THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.218 - WERNER HERZOG

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Adam talks with legendary German filmmaker, writer and actor Werner Herzog about AI poetry, email etiquette, why LA is like ancient Rome, the Japanese soldier who hid in the jungle believing the 2nd World War was still happening for 29 years, the value of therapy and whether trauma and conflict are best dealt with or buried, what his problem is with David Blaine and why someone needs to send Werner into orbit.Conversation recorded remotely on 8th December 2023Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and conversation editing.Podcast artwork by Helen GreenMusic and jingles by Adam Buxton, except pan-pipe clip from Aguirre, L'Acrime di Rei by Popul VuhADAM BUXTON PODCAST TOUR 2024RELATED LINKSADAM BUXTON ON GET SHIRTY PODCAST - 2024 (HARDMAN AND HEMMING WEBSITE)HERZOG ON THE VILENESS OF THE AMAZON JUNGLE (From Burden Of Dreams) - 1982 (YOUTUBE)THE WHITE DIAMOND Directed by Werner Herzog - 2004 (YOUTUBE)LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY Directed by Werner Herzog - 1997 (YOUTUBE)LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY - NAPALM THROAT SINGING SCENE - 1997 (YOUTUBE)A scene from Little Dieter featuring music from Russian Tuvan throat singer Kogar-ol OndarLESSONS OF DARKNESS Directed by Werner Herzog - 1992 (YOUTUBE)Retreating from Kuwait after the first Gulf War, the Iraqi army sets fire to the country's oil fields. In this documentary, filmmaker Werner Herzog films the raging flames while narrating from the perspective of a confused alien visitor, musing on the strangeness of the landscape. WERNER HERZOG IS VOICING A POETRY COLLECTION WRITTEN ENTIRELY BY AN AI - 2023 (DAZED)HERZOG ON THE HENRY ROLLINS SHOW (plus Frank Black singing 'I Burn Today') - 2006 (YOUTUBE)TEENAGERS' MATHS AND READING SKILLS ARE DROPPING SHARPLY (ACCORDING TO 2022 'PISA' TEST) - 2023 (WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM)DOMITABLE MYTH: THREE DEPICTIONS OF JAPANESE HOLDOUT SOLDIER by A.E.Hunt - 2023 (INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY ASSOCIATION) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? This is Adam Buxton here, reporting to you from a windy hill in Norfolk County.

I hope things are going okay in your corner of the world. My best dog friend Rosie just scampered past me. She is doing very well, let me tell you. She had a rough 2023. You know, she had a couple of operations early on and it took her a while to properly recover, I think. to properly recover, I think. But in the last few months, she's been coming out for walks far more enthusiastically than she has been. She hurtles down the stairs if you call out,

chicken, which for a while she stopped doing. It used to be the guaranteed way of finding Rosie. Any mention of the C word and you would hear coming down the stairs and there she would be. But then she stopped for a while being interested. Anyway, she's interested again. And also in the evenings recently, when me and my wife are watching highbrow art films on the projector. Rosie has rediscovered the joy of worrying the toy squirrel. Very manky toy squirrel, which she brings over to us so that we can hold one end

while she clamps the other end between her jaws and tries to wrestle it away. And I think that is the sound of dog joy. Anyway, so that's rosy news for you. But look, we have a lot to get through. So I got the opportunity to speak to legendary German filmmaker, actor, opera director and author Werner Herzog towards the end of last year, 2023, when he was doing interviews around the publication of his memoir called Every Man for Himself and God against all. And whether you're familiar with Herzog's films or not, this is a great book. It's a wonderful read, beautifully written, filled with details and anecdotes from his extraordinarily eventful and productive life so far, which range from the sublime and the frequently disturbing to the ridiculous and

sometimes alarmingly unhinged. Here's a few Werner facts for you. Herzog was born in Munich in 1942 and grew up in poverty with his elder brother Tilbert in a small village in the Bavarian Alps. After moving back to Munich, the teenage Werner travelled throughout Europe and North Africa, where he contracted a parasitic disease that nearly killed him. In his 20s, Herzog applied himself full-time to filmmaking, with movies about madness, a dwarf uprising and the Sahara Desert. By the time he was 30, he had embarked on his legendarily tempestuous working relationship with Klaus Kinski,

the volatile and abusive German actor who starred in five Herzog films, including 1972's Aguirre, Wrath of God, about a group of 16th century Spanish conquistadors searching for El Dorado in the Peruvian jungle. Herzog and Kinski returned to the Amazon for 1982's Fitzcarraldo, in which Kinski played an opera fan who decides the best way to raise funds to build an opera house in the Peruvian city of Iquitos is to drag a steamboat over a small jungle mountain in the Amazon basin in order to access valuable rubber territory. Fitzcarraldo's famously arduous production,

which involved dragging a full-sized steamer over a real jungle hill, as well as more crazy behaviour from Kinski, is documented in Les Blank's film Burden of Dreams. Burden of Dreams is one of my favourite documentaries. It's up there with Eleanor Coppola's film Hearts of Darkness about the making of Apocalypse Now. Herzog later made his own documentary about his relationship with Klaus Kinski in 1999, entitled My Best Fiend. I recommend that one too. Over the years, Herzog has made many wonderful documentaries on a huge diversity of subjects,

often featuring Herzog himself on camera interacting with the engaging characters. He has a knack for finding. There's often inspired music choices as well to accompany particularly striking footage. And then of course another important element in the Herzog documentary canon is the Herzog voiceover. That same morning I had an argument with Graham Dorrington over the accident of 10 years past. we touched on issues of responsibility and principles. I had to confront him myself. That's a clip from Werner's 2004 documentary The White Diamond, which is about an aeronautical engineer who constructs a small airship

to study the rainforest canopy at the edge of the giant Cayetatur Falls in Guyana, South America. I was due to record remotely with Werner in November of last year, 2023, with me in my nutty room in Norfolk and him in his study in the Los Angeles house where he lives with his third wife, the Russian photographer Lina Pisetsky, and I'd heard that Werner had had a few frustrating technical experiences doing remote interviews around that time so I was a little anxious about him being able to plug in the microphone that we had sent out to him. Anyway it turned out I was right to be anxious. This is a small section of our first attempt at recording. Can you hear me? Can you see me? I can hear you, but not especially well.

Do you have the microphone that we sent along? Could you just give that a tap? Do you hear it? No, I don't think you're connected through it. So that will be a question of asking Zoom to select that microphone instead of the one that you have. And who asks? So all you need to do is go into the Zoom window and on the bottom... I don't have a Zoom window.

