Word Food: Bumblebee & Nelson

Pushback Talks Season 9 is here with "Word Food"!

This season, Fredrik & Leilani return with their signature bite-sized episodes: sharp, surprising, 15-minute explorations of the words that shape our world. Each week, they pick a single word (or two) and unpack how its simple surface hides deeper social, political, and economic realities.

Think of it as thought-provoking “intellectual snacking” -  quick enough for your commute, rich enough to shift how you see power, privilege, and the systems around us.

This week’s episode:

Bumblebee: a comparison of bumblebees and Palestinians: how they manage to fly, to resist and maintain their beauty despite their wings being seemingly too small for them.

Nelson: a recollection of Nelson (Mandela) coming fresh out of prison after 27 years as a loving character and a celebrated leader.

New episodes drop every week.

Make this your ritual for keeping your curiosity - and your resistance - alive!

Transcript

Fredrik Gertten 0:03

I'm Fredrik Gertten and I'm the filmmaker.

Leilani Farha 0:05

And I'm Leilani Farha, and I'm the advocate.

Fredrik Gertten 0:08

And this is Pushback Talks, the word special. We are back this fall with words that make our life shine. We are word artists. No, we are not. But yeah, we're trying to. We're trying to. Wordsmiths. Wordsmiths. Leilani, are you ready for a new word? It's coming and you have to boom.

Leilani Farha 0:34

I get very nervous just before you say the word. Okay.

Fredrik Gertten 0:39

I start sweating. It's coming. It starts with a B and it's Do you want me to guess? Bumblebee.

Leilani Farha 0:48

Oh, Bumblebee. Oh. You know, I don't know enough about bumblebees except to know that they are extremely important to civilization. And one should never kill a bumblebee because of the role they play in our ecosystem. I do know that. And I think that's a good idea. What role do they play?

Fredrik Gertten 1:06

Huh? What role did it play?

Leilani Farha 1:08

Oh, they're pollinators. They're pollinators, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's important. It's like part of the ecosystem. You can explain it to our listeners.

Fredrik Gertten 1:19

And I will tell you a thing. I mean, bumblebee for me is the first is the word in English. Bumblebee. It's so beautiful.

Leilani Farha 1:28

Yeah, it's great.

Fredrik Gertten 1:29

In Swedish is humla.

Leilani Farha 1:31

Humla.

Fredrik Gertten 1:31

Yeah. Very different.

Leilani Farha 1:33

It's very quite as like Bumblebee, I'm not sure.

Fredrik Gertten 1:35

And then it's the whole idea of you're too big to fly, but still you fly. You know, it's like in some way breaking all the laws. And this is like you can't fly, but I want to fly. It's in some way, it's a very hopeful creature. So we can all get inspired by the bumblebees.

Leilani Farha 1:56

And their jackets are so amazing. Yeah. These perfect. I mean, there's so many things in nature like this that are perfection, just perfection in their natural being. But these black and yellow, golden stripes are gorgeous. My dog bean unfortunately really likes to snap and try to eat the bumblebee, and we have to, you know, trying to get a dog to understand that the bumblebee is part of the ecosystem. It's not easy. Dogs really just speak a different language.

Fredrik Gertten 2:30

Yeah. But uh, but can you say that the Palestinians are bumblebees?

Leilani Farha 2:36

Oh. That they're able to survive and resist and maintain their beauty. I sometimes believe Palestinians are a different order of people. That they can produce such beautiful poetry and art, disproportionate to their population, for sure. The numbers of poets and artists, and they have a huge intelligentsia and their ability to survive a genocide, 77 years of different types of occupation and brutality. So I don't know. I mean, I think bumblebees are a little uh less resilient than Palestinians.

Fredrik Gertten 3:18

The bumblebees are not they're too big to fly, but still they fly, you know. True, true. Sometimes they're not so good in flying, so your dog can eat them, but still they they keep flying. Okay, over to you, my dear. Oh my gosh. Oh, now I I now I'm the one who gets to be nervous. What are you going to hit me with?

Leilani Farha 3:42

I'm gonna hit you with a leader, a real leader, Nelson.

