665. Werner Herzog Isn’t Afraid ...

Summary

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Freakonomics Radio Ep. 665: "Werner Herzog Isn’t Afraid..."

Podcast: Freakonomics Radio
Host: Stephen J. Dubner
Guest: Werner Herzog
Date: February 27, 2026
Theme: Probing the worldview, art, and philosophy of Werner Herzog — filmmaker, writer, actor, and provocateur — touching on truth, memory, cultural complaint, and what defines intelligence.

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Episode Overview

In this wide-ranging conversation, Stephen J. Dubner delves into the life and ideas of legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog. The episode explores Herzog’s unique worldview, his reflections on art, truth, cultural shifts, education, memory, mortality, and the state of the world (past and present). Herzog, known for his uncompromising creative choices and philosophical depth, discusses his books, films, upbringing, and the difference between "accountant's truth" and "ecstatic truth."

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Herzog’s Self-Definition & Perception vs. Reality

• Average or Extraordinary?
  • Despite Dubner framing Herzog as "the sanest crazy person or the craziest sane person," Herzog insists:

    “No, I’m only sane.” (01:25 – Herzog)

  • “I’m as average as it can get.” (01:39 – Herzog)
• Dubner highlights Herzog’s vast and varied career, arguing he is anything but average.

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2. The Spirit Behind Herzog’s Work

• Herzog refutes the idea that his films are disconnected.

  “People are always puzzled by the scope ... No, it is not. There’s a clearly discernible worldview. It’s in all of it.” (05:01 – Herzog)

• He considers himself first and foremost a writer.

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3. Art, Specialization, and Upbringing

• Generalist vs. Specialist:
  • Herzog's childhood was difficult (“I was hungry,” but says it was not traumatic) and shaped by necessity.
  • He rejects introspection and psychoanalysis:

    “I believe that psychoanalysis is one of the great mistakes of the 20th century... The 20th century in its entirety was a mistake.” (07:01 – Herzog)

  • Cites rise and fall of ideologies (communism, fascism), the atomic bomb, and population growth as evidence.

    “The greatest of all disasters.” (08:14 – Herzog)

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4. Family, History, and Vigilance

• Herzog's parents were early adherents of the Nazi Party; his mother became disillusioned.
  • Being German, vigilance is a duty:

    “If [neo-Nazism] starts in Germany, it’s alarming for me.” (10:36 – Herzog) “You have to do something drastic, if necessary. Militant.” (10:54 – Herzog)

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5. Herzog on America

• Despite living in LA for personal reasons, Herzog downplays its climate and extols the city's industrial and cultural substance:

  “Los Angeles is the city with the most substance in the United States. First and foremost, cultural substance...” (13:04 – Herzog)

• Advocates for "the heartland of America," asserting it is underrepresented and holds the nation’s pulse.

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6. Artistic Output and Refusal to Conform

• Recounts declining an audience with the Emperor of Japan (in favor of meeting WWII holdout Hiroo Onoda):

  “There are silences that are friendly, but it was a frozen silence... I said, Hiro Onoda, the last Japanese soldier.” (18:04 – Herzog)

• Describes his sense of “brotherhood” with true artists:

  “It’s this profound feeling that I have brothers out there ... somebody who reassures me of everything and makes every toil, every labor, every disappointment, everything worthwhile.” (38:10 – Herzog)

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7. Germany’s Postwar Reckoning

• Herzog notes Germany’s consistent efforts toward education and legal acknowledgment of its past, but he does not believe its approach should be a “blueprint” for other countries.

  “You have to come with your cultural, historical identity ... Germany was consistent ... until literally today.” (20:23 – Herzog)

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8. The "Culture of Complaint"

• Critiques Western educational philosophy for praising mediocrity and failing to teach resilience:

  “It’s a philosophy behind education... Make the children happy instead of making them strong...” (25:14 – Herzog)

• Urges action over complaint, both artistically and politically:

  “Do something, don’t complain. I mean it way beyond politics...” (22:48 – Herzog)

• Cites his approach in workshops:

  “If you are able-bodied and have the will and the vision to make a film... Work as an Uber driver, work in a lunatic asylum, work as a bouncer in a sex club.” (23:34 – Herzog)

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9. Rejection, Time, and Artistic Legacy

• Herzog recounts multiple films initially met with rejection (e.g. Aguirre, the Wrath of God) later finding success.

  “I know the film is good and it will eventually find its audience. Time, in a way, is on my side, because I’m not in a trend.” (31:16 – Herzog)

• Streaming hasn't changed his work, but expanded its audience.

  “Piracy is the most successful form of distribution nowadays. So be it.” (32:44 – Herzog)

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10. Truth: "Accountant’s" vs. "Ecstatic"

• Herzog’s newest book explores the nature of truth:

  “We do not know what truth is ... But I know it’s a quest that is human. A voyage, an expedition, hardship, a search. But we must not abandon this search.” (40:44 – Herzog)

• Criticizes documentary filmmakers who equate factual accuracy with truth:

  “This is silly. It’s very shallow thinking, very shallow experience in the world, and not my way of making films.” (42:56 – Herzog)

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11. Intelligence and Memory

• Shares his mother’s observations about his intelligence:

  "He’s completely incapable of explaining anything he knows, he sees, he understands, but he can’t explain. That’s not his nature. With him, everything goes in. And if it comes out again, then it’ll be in some altered form.” (44:22 – Dubner quoting Herzog’s mother)