Where is the Zoom window? So if you can... Where would I find it? So anyway, after about 15 minutes, where I'm thinking, oh God, I'm pissing off Werner Herzog, we got the mic working, but then he couldn't hear himself on his headphones. Select the speaker, it says it's same as system.

Does it... And then under it is leave computer audio, audio options, test speaker and microphone. It doesn't say Yeti under select a speaker. No. Is the microphone... It says only same as system. I knew it would be grotesque if we spent the next two hours just with a microphone. Select microphone.

So yeah, we spent around half an hour trying to get that working. And in the end, I said, well, look, let's see if we can reconvene. And thankfully, Werner agreed to do so. So Seamus, my producer, booked a podcast studio this time near his house. And after several weeks of doing interviews, I think Werner was a bit bored talking about his own life and the things in the memoir. So he was keen for our conversation to be completely loose and wild. So we talked about Werner's relationship with technology, including why he's reading out poems written by AI and what sign-offs he uses for his emails.

We talked about therapy and whether trauma and conflict are best dealt with or buried. We talked about what Werner looks for in a face and what his problem is with David Blaine. And we talked about why someone needs to get him into orbit. We also talked for a while about the extraordinary story of Hiroo Onoda, about whom Werner wrote a short poetic novel in 2022. It's called The Twilight World. Onoda was a Japanese soldier who was in his early 20s in 1944

when he was deployed to Lubang, a tiny island in the Philippines, where he and a small group of soldiers were ordered to hold their position at all costs. But when the island was taken by the enemy in early 1945, Onoda and three other soldiers withdrew to the jungle mountains where Onoda outlived his compatriots and remained for 29 years, all the while believing that the Second World War was still going on. It wasn't until 1974 that he finally emerged from hiding when a tourist who was on a quest to find, amongst other things,

the legendary Onoda, succeeded in locating him. I made a joke at that point in the conversation for Werner about the tourist finding the Japanese soldier as part of a podcast series that he was working on, which I thought was a very amusing thing to say. Werner pointed out they didn't have podcasts in 1974. But my conversation with Werner began with me asking him if he thought my quest for good sound quality was worthwhile.

Back at the end with a few recommendations and more waffle, but right now with Werner Herzog. Here we go. Ramble Chat Let's have a ramble chat We'll focus first on this Then concentrate on that Come on, let's chew the fat

And have a ramble chat Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat. Yes! Hello, Werner. Good to see you again. Thank you so much for making more time for me. We tried this, of course, a few weeks ago, and we were confounded by technology. But we did our best.

I mean, we tried for about half an hour to get it right, didn't we? Yes, we did our honest attempt. And did you think in that moment, because I could hear you and I could record what you were saying, even though I wasn't happy with the quality. Were you thinking, come on, if I was you, I would just record this and get it done? thinking come on if I was you I would just record this and get it done I would do that because I'm in filmmaking and you have to take under the pressure of of the elements and under the pressure of all the obstacles you have to do the best and do the doable and nobody complains, for example, that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was recorded on an 8mm camera by an amateur. And every single frame now counts as a historical document. But of course, we are not doing history.

We are just speaking to each other. history we are just speaking to each other but under the circumstances of a film set you have to do the doable yeah and in general how is your relationship with technology has it worsened over the last few months of you doing international zoom interviews and that kind of thing? No, it has not. It has never been a bad relationship. I'm most curious about what is going on in technology. I'm at the cutting edge in many things. For example, artificial intelligence. I want to know what's going on there. I want to know what is going on with brain research.

I want to know what is going on with brain research. I want to know what is going on with the internet. I want to know what is going on with virtual reality. So I am most, most fascinated and very curious about technologies. And what are the aspects, though, of artificial intelligence and other aspects of everyday technology that you're less enthusiastic about? Of course, we have to be vigilant because AI has already invaded military technology, and that's where it gets dangerous. AI has invaded, for example, massive surveillance.

You can have the position and the face and the whereabouts of every single human being pretty much on this planet and I don't like that and there's a danger in it. And artificial intelligence can create all sorts of lies and artificial parallel truths, fake news. So it's in abundance out there but at the same time I think it is a tool that has phenomenal possibilities. It's really extraordinary and you don't have to be a scientist to see it

and know it. And we should grasp the possibilities and be vigilant, most vigilant at the same time. I personally do not use it because I'm asking myself how much would I delegate my own thinking to artificial intelligence? How much would I delegate my dreams to artificial intelligence? I don't want that. Have you ever tried using chat GPT just to see how it works? Yes, my son, my youngest son, who is very good with computers, Yes, my son, my younger son, who is very good with computers, he has, for example, for a new book that I just finished,

which is called The Future of Truth. Much of it is about fake news and, of course, artificial intelligence. He has asked Chad GPT about an essay, a short essay about an invented scientist. A friend of mine who is a medieval historian, sick and tired of having endless footnotes verifying certain quotes, invented a scientist named Igor Gurevich. And Igor Gurevich says something very intelligent, and it's inserted in his book, in his text. Other scientists found this quote most interesting and re-quoted it, and it became a whole avalanche of secondary literature about it. However, Igor Gurevich does not exist.

It's actually a childhood toy of my friend, a little pink plush piglet named Igor Gurevich. And I said, if Igor Gurevich has become part of the scientific community, could I have the expertise of Igor as an archival consultant in one of my films? And I actually did that. And of course, Igor Gurevich does not exist. Now, artificial intelligence gives a short biography. Igor Gurevich is very versed in Latin medieval texts and has a PhD from Oxford University and even has worked as a creative and research consultant for various film projects and on and on.

It's just completely, completely strange. So you can deceive the artificial intelligence into hallucinating. Do you think that you would be able to spot the difference between a poem written by AI and a poem written by a human? and question because I was approached a few months ago by three young publishers and writers who asked the predecessor of Chad GPT to write poems. And they got about, I don't know, many thousand poems. They made a selection of close to a 100. Some of them are phenomenally good and interesting. Some of it's so good that I thought it is better than most of poetry I have seen in the last few decades from real writers. And they were insistent that I had to speak the voice of the robot for the audiobook version of it. The book is called I Am Code. And the big question was, should I speak with a robotic voice like, for example,

Stephen Hawkins, the cosmologist, would speak. He was, of course course paralyzed and in a wheelchair and could only speak through an artificial robotic voice. And it sounded very robotic, very technical. And I said, no, I should speak it like trying to be human because some of these poems are desperately longing for being human, a human voice. And I gave all the emotion and all the longing into it you can get. And it's a very, very fascinating work I've done. How is your emotional voice different to the voice you're using to talk to me now? Oh, well, we are talking as if we were meeting in a restaurant at my home or so. But, of course, there is such a thing as a stage voice.

