Hi, my name is Werner Herzog.
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.
Yeah, 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 gonna be friends.
Yes, i can tell that we are gonna be friends.
Well, hello there.
Welcome to Conor O'Brien Needs a Friend.
I gave it a little extra today.
Well, hello there.
Yeah, you did.
Sonam Avsesian.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Matt Gourley.
Hi.
Hi.
We've got much to talk about today.
What was it?
You just said before we got on mic, talk about that.
Yeah.
And I said, sure, but I didn't hear what you said.
It was that Sona and I did.
I'm going to 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 a 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.
Hold on.
I can do this.
I can do this.
Give me a second.
Hey, you guys had an opportunity recently.
Oh.
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 forgets.
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.
Yeah.
And that you guys took it.
So 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.
Yes.
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.
I'm lost and I don't know what to do.
I can't see the sun.
Which way is 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?
No, you tell it.
So 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.
And 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 for it to come out.
And by the time it would come out, I'd go, hey, guys, I just did Gilly Galoo Patrol.
And 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 that anymore.
That was last year.
So 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.
I don't either.
Have you seen Caillou?
No, I don't know what it is.
Has anyone here seen Caillou?
Someone jump on mic who's seen Caillou.
Go.
Yes.
Am I on mic?
Yeah.
Yes.
Caillou's a French bald guy wearing a yellow shirt maybe.
Who looks like he's lacking in the immune 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.
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.
So...
It does take forever.
If I had young kids, I would know.
What's the show called?
Big City Greens.
Big City Greens.
I would know about this show.
But because my kids are now, you know, older than I am through some trick of time.
Yeah, I don't know this show.
Well, it's it's great.
And when they did send us the email offering it to us, they were like we originally offered this to Conan 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 just like, eh.
Splash I turned down.
Oh.
Yeah.
Forrest Gump I turned down.
That makes more sense.
Yeah.
Tom mostly has taken things...
They saw me, and they said, hey.
And they wrote the script.
They wrote the character for you, specifically.
They saw me running with braces on, and I had a weird buzz cut.
I did have those braces when I was a kid.
Did you really?
You did?
No, did you?
I didn't have braces on my teeth, though.
I did.
But wait, why did you have braces on your legs?
I had the pigeon toes.
I don't know even if that's the right term.
Oh, they lied to you.
That's not what you're talking about.
Your legs as crooked as question marks.
Yeah.
That's what they said in Forrest Gump.
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 feet.
You had no citrus growing up.
I had feet that turned inward and now they work too well and I walk like a duck.
Like my feet turn out too much.
Jesus.
I didn't realize I was working at a freak show.
I'm sorry, is that inconsiderate?
Well, coming from you, it's quite a compliment.
Oh, that's nice.
Sorry, I didn't realize 6'4", 190 pounds of muscle is a freak show.
I think that's the technical term for Adonis.
Let's move on.
So we recorded these characters for Big City Greens.
And you're right.
It's not going to come out for like at least I think a year and a half.
Yeah.
That long?
Like a while.
Yeah.
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.
Oh, you think the boys are going to law school?
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.
I love them, too.
I'm the one who brought it up, so that's on me.
My guest today is a legendary filmmaker who's made over 70 films, including Grizzly Man and Fitzcarraldo.
He now has a new book titled The Future of Truth.
I am thrilled.
I'm in awe of this gentleman.
Werner Herzog, welcome.
Thank you.
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 that it's movies.
And actually, I do not shoot many takes, even though some of it is very, very complex.
I just finished a feature film with the 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.
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 writing, to my writing.
I wrote my memoirs.
Every man for himself and God against all.
I like those odds.
Towards the end of the book, there's a chapter about unfinished business.
And I speak about unfinished business, a story that I carried in me that I've partially encountered myself with two twin sisters who spoke in unison.
And these sisters, they not only speak in unison, they move in unison in their 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 fasted.
In court.
You bucking foster.
I'm going to remember that.
I want to use that.
Eduardo, you bucking foster.
And the bucking foster, by the way, is Orlando Bloom, who is absolutely wonderful.
Wow.
And they... had fallen in love with him.
And after they become so insistent, he has to go to court for a restraining order.
And the judge allows something that is completely unprecedented in common law in England or Ireland where I actually shot it to have two persons testify at the same time in the same witness stand.
Both sisters in the witness box.
And they speak in unison and they shout across.
They get completely excited and panicky and jabbing with their fingers at the plaintiff.
Orlando Bloom.
Orlando Bloom.
And they shout in unison.