• Describes intelligence as a "bundle" opposed to what schools reward:

  "My bundle of intelligence was different. And because of that I was in constant conflict with my school.” (45:01 – Herzog)

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12. Technology, AI, and Fakes

• Herzog is unafraid of AI as a creative competitor but wary of its use in warfare and disinformation:

  “There’s no artificial intelligence that really would challenge me.” (03:59 – Herzog) “We have to be very, very vigilant when it comes to warfare and other things. It can be disinformation, fake news...” (47:02 – Herzog)

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13. Religion, Mortality, and Memory

• Speaks reflectively about faith, adolescence, and the inevitability of death:

  “It’s the only inevitability that we have ... But the only thing certain that we all share is that we are gonna die.” (47:55 – Herzog)

• On memory:

  “Memory is malleable... That’s what is deeply human. Thanks God, we have the quality to organize and shift and delete and modify our own memories.” (49:34 – Herzog)

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Memorable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• "No, I’m only sane." (01:25 – Herzog)
• "The 20th century in its entirety was a mistake." (08:09 – Herzog)
• "If [neo-Nazism] starts in Germany, it’s alarming for me." (10:36 – Herzog)
• “Los Angeles is the city with the most substance in the United States.” (13:04 – Herzog)
• “Just look out what is happening.” (10:36 – Herzog)
• "It’s a philosophy behind education... Make the children happy instead of making them strong.” (25:14 – Herzog)
• "I accept my films with all their mistakes. When I see a new film for the first time with an audience, I sink in my chair and I only see mistakes." (53:18 – Herzog)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• [03:40] – Herzog on AI and creativity
• [06:45] – Rejection of psychoanalysis, the “mistake” of the 20th century
• [10:36] – On Germany, Nazism, and vigilant opposition
• [13:04] – The virtues of Los Angeles and critique of New York
• [18:04] – Declining the Emperor’s invitation; Hiroo Onoda anecdote
• [21:23] – Germany’s educational and legal reckoning with the Holocaust
• [22:48] – “Culture of complaint” and the need for resilience
• [31:16] – Rejection and vindication of his films
• [40:44] – The quest for truth, "ecstatic truth" vs. factuality
• [44:22] – Mother’s view on Herzog’s intelligence
• [45:01] – Different “bundles” of intelligence
• [47:02] – AI and vigilance in the modern era
• [47:55] – Reflections on faith and mortality
• [49:34] – The malleability and purpose of memory

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Notable Moments

• Herzog’s insistence on the necessity of striving (“Truth is... an incessant striving.”)
• The anecdote of meeting WWII holdout Hiroo Onoda over the Emperor of Japan
• His critique of education and the Western “culture of complaint”
• The story of Fitzcarraldo's infamous steamship (as metaphor) and Herzog’s rejection of “cinema verité” as naive
• His powerful, nearly mythic conception of what it means to be an artist, and his reverence for a “brotherhood” with artists like Goya and Grunewald

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Conclusion

Werner Herzog presents an unflinching, often provocative vision of art, history, resilience, and humanity. He argues for the necessity of striving after truth (even if it can never be fully grasped), resilience over complaint, and authentic artistic vision over trends or consensus. Whether discussing Germany’s past, Hollywood’s present, or the metaphysics of memory and mortality, Herzog is consistent: relentless, uncompromising, and always in search of something deeper.

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Transcript

[Stephen Dubner]

Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Progressive, where drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average. Plus auto customers qualify for an average of 7 discounts. Get a quote [e-mail] to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12 month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. 20 discounts not available in all states and situations. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by LinkedIn ads. When you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn Ads, the platform that has the highest B2B ROAs of all online ad networks. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com freakonomics Terms and Conditions apply. So first of all, I just want to say it's really a pleasure to meet you. I have consumed a fair amount of your work, much less than some, more than others, and you strike me as maybe either the sanest crazy person on the planet or the craziest sane person.

[Werner Herzog]

No, I'm only sane.

[Stephen Dubner]

I. I just want to hear you describe how you see the world and I'll give you some leading questions. And I want to talk about your books, especially your recent book about truth. But I don't know. Do you feel like an unusual being?

[Werner Herzog]

No, I'm as average as it can get.

[Stephen Dubner]

That is Werner Herzog, the German born filmmaker and writer and actor and a sort of citizen soldier. He is not average. Hertog has made more than 70 films. All of them are spirited, some are absurdist or pretentious. None of them are dull. There is Family Romance llc, about a Japanese entrepreneur who leases out humans to other humans who for some reason may need a stand in family member or friend. There's Grizzly Man, a remarkable documentary about a man who loved bears a little too much. And there are the five films that Herzog made with the actor Klaus Kinski. The Kinski Herzog relationship was volatile and sometimes violent. Their two best known collaborations are Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Both films are about an obsession that tips into madness. In Fitzcarraldo, the Kinski character needs to haul a massive steamship over a steep hill in the Amazon in order to fund a new opera house. Herzog says that 20th Century Fox wanted him to shoot the film in botanical gardens in San Diego and for the ship to use a plastic model. But Herzog Got his way. He shot in the Peruvian jungle with a real 320 ton steamship and a real hill. It was a mad adventure. And all the madness of making the film is captured in the film. Today you could use AI to generate a decent facsimile of something like that for a tiny fraction of the cost. So is Herzog worried about the competition?