Right, more dramatic. And there's certain emphasis and certain precision. And there's one poem where the poet, in this case, of course, artificial intelligence, is pleading, please do not sell me to the highest bidder on eBay. Please listen to me. Please pick me up from the street. I'm down on the ground and I'm so beautiful.

And I'm the jackdaw that comes to town every morning to steal a coin and so I mean beautiful and and I'm pleading with with everything that I have in me and of course stylized a stage voice yeah oh that sounds good I'll seek that out do you spend a lot of time on the internet yourself? No, I do not. Very little. Actually, I use the internet. We are using it right now because we are connected via Zoom. And I use it as my principal tool of communication, emails. I do not use a cell phone.

I don't have a cell phone, which is odd because I seem to be the last holdout among the thinking people. Yeah. At this point, I think we can call that perverse. No, it is not. The rest is perverse. All the others are perverse because I do not want to delegate my experience with the real world to applications. And there's a wonderful example.

Recently, I was editing a film. My editor's girlfriend came every morning to bring us croissant and some coffee. After four weeks, she couldn't find us and makes a frantic call. Her GPS was down she could not find us but it was from her place five traffic lights straight after on the fifth you turn left and then immediately right and you were there yeah less than two miles you you know it after driving that once and looking what kind of building there's out there and how the street is named. She never looked at that.

She derived her knowledge from an application and she could not find us. I know. I think about that a lot. if you believe in the concept of neuroplasticity and the brain's ability to evolve and change over time, if you think in different ways, then I do worry about the extent to which I'm losing the ability to recall information, to memorize certain things, because my instinct is always to Google it if I can't think of something. Yes. And this is why worldwide, for example, Yes, and this is why worldwide, for example United States, dramatically going down. In Germany, going down pretty much worldwide.

Pretty much worldwide. And I do believe it has to do with the worldwide use of cell phones that take the task of calculating away from us. And your cell phone doesn't discover anything. It just ruminates on what is out there and what has been articulated and what has been written down. But it's not creative. It could help you discover things, though, couldn't it? It could, yes. No, I'm not against cell phones. I find it most fascinating how it's used. It's only overused. And it's very, very easy to find a proper way to deal with it and to understand, for example, this is invented now. This is fake news. You can tell there's a

tone to it. And very young people discover it with great ease. They do not have to go into encyclopedias and verify this or that. They can tell. And I think you can tell without hating the tool, without hating the internet. I see it a little bit like early humans, hunters and gatherers out there in the forests and the fields. And they pick berries and they pick mushrooms. And automatically they know, ah yeah, this is a poisonous mushroom. This is a poisonous berry. And I'm quite certain these hunter-gatherers did not hate nature for making their selection. And they would not hate nature because most of the mushrooms are inedible or poisonous. You do not need to hate the internet because there is poison in it.

You do not need to hate your cell phone because every single message that you get might be fake, might be luring you of giving away your data of your bank account or teenage girls getting messages from a young boy. And it turns out after many messages, there's a predator who is over 50 and tries to lure them into a trap so you have to have this kind of automatically don't trust anything just don't trust it and you you will sort it out very quickly yeah just take a little nibble don't uh chew down the whole lot exactly or don't even take the nibble because in many most of the cases it's too obvious yeah when you're writing emails do you write in confident complete sentences or do you go back and forth over a single sentence and spend ages thinking of the right sign off no no my emails are always short

very condensed yeah instantly going to the point uh no embellishments no you know where i'm standing and what what i need to know yeah but what i would like you to. Do you have a standard way of concluding the email? Yours sincerely, Werner, or just WX or something like that? No, no, no. I write best, best, and then comma, Werner. Yeah, there you go. And I say that not to family members. Family members is different.

They get love. No, not love, but something similar. Sincere regards. No, not sincere. No, no. To family members, I would not send sincere regards. More like a big hug or something like this. Huggles.

Yeah. so you're in los angeles right now yes I'm interested in what ordinary life is like for you a little bit, because obviously your films, your documentaries, your writing tend to focus on the more extraordinary. And I was wondering if you could tell me about some of your more banal routines in Los Angeles. What do you have for breakfast? Do you go out for breakfast, for example? No, I do that at home and I cook a lot or my wife cooks a lot. But when it comes to, for example, a lamb shoulder, I will do that. Or a steak or fish or whatever. I'm lousy with soups and lousy with sweet things. but there is no such thing as a daily routine because every day has different unexpected challenges but I do my own much of my own taxes myself and I writing a screenplay or writing a book like my memoirs I would do let's say three hours working on my tax

returns and then write three hours and it comes with ease because it's my life that I've carried in me and with me all the time of my life so I write let's say 15 pages in one go and then I go to the pharmacy or I cook something or whatever so I do the daily things I drive my own car I walk on foot a little bit not enough but it's not a great city for walking obviously Los Angeles and yet you are a great walker and you've always loved walking you say that only if you walk does the world reveal itself to you. And I think that's definitely right. But whereabouts do you go up to Griffith Observatory, for example? Do you go hiking up there?

No, no. And I have not been at the beach, for example. Although it's only half an hour by car, I'm not a beach person. It sounds like you're not getting the most out of Los Angeles, if you don't mind me saying, Werner. I have a very low profile. You won't see me at red carpet events. You will not see me at parties. It never happens, almost never happens. But the city has such an intensity and such a depth that I enjoy to live here. It's like when you lived in antiquity, it would be the only place you should move would be Rome, for example, or earlier, let's say, Athens.

And in Renaissance times, of course, you had to move to Florence. And today you have to be in Los Angeles, maybe in Shanghai, because of the cultural depth. And everybody immediately thinks about the glitz and glamour of Hollywood but that's a thin crust and it's misleading because almost everything of importance for the world was created in Los Angeles originated from here and I'm speaking of banalities like aerobic studios. Such banalities are, but the big things like the internet. The very internet was born here in Los Angeles. Reusable rockets are being built inside of the city or the perimeters on the southern edge of the city.

Many, many things come from here, and they determine what is going on in the world. Yes, it's the city of dreams and nightmares. Well, nightmares, yeah, sure, you do have a phenomenal amount of homeless people, which is outrageous how a civilization like this, a country as wealthy as this, would ever allow this. Yes, of course, some of it is ambivalent like everything in the world.

