Word Food: Occupied & Dandelion

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:

Occupied: 

How does the personal versus the political change the meanings of words?

With the word occupied Leilani and Fredrik discuss what gets to take up a space, time or your mind. 

When illegal occupations and erasure of people are happening in several places around the world it’s hard to not let negativity occupy your mind - how do we shift perspectives and what happens when we push another narrative forward? - Do other people follow suit?   

Dandelion: 

Often dismissed as a weed -  the dandelion blooms despite dire conditions. While Fredrik philosophizes about the symbolism it carries, Leilani is reminded of the word's heritage. 

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

My sweetest advocate of all. I mean, there was a time in history when I had a lot of lawyers in my life, and most of them have left my life. But you are my the last advocate I have surrounding me, and I'm happy that it was just you.

Leilani Farha 0:24

The last standing lawyer.

Fredrik Gertten 0:26

Exactly. This is uh the pushback talks, and we are back uh with our word food. We do this because we don't have time to do anything else. Are you ready to play with some words again to see if our brains are still uh functioning?

Leilani Farha 0:41

A little word food, Fredrik. Your word. Are you ready? It's a big one. Well, it it's what you make of it.

Fredrik Gertten 0:47

Okay, okay, let's see.

Leilani Farha 0:49

The word is occupied.

Fredrik Gertten 0:52

Occupied. Oh, meaning being really busy. Oh, sorry, I'm occupied. I can't have no time to talk to you. That's what you normally would tell me all the time. That's like that's Leilani. Oh, I'm occupied, I'm occupied, I'm occupied. Then I tell you, but you can't find a little time to make your word food. And then you say, But I don't have time, I'm occupied. But then you find time. I always find time for you, Frederick. Oh, that's nice. Occupied, yeah. Our brains are occupied with a lot of stuff. Um, and and um in this time in history where there is so much information flying around or disinformation, it it fills up our brains, and it in some way it confuses us and makes us tired, making us losing our focus on what's important. They occupy our brains. So I think we should free our brains from the occupation. I think that's like the first step. Don't let their language occupy your headspace and your focus. I think that's like a first start. I guess there are also something called physical occupation, taking other people's land kind of. But it can also be uh, I mean, we learned when we did push when we talked to Saskia Sassen that the financialization in society of you know, the when the big money enters into our home, they it's a line, it's a land grab. It's not only taking away lands in in uh in Amazonas, or you know, it also happens in our cities that they are occupying land with their money, and that has an effect on us. So occupation is kind of uh aggressive, and I think we need to fight back, or as we say here in this podcast, push back.

Leilani Farha 3:08

That's right. We need to push back. So I'm about to go off to Lisbon, Portugal, to teach a three-day course on the right to housing to graduate students in law and undergraduate students in law, just a small cohort of students. And I've been thinking about it. I'm not a teacher by nature, it doesn't come easily to me or easy to me. So I've had to really think about how to make the right to housing interesting for young people. And I've been thinking about what happens when you take a word and think about it from a legal point of view versus when you just take a word and think about it from your personal point of view. So I think that word occupies.

Fredrik Gertten 3:53

You are not a lawyer. Tell me. Tell me, occupation from the lawyer's perspective.

Leilani Farha 3:59

Yeah. Over to you. Exactly. So I mean, I loved what you did because you started with the way in which we think about being occupied and pre-occupied, right? Our minds are busy and we're so busy, and life is always so busy, especially for a documentary filmmaker and for an advocate. But then the word occupation means something in international law, and it's illegal. Um, and certainly Israel's occupation of uh Palestine and now Lebanon um is illegal.

Fredrik Gertten 4:33

And parts of Syria.

Leilani Farha 4:35

And parts of Syria, and there's other places that are occupied that people don't talk about as much, like Western Sahara. Um, and uh even the Kurds uh in Turkey feel they're occupied. Uh Tibetans feel they're occupied. So there's a lot of occupation that goes on that is illegal from an international law point of view. Um and it, you know, it changes how we look at the word occupation, occupied. Um, and I certainly grew up with it as a legal term mostly, the occupied Palestinian territories, which we now know, thanks to the International Court of Justice, is an illegal occupation. They said that in oh, two summers ago, July 2024. Um so it's just to me, it's interesting that these words we use them in everyday parlance, but that they actually do have some legal import, even if no one cares about international law anymore.

Fredrik Gertten 5:31

Oh, come on. A lot of people care about international right. Most of us do, actually. I can totally understand the feeling that nobody cares.

Leilani Farha 5:40

Or the leaders don't care.

Fredrik Gertten 5:42

Not enough of leaders care. And and and that's will make those leaders there kind of disqualifying themselves. Uh and the the future will condemn them greatly. Hopefully. I think it's oh sorry, no, I'm I'm floating out of thoughts, but I was thinking of when now Trump got even more crazy, and and even before that, when Biden was supporting uh Israel's violence in on Gaza.

Leilani Farha 6:14

Yes.

Fredrik Gertten 6:14

But then Trump went even more crazy when the tariffs and all this. I think okay, who will who will step out? There is a space, there is a space to stand up for some kind of dignity and something. And and so now I thought will it be Germany? Uh it wasn't Germany. No way. Would it be Keir Starmer in the UK? A good possibility for a progressive human rights lawyer as a prime minister, but it wasn't the UK. And would it be a smaller nation like Denmark or or Sweden or Norway? Not totally. No, suddenly it's Spain who steps out. Amazing. Who would have imagined? And now around that energy, things are happening. Yeah. Because now more people find that they can speak out, and it's not so dangerous. You're actually, you don't have to be afraid of saying what you think.

Speaker 1 7:16

Yeah.

Fredrik Gertten 7:16

And you know, we here in Europe we have something called Eurovision.

unknown 7:20

Yes.

Fredrik Gertten 7:21

It's like a song contest organized by the European Broadcasting Union. And of some reason, Israel is a part of this um broadcasting union, even if they're not European. But now more and more countries are saying if Israel is in, we will not be there. The Irish were first out, now the Dutch, uh, the Spanish. