Transcript of Werner Herzog Returns

#tasty number 9 from the man you were arriving #Whoever you are, whatever your flavor # Every neighbor got their flavor. Did somebody say just me? She keeps them kids in line. Three little words, it's dinner time. Headset's down for some I-R-R-L. It's the OMG we all did smell. Have you seen Brian? Think he's made a new sign? Tasty number nine from the man you were arriving. Whoever you are, whatever your flavor. Every neighbor got their flavor. Did somebody say just me?

Hi, my name is Warnherzog, and I feel elevated. I feel weightless about being Conan O'Brien's friend.

You know what? You should. That chair you're sitting in actually is attached to a scale. You lost most of your body weight as you became my friend.

I don't know, but let's hope so. Let's hope that I'm going to dwindle down to 20 pounds or something like that. Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school, ring the bell, brand new shoes, walking loose, climb the fence, books and pens, I can tell that we are going to be friends.

I can tell that we are going to be friends. Well, hello there. Welcome to Conor O'Brien Needs a friend. I gave it a little extra today. Well, hello Yeah, you did. Sonam Of Cessian. Hello. Hello. Hello. Matt Gourley. Hi. Hi. We've got much to talk about today. What was it? You just said before we got I'm like, Talk about that. Yeah. I said, Sure, but I didn't hear what you said.

It was that Sona and I did- I have to pretend to be interested in your lives.

Here we go. Hold on. Hey, this is interesting. I understand that you guys went off on It was for summer vacation.

No, not that. What? We did Voices for a cartoon.

I forgot which thing I'm supposed to be interested in. Oh my God. I can do this. I can do this. Give me a second. Hey, you guys had an opportunity recently. Oh my God. Wow. That's exciting. I want to hear all about it.

Are your eyeballs painted on your eyelids and you're sleeping right now?

I just drew a face on a shovel. I left hours ago.

This is so funny because Sona and I never want to plan what we talk about, and he always wants to plan what we talk about. Then we finally give him something and he fucking forget.

Exactly. Because it involved your lives, and I can't channel the enthusiasm. No, I am. Here's what I've heard. All I know is that something was offered to me that I turned it down. Of course, it never got to me, and that you guys took it. Tell me about this adventure you had doing the thing that I said no to.

We talked so much about what it was and what we did, and you only remember it from the angle of how it involves you. Yes.

My own self-interest is my North Star. It's my guiding light. If I'm lost in the woods, I'll just remember who I am, and that will lead me home. When I hike in the woods, I don't bring a compass, I bring a selfie, a headshot, and I just take it out every now and then, and it leads me north.

All of this is true. Yeah. It's true.

I'm lost, and I don't know what to do. I can't see the sun.

Which way's home?

Oh, wait a minute. I've got a headshot from 1998 from NBC.

Is this you talking? Yeah, let's see here.

There it is. What a handsome fella so young, full of promise.

Oh, it's leading me to the future.

Tell me about this gig. It was a gig that I turned down.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Well, yeah. Do you want to tell it or I can- No, you tell it. We both got an email from a show on Disney called Big City Greens, which is an awesome animated show. It's a kid's show. It's a kid's show.

The thing is, when you have young kids, trust me, I did this. I went through this phase when my kids were two, three, four, five, that age, I did so many voiceovers for shows that they were really into. But what happened is because it's animation, it takes a while. Then for it to come out. By the time it would come out, I'd go, Hey, guys, I just did Gilly Galoo Patrol. Aren't you excited to be like, What are you talking about? Man, they're rolling a joint. What are you talking about? My son shaving in the corner with an electric razor. What? No one watches there anymore. That was last year. I think four times I said yes to things that by the time it came out, my kids were on to the next show. Hey, guys, I taped a Caillou seven years ago. It's finally out. It's the one where Caillou gets a wig. They found the cure for his bone cancer. Oh, my God. I'm sorry. Caillou is a fucked up kid.

Oh, my God.

Check out Caillou. I don't even know what that is. Have you seen Caillou? No, I don't know what it is. Has anyone here seen Caillou? Someone jump on Mike who's seen Caillou. Go. Yes. Am I on Mike? Yeah. Yes. Caillou is a French bald guy wearing a yellow shirt. Who looks like he's lacking in a being system. My kids were very into Caillou. I'm going to say this with all kindness. And not much happens on Caillou, and he seems rather meek. That's Caillou.

So he's just French Charlie Brown?

Oh, I was going to say French Arnold.

No, I think he's French kid who's got an autoimmune disorder. But the point is, Caillou is French for please fucking help me. There's no protein. My body can't process protein.

It's just part of the sense of, Can you help me, please? Can you help me?

Can you help me, please? Anyway, I would do things like that, and then it would come out and my kids didn't care anymore.

It does take forever.

If I had young kids, I would know. What's the show It's called Big City Greens. Big City Greens. I would know about this show, but because my kids are now older than I am through some trick of time, yeah, I don't know this show.

Well, it's great. When they did send us the email offering it to us, they were like, We originally offered this to Konan, but he couldn't do it. So now we're coming to you.

I could have done it. I have plenty of time.

Oh, okay.

Does it sweeten the case anymore that Tom Hanks has done it?

Yeah, but Tom takes a lot of shit I wouldn't do. I was offered the first Toy Story. I was offered the part of Woody, and I turned it down. This was a long time ago, and I was like, splash, I turned down. Oh. Yeah. Forrest Gump, I turned down.

That makes more sense.

Yeah. Tom mostly has taken They saw me and they said, Hey, let's- Then they wrote the script.

They wrote the character for you, specifically.

They saw me running with braces on, and I had a weird buzzcut.

I did have those braces when I was a kid.

Did you really? No.

I didn't have braces on my teeth, though.