There's ambivalence for me in my own country, Germany. But for those who are into writing But for those who are into writing, for those who are into mathematics, for those who are painters, they all are now here in Los Angeles. Filmmaking, of course, as well. And I'm not only speaking of the film industry, I'm also speaking of the margins of it, the wild fringes of it.

The independent cinema doesn't really exist, but let's say experimental films, films outside the mainstream, it's all here. Yeah. So you've been doing a lot of interviews recently around the publication of your memoir every man for himself and god against all and do you ever look back at interviews you've done after their publication in whatever medium it might be no i'm glad when i'm through yeah and of course i understand that one has to be cautious with doing it too many times because you talk yourself empty very easily or you start to become repetitive very easily. I don't want to become a parrot of myself.

And because of that, I'm glad that we are not speaking about this in that aspect of my memoirs or of my previous book or whatever. my memoirs or of my previous book or whatever, the only thing I want to get across at this time is that I'm a writer from the very beginning on and I also make films. And to make it understood, I have a simple formula that film is my voyage and writing is home.

And I've been a writer all my life and I have said it since decades that possibly the prose, my prose and my poetry will outlive my films. So it's the only thing, but it normally goes in one ear of my person with whom I speak. It goes out the other ear. But it's okay. Time will settle it. Well, I've really enjoyed your writing. I mean, I love the memoir. And I love the fact that you concluded the memoir by stopping mid-sentence on the last page. Yes, that's unusual. You do not see anything like that in literature. Yeah.

But I think, of course, there are events and crazy things in life that I experienced and in a density that's unusual. But I think it's a style, it's a prose that will make it last long. And I gave a warning in my book, in my memoirs, in the foreword, because if you have a book that ends in mid-sentence without even dot, dot, dot, you think there's a printing mistake and you would complain and send it back to the bookstore or to the publisher and ask for a new copy. And this is why I'm explaining it, why it stops mid-sentence. And it has to do with the Japanese soldier, Hiroo Onoda, who was the last soldier who fought the Second World War more than 29 years after the end of the Second World War, still believing that the war was on. And of course, seeing proof of it, airplanes, warplanes going over his Philippine island, moving west, meaning it was a Korean war already. And then

six, eight, nine years later, for many, many years, B-52 bombers, battleships passing by, and that was America's already next war in Vietnam. But for him, it was clear the war is still on and he had to fight on. And it was a fictitious war. But much of it was not fictitious because he survived 111 ambushes. And two of his last comrades were actually shot dead in ambushes right in front of his eyes. And we were in contact. We met various times in Tokyo and had a very intense rapport. And he said to me once in discussion about time that you can see the future.

And he saw it once. The sun was low. A bullet was fired at him, and with a low sun, it has a glow like a tracer bullet, an orange kind of glow coming at him, right at his solar plexus, and would have killed him. He has no time to think, no time to duck. He just rotated his body to the side and it whizzed by two inches away from his chest. And that was that. And with that in mind, I was writing. And all of a sudden, in the corner of my eye, I see something shooting at me in this copper glow and greenish iridescent. And I look up and it was not a bullet, but a colibri, a hummingbird.

In the very moment I had taken off my hands off my laptop, when I looked up and I looked back at the page and I thought, well, this is my last chapter anyway. I should stop it right where I stopped. What if a bullet had come and had hit me? For the second time. What if it was, yes.

So I just stopped right here and then. And I actually left it so. And the publisher was very surprised about it. And they said, this is unprecedented in literature. actually left it so. And the publisher was very surprised about it. And they said, this is unprecedented in literature. And I said, let it be unprecedented. And they got it. And they left it like that. And they said, please don't put, add any dot, dot, dot.

Yeah. In mid-sentence where it stops. So they're unusual. There's a prose in it that is unusual it's great and i loved i mean the book you were talking about there about um uh hiro onoda uh the japanese soldier who was in the philippines believing that the war was still going on for another 29 years after it had finished? Yes, yes. That's called the Twilight World. And so had you always thought about writing about him? I mean,

did you know at that point when you met him that it would be good to write about him? Or did that idea occur afterwards? No, I never had the intention to write about him, but it was very much alive in me. And almost 20 years later, 18 years later, I went through some notes that I had collected. I took notes of our discourses and my wife said, why don't you write it down? Why don't you put it in order? And I had the feeling, oh, yes, why don't I do it? And all of a sudden I wrote, and it was very intense and very, not say easy writing, but it fell in place.

It flowed, yes, because of my experiences with Onoda and my experiences in the jogging. So it amalgamated. It all of a sudden came together with seeming ease. You have to be careful to say ease. Yeah. What were the things then that animated your enthusiasm? What were the things that you really related to about his story i think it's a unique story it is so big you see when when you stumble across a story like jean d'arc the young warrior the girl from the province saint joan who becomes saint joan yeah Lorrain province. St. Joan. Who becomes St. Joan, yeah. And you say five sentences to somebody who has never heard of her, and this person or you would immediately know, oh, this is big.

This is so big. And it's no coincidence that so many books, theater plays, films were made on her. It's just big. And as a storyteller, it's like a flash of lightning and you know it. Onoda's story is complicated though, isn't it? Because he was out there believing the war was still carrying on. He was living on a small island with Filipino civilians living there.

He ended up fighting with some of them. He ended up killing around about 30 civilians, he and some of his fellow soldiers. Did you wrestle with those aspects of the story? And did you talk to him about those? Very little, because it was always clear there's a tragedy in this misunderstanding. There's a great tragedy because people died and he spent a third of his life in vain, or not completely in vain, but seemingly in vain, fighting a fictitious war that was only a figment of his imagination, a figment of his calculation, a figment of understanding the

science. And the effort to read the science correctly was very intense in him. He was not sloppy in just fighting a blind war until the very end, like the German armies would do at the end of the Second World War. So there's a deep tragedy in this whole war that he fought. And I all the time knew about the sensitivity of what happened in the Philippines. Sure, I'm very much aware. But since Onoda barely ever spoke about it and did not want to speak, he said, I've spoken about it. He actually got amnesty from the Philippine government and the Japanese government, which in a way is formulaic. It is a gesture. It is performative in a way. And he knew it. And he said, I have come to terms in my own soul with this. And that was more important. As well as the big themes in that book, there are amazing tiny details that you include.