Fredrik Gertten 3:48

Nelson. Oh. In Cape Town, where you are, there is a very classical hotel called Mount Nelson. And my friends, the black journalists, they decided to make Mount Nelson like they they invaded and had drinks in the this beautiful garden. You have to go there. It's a very beautiful hotel. It's very we like the so it's a big garden in the middle of town. And when Winnie Mandela, when she visited her husband out on Robin Island, she always stayed at Mount Nelson, you know, to say, I'm the queen of the country, so of course I'm going to stay in the best hotel. Which a lot of some part of the left got really provoked by it, but I I loved it. And uh when I was the first time in South Africa in 1986, Mandela was still in prison, and it was a lot of rumors going on, and maybe he was out, maybe he was, you know, somewhere, and you know, there was because obviously the negotiations were already ongoing, but he was still in prison. But for a long time there were so many rumors about Mandela. So it's you know, remember the big birthday party in London in Hyde Park, you know, all the big artists were playing. I mean, there's been he was he was like a celebrated leader after 27 years in prison. People hadn't seen his face. And suddenly one day in 1990, he steps out and he meets the world as such a loving character. So smart, so eloquent, so good at also bringing his enemies close and make them respect him. It was in one way never heard of, you know, because if you've been locked up for 27 years, it's you kind of have the right to be bitter and angry, you would say. Um, he showed nothing of that. And I was there in 1990 in Cape Town, and Nelson had been out visiting his former prison inmates, friends out on Robin Island the first time he returned. Right. And I was waiting at the ferry station in for the prison has their own little ferry station. Yeah. We were a small group of journalists, and I remember everybody rushed up to him, and I was kind of first. I was pushed up to his chest. You know, I was like body to body, all body to body with Nelson. And I he's much taller than me, and I'm 180. And so I looked up and and then I I had my radio mic just stuck here in up in his breast. And then I asked him about the prison. What do you think we should do? First, I said I was from Sweden, and you know, Sweden was for a long time, the Swedish government gave 50% of the ANC's budget, the 10 last year of before he was released. So it was like very important support. So he knew about Sweden, so he was also very friendly. But then I asked him about what do you think? I was looking up, what do you think we should do with the prison now when you're taking over? And he said, I think we should close all prisons, you know. And I I've yeah, it's it kind of stuck with me, this kind of utopian thought that we we should have a society without prisons. And I mean, he didn't when he was then the president later on. Uh he, of course, he also kept the prisons going. But it's I think it's it was a beautiful thought to have the ability to be utopian. That the same year I I met him several times more, and then four years later, I was also in Pretoria when he was installed as the president. That's this big, big, big thing. So incredible. And and uh I mean the and also the first trip he made to outside of Africa was to Sweden. So he went straight to Stockholm and there was a big gala, and I was also there, and and you know, my one of my best friends played with him, and you know, I mean, for him, it's Mandela was he touched me more than also physically, yeah. So a great inspiration, and I think maybe young a lot of young people now are kind of losing the understanding of who he was. It also tells us something the importance of great leaders, which is yeah, difficult. And when a country has a great leader, we should really be careful and protect them. And I know that the Palestinians have a great leader in in prison, and that they have uh he's also been in as long, almost the same length as Mandela. So the Israelis know also that they're afraid of letting uh Barguti uh out. What his name, but no, I can't pronounce. Yeah, Barghuti. Yeah, Barguti, yeah. Yeah. I don't know enough about him if he's a Mandela or not, but it's interesting.

Leilani Farha 8:38

He has he's considered to have those kinds of qualities of a bridge maker, you know, creator.

Fredrik Gertten 8:45

He speaks Hebrew, I mean, learns taught.

Leilani Farha 8:48

And it's this these um fiercely gentle people, fiercely gentle giants uh that become these incredible leaders. I think the Prime Minister of uh Barbados, this woman, uh I can't remember her name, but I think she's has some of those qualities actually. She's fiercely kind of gentle and uh bridge builder. That's nice.

Fredrik Gertten 9:15

Long live fiercely gentle people. That's that's what we need. We don't we don't need more of cynical, uh lying people, nor on the right nor on the ne nor on the left, you know. It's uh silly populism is out. Go and die.

Leilani Farha 9:37

It's um well, a couple of things uh on Nelson and the there should be no prisons. I grew up in a household. That was my mother's position all when I was growing up. She talked about that a lot, that she thought prisons were an inappropriate way to treat human beings. And my mom is ri really gentle. She was she wasn't a fiercely gentle person, but she's very gentle, is very gentle person. But I being here in Cape Town and seeing Nelson's well, you know, statues, sculptures of him, and his image. I I took a picture of uh image of him at provincial um government buildings with uh Desmond, a huge Desmond Tutu, a huge picture of the two of them with their arms up and sort of celeb, you know, celebrating liberation. It's so moving. Uh I actually, there's a sculpture of Nelson in that, in the place, you'll know the name of it, uh, where he gave his first speech upon liberation. And just looking up at it, I took a picture from below. It was just moving. I almost started crying just right there to think that there are or were, I don't know, leaders who believed in human rights and who moved forward human rights and won human rights. It's just, and I feel like we're so far from that in so many places. Certainly, my government is not in Canada, not motivated by human rights and and moving forward the human rights idea and vision.

Fredrik Gertten 11:07

That that it's all true, but remember that also Canada in at some point later on received Mandela, you know.

Leilani Farha 11:13

I mean, he even if you were late, late adopters of the NFL.

Fredrik Gertten 11:19

But in the end, they have to kind of okay, hands down, you're amazing. Yes. Thank you. This is pushback talks, and we are doing kind of our word food, word play, word salad. And we have this podcast together, we make it for fun, we want to tell inspirational stories, and we don't make any money out of this, so we try to kind of find time to do it. And how do we fund it? Because we still have a technical crew who is editing, and so we are not without cost. How do we fund our podcast, Leilani?

Leilani Farha 11:56

Well, we try to fund it using our Patreon account. If you go to patreon.com, you can support pushback talks, and people do. Yeah, and every little bit helps.

Fredrik Gertten 12:07

Thank you for every single person who is supporting us. It means a lot because support is also some kind of love going away. And and we are addicts of love. Thank you. See you very soon. Bye.

Leilani Farha 12:23

See you next time, Frederick. Bye. Bye.

Kirsten McRae 12:29

Pushback Talks is produced by WG Film. To support the podcast, become a patron by going to patreon.com slash pushback talks. Follow us on social media at make underscore the shift and push underscore the film. Or check out our websites maketheshift.org, pushthefilm.com, or breaking socialfilm.com.