I did. Why did you have braces on your legs?

I had the pigeon toes. I don't know even if that's the right term.

They lied to you. That's not what you're doing.

Your legs is quick as question marks. That's what they said in Forrest Scott.

My dad used to pick me up out of the crib by the bar and swing me upside down.

Wait. Did you have rickets or something?

No, I just had- You had no citrus growing up. I had feet that turned inward, and now they work too well, and I walk like a duck. My feet turned out too much.

Jesus, I didn't realize I was working in a freak show. I'm sorry. Is that inconsiderate?

Well, coming from you, it's quite a compliment.

That's nice. Sorry, I didn't realize 6,4, 190 pounds of muscle as a freak show. I think that's the technical term for Adonis. Let's move on.

We recorded these characters for Big City Greens, and you're right, it's not going to come out for at least, I think, A year and a half? Yeah.

That long?

Like a while. Yeah. She said 2027, so we can revisit this.

You're going to be sending this to your kids in law school. You're going to be saying, Hey, I'm sending you something in what used to be FedEx is now called Glip Glorp.

You think the boys are going to law school?

That's sweet. Well, I think they're going to have to. No other lawyer will take it. We got to go to law school ourselves. Right, Mikey? Right, Charlie? Who says we ain't smart? All right, here we go. I love your boys. You know that. I know. More than life itself.

I love them, too.

I'm the one who brought it up, so that's me. My guest today is a legendary filmmaker who's made over 70 films, including Grizzly Man and Fitz Craldo. He now has a new book titled The Future of Truth. I am thrilled. I'm in awe of this gentleman. Werner Hertzog. Welcome. I want to thank you for being here. When I say that, this is my second take. As a director, how do you respond when an actor demands multiple takes?

Oh, I don't care. It's movies. Actually, I do not shoot many takes, even though some of it is very, very complex. I just finished a feature film with a two Mara sisters, Kate Mara and Rune Mara.

They're fantastic, yeah.

I mean, it's something you've never seen ever before or after. They speak in unison, move in unison, and it is extremely high precision to speak in unison, have the same emotion in unison. And yet I didn't have more than two, three, maximum, maybe four takes.

Incredible.

Last time you were here, you were saying you started production on this film.

Yeah, it has been dormant for a long, long time. And it's wonderful that I finally did it. And it's also related to my writing. I wrote my memoirs, Every Man For Himself and God against all. There's a chapter towards- I like those odds.

Yeah.

Towards the end of the book, there's a chapter about unfinished business. I speak about unfinished This business, a story that I carried in me that I have partially encountered myself with two twin sisters who spoke in unison. These sisters, they not only speak in unison, they move in unison in that choreography. They fall in love with the same man. They have the same dreams, and they make the same Freudian slip of tongue at the same moment. So the film is called after one of these slips of tongue Bucking Fostered. You Bucking Fostered.

I'm going to remember that. I want to use that. Eduardo, you Bucking Fostered.

And the Bucking Foster, by the way, is Orlando Bloom, who is absolutely wonderful. They had fallen in love with him. After they become so insistent, he has to go to court for a restraining order in The judge allows something that is completely unprecedented in common law in England or Ireland, where actually shot it, to have two persons testify at the same time in the same witness stand.

Both sisters in the witness box.

They speak in unison, and they shout across. They get completely excited and in panicky and jabbing with their fingers at the plaintiff, the- Orlando Bloom. Orlando Bloom, and they shout in unison. He's lying. Don't you hear that he's lying? He's lying under oath. The bucking fast that is lying.

They both make the same slip.

Same slip of tongue, yeah.

When is this going to be out? Can you Can you screen it for us right now in this booth? Or at least to act it out. I got it.

I could tell you the story, act it out.

It just did. Part of it, it was great.

No, but it's still not finished. But I have another film that is finished. It's called Ghost Elephants. Ghost Elephants is shot in Africa in part in the United States at the Smithsonian and in some scientific labs. This will be shown in Venice, the Film Festival, end of August.

Incredible.

There's a world premiere there and then Telleride.

I just read your latest book. This is a testament to your productivity, which is off the charts, you've written a book called The Future of Truth, which is a bunch of just fascinating essays about what is the nature of truth and where are we headed in this post-strange information age that we live in. But I noticed that at the very end of the book, I'm just looking at the dust jacket as if I didn't... I don't need to read your bio, but it said something that struck me, which is you've done over 70 documentaries and feature films.

It's probably more than 80 by now.

Since we've been in this room. You ran out and directed seven movies while we were talking. We're in one of them. Yeah, exactly. But okay, over 80. I'm going to go with over 80. You should talk to your publisher. I think one of the reasons that I get nourishment from being around you is that you are such an inquisitive person in your books and in your writings. You can't mention an obscure tribe or place on Earth that you haven't been to. You'll say, and I've been there, by the way. I was there to shoot this film. I was there to do this project. Before this is over, I'd like to have your frequent flyer miles, if I could, because you're everywhere. I was fascinated to learn that you don't engage in social media, you don't have a cell phone, and I think you lead a richer life than most people I've encountered, if not everybody.

Well, it's hard to compare each one of us as the privilege of living, to live your life, to live your life, to live your life. We are here only once, so we better do something decent, do something meaningful, whatever it is at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. But I have lived with a great intensity, with great, how shall I say, also great dangers, great challenges. It has been wonderful so far. I can't complain.

I don't know how you survive without a cell phone in the modern era?

Easily, I enjoy it. I do read. But in fact, I had to get myself a cell phone. Technically, I have one now because what happened in Dublin, I was filming at the train station, parked my car at the adjacent train station building, and I couldn't get out of it because it would open only with an application on a cell phone. Apps? Yeah. Yes. You could not pay cash. You could not pay with a credit card. You had to download an app of this parking lot. Then because it would register your license plate the place where you parked in the duration of your time in parking, so I couldn't get out of it. And I was stuck. And for things like that, I do have a cell phone.

