Word Food: Industry & Solar

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:

Industry: 

In the past, the highest cost for major organizations was paying employees; now wages account for less than 1% of corporate spending! How do we fight back against industry?

Solar: 

Everyone needs some sun, but as oil prices rise, countries that rely on solar power aren't feeling the same economic strain as oil-dependent countries. Is this enough to push more countries towards green energy?

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

This is the pushback talks, and we are back with our word food. We do this because we don't have time to do anything else. Are you ready, Fredrik? I've got a word for you. I'm ready.

Leilani Farha 0:21

Industrious.

Fredrik Gertten 0:23

Industrious. Industrious.

Leilani Farha 0:27

Or industry.

Fredrik Gertten 0:28

Or YouTube. Industry. Yeah, okay. Industrious means what? I'm trying to put this into my Swedish brain and convert it into something understandable.

Leilani Farha 0:40

We should look that up. What is the Swedish word? I don't have the internet at the moment. What's the Swedish word?

Fredrik Gertten 0:48

But industry. Let's talk about industry. Okay, let's do industry. When you say industry, people think about factories and stuff. But then when I go to film festivals, the bigger film festival, they will also have an industry section, which is then professionals. Right. And I've always said, what industry? I'm not a part of an industry. I'm I'm a filmmaker. But then it's been like it's accepted as in our world as film professionals are part of an industry. I never felt, I mean, I I feel part of it like a community of people who try to make a living out of making documentaries, but yeah, never part of an industry. Or if there is an industry, I hate them. I mean, that would be Netflix and you know, and the studios in LA, or you know, all this the bad money and the bad that try all the time to strangle us. That's for me industry.

Leilani Farha 1:43

But of course, um well, would you ever say I'm part of the film industry?

Fredrik Gertten 1:49

Not really.

Leilani Farha 1:49

I mean that's funny.

Fredrik Gertten 1:52

I know no, I I don't feel comfortable around that because industry for me is like mass production, it's like yeah, it's something else.

Speaker 3 2:00

Yeah.

Fredrik Gertten 2:00

Um, but maybe it's me being a snob. I've I don't know. Right. Even if my films are shown on cinemas, and of course, the same cinema could play the new Batman film, also. Right. So in that sense, we are in the same game. But then there is nothing, we have nothing in common. We have zero in common.

Leilani Farha 2:19

And in fact, you in particular have taken on industry, the banana industry, the car industry, the financial housing industry. So yeah, so strange bedfellows with the word industry.

Fredrik Gertten 2:37

Yeah, exactly. So but I mean, then the banana industry is it's slave, the kind of slave tradition, it's like a plantation economy. Yeah, it's so so old-fashioned, and the mentality and the moral around it hasn't changed in 200 years or more. It's like it's it's very, very basic. Yeah, you you have a market for a fruit, and and then you plant it, and you have slave people working around it, and they die young and they live in poverty, and we eat their cheap, the the cheap bananas. Yeah, it's uh it's like so unmoral that fruit. Um, the car industry is of course a part of something else. I saw this the Greek economist, the former economy minister of the finance minister of Greece. Um, yes. I dropped his name right now.

Leilani Farha 3:33

Janis.

Fredrik Gertten 3:34

Janis something, and he said that in the old Ford company, 80% of the cost was salaries, meaning that uh the the rich, I mean the the top level made much more money and the poor very little, but still the big cost of that industry was salaries, and in that sense, also kind of spreading some kind of wealth in society. Yeah, and he said now that these new big tech giants, you know, whatever Facebook, uh Google, all these guys do you know how much they have in in labor costs? Less than one percent.

Leilani Farha 4:21

Oh my gosh.

unknown 4:22

Wow.

Fredrik Gertten 4:22

So I mean that's kind of mind-boggling. The this kind of the relation. It and it also shows you in some way that it's they don't really contribute a lot to to society. That's industry, and and this is kind of um so there is obviously industry and industry. Some industry can be productive and and also kind of share their success in s with society in some way, and um, I mean, countries need industries, they need jobs, they need you know uh production. But it's obviously that I think that's so we we talked earlier on about the wealthy making more money than ever. Is that they now they make the money not even of producing stuff, it's all in this kind of financial bubble. Yeah, so it's it's not all this money that they make, it's not from producing something that we really need. It's just they're just a part of this uh huge roulette thing. Um and and this is this is gonna end because it's not productive and it's not industry in that sense. The financial industry, you know, and we we've talked about this before that the guy who invented this the GDP, how we measure uh production, he didn't want the financial industry to be a part of that measurement, yeah, because finance is something else. That's right, and now we have finance as a part of our GDP, and GDP can grow, but people can get poorer at the same time, exactly. So it's we we need a new way of measuring also the progress of a society, yeah. So that's also interesting.