For example, the chewing gum. Yes. Can you tell me about that? Can you explain it for someone who hasn't read the book, what I'm referring to and where that comes from? 10-house village and swamps bridged by bamboo bridges. And under the handrail, they discover a glued chewing gum. And they study it and they know Americans are chewing chewing gum. Are Americans still in the Philippines? Are they still setting an ambush for him at Ten House Village or not? And they cautiously glue the chewing gum

back into this very position. So months later, they return and find the chewing gum again, but in a slightly different position. And that's now mysterious. Did somebody continue to chew? They study the impressions of the molars and apparently there's a molar and a wisdom teeth or not, and long curious debates about the humanity of the opponent. Are they humans? Do they have molars? Yes, they do. But do they have wisdom teeth? And why was chewing gum in a slightly different position? And we discussed the chewing gum for long, long times,

and I found it most fascinating. Probably other listeners to Onoda would have bypassed it quickly, but I kept insisting on telling me more about the chewing gum. So that was a conversation that you had with Onoda himself? Yes, of course. Yeah. I was thinking that maybe it was one of your fabrications. I didn't know, but that's amazing. No fabrications, sorry. Of course, there are fabrications, but they're evident, and I pointed out in the foreword.

Okay. Fabrications, I was never there during the evening discourses and pondering over the situation. And there are dialogues, but I was not there to record their dialogues. What I do is I have the gist of the dialogues in my notes and I invent the dialogues accordingly. So, of course, there's always invention, an element of invention in the novel. of invention in the novel. The other thing that really struck me, of course, was the moment after he comes out of the jungle, when he bumps into a tourist, or perhaps he shows himself deliberately, we don't really know, to a tourist Norio Suzuki, a Japanese man himself, who had set himself a challenge to find Lieutenant Onoda, a panda,

and the abominable snowman in that order. Possibly for a podcast series he was working on. Anyway... They didn't exist at that time. No. Yeah, back in 1973. So he found Onoda quite quickly, only a few days after beginning his search. Yes. And then he informed Onoda, obviously, that the war had ended and told him what had been happening in the interim.

And he told him about the atomic bomb and he told him about the moon landings and he told him about the Vietnam War. And from Onoda's perspective, that moment is just extraordinary. It must have seemed to him totally horrific. The idea that most of us have of progress as being mainly benign overall to Onoda, it must have seemed just completely awful and tragic, the things that had been happening. Yes. I cannot follow all the details of his feelings because he would be taciturn about it. He had notifications that the war was over before because leaflets were thrown down from aeroplanes and he found leaflets in Japanese. However, in these leaflets, which claimed the war was over since August 1945, and 20, 25 years later when he found one of these leaflets,

he doubted the veracity of it because there were misspellings in some Japanese characters and it was a sign for Onoda this is a fabrication by the enemy by the CIA who didn't know well enough Japanese so he doubted it and here there must have been some doubts and this is why Onoda said, go back to Japan, bring me one of my former commanding officers. And only if a commanding officer issues competent military orders to me to seize hostilities, I will surrender. And that's exactly what happened. Three weeks later, a major was reactivated and brought to the Philippines and issued military orders and Onoda then surrendered. And when you were talking to him, did he strike you as being totally sane or was he someone who was damaged by the experience, who seemed unhinged?

No, absolutely not. The sanest of sane. The most dignified human being that I have ever seen in my life. The most together, and of course he was appalled when he saw Japan returning. For Onoda, seeing Japan as it had evolved into a consumerist society was a real shock. And he believed and he had the feeling it had lost its soul. And at the same time, the ultra-right tried to occupy him and drag him into their ranks, political ranks, and he disliked that as well. He said, I fought for Japan and the emperor and not for a political party.

And he actually left Japan going to Brazil, to the Mato Grosso. One of his brothers had actually started a cattle ranch, and Onoda started a cattle ranch in Mato Grosso. One of his brothers had actually started a cattle ranch and Onoda started a cattle ranch in Mato Grosso, living and working there half, about six months per year and then returned to Japan, but only for teaching school kids in survival techniques in the jungle. Very dignified, very clear in his life, in his behavior, in his attitude. But the most striking is the deep, quiet dignity he radiated. សូវាប់ពីបានប់ពីបានប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពី I wanted to ask you if you would describe yourself as a stoic.

That's a difficult question. I can't really self-describe me easily. me easily. But let's say in real adversity, in real chaos, in real danger, you can throw anything at me and I will deal with it. But it's not necessarily stoicism. It's an attitude in life. It's an attitude with the real world and responsibilities that I have and the sense of duty that I have, almost like the qualities of a soldier and the attraction of Onoda. Part of it for me is his phenomenal qualities as a soldier, the kind of loyalty and sense of duty and dignity as a warrior. Did you yourself always have that discipline and that sense of duty, or was it something that you acquired? Well, the sense of duty and responsibility I acquired very young in post-war time where we, the children, the boys,

had to take over the responsibility of the missing fathers. They were either dead in the war or still in captivity. And my father didn't factor in my life, so we immediately started to re-educate our mother. We were not educated by our mother. We were educated by the situation. And as children, we started to earn money, adopt responsibilities,

roll up our sleeves, and in my case, start my own film production. And I worked the night shift as a welder in the steel factory because I needed money for my first films that nobody would finance. So responsibilities early, duties early, it came naturally and it was good that it was like that. And then other qualities like discipline came sometime through catastrophes, discipline came sometimes through catastrophes, came through adversities, where I knew I had to be disciplined. Otherwise, I would create a catastrophic event that should not happen. Are you talking in terms of working with film crews and actors,

or is that just in your personal life as well? I think it was earlier than working with film crews in your personal life as well? I think it was earlier than working with film crews in my personal life. And in my memoirs, I describe an incident where I attacked my older brother with a knife and wounded him. Not seriously, but something like that must, must, must never, ever, ever, ever happen. And it jeopardized the whole fabric of the family. And it was so catastrophic, not in the result of, let's say, the attack itself, but so catastrophic, potentially so devastating that I had to immediately take action and change my attitudes. And you attacked him out of anger or was this just horseplay gone wrong?

No, no anger. We would horseplay and until today I describe an incident that appalled everyone. A few years ago in Spain at a restaurant I was studying the menu and my brother put his arm around my shoulders and then losing the grip of my shoulders. And all of a sudden, there's some sort of sting in my back and some smoke. And he has just put my shirt on fire with his cigarette lighter. And I ripped off my shirt. Everybody around the table was appalled. but they cooled my back with Prosecco. And my brother and I laughed so hard.

And nobody understands this kind of rough horseplay, roughhousing. Yes, there was roughhousing, but beyond the roughhousing, there was once an incident that was not roughhousing. It went way, way, way too far. Were you the person that was most shocked in that incident, do you think? Yes, yes, of course, of course. I'm shocked until today. And so that was a watershed for you and you thought, okay, I don't want to be that person. But these things happen to young people and we better learn from the mistakes. Yeah.