He's lying. is lying under oath.
The bucking fasted is lying.
And they both make the same slip.
Same slip of tongue, yeah.
When is this going to be out?
Can you screen it for us right now in this booth?
Or at least act it out.
I could tell you the story, act it out.
You just did part of it.
It was great.
No, but it's still not finished.
Yes, yeah.
But I have another film that is finished.
It's called Ghost Elephants.
Ghost Elephants are shot in Africa and part in the United States at the Smithsonian and in some scientific labs.
This will be shown in Venice Film Festival end of August.
Incredible.
There's a world premiere there and then Telluride.
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.
So 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 doesn't really matter anymore.
But I have lived with great intensity, with great how shall I say?
Also great dangers, great challenges.
And 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.
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 station.
Train station building.
And I couldn't get out of it because it would open only with an application on a cell phone.
Apps.
Yes, you could not pay cash.
You could not pay with a credit card.
You had to download an app of this parking lot.
And 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 unpack it and 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.
So there's an app on our phone for cat litter.
A cat litter box.
And 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.
It tells you what they ate.
And then I think it sends the feces back in time.
It's insane.
And 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.
Yeah.
It's insane.
And too much disinformation comes in through it and people get addicted and they cannot take their eyes off and keep scrolling, scrolling.
And, of course everything, everything that comes in via your cell phone or your laptop, emails or whatever.
You have to distrust, you have to doubt.
Every single mail asking you for, let's say, your information for making a money transfer is probably something fraudulent going on.
Every mail that you receive or, 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.
Yeah.
Well, this gets us to this book, which I very much enjoyed, 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 generate.
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?
And 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.
And there was a survey among philosophers 2000 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's somehow innate.
It's inborn in us that some sort of search for truth that makes us distinct from the cows in the field.
And in all my work, whoever is an artist, a filmmaker, is always confronted with a question of truth.
It's something very, very deeply And 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 have found ways to approximate what we think may be truth.
That's something deeply known in us, a 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.
And I can simply explain it with Michelangelo, who did the sculpture of the Pietà in St.
Peter's.
The Virgin Mary with her son taken from the 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. so um that's the way he could have depicted uh mary being 20 30 40 years older in that moment uh sure yes and and that might have lined up more with chronologically what's happening in that moment but it would have not arrived it would not have had the emotional impact which is truthful yeah had he not altered their ages Yeah, sure.
And, of course, would he have shown the Virgin Mary as, let's say, a 55-year-old woman.
He would have created what I call the accountant's truth.
There's such a thing like fact-based accountant's 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, strangely enough, are always truthful.
And I describe a case, I made a film, called Family Romance LLC.
In Japan, there's this company that, an agency that rents out friends or family members.
I am familiar with this because 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.
And the family is fake, but the emotions are truthful.
And that's a significant thing.
Or, for example, you have an opera, which I describe in the book, and opera stories are sometimes completely incredible and beautiful. 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.
In the book, you break down the plot of an opera.
It's the most insanely implausible.
I mean just breaking down the storylines 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 I mean it just it goes and goes and goes.
But you're right when the music is added.
Yeah.
And there's a power.
I mean, how many times have we broken down the lyrics to a 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, you know.
That we should have sugar poured on us.
And we should all have sugar poured on us.
That's...
That's a rare occasion where I actually read the text and I think the text holds up too.
And you see, Conan, it's the opera is a transformation of an entire world into music.
And then you achieve it.
And, as you mentioned, I mean the story and I'm describing La Forza del Destino, The Force of Destiny.
And the father, an aristocrat, has just left and hears some commotion or some noise 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.
And 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 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 important.
I did a film in Kuwait when everything was set on fire before the first 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 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.
Interesting.
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 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 Conan, stop.
Hold on.
No, no, no.
You spent $18.
You said 17.
It was 18.
And this is going out to you, my beloved wife, Liza.
Yeah.
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 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 truthful than the sheer facts.
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?
And 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 fakes.
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 phishing or whatever they call 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.
Yes, but even the generation of, let's say, the 2030 generation, who also grew up with it, don't have this kind of ease and nonchalance about separating 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 berries, 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.
And 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, going wrong routes and then recalibrating your way.
That's what I have done all my life.
And knowing that I will never get at 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.
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.
No.
Very good, by the way.
Fantastic.
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.
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.
And 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, cannot give up the search for it.
End of the book.
Yeah.
No, it's 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 you, unlike many famous directors, you're driving a car that you've owned for maybe 12 years.