Leilani Farha 6:20

Um well, and the word industry or industriousness means like working hard, and I mean, you know, we know I'm not saying that Bezos and all those Elon and et cetera, didn't work hard at some point, but at this point their money is working hard, they're not working hard to make all of this billions. So it's changing what industry actually means and industriousness.

Fredrik Gertten 6:48

They can't there is no relation to their offers and to the money they make. There is no fucking relation. Sorry, language. It's uh no, I like that language.

Leilani Farha 6:57

I'm good with that.

Fredrik Gertten 6:58

And it's it's uh a lot of people work really, really hard.

Leilani Farha 7:02

Exactly. And and uh for a pittance, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fredrik Gertten 7:06

Leilani, I have a word for you. Okay, I'm ready, sort of. It's a sunny day, it's a sunny day in Malmo, so I will give you the word solar.

Leilani Farha 7:21

Oh well, I always think immediately think of solar energy. And um, my father has this big piece of land, he's a land banker, no, but he does have a big piece of land outside of the city where I live, Ottawa. And he has been approached by some solar energy people if they could put solar on his land and generate solar energy. And I can't remember why he said no, but he said no. So his land sits vacant and there's no solar being generated there. But I remember being in um outside of Las Vegas fairly recently, within the last few years, and driving out to these red rock mountains that I wanted to walk around. I love that red rock. It's the most beautiful hiking. I love it. Anyway, driving and off in the distance, I could see, I couldn't tell what it was. It looked like the side of the road was just burnt, black, dark. I could see it in the distance. And then as I got closer, what I saw were hundreds and hundreds of solar panels in the middle of the desert, of course, generating solar energy. Kind of cool.

Fredrik Gertten 8:40

I think um I'm so interested in what is happening in the world while Trump talks, while Trump tweets. Yes. When he when he says drill baby drill, right, I mean, which is like a a chant for the the fossil capital, uh, which he is really part, he represents their last battle in some way. I saw that in Pakistan, which is a neighboring country of Iran, of course, 80% of their uh petroleum they get from Iran, so it's like troubled right now.

Leilani Farha 9:18

Right.

Fredrik Gertten 9:19

But then a quarter of Pakistani households are now using solar panels. A quarter. Wow. And it means that they are not affected so much right now. And this is not a big national plan.

Leilani Farha 9:37

Right.

Fredrik Gertten 9:37

It's a result of millions of individual decisions.

Leilani Farha 9:41

Yes.

Fredrik Gertten 9:42

Farmers stop using diesel and and households looking for something that is more reliable. It's really cool.

Leilani Farha 9:50

That's very cool.

Fredrik Gertten 9:52

And it's, I mean, I think also California, for example, is now more and more dependent on solar energy.

Leilani Farha 9:59

Right.

Fredrik Gertten 10:00

So the interesting thing with this the blockade of the hormones, the Strait of Hormos, is that it tells a story to most people and countries and economies and businesses. Is hey, we have to switch sooner, so we are not dependent on these ships to come with all this oil. Yeah. I also saw a story now that China is uh building 75 solar parks in Cuba.

Speaker 3 10:31

Right.

Fredrik Gertten 10:31

You know, in a very, I mean, and the Chinese when they do something, they they can do it really quick.

Leilani Farha 10:36

Yes.

Fredrik Gertten 10:37

So also helping Cuba out of this the blockade.

Leilani Farha 10:41

Yeah.

Fredrik Gertten 10:42

So it's it is um, and again, we're talking about an electric car and so on. China has more electric cars. I I saw a story from from Beijing that you don't hear the sound of the of the old engines anymore.

Leilani Farha 10:56

No, so so although unfortunately, some of these electric cars have make a terrible sound, screeching, screeching sound.

Fredrik Gertten 11:03

I think more people should go on bicycles.

Leilani Farha 11:05

I don't think I was gonna say bicycles are the best.

Fredrik Gertten 11:08

I don't think that the the electric car is the solution at all, but it's of course better than the old guys.

Leilani Farha 11:15

Yes.

Fredrik Gertten 11:15

So but solar is a part of something that is happening today.