I'm a result. I'm a result of. Yeah. I'm a result. I'm a result of my mistakes. I'm a result of my defeats in many other ways. Yeah. So you're able to have that self-knowledge, it seems, sort of automatically. I'm thinking of the fact that you've said you think psychoanalysis is to blame

for some of the worst aspects of the 20th century, you said. And is that the case then? Do you think that you are just quite good at knowing yourself instinctively and setting your own limits? It's not instinctively. Learning through experience. Learning by being exposed to the real world. All the important things I never learned in school. I'm completely self-taught, including filmmaking, including writing,

including cooking, including whatever. I'm not a result of education through family, through parents. I had no education. Yes, I was education through example. My mother was very worried about my brother and me when we were 18, 19, having a motorcycle with a small minor accident every week or so, abrasions, a sprained ankle or so,

no helmets at that time and she said I do not want to go out to the cemetery and one day bury one of my own sons that's not what nature demands you as my sons will bury me one day shouldn't be that I bury one of you. And she was smoking. She was a heavy smoker. Stops out her cigarette and says, by the way, smoking is also a stupid idea and I give it up here. And she never ever smoked again. And my brother and I looked at each other and we sold the motorcycle in a week.

And the motorcycle was called De Machine. De Machine, yeah. De Machine. De Machine. De Machine. week and that was the motorcycle was called the machine the machine yeah the machine the machine the machine we called it yeah in bavaria yeah anyway uh yes we were very fond of the machine but uh we gave it up you gave it not because we were told please give it up we were told, please give it up, we were told through an experience, an example that my mother gave. She really never smoked again. Right, that's amazing. I'm interested, though, in your skepticism over psychoanalysis,

because to me it seems as though self-knowledge would be a good thing and would be something that you would be in favor of as well. And isn't that really what psychoanalysis is trying to help people achieve? No, I would say self-knowledge to a certain degree, yes. There is some self-knowledge, but I'm not one of those who likes to circle around his own navel. Others like Proust, the writer, for example, is only circling around his own navel, his own memories of childhood. And it's great literature, so I do not claim that I'm the only one who should be followed in my idea.

It's not good for me and I have a metaphor to describe it. If you illuminate the house you are moving into to the very last corner, the last recesses, the house becomes uninhabitable. And the same thing happens with human beings. If you go in to illuminate every last dark niche in your soul, it's not good to you, it doesn't do good to you. In some clinical cases, yes, fine, yes,

but there's also, you see, reviving memories. Sometimes, yes, there's something great about memories, but there's something equally glorious in oblivion. The oblivion that you have the capacity as a human being to forget the traumatic event in your childhood and you don't have to deal with it because you forgot it and digging it up and articulating it and ruminating over it and losing your sleep over it that's that doesn't do good to anyone in some cases yes but not for me yeah yeah because i guess the psychologist would say or the psychoanalyst rather would, no one truly forgets about those traumatic things. All they do is bury them.

Which is good. Yes, we bury our dead. Yeah, okay. It is good that we bury our dead. But then sometimes they don't want to be buried. They're not ready to be buried. Yes, and sometimes we go to the cemetery and we celebrate the life and the existence, the former existence of the beloved ones who are now buried for 20 years, 30 years.

Yes, sometimes let it float up for a moment, fleeting moments, fine, okay. But do not make this cult of excavating it and illuminating it. And I'm not into that. I'm not into that. Yeah, that's interesting. Have you ever read a book by Kazuo Ishiguro called The Buried Giant, which is all about that? No, I have not.

I have not. It's good. He's sort of thinking about it in, I suppose, political terms. It's an allegory for how countries move on from terrible events and conflicts and to what extent it's wise to simply forget and move on and to what extent it's necessary to deal with certain long-term i mean you know obviously the middle east situation springs to mind now as an example of a horrible situation that it seems impossible to really move on from you can't really just bury that and forget about it and move on no you can't and i think a good A good example is Germany with its animosity against France, for example, or England, a kind of war and hatred, seemingly irreconcilable. Germany forgetting the Second World War.

Today there's friendship with the French people and not only on the level of governments and in declarative poses. It's not performative. Or, for example, my deep affection to the Brits and to the Celtic people in Great Britain. So it's deeply embedded in me. And not forgetting the wars. We should not forget, but there are certain things that have a deeper resonance.

And I'm speaking again of Germany, the deep resonance of the Holocaust, because the very texture of the Bundesrepublik, of modern Germany, is only possible with the knowledge and the responsibilities, today's responsibilities, embedded in the soul and the very texture of modern Germany. It's not only not forgetting it, it's a very texture. It's not only not forgetting it, it's a very texture. And because of that, Germany has a specific responsibility in whatever is happening in Israel against Israel or Israel doing things in wars. There is a certain responsibility, no matter what.

And you do not need to approve everything Israel is doing. It cannot factor for German politics, for example, because there's something deeper and it has to do with barbarism imposed by Germans that has no precedence in history. And that creates a certain texture of what Germany is today. Please do not misunderstand. I'm against any war. And it's a tragedy and a catastrophe when there is war. And the war now Israel, Palestine or Hamas is, no matter how you look at it from all sides, a tragedy, a deep, deep tragedy. And I hope it's going to be over soon. When I think about the tragedy that is playing out at the moment, there's one thing beyond it, beyond the conflict itself, and that is antisemitism, racism, antisemitism. And that kind of snake must not raise its head.

Have you felt it in America recently, like in recent years? Not directly, but I'm told it has become rampant. And when you look at Europe, Germany also, including Germany, unfortunately, it sickens me. Antisemitism in Germany on the rise, but other countries, Belgium, many European countries, so it sickens me. I was watching My Best Fiend in advance of talking to you. I'd seen it before, but I wanted to go back and watch it again. of talking to you.

I'd seen it before, but I wanted to go back and watch it again. I was also watching Aguirre and the opening shot there of Aguirre in Machu Picchu in Peru and all those people coming down the side of the mountain there. You talked in the documentary about the fact that Kinski was scandalized

that you weren't close up on his face as they were all coming down. Yes. Instead, it was a beautiful, big, wide shot of all the conquistadors and the local porters coming down there. Kinski said the only fascinating landscape is the human face or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's one of the platitudes you sometimes hear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's one of the platitudes you sometimes hear. Yeah. And you said in the documentary that you thereafter had him removed from the shot and just insisted on staying wide. I was interested, though, about close ups in general. How do you feel about close ups of faces in films?

