Welcome to Michael and us. I'm Will Sloan. Here is always with.

Luke Savage. Welcome back, everyone.

We have a jam-packed episode.

We'll be returning to the subject of Werner Herzog on this episode.

As you all know, a subject of great mutual interest for both Luke and I.

Before getting into it, I think we'd be remiss if we didn't talk a little bit more about the situation in the Middle East,

which I know has been occupying both of our thoughts, the thoughts of a lot of our listeners.

I'd just like to address some of what we've been feeling over the last week since we last spoke to you, really just to hear myself talk and work through a lot of difficult and very

strange feelings.

You know, Luke, next year is actually the 20th anniversary of a film very near and dear to our

podcast, Fahrenheit 9-11.

Right. Maybe you've heard of it. And I was remembering how when that movie came out, it was quite

novel some of the footage it presented of the Iraq War, the ground invasion itself. There was so

much atrocity footage, footage of dead bodies, footage of Iraqis mourning their losses.

I remember when I saw that in theaters at the time being particularly disturbed of the footage of the U.S. military just like going house to house in Baghdad and arresting people.

Or if you remember, there's that scene of the tanks rolling through Baghdad and the guys are talking in this very matter-of-fact way about the

death metal that they're listening to or whatever, just viscerally disturbing stuff. Yeah, I remember all that

well. The other one that has always stuck with me is the woman whose house has been destroyed.

Oh, God. Yeah, no, I still think about it. I mean, those are the scenes from that movie that I really

remember and think about, not so much the other stuff. Well, I think I know where you're going with this will.

Well, it's an interesting lesson these past few weeks about what has changed and what has remained the same. In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, you know, a lot of us compared it to the moment after 9-11 and the lead-up to the Iraq war.

As an article in N-plus-1 magazine put it, have we learned nothing?

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