[Werner Herzog]

I saw a film which was scripted by artificial intelligence, and the image is made by artificial intelligence.

[Stephen Dubner]

How was it?

[Werner Herzog]

Completely dead on arrival. A stillborn baby. There's no spark of life in it, only mimicry of invention. Only mimicry. So I'm not worried. There's no artificial intelligence that really would challenge me.

[Stephen Dubner]

Herzog recently published a book called the Future of Truth. Here's one bit that captures the essence of. He writes, I don't think truth is some kind of polestar in the sky that we will one day get to. It's more like an incessant striving. Today on Freakonomics Radio, here's to incessant striving and what it means, according to Werner Herzog, to be intelligent.

[Freakonomics Radio Announcer]

This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that

[Werner Herzog]

explores the hidden side of everything with

[Freakonomics Radio Announcer]

your host, Stephen Dubner.

[Stephen Dubner]

Werner Herzog is smart enough to understand that a lot of people have a hard time understanding him and his worldview.

[Werner Herzog]

People are always puzzled by the scope of subjects of my films. There's a world champion of ski fliers and nine films on death row. And there's a film, Fitzcarraldo, a steamship over a mountain, and opera in the jungle and on and on. They think, yeah, it's a very separate sort of things. No, it is not. There's a clearly discernible worldview. It's in all of it. You see it even clearer in my books, and I always considered myself a writer.

[Stephen Dubner]

And you haven't even mentioned, you know, creating operas and acting yourself and doing voiceovers for documentaries and for the Simpsons and on and on.

[Werner Herzog]

Just a few days ago, for a Korean animated film by the director who did Parasite. A wonderful, very creative man, very good writer. And he wrote a screenplay for an animated film and invited me to be one of the characters. So I did recordings for this character. And it is a deep sea creature. So I'm good as a deep sea creature, but of course animated. And you see me as a person, for example, as a villain in Jack Reacher, but of course, it's all performance.

[Stephen Dubner]

We live in this age where I think more people are steered towards specialization. And you've done a lot of things within the arts but very different within the arts. And I'm just curious where that comes from. You had this wild childhood where you did a lot of things that children today don't do. You had a traumatic and poor childhood after the war.

[Werner Herzog]

No, not traumatic. Of course I was hungry. But it's okay for children. You get through it and you man up later. And it's hard for the parents, in this case heart, for the mother who couldn't feed the three boys anymore. And I don't like introspection. There's something not right, not in my life, not in my existence. I try to avoid it. This is why I believe that psychoanalysis is one of the great mistakes of the 20th century. Of course, it started earlier in the 19th century, but basically a phenomenon of the 20th century. I think it is not good if you illuminate all the dark recesses of the human soul, it's good that we can forget and that we forget traumas. We do not have to unearth them and articulate them in endless sessions with a psychiatrist. And the 20th century is full of very, very deep mistakes. Psychoanalysis is only one. But because of all these monstrous mistakes of this century, I do believe that the 20th century in its entirety was a mistake.

[Stephen Dubner]

The entire 20th century?

[Werner Herzog]

The entire. Yes. Good Lord, yes. And I have good reasons to argue.

[Stephen Dubner]

Let's hear some.

[Werner Herzog]

I would speak of the demise of social utopias. It begins with communism. It had its demise and of course, fascism and the barbarism of the Nazis, which has been unprecedented, postulating a master race dominating the planet. So this social utopia, thanks God, has come to an ignominious end. Atomic bomb, for example. Maybe the most significant of all, that in the 20th century, the population of the world grew from one and a half billion, roughly, to six billion. And that's the greatest of all disasters.

[Stephen Dubner]

Both your parents, you said, were, I think enthusiastic was the word you used. Adherents of the Nazi Party in the early time.

[Werner Herzog]

Yeah. And my mother, more the socialist, the nazional socialismus, meaning what room represented whom Hitler had eliminated, executed fairly early on because he was more in the mainstream of socialism and not so much nationalism. It's a long, complex debate, but that was more the sources of where my mother took her credo. But she was, shall I say, intelligent enough. And she was so much rooted in the real world with three boys to raise all alone, that she came to very sobering conclusions fairly early on.

[Stephen Dubner]

You were born during World War II in Munich?

[Werner Herzog]

Yeah, yeah, I was born 1942.

[Stephen Dubner]

So by the time that you're a Thinking sentient, human. I'm curious what kind of conversations you had with your mother about the beginning of the war in the Nazi Party?

[Werner Herzog]

Well, only much later, when I was grown up enough to ask the right questions. Still mysterious to me in a way. My father barely knew, so I didn't have real serious conversations with him about it. But puzzling, disturbing, and giving me a sense of becoming vigilant.

[Stephen Dubner]

What do you mean by that?

[Werner Herzog]

Just look out what is happening. For example, you do have neo Nazis in Germany. You have them in other countries as well. It's not Germany alone, but if it starts in Germany, it's alarming for me.

[Stephen Dubner]

You've said you would pick up arms against them if they.

[Werner Herzog]

Sure I would. Instantly. That's what we have to do. I mean, as a German, it doesn't matter which age I am. You, you have to do something drastic, if necessary. Militant.

[Stephen Dubner]

You now live in Los Angeles? Yes?

[Werner Herzog]

Yes. Yeah, because I'm happily married there. No other big reason. And of course, what's good weather. No, I don't care about that. I could live near the North Pole or whatever. Doesn't matter now. I need a roof over my head and something good to read. And that's it. What I need.