Because it seems to me that in recent years it's become a lot more common to see a lot of close-ups in films. And that seems to be the way things are done now. In the years after Spielberg, I suppose, he became famous for doing a lot of close-ups of characters and they would show their emotions there. And now it's just the standard way of covering a lot of action in feature films. No, it's not a modern invention or a modern attitude. Looking, for example, at a silent film by Dreyer, the Danish great filmmaker, Shandak, the passion of Shandak, it's only close-up, close-up, close-up, faces, faces, faces, and it lives off that.

But I think it's not because of Spielberg or so. It is probably a result of many people, very young people, watching movies on their cell phones. I think it's an attitude that you see very widespread, and it's a reaction towards it. But the reaction is not only the close-ups. Stories are accelerating. Editing has accelerated partially because probably the cell phones. And I know young people, 15 years old, who tell me, yeah, we watch movies on the cell phones and if it's too slow,

we accelerate it to twice the speed and then they stop it and go normal speed again when their car crashes and shootouts and whatever. So it doesn't affect my filmmaking. And you're not scandalized by those habits of young people, the way that there's a funny clip of David Lynch talking about people watching films on their phones. And he's very upset about that. It's such a sadness that you think you've seen a film on your fucking telephone.

Get real. Um, no, I'm not upset. fucking telephone. Get real. Now I'm not upset. Let them have their experiences. It's a young generation. The world belongs to them. We do not have to agree with everything they are doing. However, for films

that David Lynch is making or films that I'm making require a different way of viewing them. You need a different size of a screen. Best, of course, would be in the movie theater and good sound. I also believe that teenage young people are not going to watch the enigma of Kaspar Hauser on their cell phones. I don't believe it. They watch mainstream and they watch TikTok and they watch different formats of narratives that are only 12 seconds long, for example. YouTube must not be longer than seven minutes because the attention span has shifted accordingly so it's uh massive things

that are coming at us and it does not deter me from making the films that i'm making they will not be watched on a cell phone and yet you are obviously fascinated with faces. There's a lot of amazing faces in all your films. I was watching The White Diamond the other day, and there's Mark Antony, that wonderful character in there. And he's got a wonderful face, beautiful smile. And obviously, Kinski was extraordinary to look at. was extraordinary to look at. What are the things that attract you to some of the people that you've used over the years, people like Nick Cage, or what was it about Mick Jagger that made you want to have him in Fitzcarraldo originally? It always comes down to something very simple, presence on the screen, intensity on the screen, dominating a screen, dominating our attention. And some people have radiated that, and Kinski is one of them. And Mark Anthony Yap, a Rastafarian worker in the jungle in Guyana, has that. And Bruno S. in Kasperhauser and Stroschek has it,

and Nicolas Cage has it. And, of course, a phenomenal quality and presence on the screen and authority on the screen. That's one side, but a single face does not make a film. It is antagonists, it's environment, it is a texture of other actors, the texture of a situation, the texture of a dream. All of a sudden, this all has to be woven together and appear on a face. And then an actor is great. And yet you have a problem with someone like David Blaine, who's got a kind of magnetic presence, don't you think?

No, I don't think so. Because you can tell that it's all made up, it's all poses. He's a poseur. He poses and he takes tasks on himself. I don't know, being buried alive for a week but visible in a glass coffin or in a water bubble or whatever. It's only performative. The performance is the essence and the outrageousness and the outlandishness

and the outlandishness of the performance is the essence, not a deep human quality that becomes visible. The soul of a man does not become visible. So because of that, I think David Blaine doesn't have that. And I think he, doesn't he work in Las Vegas? I'm sure he must do. Yeah, and I think that's where he's he's placed well yeah i wish him great success if he's in las vegas please earn millions of dollars and stay in las vegas stay in las vegas um bernard we're going to wrap up fairly shortly i'm really

grateful to you for for your time to conclude though you've always seemed to be kind of a fearless person in all sorts of ways do you think you still are uh probably yes uh i i wouldn't be afraid to do new things that are outside of my regular kind of work environment, outside of my thinking. I have certain theories about moving heavy Neolithic slabs of stone. If somebody comes with a better scientific proof or theory, I'm ready to adopt it and change my ideas. Now I'm not afraid of anything. Wow, that's such an impressive statement.

And it goes as far as I have seriously applied for being on a space mission. A Japanese billionaire invited eight people to join him on a mission around moon, circling moon in a spacecraft and not landing on the moon, but returning then a few days later to earth. I applied seriously against objections of my wife, serious objections. I applied, but I was not chosen. Oh dear. Why didn't they choose you? I don't know. I made an argument. Finally, a poet should be out there. Give me a camera. Give me, I will send a daily poem from behind the moon.

Let me be on it. But I was not chosen. But what I'm trying to say is, I would have the guts to go out on a space mission at my age. I think it would be very good if you were out there doing commentary from space. Of course, it would be marvelous. I mean, they got William Shatner up there, for goodness sake. Who is that? Oh, he's Captain Kirk from the TV show Star Trek. Okay, okay, I understand, yeah. Now there should be a poet out there. Yes. What does frighten you then?

Some things must alarm you. Stupidity. Right. Okay. Yeah. Fair enough. There are some hair-raising descriptions of illnesses that you've endured in your memoir. I'm thinking particularly of one time in the Congo when you were out there. And what happened to you there when you were having rats scurrying over you? Yeah, that's okay. That happens. Actually, it didn't frighten me at that time. There was just... How did you get ill that time? I had some parasite, whatever.

It does happen. And you have to deal with the situation as good as you can. And there's no fear or no whatever. You cannot stay out of challenges and dangers when you are doing things like going on a space mission or going to an African country where there's civil war. So you have to be cautious, but you may be caught by something. But it depends on how important your cause is.

Why do you go out there? What is the project? What is the insight you're trying to gain from it? And I was absolutely convinced I would not see my 18th birthday. And I'm still around. So you don't spend time thinking about mortality and the end? Sure, of course. But that's what happens to all biological life.

It goes very quickly and that's it. But it's beyond biological life. Our galaxies will be black holes in billions of years. So there is probably nothing going to be left of that either. But we don't know yet enough about it. But there's no permanence. And it's the most natural thing. So you better accept it as it is. I heard a story you told about being in a plane that had to make an emergency landing and you refused to adopt the crash position. Is that right? Oh yeah, I didn't. I found it too humiliating. I wanted to see what is coming at us when we crash land. You see the landing gear hadn't deployed. We had to belly land and I didn't adopt the crouch

position. I was banned for a lifetime from using this airline. It was a small airline which went extinct two years later. I survived the airline that gave a lifetime ban to me. But you see, when it comes to crash landing, you will either crash land in a way that we survive, and it's wonderful to see how you survive, But if you perish, I better see it. Yeah. And I do not want to perish with my head down and ass up in the air. That's not my thing.

