Word Food: Doughnuts & Polar

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:

Doughnut: a lighthearted conversation about personal preferences, voids and economics – all about doughnuts!

Polar: a discussion around the pressing topics of polarization and the polar region.

New episodes drop every week.

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

Transcript

Fredrik Gertten 0:02

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 0:09

Hello, advocates. This is Pushback Talk. And this is our, you know, the way of us keeping alive, you know, putting words to each other, and we call it word food. So let's play with words, Leilani.

Leilani Farha 0:27

I have a food word for you.

Fredrik Gertten 0:31

Ah, entrecotte. No. No.

Leilani Farha 0:37

Donuts.

Fredrik Gertten 0:38

Donuts? That's something extremely American. Oh, is it? And there is a like a hole in it. And I guess also Canadians. But it's like the question about the donuts is what is the sales pitch? Is it the hole or is it what surrounds the hole? Is it the void in the middle?

Leilani Farha 1:04

You pay for the void. We're all paying for the void.

Fredrik Gertten 1:09

So yeah. Donuts, now for me, that's extremely American. So I I guess I often would offend some part of our audience if I say that I'm not so much into donuts. It feels like this kind of greasy, unhealthy something. But one thing.

Leilani Farha 1:41

With third wave coffee. A hipster donut with a cortato. You're there, Frederick.

Fredrik Gertten 1:47

Right, of course. And then it should be uh artisan gin with artisan tonic and there you go. And then ecological lemon squeeze on top of it, yeah.

Leilani Farha 1:59

Oh, there we go. Well, so donuts, they're certainly Canadian as well as American, or it spread to Canada. I don't know where they although there's, you know, in French beignette, I think. So maybe it is a Canadian thing as well. Um truth is my partner is Australian and he came to Canada to do a master's in law. And I would like to think that the reason he stayed in Canada was me. But I think if you really press him, it might have been the donuts. He said in Australia they didn't have donuts the way we have donuts in Canada. Like donuts were this crappy, greasy thing that you're talking about. And then he came to Canada and he experienced a real fresh, doughy, you know, top of the morning donut.

Fredrik Gertten 2:54

So now you're turning this podcast into some kind of a marriage counseling.

Leilani Farha 3:01

So yeah, maybe.

Fredrik Gertten 3:02

Maybe, but I dear, my dear, you have to tell your husband that he also needs to say that he loves you.

Leilani Farha 3:09

Yeah.

Fredrik Gertten 3:10

He can do it with a donut in his mouth.

Leilani Farha 3:13

Right. Exactly. Exactly. While we share a donut, he could tell me.

Fredrik Gertten 3:18

Right. You can take the void and he can take the donut.

Leilani Farha 3:21

I get the void. I get the void. Uh, but I'm gonna challenge you on donuts being North American, because I'm gonna show you this and I'm gonna say it out loud for those who are just listening. What about donut economics?

Fredrik Gertten 3:38

Do you know about this? No, because now we're back to the whole, I guess, the void.

Leilani Farha 3:45

It's a very famous book by Kate Raworth. And I mean, I won't go into in a very short podcast, I won't go into the details about donut economics, but the idea is very different than neoliberalism, and it's very much about local and keeping money local and keeping money circulating. There's the donut, circulating within your, you know, within certain parameters. And so there are cities that are adopting the donut economics theory. It's not different than what's these movements, you know, a hundred kilometers or whatever, where you're there's a name for that. I can't remember it, but it's not so different from that.

Fredrik Gertten 4:29

In Italy it's called Kilometro Cero. Yeah, in Italy. Yeah, it's um local grown.

Leilani Farha 4:35

Yeah.

Fredrik Gertten 4:36

But I'm surprised you don't know this book, Donut Economics. I've I've heard about it, but I would very, very famous. I wouldn't brag about that. I've heard about it.

Leilani Farha 4:44

Right. But it the idea is very similar to human rights, too, which is where the economy should be producing human well-being, not wealth for multinationals and billionaires, basically. And that's, you know, nice to think about on the heels of we're recording this just before Davos, our favorite event, yearly event. Uh so that's what I think of when I think of donuts, to be honest.

Fredrik Gertten 5:11

So we can also call it the donut resistance. Mm-hmm. The donut economic resistance.

Leilani Farha 5:18

Exactly.

Fredrik Gertten 5:19

I remember that the Simpsons, uh, that's like a very good American show. They have a lot of donuts, also.

Leilani Farha 5:26

So that's true. In fact, my local trendy donut shop, which is called Suzy Q Donuts, and I'm gonna give them a shout out. These donuts are really out of this world. We eat them on New Year's. They have one that's called something related to The Simpsons. I can't remember what it's called. Maybe the the Bart. I don't know. Delicious. Has sprinkles on top.