I will tell you something.

But it's always switched off. Sorry.

No, no. There's a sign of our modern times is we have in my home two young kittens. My wife and I went out and we had heard that, Oh, you can get a cat litter box that is self-cleaning. So we got it and we It got very good reviews. We put it in the room with our two kittens, and it said, To operate this, you need an app on your phone that you need to download. There's an app on our phone for cat litter. For cat litter. A cat litter box. It tells us when the cats went to the bathroom, which of the two cats went, because it knows the two of them separately by their, I guess, weight differential, what they did in there. What? Yes. What they ate. Yeah, what they ate. It analyzes the feces. Theses. It tells you what they ate. Then I think it sends the feces back in time. It's insane. I now have a new rule, which is I don't want to buy a product that requires me to have an app. I think that's a crime. I think it should be a federal crime. To demand that, Oh, this is really nice.

I bought these socks. You need to download the app. It tells you if it's on the right foot or the left foot. It tells you what your temperature of your body is. It gives you alerts about how the sock is feeling.

It's insane. Too much this information comes in through it, and people get addicted, and they cannot take their eyes off and keep scrolling, scrolling. And of course, everything that comes in via your cell phone or your laptop emails or whatever, you have to trust, you have to doubt. Every single mail asking you for, let's say, your information, your information for making a money transfer is probably something fraudulent going on. Every mail that you receive, let's say, young girls receive mails from a young, handsome young man. Maybe behind it is a predator who is 60, pretending to be a 17-year-old kid.

You're looking at me. I didn't. That was an innocent thing I was doing. Well, this gets us to this book, which I very much enjoy is called The Future of Truth. Again, I don't know how you're able to make over 80 documentaries, films, constantly travel the globe, and I think you've generated two books since this new book, which will be coming out soon. But you're talking about truth. What is truth? What are we talking about when we talk about truth and how unattainable it is? At the same time, you make the point that it's the absolute truth of any issue is impossible to determine, but we must strive for it. The striving is the important part.

Well, nobody knows what truth is. We do not know. There was a survey among philosophers, 2,000 or so of them, and scientists, mathematicians, and trying to get a definition of truth. Nobody could come up with it. There's no way. There are different schools of thinking, schools that link truth very much with reality and facts. But the question immediately would arise, what is reality? Am I real? Am I just a rumor sitting here? Am I an imposter to try to persuade you it's me? However, it somehow innate, it's inborn in us, that some search for truth that makes us distinct from the cows in the field. In all my work, whoever is an artist, a filmmaker, is always confronted with a question of truth. It's something very, very deeply inherent in us. I always have struggled with it, always have tried to define it and find a deeper stratum of truth in filmmaking, in writing, and it makes it meaningful what I do. And yet I do not claim that I'm in possession of the truth. However, I found ways to approximate what we think may be truth. That's something deeply known in us. Because I'm sometimes changing facts, I modify facts, but not for the sake of misleading you or cheating you.

I do it for the sake of arriving at a deeper stratum of truth. I can simply explain it with Michelangelo, who did the sculpture of the Pietar in St. Peter's, the Virgin Mary with her son taken from cross in her lap. When you look at the son, he's a 33-year-old man, tormented, and the mother is only 15 or maybe 17. So my question now comes, did Michelangelo try to cheat us or give us fake news? Of course, he didn't. He wanted to, by modifying facts, got us into a deeper insight into the very nature of Jesus Christ, the man of sorrows, and into his mother, the Virgin. That's the way I see it.

That he could have depicted Mary being 20, 30, 40 years older in that moment. Sure, yes. And that It might have lined up more with chronologically what's happening in that moment, but it would not have not arrived. It would not have had the emotional impact, which is truthful had he not altered their ages.

Yeah, sure. Of course, would he have shown the Virgin Mary as, let's say, a 55-year-old woman? Yeah. He would have created what I call the accountants' truth. There's such a thing like fact-based accountants' truth, which is a term that, again, is not completely applicable to these things. But I do believe that he showed us something very, very deep in the emotional context. It's always something that is among all the crazy facts and implausible things. Emotions are always, strange enough, are always truthful. I describe In that case, I made a film called Family Romance LLLC. In Japan, there's this company, an agency that rents out friends or family members.

I am You are familiar with this because I've done it.

You are familiar? I know.

I've done it. In Japan, you can rent. It's to deal with the problem of loneliness, and you talk about this in the book, you can rent a family.

Exactly. The family is fake, but the emotions are truthful. That's a significant thing. Or, for example, you have an opera, which I describe in the book, an opera stories. Sometimes I'm completely incredible and strange and wild and completely exaggerated out of context of any credibility and plausibility. And yet with the power of music, the emotions of the audience, the emotions that we feel, are completely truthful.

Every neighbor got their flavor. Did somebody say just me? He keeps them kids in line. Three little words, it's dinner time. Head sets down for some IRL. It's the orange we all did smell. Have you seen Brian? Think he's made a new sign? Tasty number nine from the man you were arriving.

Whoever you are, whatever your flavor.

Every neighbor got their flavor. If somebody say, Just be.

In the book, you break down the plot of an opera. It's the most insanely implausible. Just breaking down the story lines and how people are posing as other people and fleeing, but then bumping into each other in a cave a thousand miles away, but then marrying each other accidentally, but then having kids who then... It goes and goes and goes. But you're right when the music is added and there's a power. How many times have we broken down the lyrics to rock and roll song that we love, a rock and roll anthem, and you just look at the lyrics and you think, Well, this is ridiculous. But if the band is playing it and you're hearing that recording, you think this is an elemental truth in our lives. We should have sugar poured on us. We should all have sugar poured on us. That's a rare occasion where I actually read the text and I think the text holds up, too.