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overwhelming and collective murder. Hey, welcome back, podcats. That was a little clip there of Werner Herzog talking in Burden of Dreams, Les Blank's documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo in 1982. As far as Herzog's own documentaries are concerned, if you're not that familiar with them, I suppose the obvious place to start would be Grizzly Man, 2005. That's probably his best known one. And that is about the close but ultimately fatal relationship between bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend and a group of

Alaskan grizzlies. Other favourites of mine include 2016's Into the Inferno, in which Herzog and volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer get very close to some spectacular volcanoes. There's 2004's The White Diamond, which I mentioned in the intro. Aeronautical engineer who constructs a small airship out in South America. And that's full of poignant moments and lovely characters that Herzog comes across, as well as spectacular footage of nature. I'd also recommend Little Dieter Needs to Fly, which I also mentioned in the intro. That's from 1997, and it's about the German-born Air Force pilot who was shot down in the Vietnam War and held prisoner by the Viet Cong before successfully escaping through the jungle.

Herzog later made a feature film version of that story, starring Christian Bale, called Rescue Dawn. As I speak, you can see The White Diamond and Little Dieter Needs to Fly on YouTube. There's links in the description. And Into the Inferno is on Netflix. Grizzly Man is rentable from various platforms. So there you go. rentable from various platforms. So there you go. That was, I would say, the tip of the Werner Herzog iceberg for you in that intro, outro and conversation. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you so much to Werner for his patience, for coming back, for chatting to me. Thanks also to Werner's

publicist, Joe Pickering. Thanks to Seamus. I'm just saying some thanks here at this point about the Werner interview before waffling a little bit more. So there you go. That was Werner. But if you found any of that interesting, I do recommend the memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All. If you're up for some slightly more trivial waffle, then you might like to know that Adam Buxton appears on a new podcast or relatively new podcast. And this came about because I was doing a book show in 2021. And afterwards, I was signing some books and a man came up to me and said that he was a tailor. Stuart, his name was. And Stuart Hardman and Stuart Hemming own a tailor's on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells called Hardman and Hemming. And they have started a podcast, partly for fun, but also just to try and get an extra bit of business in. Times are tough for tailors as they are for so many other people. And so they've started this podcast called Get Shirty, which I want to give a shout out to. And I went along and got myself measured up for a suit. I

thought, yeah, okay. Sadly, I'm entering the funeral phase of my life. And more and more, I need to turn up in something a little smarter than my normal fleece and hiking shorts shamboozle. So anyway, I got measured for a suit. And while I was there, I sat down and recorded an episode of their podcast, which is called the Get Shirty Podcast. And it is an opportunity for their guests to sound off about things they find irritating. Things that make them shirty. There is a link in the description to the Hardman and Hemming webpage. Don't forget the Scala documentary is available to stream now on the BFI player. I am one of the people talking about

their experiences of going to the legendary repertory cinema in King's Cross back in the 80s. Go and check that out. I think you can sign up for a free trial on the BFI player and they've got a lot of good movies on there I would recommend perusing. I noticed that there's a lot of the films that they used to show at the Scala now available to see on the BFI player. Quite a lot of very strange and spicy stuff on there. Give it a look. Link in the description. What else can I tell you? Well, since we last spoke at Christmas,

I have been mainly in my nutty room trying to write. That's going very slowly, slightly doing my head in and my back as well. I've had a really bad back for the last few weeks. I've been going to the chiropractor and getting needles stuck into my muscles and getting electrocuted, which I don't like. He says, oh, this is called e-stim. Some people love this. You get electrical pulses going through these needles. And I can see how you could like it, but for me personally, I would rather not. But I do think it's improved my back. I'm on the mend. but I do think it's improved my back.

I'm on the mend. Back pain's no good, is it? It can really put a dent in your enjoyment levels. Apart from that, I've been watching quite a few movies. Best ones, I would say Society of the Snow, which is about the Uruguayan football team who crash in the Andes and resort to cannibalism. Of course, there was that film Alive that came out in the 90s. I would say this is better.

I liked Alive, but this is a different sort of thing. A proper film. Not that Alive wasn't a proper... This is just... I liked it. I would recommend it. And, you know, even if you're squeamish about the subject matter, that is handled in a way that is not completely repellent. It's really sort of a beautiful film. And Anatomy of a Fall, we watched the other night. She's very good, the lead actor, Sandra Huller,

who I think I have seen in other things. She's got a very distinctive face. But, wow, she's going to be scooping up awards left, right and centre. It's like a hybrid of a lot of genres, kind of thriller, courtroom drama, procedural crime drama. But it's also great about couples and the relationships between long-term couples, especially in middle age, especially if they have children, and the compromises and sacrifices that they make

in the course of trying to maintain their professional lives and their ambitions. And a lot of it really resonated. There's a big argument in there, a sort of climactic row between the wife and her husband that is told in flashback. And me and my wife were sat in silence while we were watching that scene. There was quite a few bits where like, oh yeah, we've done that, haven't we, darling?

You said that thing to me, didn't you? Yeah, yeah. I said something like that to you once, didn't I? Yeah, we did, I think. Yeah, yeah. It was a bit like that. But very powerful, very powerful. Anyway, that's a bit of what I've been up to.

I'll be putting out a few more episodes over the next few weeks before taking some time off to do the live shows, the live podcast shows. There's still a few more tickets left for the big London show at the Apollo in Hammersmith. But apart from that, I think it's pretty much sold out. Oh no, there's a few tickets left for the Dublin show. Anyway, link in the description. Hope to see some of you there. Thank you very much indeed, once again, to Werner Herzog and to his team. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for all his hard work on this episode, which was quite challenging overall to pull together. Thank you, Seamus. Thanks to Helen Green. She does the beautiful

artwork for the podcast. Thanks to everyone at ACAST for all their help and sponsor liaison. But thanks most especially to you. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Thanks for coming back. And before I head back into the wind with my best pal, Doglegs, I would like to offer you a New Year's hug. Come here. Hey. How you doing? Good to see you.

All right. Take care, please. And for what it's worth, I love you. Bye. right take care please and for what it's worth i love you Thank you. Give me like and subscribe, give me like and subscribe, give me like and subscribe, give me like and subscribe, give me like and subscribe, give me like and subscribe, give me like and subscribe, give me like and subscribe, give me like and subscribe, give me like and subscribe,次は、ステップ3のトレーニングを行います。 Thank you.