The last one, 17 or 18 years.
Oh, 17 or 18 years.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, uh.
What kind of car is it?
A simple uh, ford explorer.
Okay yeah, but the most primitive i love that's a great uh.
This is why ford explorer is not asking you to do commercials, because you went ford explorer and then you shrug like, what are you gonna do?
Yeah no okay let's, let's take the name out of it, let's.
No, that's okay.
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 sort of phone calls that come in or Google whatever maps and routing you and so.
And I asked, do you still have a car where I can hand crank my windows?
And 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, then I can hand crank the windshield wiper in a thunderstorm.
And they just laughed, but they got the point.
Yeah.
So I just need four wheels and engine in the steering wheel.
Fred Flintstone had it, right?
Yeah.
So you also, I don't think you own a lot of clothing or shoes, right?
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 Conan, 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.
So it's not just one pair of shoes, but basically.
But you keep things very simple.
I don't.
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?
What are you, Johnny Appleseed?
No, I actually own a jacket that's very Bavarian in style.
And I actually own a suit, but for very formal sort of events where I would dress up to the occasion.
I do understand.
I didn't used to understand this, but You know, when Maria Kondo'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.
And it doesn't mean I'm gonna 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.
Number one, we are too many for this planet.
We are using eight or nine billion people.
9,000 million human beings and the resources of our planet are not sufficient.
So we are overdrafting our account here on this planet.
And the second thing is consumerism.
There's a great amount of human beings on this planet and growing into consumerism.
And you see it with emerging countries.
They are wildly into consumerism, and 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.
And 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.
And 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 conan, because i grew up as a child of the second world war.
Yeah, 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 and i'm.
It pains me.
It pains me to see how people are throwing 40 of the food away into the trash it's.
It's not that i do i want to be ideological or being the the prophet of anything.
It just pains me, pains me, and it's not right that we are into this amount of consumerism.
And 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.
And 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 bit 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.
And I know as one of six kids in a family.
My food.
And so you'll attest to this, Sona.
I eat like somebody in a prison yard.
I have my arms around my food.
And I'm here, you know, living in Los Angeles with, you know, everything at my disposal.
And I still eat my food very quickly and my eyes dart around.
Yeah um, because i think neil's gonna get it if i'm not careful, and so these things stick with you.
Yeah, but what sticks more to me, uh is not that i was hungry yeah yeah, it's uh remembering my mother, who could not feed us three boys, and she doesn't have enough food to uh satisfy the most basic needs, and uh.
So 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 mother, when we were tugging at her skirt...
And we were kind of wailing and we are hungry and give us something to eat.
And 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.
And she goes on working in whatever she was doing.
And that sticks to me.
It's seared into you.
Yeah, of course it does.
Oh, my God.
So that's much worse.
For the parents, for the mother, it's much worse to be incapable of feeding the children than it's for the children themselves.
We can take a lot.
Yeah, I'm thinking about you know.
Your book brings up all these questions and there's so much to talk about with obviously, with AI and deep fakes and how, talking about the search for truth, but everything can be manipulated.
And it's only going to, we're just at the beginning.
So I'm curious, are you okay, Werner, with, your distinctive voice, your image living on beyond you.
And I mean, it must have, first of all, I'm sure it exists.
I'm sure there are Werner AI generated.
Yeah, indeed.
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 tell you jokes.
They do whatever.
And 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 Vernors.
No one wants another Conan.
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.
You know, that would fill me with delight.
And, you know, if it enabled 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'll cease to exist.
No, calmly, calmly intimidating.
Turn left now.
Something like that, yeah.
Or else, you have arrived, or have you?
Do any of us really arrive?
We always have a philosophical question at the end.
We must strive to arrive.
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.
So, no, the experience of self is a massive change.
And, of course, AI.
I do not want to put it down completely, because it has glorious, magnificent possibilities in science, in pharmaceuticals, in transportation, in you just name it.
But at the same time it has already, it's en route to take over warfare directing drones, and I mean huge swarms of them.
And it will be overwhelming the face of warfare of the future.
And, of course, cheating, pretending, propagandizing, all these things are like a nemesis.
It's out there and we have to be alert to it.
And again I say, when you're curious and when you access different sources, very quickly you will find out.
This is 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 the spark.
Yeah.
It's not only a spark.
They are empty and, And you know, it's a most common lowest denominator of what is filling billions and billions of informations on the internet.
The common denominator.
And nothing beyond this common denominator can be found in these fabrications.
And you will immediately identify it.
You will find it very quickly.
