’s I believe a real housewife of London now—she’s on Ladies of London.

Yeah, you’re a hitmaker. I was on a plane once and I’m like, this girl looks awfully familiar. She was on Bravo right now, she’s on Beg Borrow and Deal, part of Josh Gates going across the country.

Yeah, and some like Clemson Tiger fan named Bubba.

That’s right.

This is a true story. And then I got a phone call one day on SportsCenter, saying, “Okay, I know you’re on SportsCenter tomorrow night, but this group of people are gonna make it to Alcatraz tomorrow. You gotta get on a flight right now and get to San Francisco for tomorrow.”

I said, “Mike, really?!”

Boom, I dropped everything and flew all the way out and stood on the roof of Alcatraz. Then you stroll down, you know. Actually, we were in this cellblock. And then you strolled around the corner and I smelled you before I heard you. You had not showered in like a month.

That’s right. That’s right. We had been—I forget how long it took us to get it done, but yeah, we completed ten of the tasks and made it to Alcatraz. It was a crazy experience.

Now, I mean, one of them was you caught a pass from Jesse Palmer, right? Because you had to go into the Giants facility and catch a pass from a real NFL quarterback.

Yeah, the tasks were hard, right? It was like, “Sing the national anthem at a major league baseball game.” Yes, no big deal. “Catch a pass. Beat an NBA player to a game of horse.” I mean, they were like pretty legit, difficult things to pull off.

I mean, luckily, you could stroll in anywhere and say, “We’re doing a show with ESPN.” That helped, right?

Right, exactly. But really, we were kind of on our own to go figure these things out.

Did you throw out a first pitch at a minor league baseball game?

Yeah, I think we let Juliet throw out the first pitch.

No, it was that—talked your way into this.

You did talk your way into it.

Yeah, exactly. She threw the first pitch. I think it was in a White Sox game.

She’s like, “Impossible.” But maybe. And then again, winding up on Alcatraz first. You wound up winning the grand prize, which was—

If which was a pack of gum?

No, and a bus ticket home?

No, break. You know, it was for the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby. It was four pairs of tickets, yeah, to any four championship sporting events in the U.S. within a calendar year.

Did you go to them?

Yeah, I mean, I’m not a sports guy. At least I was on the show as that big guy who seems like he should know something about sports, and I don’t.

Josh Gates of Expedition Unknown here.

But you should know, they did tell me, the producers, before I met you, “Okay, now one of the guys on the team knows nothing about sports.” So go easy on him. Right?

He’s basically told me beforehand.

So which ones did you go to?

Like, this is a prize for a sports fan that would be outrageous, right?

I was looking at it based on—because I’m a travel nut, so I’m like, well, where can I go with these?

So a lot of guys would have chosen the Super Bowl. I was living in LA. Super Bowl was in San Diego. To me, no interest in that.

Okay, so I went to the Pro Bowl in Hawaii.

Yeah, because I wanted to go to Hawaii with my girlfriend.

Good for you.

Right? Yeah, not the best game in the world, but yeah, it was a free trip to Hawaii. I wanted to go to the Iditarod, and they were like, “No, dude. We’re—no, that doesn’t count.”

I was like, “That’s a championship sporting event.”

You’ve been to the Iditarod?

Never been, but I lived in Alaska for two different times, for seven years total, so I know all about the Iditarod.

They literally were like, “No, let’s pick something else.”

I did the World Series. I was hoping it was gonna be the Red Sox, which wasn’t until the year later, so it was, yeah, it was New York-Florida and Yankee Stadium.

And also, you got to watch the Marlins beat the Yankees.

Yeah, just as rich, man. Yeah, that’s as close to seeing the Red Sox, exactly right. And then Final Four, New Orleans basketball. And then I let my mom pick one. I said, “Mom, whatever you want to go do.”

And what’d you think?

I thought she was gonna choose the US Open. She chose Kentucky Derby. So we went down to the Kentucky Derby, and she picked the winning horse. We won 500 bucks! So, you know, it was awesome.

And you thought you didn’t win money being on Beg Borrow and Deal?

Yeah, and now look at you, man. You have built a career out of this sort of—out of not showering.

Well, no, no. Out of just throwing caution to the wind and living life and trying to crack codes that you don’t know that could be cracked.

Yeah, it’s been a really amazing journey since that show, actually. And funny enough, the producer who made Beg Borrow and Deal, the manse—the manse and they sold this concept for the next show that I did to Sci-Fi, they needed a host. They need a travel guy. So really, without Beg Borrow and Deal, I would never have come to that opportunity, which would never have led me to Travel Channel. So I guess what I’m saying is I owe it all to you.

Is that—

No, what we’re saying is, but Josh Gates, host of the Travel Channel’s Expedition Unknown: Hunt for Extraterrestrials, that if you one day do, in fact, prove that we are not the only beings in this world or galaxy or what-have-you, it all starts with that Schmo, a show Beg Borrow and Deal.

That’s right, it really does. It all started there. That’ll be on my epitaph.

We are not alone.

That’s right. Essentially, yeah.

No, it’s a—this special is really cool. It kicks off tonight. I’m really excited about it. It’s—you know, it’s a question that everybody has asked. You know, who—who hasn’t sort of looked up at the stars at some point and said, “What else is out there?” So this was a chance to go literally around the world. We did about 50,000 miles, four continents to investigate this question of life in the universe. From NASA’s Mission Control all the way down to, you know, experiencers who claim they’ve, you know, been abducted.

Hmm, everywhere in between.

So can you tell me, what is the closest that you came away saying, “All right, I believe it. I believe it. I know we are not the only ones.”