You see, come on, it's Opera is a transformation of an entire world into music, and then you achieve it. As you mentioned, I mean, the story I'm describing, La Forza del Testino, the Force of Destiny. It starts with a young lover who is actually an Inca Prince entering at night through the window of his beloved. The father, an aristocrat, has just left and hears some commotion or some noise his returns, corners the intruder who has drawn his pistol because he thinks he's attacked. But he recognizes the father, throws his pistol away to show that he has no bad intention. The pistol hits the ground, discharges, and hits the father through the heart and kills him. So that's only the beginning.

That's the first action of the play.

It's just the first few minutes.

It's the most reasonable thing that happens in the opera. It just goes and goes and goes.

Yes, it gets wilder and wilder. And yet there's a beauty about it. The beauty of... And in the joy of, by the way, the joy of stories, the joy of storytelling. When I modify things, of course, I would let the audience know. Either the story is so implausible, it cannot... I did a film in Kuwait when everything was set on fire before the first the Kuwait war. All the oil wells were on fire. And the commentary at the beginning explains that this was shot on a planet in our solar system. Meaning we as an audience know it cannot have been shot on Pluto or on Mars or on Jupiter. It must have been filmed here. But the world that you see is not recognizable anymore. There's 60 minutes of images where you cannot recognize our planet anymore. It's not embellishing. It's in a way modifying things in order to enter into a deeper truth, into some sort that elevates.

What I took away from the book was we all do this. It's in us. There's something called an Irish fact, which is when the Irish get going on a story, they use Irish facts, which are not... No, this is not factually correct. But when a person such as myself, who's 100% genetically the Irish and steeped in whatever that is, good and bad, is when I'm telling a story, the worst thing that you can do is step in and go, Well, no, Konan, stop. Hold on. No, no, no. You spent $18. You said $17. It was $18. This is going out to you, my beloved wife, Liza. She will hold me to account on some of the facts sometimes, and I'll look at her like, The facts don't matter in this story. I know that I'm switching reaching things out left and right, but it's a really good story, and it is getting to some moment that feels like it's the truth to me.

More truth than the sheer fact. Yes. That's the beauty about it. That's the beauty about storytelling, the beauty about invention, the beauty about the invention somehow enters your heart and enters your dreams, but not your books of the accountant.

Well, I think that's what you're talking about throughout the book is that emotions get us to a truth sometimes that facts cannot deliver. We live in this world right now where people are constantly contesting, this is a fact, no, that's fake news. What's real? What's not real? We have deep fakes, we have AI. We're constantly debating, whose reality are we going to use, which is the real reality. But I do think there are moments where everyone can look at something and the emotion they feel about it delivers the real truth.

Yeah, but you have to be careful about it because when you look, for example, at Germany in the late '20s, early '30s, and when Hitler came to power, it was this emotional impact.

Yeah, that's true.

So you have to be very, very- No, it's not unfailing, but it's- Just be suspicious, remain suspicious. And you see, I see today 10-year-olds who very casually tell me, Oh, don't open this here. That's an attempted fishing, or what they call it. And they look at it. Yes. And they say, Yeah, look at this here and look at that here. Just put it into junk. And they deal with it with great ease.

They've grown up with it. Younger people- Yes, but even the generation of, let's say, the 2030-year-old who also grew up with it, don't have this ease and nonchalance about separating eating things and being suspicious.

It's a little bit like with prehistoric men. When they were out roaming around and hunting and gathering, they would gather berries and they would gather mushrooms. But I'm sure they were suspicious about things and they would not pick the poisonous mushroom or the poisonous berry. They had a natural acquired suspicion about things, and it was so natural that we can certainly assume that they did not hate nature. They didn't hate nature. They just knew how to navigate. It's the same thing you don't have to hate the internet and the cell phone and whatever is coming at you in these new media. You just have to maintain a complete level of suspicion. Truth is not like a point somewhere far out in the distance, like a light. Something translucent, something which is far out there, which you can never reach. It's more a process of searching for it, approximating and having doubts It's going wrong routes and then recalibrating your way. That's what I have done all my life. Knowing that I will never get it the very, very truth, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter the search itself.

The search is the point.

The search is the point. The not giving up the search. Could I have the book? Because the very last chapter I would like- I wish this was your book, but you know what?

It's not. The publisher sent a But I have it. You have it, good. They sent us... I have your copy at home, your paperback, but to have a hardback here on the table, they sent us... I think there's a... This is pornography they sent us. Very good, by the way. Fantastic. Actually, no. There's a picture of Fabio here.

No, that is the book. Oh, this is the book? The cover is correct. But you see the...

What did they put here? This is the great degeneration, how institutions decay and economies die.

No, don't worry about these things. Let them decay. But you see, I just recorded it in a studio, and it will be out as an audiobook. At the same time with the printed version. It has a last chapter, The Future of Truth. In the future, the chapters are 10 pages, 15 pages or whatever. The very last chapter is only two lines long, The Future of Truth, and it reads, Truth has no future, but truth has no past either. But we will not Must not, must not, cannot give up the search for it. End of the book.

Yeah. No, it's... It's... The striving is probably what it's ultimately all about. It's interesting because I'm thinking about the way you live your life. We talked earlier about how it must help you that you've kept things simple. You avoid the distractions of social media and a cell phone. You also avoid a lot of the distractions of materialism. You've had a great success, but unlike many famous directors, you're driving a car that you've owned for maybe 12 years.

The last one, 17 or 18 years.

17 or 18 years? Yeah. Okay. What car is it?

A simple Ford Explorer.

Okay.