Leilani Farha 11:21

Yes. Well, and I I think it's so interesting what you said about it emerging out of a kind of need, necessity from people who can't afford fuel or don't have access to it. And I know when I was in California years ago, I went up and down California looking at and meeting with people living in homeless encampments. And, you know, most cities don't want homeless encampments, so they don't give them any services, you know, and certainly they don't give them generators or electricity. And so they were using solar panels to create their own electricity so that they could charge up their cell phones. It was super important for a homeless person to have access to a cell phone, et cetera. And so I just love that that's an industriousness that's really amazing, and it thwarts the system, right? It's like we're not relying on you.

Fredrik Gertten 12:17

Yeah, and the thing is also that here, I mean, that's also been uh the word of the day of the of the right wingers, is that they hate they hate they hate wind, you know. Yes, yes, and but what do they love? They love gasoline and they love nuclear, yeah. And both of these are like businesses controlled by big corporations, it's not small scale. Nuclear is like huge, quite often publicly funded investments, and then you need to take care of the waste for 100,000 years. It's like it's so big scale, yeah, and and um the same with with the the fossil fuels. So solar and wind is kind of it can then happen small scale. Yeah, you can go out in the countryside in Latin in Central America and in the evening you can see lights out there, and it's because of they have this kind of very cheap, easily you know, lamps that go off when the the sun goes down, and it's solar power.

Leilani Farha 13:21

Yeah, I have that in my garden, those little, you know, yeah, yeah, lights that are solar powered.

Fredrik Gertten 13:27

Yeah, it's it's happening, it's possible, it's going on. And I I think all the time when we get depressed, uh, which happens quite often, of course, because there are so many horrible things going on, we should also try to have a look at what's going in the right direction. And I think solar is one of those things. Yeah, it should, of course, have happened many, many, many years ago. Uh and it hasn't happened because of it's been the energy has been so cheap with with petrol and and with with um nuclear power, so it's been too cheap to invest in anything else. But now the Chinese have understood that they need it, and when they when they decide to go there, they go because it's their business decisions are taken in a different way, and there is a lot of power in that. And now, as the West, if we can talk about Europe and North America, is so anti the global south, so aggressive against people who come from the global south, or you know, you don't get the visa, or you know, it's all this. Um, so then of course, um the influence of China is growing. I mean, China is also a dictatorship, very aggressive, they don't care about human rights, but they sell people cheap solar power, yeah, and that's a part of change in these societies. And it it is um a little bit unexpected. I mean, from this kind of the very western perspective, I think that we are the lead in something, but we are losing out because we are so focused on defending the big the big chunk of money that is in in fossil fuel and nuclear power. So go solar. Go solar and and you know what who doesn't like the sun?

Leilani Farha 15:32

I mean, come on, the sun just I wait for the sun every day. I'm looking for the sun, it's just so important to mood and well-being. So solar.

Fredrik Gertten 15:43

We record this on a Friday afternoon, and it's 5 p.m. here in Malmo. So I will soon check it out and I will find a little bench in the sun. Nice, and I will order a glass of wine, maybe a beer, I'll see, or maybe I don't know, everything. We'll see.

Leilani Farha 16:05

Nice. Well, and it's a sunny Friday morning here, still morning. Yes, still morning. And I will go for my Friday, Friday coffee in the sunshine. And it's a little chilly to maybe sit outside yet, maybe in an hour.

Fredrik Gertten 16:22

Yeah, it'll be warm enough. I will, I will, I will see you from inside me. I will see you sitting in the sun. Yes, enjoying.

Leilani Farha 16:31

Yes, but soon I'm going to Lisbon and there is sunshine there and warmth.

Fredrik Gertten 16:35

My dear friend, pushback talks again, and we are alive and kicking.

Leilani Farha 16:40

Alive and kicking. And maybe one day we'll interview someone sometime. Maybe.

Fredrik Gertten 16:45

I will interview you. Yeah. About your book. I've heard you have a book coming out.

Leilani Farha 16:52

I have a book coming out. Yeah, you can interview me about that once you've read it.

Fredrik Gertten 16:56

Yeah, once I get to read it.

Leilani Farha 16:58

Yeah. But it only comes out in September. It will be announced in early June, but it only will be printed in I think end of August, beginning of September this year.

Fredrik Gertten 17:09

Exciting. Thank you, my dear. Thanks, Fredrik. And uh you are sweet listeners out there. Please uh comment, tell your friends, subscribe to the podcast. Uh I mean, all those kind of things that helps uh so other people can can find pushback talks. Help us, and we will get some more energy out of that. That's that's all.

Leilani Farha 17:32

That's all.

Fredrik Gertten 17:33

See you soon, Leilani.

Leilani Farha 17:35

See you later.

Kirsten McRae 17:40

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 socialfilm.com.