Werner Herzog Is Ready for the Post-Truth World

Growing up in a suburban utopia outside of Houston, I wanted for little. Ours was a community of deeply religious, hardworking oil-and-gas men and women, beautiful families with manicured lawns, gas-guzzling SUVs, Little League, country clubs, marching band, and Outback Steakhouse. But things seemed a bit too perfect. What deeper truths were lurking? I wondered. Absent real answers, I turned to the otherworldly and the supernatural, obsessing over inexplicable phenomena, conspiracy theories, calamitous predictions of doom via civilization-ending comet or pandemic. The Betty and Barney Hill abduction, D.B. Cooper’s lost briefcase, the JFK assassination, the Mothman, the Antichrist’s imminent arrival. By the third grade, I had become a chubby, big-haired, walking encyclopedia of the catastrophic and the unknown.