But the most primitive.

I love that's a great... This is why Ford Explorer is not asking you to do commercials. Because you went Ford Explorer and then you shrug, what are you going to do?

Okay, let's take the name out of it.

No, that's okay. It's a simple- No, but I asked for the one with the least amount of digital things in it.

Yeah, good. No phone calls that come in or Google, whatever, maps and routing you. I I asked, Do you still have a car where I can hand crank my windows? They said, No, since 12 years, nobody produces it anymore. Then I asked, Do you have a car if my electric system somehow fails me that I can hand crank the Windschild Viper in a thunderstorm? They just laughed, but they got the point. I just need four wheels and engine in the steering wheel.

Fred Flintstone had it, right? Yeah. I don't think you own a lot of clothing or shoes, right? No. Do you have how many pairs of shoes?

Basically, one pair, but I do have sandals.

Someone's hit the big time. Take it easy. You sound like Jesus Christ. I also have sandals. Oh, Jesus. Hitting the big time.

But, Konan, you will understand, as you have been in the Austrian Mountains not long ago, I do have strong heavy boots for being in rocky terrain. It's not just one pair of shoes, but basically- But you keep things very simple.

Yeah, sure.

I don't need- Do you have a lot of suits and things like that? No, no. The jacket, I put it on for you today.

This is the jacket that you own? No. What are you, Johnny Appleseed?

No, actually, I own a jacket that's very Bavarian in style. Yeah. I I actually own a suit, but for very formal events where I would dress up to the occasion.

I do understand. I didn't use to understand this, but When Maria Kando's books came out and she started talking about, you need to clean out your closet, you need to these things weigh on you, that resonated with me that when I have a lot of stuff, It has a psychic weight, which doesn't really make sense, but it feels like it does. It doesn't mean I'm going to have less.

Oh, you're not learning from it. Oh, no. You're not adjusting anything.

I have 15 homes. I've never been to 12 of them, but I won't let anyone else stay in them because they're mine. No, but I do understand the principle of it.

Well, the principle is the observation that we are are ruining our environment because of two major reasons, underlying reasons. Number one, we are too many for this planet. We are using 8 or 9 billion, 9,000 million human beings, and the resources of our planet are not sufficient. So we are overdrafting our account here on this planet. The second thing is consumerism. There's a great amount of human beings on this planet and growing into consumerism. You see it with emerging countries, they are wildly into consumerisms. That's why I love, for example, the Amish. The Amish who do not want to have electricity, do not want to drive cars, they have horse buggies, they do not have telephones, television, or anything like that. Let's say if there's a cataclysmic catastrophe, they are the first survivors because they are homestead farmers, and they can provide what they need. Inuit, by the way, would also hunter-gatherers would have a real survival if it comes to a cataclysmic catastrophe, which is not too far fetched to think about it. So just in order to understand what's going on, throwing things away is not the right thing. It doesn't feel right, and it doesn't feel right, Konan, because I grew up as a child of the Second World War.

I was born in the middle of Second World War. I know what hunger is. I was hungry two and a half years of, and that's my strongest memory, being really hungry. It pains me. It pains me to see how people are throwing 40% of the food away into the trash. It's not that I want to be ideological or being the the profit of anything. It just pains me. It pains me, and it's not right that we are into this amount of consumerism. It would be very easy to reduce the amount of things that you are throwing away by simply managing your fridge better. I overlook sometimes something and, Oh my God, it's gone and it's moldy and I throw it away. But it doesn't happen very often. It's simply because my experience in life was different than your experience in life for most of the people that I encounter here. Not that you have to adopt my ways of life, but it's healthy to look a little about how we are in a culture of consumerism.

It has to be a profound influence on you the way that you were born into that cataclysmic event and then experienced hunger, which is the most primal, really, deprivation you can feel. I know as one of six kids in a family, I didn't know hunger, but I knew the fear of my brother's taking my food. You'll attest to this, Sona. I eat like somebody in a prison yard. I have my arms around my food. I'm here living in Los Angeles with everything at my disposal. I still eat my food very quickly and my eyes dart around because I think Neil's going to get it if I'm not careful. And so these things stick with you.

Yeah, but what sticks more to me is not that I was hungry. It's remembering my mother who could not feed us. Three boys, and she doesn't have enough food to satisfy the most basic needs.

In a way, you're remembering her pain at not being able to perform.

Kids get over it easily. It didn't damage me that I was hungry. It made me alert. It made me curious. It made me looking around what is not going right here. My My mother, when we were tagging at her skirt and we were wailing and we are hungry and give her something to eat. I remember that moment, she spins around completely collected and calm. She says to us, Shut up, children. Shut up, boys. If I could cut it out of my ribs, I would cut it out of my ribs, but I can't. She goes on working in whatever she was doing. It sticks to me. It's seared in the air. Yeah, of course it does.

Oh, my God.

That's much worse. For the parents, for the mother, it's much worse to be incapable of feeding the children. It's for the children themselves. We can take a lot.

Yeah. I'm thinking about your book brings up all these questions, and there's so much to talk about, obviously, with AI and deep fakes and how I'm talking about the search for truth, but everything can be manipulated now, and it's only going to... We're just at the beginning. I'm curious, are you okay, Werner, with your distinctive voice, your image living on beyond you? First of all, I'm sure it exists. I'm sure there are Werner AI generated.

Even before AI, I had at least 30 doppelgangers and they speak with my voice. They adopt my accent. I mean, fine, let's accept my accent as it is, but they give you advice for difficult situations in your life. They read books to you. They They tell you jokes, they do whatever. I thought, yes, experience of self has changed, and of course, with the internet in particular, and doppelgangers and fakes of you are rampant out there, and I'm sure there are fake Konans out there.

