That spirit is partly revealed through Herzog's ongoing narration, such as when he muses on collective behavior and whether fish have souls—a digression sparked by his interview with Siri co-inventor Tom Gruber. “In the background I noticed his TV screen was still on, we hadn't turned it off, and I saw a very, very strange school of fish,” Herzog said. “I asked him about the school of fish, which he had filmed himself. And suddenly I'm only interested in the fish and the normal behavior. Why do they all behave at the same time in big schools? Why do they do that? Are they dreaming? And when they think, what are they thinking about? I immerse the audience in a very strange form of underwater landscape and fish behavior.”
Werner Herzog's inspiration for Theater of thought emerged from conversations with neuroscientist Rafael Yuste of Columbia University, who served as a scientific advisor on the film.
Argot photos
Werner Herzog's inspiration for Theater of thought emerged from conversations with neuroscientist Rafael Yuste of Columbia University, who served as a scientific advisor on the film.
Argot photos
Yuste (left) with Kernel founder Bryan Johnson (right).
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Yuste (left) with Kernel founder Bryan Johnson (right).
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Rajesh Rao of the University of Washngton specializes in human brain-to-brain communication.
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Rajesh Rao of the University of Washngton specializes in human brain-to-brain communication.
Argot photos
Yuste (left) with Kernel founder Bryan Johnson (right).
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Rajesh Rao of the University of Washngton specializes in human brain-to-brain communication.
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Neuroscientist Eberhard Fetz of the University of Washington
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Herzog's camera captures brain surgery in progress,
Argot photos
We get a glimpse of the inner workings of Herzog's mind in the kinds of questions he asks his subjects, such as when he asks IBM's Dario Gil, who works on quantum computers, about his passion for fishing, eliciting an enthusiastic smile in response . He agrees to interview University of Washington neuroscientist Christof Koch after Koch's early morning brawl on the Puget Sound and includes music from New York University neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux's band, the Amygdaloids, in the film's soundtrack. He asks married scientists Cori Bargmann and Richard Axel about music, their dinner conversations and the linguistic abilities of parrots. In doing so, he brings out their innate humanity, and not just their scientific expertise.
“That's what I do. If you don't have it in you, you shouldn't be a filmmaker,” Herzog said. “But you also see the joy of being exposed to all this and the joy of meeting these scientists. We're talking about talking parrots. What if two parrots learned a language that is already extinct and they talked to each other? we make something of it? So I ask spontaneously, because I saw it, I felt it, there was something that I had to completely deviate from scientific searches. And yet there is a deep scientific background to it.