And 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, or 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 read your work, when 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 – it's a wave.
You know 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.
So 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.
And I love storytelling and I love what I do.
And 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 Elephants, a documentary in Africa, Namibia and Angola.
What is interesting is that tribal people in the southern part of Africa, Kalahari 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 disappears, lives in you and lives in.
In case of these tribal people, lives in our tribal communities.
And it's beautiful to see that.
And it sounds a little bit as if it were a documentary on...
You see elephants only for 20 seconds in the film.
Otherwise, you see ghosts.
You see the spirits of elephants.
And how do you show the spirit of an elephant?
And that's a big question.
And they show the glory and the magnificence of elephants.
And at the same time, as you have suggested, yes, there's this glorious side and the dark side.
If we exterminate them, it will probably lead to our own 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 to be noble, but these creatures need to endure so that we can endure.
Sure.
And it's more than just enduring.
And today, as we are around it about in, still thriving.
I do not 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.
Yes.
And 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, amphibious flight, far out into a small tributary of the Amazon.
And I was woken up every night, ah, the plane is there.
So it wasn't there, so I went back to sleep.
Suddenly at four in the morning, wake up, wake up, get out, get up.
The plane is there.
So I put on some clothes, put one shoe on the other, and there's a sock still in there.
And I grab into the shoe and pull it out, and it's a tarantula.
I mean, almost hairy, as big as my fist.
And I dropped the tarantula and my heart stopped beating.
It literally stopped beating.
And I knew it.
And I thought to myself, dying from a heart attack is ridiculous.
Not because of a tarantula. not even bitten you.
And I was sitting there and I was looking at the tarantula and tried to listen at my heartbeat, which wasn't there anymore.
And then after 20 seconds or 30 seconds, all of a sudden, I was back to life.
So 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?
And 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 Boo-Boo, of course, you made something beautiful out of it.
I had no idea that it would have such repercussion on you.
In your spiritual life.
Oh, it's huge.
It's the only reason I get out of bed in the morning.
And when I'm down, I think of you saying honey boo boo, and it makes me very happy.
I had no idea that it was that funny, but I accept it.
And 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 appreciate 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 Herzog.
So Werner, until we meet again.
Thank you so much for being here and for honoring us with your presence and your insights.
I enjoyed to be with you on this table.
Thanks a lot.
Yeah, yeah.
And yes, look for if you want to request that Werner Herzog 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.
So probably there were enough sound bites from this recording.
Turn left and I'm worried about spiders.
So look for that soon.
All right.
Thank you, Werner.
Thanks.
Well, 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 look to my right and I see that Okie, your dog, is with you.
Okie has been a fixture for a long time.
When did you get Okie?
He's a special girl.
Well, we were just talking about this.
We got her in September 2018, and this podcast premiered November 2018.
So Okie is pretty much the same, exact same age as the podcast.
Yes.
And the same amount of downloads.
Yeah.
Do you guys ever think about what your animals sound like?
Yeah.
Mine are like, oh.
Oh, what?
What?
Mine is feed me, fucking feed me all day long.
Feed me, feed me.
I brought, I'm worried she's a little depressed lately because she's been under our bed a lot.
She used to like roam around, but I think she's just not used to the change of scenery.
So she's just been in under the bed a lot.
Have you checked under the bed?
There might be like half a ham back there.
Oh know, the half ham.
We left it there i forgot.
No, she's just, i don't know, i just brought her.
Now let's talk about okie.
Uh, of course, famously.
Uh, you brought okie to a restaurant once when you're gonna meet me because you thought well, i'm eating with conan, they don't allow dogs at the restaurant, but i'll bring okie because who's gonna say boo to conan o'brien?
So you use, did you use me?
Yes, I did use you.
I did.
Who is going to say?
I mean, look, it's it wasn't 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 110 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.
Have you ever?
You don't 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?
And they go, well, yes, officer.
I just, so much work, so prolific.
September 13th, 1993, up until the present day, every medium you try, a total home run.
Officer, please.
Officer, do you need a change of pants?
I do.
And then they always let me wear their cap.
They give me candy.
And shoot their gun, probably.
They let me shoot their gun.
They let me shoot their gun.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Yeah, but you make me 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.
Yeah.
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 Okie got to sit with us.
I said we should use a penknife and make a small opening in her trachea so she can breathe.
And you said on it chief, and stabbed her to death in the throat.
I heard about this.
Yeah, it was all over the papers, the papers.
And then you let oki just go feed from everybody's plates yeah, and from her wound.