[Stephen Dubner]

How do you feel about living in the US during this rather odd time? Politically, socially, etc.

[Werner Herzog]

Well, these times come and go. America has great resilience. It has a strange ability to rejuvenate itself, to start again, to recalibrate itself. So you don't have to complain about what is happening. It is a consequence of many things that people in particular East Coast, west coast, have overlooked. And that's a heartland. The heartland of America and their values and the fact that they are underrepresented, under educated, underpaid, disenfranchised to some degree. This is serious. And I love the heartland of America much more than the fringes. The fringes are Boston, New York.

[Stephen Dubner]

You've written about New York. You don't like it very much, do you?

[Werner Herzog]

I like New York. It's an incredible city and I like that it forces you to a certain rhythm, speed and energy. I also am not completely against the hostility of New York. It's okay. It's challenging. You really are whipped into doing something. Los Angeles is the city with the most substance in the United States.

[Stephen Dubner]

The most substance, you said. In what way?

[Werner Herzog]

First and foremost cultural substance. But don't forget that there's a huge amount of industry there. When you fly into Los Angeles, you see all these industrial areas, flat roofs, gigantic factories, reusable rockets are being built within the perimeter of the city. You don't have this factory in the Bronx, you don't have it near Wall Street. Of course, people immediately think the superficial side. Glitz and glamour of Hollywood, that's what I don't mean. But serious art, all the artists that made New York important, they were late 1940s, early 1950s. The last straggler, in a way, was Andy Warhol. It's a place where you consume culture. New York, it's generated in Los Angeles. The painters are living there nowadays. Not all, but some very important ones. Writers, mathematicians. Also stupidities like crazy sects. Yoga classes for 5 year old. I mean, it's grotesque. Great universities, LACMA is going to open very soon, and all of a sudden you will have one of the two, three most important museums in the United States. I mean, it has great museums already and it's going to be big. You see, I'm the one who says it at a time where nobody believes it, nobody notices it, and it's wonderful to articulate it.

[Stephen Dubner]

Now nobody believes it. About la, you're saying.

[Werner Herzog]

No, you find it kind of funny when I say it, I see your face.

[Stephen Dubner]

So I've been to LA maybe 20 times in my life, never for more than a week. And I love la. It's just so different from New York that I feel like I need to orient myself anew. But being a New Yorker, I do want to ask you. Let's say that I consider it tragic that New York has fallen behind in the arts, as you said.

[Werner Herzog]

Oh, no, come on. It's not tragic that Florence has fallen behind. It's not tragic magic that medieval Venice, Italy has fallen behind. So what? It keeps shifting. And it was shifting within Italy. Florence, Rome, Milan, Venice, Ferrara, Sometimes it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's one country, it's one culture.

[Stephen Dubner]

So what I hear you saying when you mention that is that, you know, time is long, art can be long, but each of us moves through this space in a relatively short time. You've done a great deal in your life, and I know you're still working on things, but when you think about, you know, one person's life and what you're able to observe and accomplish in regard to the whole span of civilization, how do you process that?

[Werner Herzog]

How do I process that? Probably because I have an output in doing things like films or books and other activities, acting, operas, also things in between writing and filmmaking. Did an installation for the Whitney Museum, Hearsay of the Soul, which was partially Music partially images. And it was a wonderful, wonderful task for me. And very strange because I immediately refused the offer to do an installation for the Whitney piano. They said to me on the phone, ah, yeah, but you're an artist. Aren't you an artist yourself? And I said, no, I'm not an artist. I'm a soldier, and hung up.

[Stephen Dubner]

You're good at saying no to big official requests, it seems. Was it the Prime Minister of Japan you wanted to meet with You?

[Werner Herzog]

No, the Emperor.

[Stephen Dubner]

The Emperor.

[Werner Herzog]

Sorry. It's much, much more embarrassing. It's so embarrassing that I have difficulties to even speak about it. I staged the world premiere of an opera of a contemporary Japanese composer who wanted me desperately to stage it for the first time in the world. And it was somehow known in the media that I was working in the city and not the Emperor himself. It was from his office, cautiously, an official stretched out the feelers where I could meet the Emperor in a private audience. It was shortly before the premiere, and of course, there was a lot of turmoil and work and things didn't function yet. But I immediately said to the people of the opera, who were on a long table for dinner together, I said, no, I cannot do that. And I made a remark. I wouldn't even know what to say to the Emperor, because I should say something of importance, something of gravitas, something formalized. I wouldn't know how to handle it. But there was complete silence. There are silences that are friendly, but it was a frozen silence. And then into the silence, all of a sudden, there's a voice asking, whom else then would you like to meet? And without missing a beat, I said, hiro Onoda, the last Japanese soldier.

[Stephen Dubner]

He'd been in the jungle for 40 years or something. Yeah.

[Werner Herzog]

He surrendered 29 years after the end of the Second World War, still believing that the war was on. I met him, and I had quite a few meetings, and we immediately had a very intense rapport and ultimately ended up by me writing a novel, the Twilight World. But I actually met the Emperor. I invited him very kindly to attend the world premiere of the opera. And the Emperor showed up, and I asked for permission to shake his hand. So I came in the intermission, I shook his hand, and he said, stay for a moment. We should speak. And we spoke. And it was very pleasant, by the way, a wonderful short conversation. And it was at the right moment, I think it was, when I had to offer something which was visible. You could see it. And in 15 minutes, intermission was over, and the second act would come So I didn't come with empty hands. And it was much better then.