No one wants to do that. There's been no takers. They want other Werners. No one wants another Konan.

You're making them and everyone's like, No, thanks.

I'm trying to sell them. Give them away for free.

No, I can live with it easily. Let them do the battle out there and let them do the dirty fight out. I mean, the doppelgangers.

But I'm thinking right now, if I could change the directions in my car to being Werner, I would happily do that. I would happily have Werner telling me to take a left on Crenshaw. That would fill me with delight. If If I were to enable you to buy another pair of shoes, then everyone wins.

I should be actually the voice of these systems. They tell you in 500 feet from now, turn left.

Or get more philosophical. In 500 feet, you will cease to exist.

No. Calmly, calmly, intimidating. Turn left now.

Something like that, yeah. Or else, you have arrived, or have you? Yes. Do any of us really arrive? But we always have a philosophical question.

We must drive to arrive.

No, It's the journey that's important.

No, it would be great joy if I would pop up with the voice to give you guidance for turning right or left or going for the next 12 miles straight. No, the experience of self is a massive change. Of course, AI, I do not want to put it down completely because it has glorious, magnificent possibilities in science, in pharmaceuticals, in transportation, and you just name it. But at the same time, it has already its on route to take over warfare, directing drones, and I mean, huge swarms of them. It will be overwhelming the face of warfare of the future. Of course, cheating, pretending, propagandizing, all these things are like a nemesis. It's out there, and we have to be alert to it. Again, I say, when you're curious, and when you access different sources, very quickly, you find out this is even invented. I've seen movies, short films, completely created by artificial intelligence, story and acting and everything, and they look completely dead. They are stories, but they have no soul.

They don't have a spark.

It's not only a spark, they are empty and soulless. You know it's a most common, lowest denominator of what is filling billions and billions of informations on the Internet, the common denominator. Nothing beyond this common denominator can be found in these fabrications. You will immediately identify it. You will find it very quickly. I have no problem that people are using it like school kids using it as a tool, the same way we used dictionaries or encyclopedias in my time, where we would use a calculator for calculating multiplication or the square root of something, fine. But you should understand what does it mean a square root of something? What is the mathematical concept behind it? What is the mathematical concept of logarithmic curves and things like that? You have to know that. If you know that, use the calculator. That's fine.

It's interesting because when I listen to you, when I speak with you, when I I see your work, I see your films, there's a pattern where things can get quite grim, but then you'll say something that makes me very optimistic. I find that it's a bit of a wave, which it should be because you can always see both. But I find myself, even in this course of this chat we've had, at times feeling like you're telling me we're all in great danger and it's over, but also feeling optimistic at times that if we strive and if we try to see things as they are or we make multiple attempts to find a real truth, we'll get there somehow. I'm always end up with two ends to the story when I talk to you. A bright one and a darker one, which I think is probably okay.

Sure, yes. I love storytelling, and I love what I do. Of course, when I listen to you, yes, you're right, and it continues until this very day. I just made a film called Ghost Elephant, a documentary in Africa, Namibia and Angola. That's okay. What is interesting is that tribal people in the Southern part of Africa, Calahari, Sun, Bushmen, Tribesmen, they link the fate of humans to the fate of elephants. If these elephants disappear, human beings also will disappear because They are mutually somehow incorporated in each other's. The soul of elephants lives in you and lives in, in case of these tribal people, lives in our tribal communities. It's beautiful to see that. It sounds a little bit as if it were a documentary on wildlife, but you see elephants only for 20 seconds in the film. Otherwise, you see ghosts, you see the spirits of elephants. How do you show the spirit of an elephant? That's a big question. They show the glory and the magnificence of elephants. At the same time, as you have suggested, yes, there's this glorious side in the dark side. If we exterminate them, it will probably lead to our self-destruction.

And yet, of course, we don't do it completely. We try to protect them, preserve them, study them, keep them alive. Yeah.

That's a great way to look at environmentalism is do it for ourselves, not for It's not to be noble, but these creatures need to endure so that we can endure.

Sure. It's more than just enduring. Thrive. Today, as we are around it about in still thriving, I do not I want to live in a world without lions, period. I just want to see them around or without elephants.

Is there an animal you hate that you're fine if we get rid of it?

Well, yeah, I'm worried about spiders.

I just wanted you to admit. So it's okay to kill this. If you're listening, kill a spider.

A spider, a tarantula, that didn't sting me or bite me, almost killed me once. I was in the jungle, in the Peruvian jungle.

But not a bite? It had a gun?

No, no, no. We were desperately trying to get a flight, a single engine flight, amphibians flight, far out into a small tributary of the Amazon. I was woken up every night, The plane is there. So it wasn't there. So I went back to sleep. Suddenly at 4: 00 in the morning, Wake up, wake up, get out, get up. The plane is there. So I put on some clothes I just put one shoe in the other, and there's a socks still in there. I grab into the shoe and pull it out, and it's a tarantula. I mean, almost hairy as big as my fist. I dropped the tarantula, and my heart stopped beating. It literally stopped beating, and I knew it. I thought to myself, dying from a heart attack is ridiculous, not because of a tarantula that has not even bitten you. I was sitting there and I was looking at the tarantula and tried to listen at my heartbeat, which wasn't there anymore. Then after 20 seconds or 30 seconds, all of a sudden, I was back to life. I don't like spiders.

Do you have an edit of our My favorite quote of yours from one of the previous podcasts was you talking about your favorite reality, or a reality show that intrigued you. It's burned into my brain, and I hope to burn it into everyone else's. Give it a roll, Eduardo.

Here comes Honey Boo Boo.

That just makes me happy. You enunciating Boo Boo. It gives me so much joy. Do you still watch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, or have you moved on to Love Island?