But they didn't arrest me because i was with conan.
Yeah, they couldn't.
They said you're, you're technically guilty of murder, but sure, i'm the cover of tv.
God free 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 kind of true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaking of the early days of this podcast, Okie played kind of 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 Conan about Okie.
Do you remember this?
I don't.
The Okie shits?
Remember when I texted you, I was like, Okie.
It's classic.
Shit everywhere.
And there's throw up.
And I got to stay and clean it up.
And then I'll be in soon.
And I read it.
Which way?
You read it as, I'm going to be late.
Okie, I shit everywhere.
Yes.
Yes.
The dog's name is Okie.
And this is a blast in the past.
And what a blast.
But you said, Okie shit everywhere.
And I read.
That's so annoying.
Yeah, I'm going to be late.
Okie, I shit everywhere.
And 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.
Like, all right, you got me.
I'm late because I shit everywhere.
No one asked you.
And I just pictured you firing at the walls.
Don't picture it.
But then.
Too late.
And every listener is now too.
Oh, come on.
And then remember you got that second dog?
Huh?
Yeah.
Its name is, I have to be honest with you.
And you said, remember I got these texts, I have to be honest with you.
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. And it was all ran together.
I have to be honest with you, I was the name of the dog, which is an Armenian term.
Meaning bright sun come over mountain.
While shitting.
Yeah.
And 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.
And I said, what?
And 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 licked my own butt for a long time.
And then remember you got a cat called.
Don't tell anyone, this is just between us, but I remember that.
These are all true stories.
Is it true?
If only, did you ever think of Fido or Art or Snoopy?
No.
Oh, no.
Poor Okie.
Okie, they're using you for comedy fodder.
You know what?
You can tell Okie knows what's happening, because Okie has just sunk his head, her chin, down onto your leg and is just in a depressive funk.
Mocked once again.
Aww.
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 sort of... I love ham.
Okay.
Why wouldn't you keep ham under the bed?
So 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 dusted?
Yeah.
It's all covered in.
It's collecting a lot of things.
Yeah.
It's seasoned.
It's getting seasoning.
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.
And I'm glad you brought, I'm going to reach over and give Oki.
What's the name Oki come from?
So when Tack and I were in Japan, we were in Okinawa for our honeymoon for a chunk of it.
And then my friend Nyree posted her picture on Instagram and said that they were looking for a home for her.
So to remember where we were, we called her Oki, which is short for Okinawa.
Okay.
You had a really nice wedding.
We had 550 people at the wedding.
It was great.
It was really fun.
That's not a wedding.
That's a convention.
Yeah.
It was a convention.
Yeah.
I wish I knew you back then.
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.
And then did you guys hear someone in Glendale stole the money from a wedding?
Yeah.
What?
Yeah.
Well, just so everyone knows, Armenian 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 going.
I was looking hard for a fiver.
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 score strip club.
But there were a lot of ones.
And then there's no registry.
Usually they just envelopes of cash.
And so you put them in a box and some guy came into a hall in Glendale and then like, stole the whole box of money.
It must have been like $100,000.
Oh, wow.
Crazy.
There's video.
You see him like sauntering and grabbing.
Do we know who he is?
Has he been caught?
No.
But they have him on video.
Yeah, but it's fresh.
It's fresh.
It's like it just happened.
You should have a crime show where nothing's ever solved, but you have that exact optimistic tone.
And they never figured it out.
Yes.
Never.
And they called him the Zodiac.
And 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 Oki, especially you bought him, or you had it made, her, I'm sorry, her.
You know, different pronouns, I suppose.
Who knows?
I don't know.
You bought Oki a little slash hat because you love slash from Guns N' Roses.
She was a slash for Halloween one year.
She had a little leather jacket and then a little hair.
Yeah, she had.
And we we just got her groomed.
But usually she's like fluffy and she was slash like.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Very cool.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, she's the coolest dog in the world.
Peace out.
And don't say Tupac.
No, I was going to say Slash.
Oh, okay.
It's very cool.
You can 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.
And shout out to some of his other dogs.
I swear to God, you can't tell anybody but I.
And this is a complete cone of silence.
You can never breathe a word of this.
But here goes, I And you have to swear on your life and your mother's life and 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 Conan O'Brien, Sonam Ovsessian, and Matt Gourley.
Produced by me, Matt Gourley.
Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and Nick Liao.
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 Brendan Burns.
Additional production support by Mars Melnick.
Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, and Brit Kahn.
You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts and you might find your review read on a future episode.
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