[Stephen Dubner]

It's always, I guess, impressed me the way that Germany, after the Second World War, assessed what had happened and in its schools and its institutions, tried to come to grips with why and how and to educate its successive generations. Can you just talk about that a bit? Did you see that as unusual among nations? Should it be a blueprint? Because there apparently are going to continue to be wars into the future.

[Werner Herzog]

No, it shouldn't be a blueprint. As a German, you do not give a blueprint to the Americans how to handle their educational system. You don't. And you don't tell the Japanese how to deal with their education, or the Italians or the. You just name it, you just don't do it. You have to come with your cultural, historical identity. You will come to your conclusions. But of course, Germany was consistent in it from the end of the Second World War until literally today. And it's not only education, it's translated into legislation. For example, it is a criminal offense to be a denier of Holocaust. If you are a fervent denier and go to public as a denier of the Holocaust, you will end up in jail in Germany. And I think it's good that it is like this.

[Stephen Dubner]

I've heard you speak about living in a culture of complaint. My wife has a phrase for certain kinds of people. She calls them injustice collectors.

[Werner Herzog]

That's a good characterization. Yeah.

[Stephen Dubner]

I'd love you to say whatever more you can about what you mean by a culture of complaint, and especially what you think is the cost of that.

[Werner Herzog]

I mean it in a larger context, of course. I mean what you're hinting at politically. And I try to encourage all my friends who are not Trump supporters, I tell them, don't complain. It is a majority. It's not lottery that brought Trump to the presidency. He won the popular vote by a very significant margin, both houses, Senate and Congress, and the Supreme Court is to some degree shaped by him. So it's significant it doesn't come because he's a lucky man. No, there's a clear worldview, a clear cultural war that he wants to wage. And it's evident he really says what he means. It's not that there's anything hidden. And I say to everyone, if you do not agree, take America, the heartland of America. Take it seriously. That's where the heart beats.

[Stephen Dubner]

When you say take it seriously, do you mean that as a political direction, an artistic direction in every sense?

[Werner Herzog]

And many of my friends who are working In Los Angeles. I say, don't you come from Kansas? Yes, I come from Kansas. And I say, when were you in Kansas last time? That was 20 years ago now. You should be every year. When did you meet your high school buddies? Oh, no contact with them at all. You have to get in touch with them, ask them how they are doing, ask them about their visions, ask them about their grievances, keep them engaged. They are your buddies, your high school friends. Do something, don't complain. I don't like the complaints. I mean it way beyond politics. When I do a workshop for young filmmakers, they have to make a film within nine days. A short film, very short film. But it's a relentless push and they learn a lot because I'm behind them during casting, choosing some sort of a story, showing them locations. I'm with them, going around when they are shooting, look over their backs when they're editing. And they have to come up on the 10th day with a finished short film. The mood in the beginning is always, ah, the film industry is so stupid. And they do not finance. And I ask from where are you? South Korea? And the Americans, they complain, they say the same thing. The Mexicans say the same thing everywhere. The Germans, that's immediately the mood of complaint. I say, you idiots. If you are able bodied and have the will and the vision to make a film, earn a little bit money today you can make a documentary that is cinema quality for under $10,000. A one and a half hour film. Work as an Uber driver, work in a lunatic asylum, work as a bouncer in a sex club. That's what I always recommend.

[Stephen Dubner]

Or as a German rodeo clown, like you did.

[Werner Herzog]

Yes, in Mexico. Yeah, yeah. Well, I earned money because I had to survive.

[Stephen Dubner]

You earned money in a lot of interesting ways.

[Werner Herzog]

Ye, yes, but I made my money really old fashioned way. I really earned it.

[Stephen Dubner]

Where do you think that culture of complaint, where do you think that comes from?

[Werner Herzog]

It probably has wide sources, broad sources. In the West I see an educational system that immediately rewards you for everything. Ah, great job. And it can be a lousy sketch, lousier than anyone in class. And you have to be praised for it. There's no way to tell a kid, well, this wasn't really good work, but I know you can do better. And why don't you work on this? Bring it to me tomorrow. All of a sudden you have a good one. It's a philosophy behind education and the philosophies. Make the children happy instead of making them strong, just for God's sake, make them Strong guys, strong young women. And they will like it. They will like it. And the world out there is complicated. It's not easy and sometimes very harsh to you. Get prepared. Get yourself ready for it. And that's what is missing. So the reasons for it are quite diversified. But it's a very, very big trend. And I don't like it. Because when you are a filmmaker, you are out for relentless, relentless judgment. You will start a storm of negative reviews. The audience will not like your movie. It may be financially a disaster. And on and on. You better prepare yourself.

[Stephen Dubner]

Hollywood is in the middle of one of its fairly regular existential crises. A lot of people say that this time it's really different. But of course, that's what they always say. But it has become much harder over the past 10 years. Especially to make a living in film or TV. This would seem strange since people are consuming so much film and tv. But these industries have warped economics. They've been warped for decades. Maybe we should do a series on that someday. Anyway, Herzog doesn't let rejection get him down.

[Werner Herzog]

There was a project once to do a film on Mike Tyson, which fell apart. But I like him.