Now I'm still searching around Honey Honey Boohoo, of course, you made something beautiful out of it. I had no idea that it would have such repercussion in your spiritual life. Oh, it's huge.

It's the only reason I get out of bed in the morning. When I'm down, I think of you saying Honey Boohoo, and it makes me very happy.

I had no idea that it was that funny, but I accept it. Today, I enjoy myself because you made it into such a wild thing.

Well, a joy to talk to you always, Werner, and I'm in awe of your spirit and your tenacity and your curiosity. These are all great qualities, and we can all... I should get a bracelet. What would Werner do? Because I think you have a terrific outlook on life, and I'd like to be a little more like Werner Hertzog. So Werner, until we meet again, thank you so much for being here and for honoring us with your presence and your insights.

I enjoy to be with you on this table. Thanks a lot.

Yeah. And yes, look for... If you want to request that Werner Hertzog become directional vocals on your- You can actually do that on the Waze.

Speaking of app, on the Waze app, you can plug in a few little things. Probably there are enough sound bites from this recording. Turn left, and I'm worried about spiders.

Look for that soon. All right. Thank you, Werner. Thanks.

Every neighbor got their flavor. Oh, yeah. Can somebody say, Just me? Emergency at 23, Efa's extended family. Can't you get a rewind? No. Nappies, coffee rolls to go. Nates, dates in a hot mess. No, Chilly, it's an SOS. Major cookup, Louis Sawyer. Let me call the Reenforcedman's for you.

Whoever you are, whatever you are, Every neighbor got their flavor.

Did somebody say, just be.

I'd like to discuss, not the elephant in the room, but Sona's dog in the room. Okay. Sona, this is a first. I sat down at the mic, like any professional, ready to go, when in my peripheral vision, I looked to my right and I see that Oakey, your dog, is with you. Oakey has been a fixture for a long time. When did you get Oakey? She's a special girl.

Well, we were just talking about this. We got her in September 2018, and this podcast premiered November 2018.

Oakey is pretty much the exact same age as the podcast. Yes.

And the same amount of downloads.

Do you guys ever think about what your animals sound like? Yeah. Mine are like, Oh, What?

Mine is, feed me, fucking feed me all day long. Feed me.

I'm worried she's a little depressed lately because she's been under her bed a lot. She used to roam around, but I think she's just not used to the change of scenery. She's just been under the bed a lot.

Have you checked under the bed? There might be like half a ham back there.

Oh, no, the half ham. We left it there. I forgot. No, she's just, I don't know.

I just brought her. She just wants to hang out with us. Now, Oakey Let's talk about Oakey, of course. Famously, you brought Oakey to a restaurant once when you were going to meet me because you thought, Well, I'm eating with Konan. They don't allow dogs at the restaurant, but I'll bring Oakey because who's going to say boo to Konan O'Brien? So you used... Did you use me?

Yes, I did use you. I did. Who was going to say... I mean, look, it was outdoors. You're making me sound really shitty right now.

You used to do this when you would drive me places. You would go like a hundred 10 miles an hour in a residential zone, and your whole attitude was, What are they going to do if they pull me over? I'm sitting here with the golden child, Conan O'Brien.

Have you ever... You don't even have to talk about this, but you've been pulled over, and they haven't given you a ticket.

You know what they do? What? They pull me over and they say, Sir, do you realize, Holy fuck. Are you... And I go, Well, yes, officer. I just... So How much work, so prolific. September 13th, 1993. Oh, God. Every medium, you try a total home run. Officer, please. Officer, do you need a change of pants? I do. Then they always let me wear their cap. They give me candy.

They shoot their gun, probably.

They let me shoot their gun. They let me shoot their gun. Yeah, it's amazing.

Yeah, but you made me I didn't sound bad. It was outdoors. We were meeting outdoors at a restaurant. There weren't any other dogs there, but I don't think I explicitly asked.

They explicitly said no dogs. You walked in holding your dog, sat down opposite me. A woman at the next table went into anaphylactic shock because she was allergic to dogs. She is no longer with us. She died? Yeah. Did she? Yeah.

But Oakey got to sit with us.

I said, We should use a pen knife and make a small opening in her tracheia so she can breathe. You said, On it, chief, and stabbed her to death in the throat. I heard about this. It was all over the papers. The papers.

Then you let Oakey just go feed from everybody's plates.

And from her wound.

But they didn't arrest me because I was with Konan.

Yeah, they couldn't. They said, You're technically guilty of murder, but...

Konan. Oh, my God.

Sure, I'm a cover of TV God, three times. Rolling Stone twice. You were one of us magazine's 75 Bachelors in 1995 to, quote, Keep an eye on. Is that real? I don't know. I think that last one's true.

Yeah.

Yeah. Speaking of the early days of this podcast, Oakey played a pivotal part because one of the earliest segments we did, and we should recount this story, at least in a nutshell, is the text between you and Konan about Oakey. Do you remember this? I don't. The Oakey shits?

Remember when I text you? I was like, Oakey, shit everywhere, and there's throw up, and I got to stay and clean it up, and then I'll be in soon.

I read it which way?

You read it as, I'm going to be late. Okay, I shit everywhere.

Yes. The dog's name is Oakey, and this is a blast in the past, and what a blast. But you said, Oakey shit everywhere. I read- That's so what are we saying. Yeah, I'm going to be late. Okay, I shit everywhere. I thought, wow. Tmi.

We were talking about this before. The sentiment and the reading of it is like, I'm going to be late. Pause. All right, you got me. I'm late because I shit everywhere.

No one asking me.

I just pictured you firing at the walls.

Don't picture it.

But then- Too late.

Every listener is now, too.