Fredrik Gertten 5:49

Oh, colorful sprinkles. That's nice. Yes. So thank you very much for sending me a donuts, even if it's just I'm giving you the void.

Leilani Farha 5:58

I'm sending you the void.

Fredrik Gertten 6:00

Okay, that's best for my diet, I would say. So it's fine. That's fine. Okay, well, I will send you something your way.

Leilani Farha 6:09

Yep.

Fredrik Gertten 6:10

Are you ready?

Leilani Farha 6:11

I'm ready.

Fredrik Gertten 6:13

Polar.

Leilani Farha 6:14

Polar. Well, in this minute. Yes. Well, in this part of the world, we talk about polar. I, you know, I live in the north. Maybe not as far north as Sweden goes, but anyway, I live north. So we talk about polar bears. I've never seen one, but they seem amazing. Those big white bears. And we talk about polar vortexes. Do you know about this? Polar, it's a weather system. And what it means is, and block your ears if you don't like swear words, it's fucking cold. And it comes, I guess, winds or something from the north. And we go into this polar vortex of deep, deep freeze. It makes me exceptionally unhappy. Although I do sit by the fire while we're in the midst of a polar vortex, which is cozy and lovely.

Fredrik Gertten 7:13

But then we have your southern neighbor who wants to include a polar territory into theirs. They sure do. They want to steal another land. Like it's colonialism all over the world.

Leilani Farha 7:28

Steal or buy it, Frederick. Steal or buy it. Unbelievable. Greenland, for those who don't know, Greenland is what we're talking about.

Fredrik Gertten 7:38

Yeah. And by asking for Greenland, they push polarization. Oh, wow. And that's of course the big thing for Trump is to polarize. Yes. That's his energy. Yeah. He's taking on the Federal Reserve, he's taking on Denmark, he's taking on everybody except then the Israelis or you know somebody else. But he's like, he's taking on, and he takes on Minneapolis, he takes on Los Angeles, you know, he creates this kind of constant conflict. But you could also add to polar a BI. Bipolar.

Leilani Farha 8:20

Oh, bi oh. Yes. Never thought of that. Bipolar. As in the psychological condition, you mean?

Fredrik Gertten 8:28

Yeah.

Leilani Farha 8:29

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I've known a few bipolar people in my life. Very serious psychological condition and complicated for people who are bipolar because the as I understand it, there are medications that can mitigate some of the characteristics and symptoms, but the medications make you feel not like yourself. And so one person I knew who was bipolar was on and off his medications for that reason, and it was complicated for him and the people around him.

Fredrik Gertten 9:01

So of course, a lot of good people could be bipolar. Absolutely. So it would it would be horrible to call Trump bipolar because then we will kind of, you know, compare bipolar people with Trump because he's his disease is is worse than that, I guess. But it's just I'm just playing around with polar and polarization and Greenland and the state of the Union.

Leilani Farha 9:26

Well, if we go back to the idea of Trump being uh the ultimate actor in terms of polarization, I mean I I guess this is characteristic of me, but I always like to imagine the mindset of different people, different actors. I mean, I do that a lot with my work on housing. I'm always thinking like, how do these private equity people think about home and people and tenants and so the same with Trump. How does he think, how does it make him feel to be this polarizing instigator and character? And my sense, sadly, is that it's not that he pays a price. I don't believe he pays a price for his actions. I think he's giddy. I think he's like, I think he's like, look at what I'm doing, look at the shit I can stir up. I'm amazing.

Fredrik Gertten 10:23

I think that's oh, he's totally full of himself.

Leilani Farha 10:26

Yeah.

Fredrik Gertten 10:27

In a in a way we haven't seen before. Because he is like he is like this a silly clown in many ways. But then I wouldn't talk badly about clowns, so it doesn't really apply anyway. Because clowns are doing a great shout out to clowns, yes. And I couldn't call him a pig because pigs have some kind of dignity, also. Uh, I mean, so it's it's complicated to name what he is, but we could maybe agree that we we don't like him.

Leilani Farha 10:58

Agreed.

Fredrik Gertten 10:59

Agreed. Are we good?

Leilani Farha 11:01

Thanks, Frederick.

Fredrik Gertten 11:02

Thank you, Leila. See you next week.

Leilani Farha 11:04

Yeah.

Fredrik Gertten 11:05

And to friends, if you want to support the podcast, send us some money on Patreon. It's not bad. Patreon.com pushback talks. See you. See you.

Kirsten McRae 11:20

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 makeshift.org, pushthefilm.com, or breaking social film.com.