[Stephen Dubner]

What attracted you to him and his

[Werner Herzog]

story, his intelligence, his knowledge? I immediately had a conversation about the Roman Republic. He triggered it. About early Frankish kings, Merovingian kings, Pepin the Short and Fredegunde and Clovis. And it comes from Mike Tyson. Man, this is a good guy. I like him as an independent thinker. And I say thinker, not just the one who has destroyed his opponents in the ring.

[Stephen Dubner]

What happened to the film?

[Werner Herzog]

It never materialized. There was a project where I wanted to have him as an actor. And the film was never financed. So what? It's okay.

[Stephen Dubner]

After the break, we'll hear what Herzog is working on now. I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back. Freekonomics Radio is sponsored by Mint Mobile. Every group has someone who insists on doing things the hard way. That friends still paying for a subscription they forgot they had. And now that one who's somehow still overpaying for Wireless in 2026. Mint Mobile is here to help with that last one. For a limited time, get 50% off 3, 6 or 12 month plans of unlimited Premium Wireless. Bring your own phone and number, activate with ESIM in minutes and start saving immediately. Ready to stop paying more than you have to? New customers can make the switch today. And for a limited time, get unlimited Premium wireless for just $15 per month. Switch [e-mail] freak that's mintmobile.com freak upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only over 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device required Availability, speed and coverage varies. Additional terms apply. See mintmobile.com

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[Werner Herzog]

I went to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Live

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[Stephen Dubner]

WERNER Herzog is 83 years old and remains productive. Among his recent projects a documentary about a wildlife researcher who's trying to find the giant ghost elephant in the highlands of Angola, and a feature film with a spoonerized title, Bucking Fastered, which stars sisters Kate and Rooney Mara as two sisters who speak in unison, love the same man and have the same dreams. I asked Herzog how he thinks about the critical and public response to his work.

[Werner Herzog]

When I make a few films in a row, four or five films, not much resonance, bad reviews, it's okay. I can survive it because I know the film is good and it will eventually find its audience. I know that time, in a way is on my side because I'm not in a trend. I've never been in any trend. A very good example is the Wrath of God, which was a very hard film to do and it was rejected by everyone. The festivals rejected got very bad reviews in Germany, I mean really, really bad ones. It took five years until first audiences got in France, started to see it and like it, and they lined up in two theaters only, but they lined up around the Block for two and a half years. Ten years later, America caught up. I had three RE releases of that film and today it's not a household name. But those who know about cinema know about this film. So time was on its side.

[Stephen Dubner]

What has the streaming revolution done for you and your films?

[Werner Herzog]

Nothing. It has not changed the shape of my films, the substance of my films.

[Stephen Dubner]

But people can discover older films easily.

[Werner Herzog]

Yes, that's a great advantage because you can see a film I did in the mid-1970s, you can find it on some platform. If it's nowhere, it's always somewhere. Pirated piracy is the most successful form of distribution nowadays. So be it. But films are accessible and this is why very young people discover it today. The males that reach me are males by 15 year olds in Missoula, Montana, in South Korea, in Brazil. 15, 16, 17 years old.

[Stephen Dubner]

What is it about your work that moves them?

[Werner Herzog]

I do not know. Something that comes across a great vision and something really authentic. Films like no one else ever has done.

[Stephen Dubner]

When I watch Fitzcarralda, which I think we'd agree is your most famous film to date.

[Werner Herzog]

Yes, I cannot really judge here, but people normally know about it.

[Stephen Dubner]

For anyone who's not seen Fitzcarraldo, I would say you're diminishing yourself by not seeing it. It's so compelling and magnetic on so many levels. But then when this 320 ton, whatever steamship is being manually moved over this mountain, it becomes, when I watch it, a metaphor for anything and everything difficult in life. And not only are you hoping and praying that somehow catastrophe doesn't happen, but you're also wondering, or I'm wondering about you. I'm wondering like why. Why did you feel compelled? Because in the real story of Fitzcarraldo, the ship was taken apart.

[Werner Herzog]

Well, there's no real story. It's basically all invented. A real rubber baron, a billionaire at his time, 120 years ago or so, uninteresting as it gets. But he moved once a small ship, 30 tons or so, I mean ridiculously small for me, and disassembled it and moved it over flat terrain into another river.

[Stephen Dubner]

But what you're doing in the film, and we see, and Klaus Kinski is, you can't stop watching him. Why were you willing to take on that challenge with all its physical, logistical.

[Werner Herzog]

Because there's something deep in it that I share with almost everyone that I know. Something that is very human. A deep metaphor, like the metaphor of Sisyphus, who rolls up a big boulder of rock up the mountain and it rolls back on him and he has to do it over and over again. Sisyphus, of course, dates back two and a half thousand years, at least into ancient Greek mythology. But I knew there was something of that nature, a very deep metaphor, a little bit like, let's say, the quest for Moby Dick, the white whale. Something that we share. We have it in us. It's some sort of human knowledge, but undiscovered, yet unarticulated. Yet the ancient Greek articulated with a myth of Sisyphus. Melville articulated it in his book Moby Dick. And I articulated something in Fitzcarraldo. What exactly I uncovered, I can't tell you, but I know it's big.

[Stephen Dubner]

Who's articulating those kind of ideas now, in your view?

[Werner Herzog]

I do it besides you? I hardly see anyone. Visual artists I don't see well. I have to think hard. I don't see anyone. But I have to confess, I do not see many films. Four or five a year. Much less than an average moviegoer.

[Stephen Dubner]

I read you live in la. When you go to the Broad or to lacma, do you see modern visual artists?