Then remember you got that second dog? Yeah. Its name is I have to be honest with you. You said, remember I got I have to be honest with you, I. Yeah. It was the name of the dog was I have to be honest with you, I. It was all ran together. I have to be honest with you, I was the name of the dog, which is our Romanian term, meaning bright sun come over a mountain. Anyway- While shitting. Yeah. You said, I have to be honest with you, I humped the leg of a chair for three hours with my eyes rolled back in my head. I said, What? You said, Yeah, I have to be honest with you, I has an erection that won't go away and has gone for nine hours straight.

Remember this? Do you remember your dog, To Tell the Truth, I? Yeah, come on. To Tell the Truth, I licked my own butt for a long time?

Then remember Where you got a cat called Don't Tell Anyone. This is just between us, but I. Remember that? These are all true stories. This is true. If only did you ever think of Fido or Arth or Snoopy?

No. Oh, no. Poor Oakey. Oakey, they're using you for comedy father. You know what?

You can tell Oakey knows what's happening because Oakey has just sunk his head, her chin down onto your leg and is just in a depressive funk. Yeah, she is. I'm locked once again. Oh, yeah. I can't wait to get back under that bed and nibble that half ham. Oh, my God. Why do you keep hams under the bed? Is that some- Yeah, why? I love ham. Okay.

Why wouldn't you keep ham under the bed?

You're sleeping and you've got your eye mask on and you just do a reach under and grab a hunk?

Pre-bedtime ham hunk.

I love that.

Is it on the floor just getting dusty? Yeah.

It's all covered in- It's collecting a lot of things.

It's seasoned. It's getting seasoned. The dust actually makes it taste a little better. You guys should try it. Bed ham.

Bed ham. Well, I enjoyed this segment. I really did. I'm glad you did. I'm glad you brought... I'm going to reach over and give Oki. She's special.

What's Where did your name, Oki, come from?

When Tak and I were in Japan, we were in Okinawa for our honeymoon for a chunk of it. Then my friend, Nairi, posted her picture on Instagram and said that they were looking for a home for her. To remember where we were, we called her Oki, which is short for Okinawa.

You had a really nice wedding.

We had 550 people at that wedding.

It was great. It was really fun.

That's not a wedding.

That's a convention. It was a convention.

I wish I knew you back then. I I would have invited you. It would have been crazy. People throw money on the floor. You're dancing on money the whole night. It's awesome. Then did you guys hear someone in Glendale stole the money from a wedding? What? Yeah.

Well, just so everyone knows, Romanian weddings, you throw money in the air. Yes.

You throw money in the air. There's money everywhere.

It's $1 bills.

Well, some of them are like fives.

Not at your wedding. How dare you? I was looking hard for a I would take a five. I would have taken a two. They were all singles. I'm sorry. It looked like there was an explosion at the Scores Trip Club.

But there were a lot of ones. Then there's no registry, usually. It's just envelopes of cash. You put them in a box and some guy came into a hall in Glendale and then stole the whole box of money. It must have been $100,000. Oh, my God. Crazy. There's a video. You see him sauntering and grabbing it.

Do we know who he is? Has he been caught? No. But they have him on video.

Yeah. Yeah, but it's fresh. It's fresh. It just happened.

You should have a crime show where nothing's ever solved, but you have that exact optimistic tone. They never figured it out. Yes.

Never. They called him the Zodiac.

No one figured it out. Anyway, next week, this guy went in the woods and he's just gone. I don't know. Did they find him? I don't know. Isn't it great? Yes.

That's a great podcast. I'm going to do it.

Well, listen, I'm going to wrap this up because I think we've gone on for quite a while, but we had some good laughs I do love Oakey, especially you bought him, I remember, or you had it made, I'm sorry, her. Different pronouns, I suppose.

Who knows?

I don't know. You bought Oakey a little slash hat because you love Slash with us and Roses. A top hat?

She was a slash for Halloween one year. She had a little leather jacket. She's got curly hair. Yeah, she had. We just got her groom, but usually she's fluffy, and she was Slash-like. It was awesome. Very cool. Yeah.

All right. Well, peace out.

She's the coolest dog in the world.

Peace out. Don't say Tupac. No, I was going to say Slash. Oh, okay.

It's very cool. You could say it.

Yeah. Saul Hudson. Love him. What a great guy.

He's the best.

Good friend to us. We've touched on many subjects. We've roamed. We came up with some amazing dog names. If you want to use them, we will lease them to you. Peace out, Saul Hudson, Slash, Tupac.

Saul Hudson, Slash, Tupac. Yeah.

Shout out to some of his other dogs. I swear to God, you can't tell anybody but I. This is a complete cone of silence. You can never breathe a word of this, but here goes I. You have to swear on your life, in your mother's life, in your father's life, that you will never repeat what I'm about to tell you, I. Peace out.

Conan O'Brien needs a friend. With Konan O'Brien, Sonam of Cessian and Matt Gourley. Produced by me, Matt Gourley. Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Jeff Ross and nick Leal. Theme song by the White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering and Mixing by Eduardo Perez and Brenda Burns. Additional production support by Mars Melnik. Talent Booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, and Brit Kohn. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts, and you might find your review read on a future episode. Got a question for Konan? Call the Team Coco Hotline at 669-587-2847 and leave a message. It too could be featured on a future episode. You can also get three free months of SiriusXM when you sign up at siriusxm. Com/konan. If you haven't already, please subscribe to Konan O'Brien Needs a Friend wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.

Every neighbor got their flavor. Did somebody say just me? Emergency at 23, Efa's extended family. Can't you get a rewind? Nappies, coffee rolls to go. Nace dates in a hot mess. No chilly, it's an SOS. Major cookup, we saw ya. Let me call the reenforcedman's for ya.

Whoever you are, whatever your flavor.

Every neighbor got their flavor. Did somebody say just me?