[Werner Herzog]

No, I don't go to museums. Museums has a threshold. It's very hard for me to step over this threshold sometimes. My wife manages to get me into a museum. I was, for example, at the Prado in Madrid. But I walked through it, I hastened through it, through the entire museum, not looking left and right because I wanted to go to one single room with Goya's Black nightmare images. I only saw that.

[Stephen Dubner]

What was it about those Goyas that you wanted to see? I mean, he's particularly soulful. He's a very good technician. What is it about Goya in particular?

[Werner Herzog]

It's somebody who touches me as one of the true artists that I know. There's very few. I could name you only two or three, and that's about it.

[Stephen Dubner]

Who are they?

[Werner Herzog]

Matthias Grunewald, for example, Late medieval. The Isenheim Altar. It's something which is beyond belief and I spent once a whole day in and around it.

[Stephen Dubner]

What did you feel during that day?

[Werner Herzog]

Just knowing that there's somebody out there who is the truest of true artists. Somebody who touches me to my core. Same thing with Goya. The Black Nightmares touches me to the core.

[Stephen Dubner]

How do you rate yourself compared to them?

[Werner Herzog]

I do not compare myself. But I know I'm not alone anymore. It's this profound feeling that I have brothers out there and I don't care whether they are much greater than I am. It doesn't matter. But there's a brotherhood out there, somebody who reassures me of everything and makes every toil, every labor, every disappointment, everything worthwhile.

[Stephen Dubner]

After the break, what makes a person an intelligent person? This is Freakonomics Radio. I'm Stephen Dubner speaking with Werner Herzog. Will be right back.

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[Stephen Dubner]

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[Stephen Dubner]

So your most recent book is called the Future of Truth. You write about the difference between what you call the accountant's truth and the ecstatic truth. I'd love you to walk us through that.

[Werner Herzog]

We do not know what truth is. Philosophers do not know. 2000 philosophers in a survey couldn't give a clear answer. Nobody has it. But I know it's a quest that is human. A voyage, an expedition, hardship, a search. But we must not abandon this search, even though we never will exactly know what truth is. It has to do with art per se. I think every artist, sooner or later, is confronted with the question of truth. It comes inevitably at you. Filmmaker, painter, writer, poet. It doesn't matter. It will come at you. I have always seen the deepest insights, the deepest illumination, when it was not only carried by facts. I always use this as an example. Until recently, you had the Manhattan phone directory, half a foot thick with four and a half million entries, all of them factually correct. But it doesn't illuminate you. So it's not the book of books. The phone directory is the accountant's truth. But doing films or being a poet, you have to do something that illuminates you. And very often you have to depart from the facts. You have to go into ecstasies, you have to step outside of your own self, you have to exaggerate, you have to modify, you have to invent. And this puts me in immediate conflict with cinema. Verity. Which even has it in its name. Verity. Of course, they cannot claim being in possession of truth. Nonsense. They are not. Nobody is. And I have my ongoing battle with them. Whenever I run into them, I do. Battle.

[Stephen Dubner]

Because you feel they are adopting a mantle that they don't live up to.

[Werner Herzog]

No, no, no, no, no. It's a concept that film is as truthful as it gets in their lingo, if you are factually correct. Fact based. Fact based. Fact based. Verifiable. Fact checked. This is silly. It's very shallow thinking, very shallow experience in the world and not my way of making films.

[Stephen Dubner]

I mean, as a journalist, I like facts, but I understand that facts are not the whole story.

[Werner Herzog]

And as a journalist, you better do fact checking. You better do that because there's a certain responsibility vis a vis your readers. You are not a poet who is just inventing the world. Same thing when I'm writing my memoirs. Fact checking my memoirs took three times more time than just writing it. I gave the manuscript to my brothers, my older and my younger brothers. And I said, read this because you have been in many of these events. Tell me if I'm completely wrong. And of course, I made a few modifications.

[Stephen Dubner]

Your mother was long dead by the time you published your memoir.

[Werner Herzog]

Yes, sure. She couldn't fact check. Yeah.

[Stephen Dubner]

But I did want to ask you something, because you did quote her. This is in your memoir, Every man for Himself and God against all, which is a title of a film as well, correct?

[Werner Herzog]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen Dubner]

But you quote your mother saying this about you all the time he was at school. Werner never learned anything you have your mother saying about you. He never read the books he was supposed to read. He never studied. But then, in fact, Werner always knew everything. His senses were extraordinary. He could pick out some note or Sound, and 10 years later, remember it exactly. He would talk about it and use it in some way. He's completely incapable of explaining anything he knows, he sees, he understands, but he can't explain. That's not his nature. With him, everything goes in. And if it comes out again, then it'll be in some altered form.

[Werner Herzog]

Well, I didn't invent it. She said it in an interview. So that is verifiable. But I always had it in me to absorb things. And things are embedded deep inside of me. All of a sudden, 10 years later, it re emerges, but in form of a story, in form of an element, of a vision. I think she's right in what she says. And I was not a happy kid in school. I hated school the last two and a half years. I was dozing most of the time. Sometimes deep, fast asleep. Because I worked the night shift in a steel factory as a welder. I needed to earn money for producing my first films. And I didn't like the kind of education. It's complicated. There's such a thing like intelligence, but it's a bundle of mental memory, speech, combination of elements, logical thinking and musicality. A sense for poetry, many, many things. A whole bundle. The kind of bundle necessary for being a good pupil in the school that I attended was not congruent with what was in my existence. My bundle of intelligence was different. And because of that I was in constant conflict with my school.

[Stephen Dubner]

Some people argue that AI, even though many educators are scared of it, some people argue that AI will be a phenomenal teaching tool. Because if children know that they have the available facts at their disposal, then they can spend more time thinking about bigger, more interesting truths, maybe about creativity and so on. What do you think of that?

[Werner Herzog]

Well, it's a complex subject, AI. I would say I'm not afraid of what's going on. However, we have to be very, very vigilant when it comes to warfare and other things. It can be disinformation, fake news. Perfect replicas of you appearing in a pornographic film can be done today and almost credibly. You better go to the source directly and ask, did you really do that? What I saw in the movie?

[Stephen Dubner]

The answer is no.

[Werner Herzog]

Okay. The answer is no. Thanks, God.

[Stephen Dubner]

Do you believe in God?

[Werner Herzog]

I can't answer that. I have a dramatic religious phase.

[Stephen Dubner]

When you were much younger?

[Werner Herzog]

When I was in adolescence, yes. Yeah.

[Stephen Dubner]

You converted Catholicism when you were 14 or something? Yeah.

[Werner Herzog]

Yeah. That was a dramatic short time, but I left the church.

[Stephen Dubner]

Do you think about what happens when you Die.

[Werner Herzog]

I think everybody who is alive and has his or her wits together thinks about it. Because it's the only inevitability that we have. Everything else is up to, God knows, fate, lottery, statistics, anomalies within the statistics. You just name it. But the only thing certain that we all share is that we are gonna die. And that, of course, dictates whether we are religious or whether we believe in an afterlife or not.

[Stephen Dubner]

I've had a very jarring experience a couple times in the last year. Where loved ones, members of my family who were very religious. Toward the end they lost their faith. And it surprised me.

[Werner Herzog]

Normally it's the other way around. Because it stabilizes, it gives hope. Because dying is not easy. Being born is not easy. I mean, it's a brutal event, painful and brutal. And normally dying is not an easy thing either. So you better face it what's coming at you. And very often those who are religious can cope with it much better.

[Stephen Dubner]

I've always been transfixed by the notion of memory. It's so subjective, it's so individual. It's so odd. We take in so much information and remember so little. But when I watch your films, I feel like I'm planting things in my mind that will become memories. And I'm just curious how you think about that sense and what it was put there for.

[Werner Herzog]

Well, memory is something necessity for simple survival. Let's face it. Of course, memory is malleable. And it is shifting. And we start to organize or reframe our own memories. And it's good that we can do that. We can forget the real awful things. And we can move on to the better part.

[Stephen Dubner]

Many people can, some people can't.

[Werner Herzog]

Yeah, but it's a blessing if you can forget bad things or put them in a little corner. My memory functions like everyone else's. I shape my own memory, like everyone does it. And you see it when you ask your own brothers about the same event. And I see somehow I must have shifted it slightly different from how they shifted it. That's what is deeply human. Thanks God, we have the quality to organize and shift and delete and modify our own memories. So it's not a solid thing like a hard drive in your laptop. Thanks God we don't have that kind of memory.

[Stephen Dubner]

This conversation is going to stay in my memory for a while. I know that, and for that I thank you very much.

[Werner Herzog]

It's been good to talk to you.

[Stephen Dubner]

I hate to throw a piece of the Accountant's Truth at Werner Herzog. But in the interest of fact checking. I don't think there were ever four and a half million entries in the Manhattan phone directory. Maybe two million. But I think you will agree that he gave us enough ecstatic truth to let the phone book thing slide. His latest book is called the Future of Truth. The one before that, it's called Every man for Himself and God Against A Memoir. If you want to let us know what you thought of this episode, Our email is radioreconomics.com youm can also leave a comment on your podcast app [e-mail] where we also publish transcripts and show notes. Coming up next time on the show, we look at the long arc of technology through the eyes of an economic historian.

[Werner Herzog]

Every technology has a downside. When early humans made their first hammers and axes, they could bash each other's heads in. And they did.

[Stephen Dubner]

Joel Mokir recently won a Nobel Prize. He was not expecting to get that. Famously, early in the morning phone call from the Nobel people.

[Werner Herzog]

Oh, I was completely flabbergasted. You know, stupefied. I mean, run down to thesaurus.

[Stephen Dubner]

But now he's got the mic and he's got a mission.

[Werner Herzog]

It is my mission to tell people how good they have it. The good old days may have been old, but they weren't good.

[Stephen Dubner]

We'll get some economic history and we'll get some advice.

[Werner Herzog]

I have many tips.

[Stephen Dubner]

The Nobel laureate, Joel Mokeir. That's next time on the show. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app. This episode was produced by Alina Coleman and Zach Lipinski and edited by Gabriel Roth. It was mixed by Jasmine Klinger with help from Eleanor Osborne and Jeremy Johnston. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Abuaji, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Ilaria Montenacourt and Teo Jacobs. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thanks for listening.

[Werner Herzog]

No, I'm not a perfectionist. I accept my films with all their mistakes. When I see a new film for the first time with an audience, I sink in my chair and I only see mistakes.

[Freakonomics Radio Announcer]

The Freakonomics Radio Network the Hidden side of Everything Everything. Stitcher

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[Stephen Dubner]

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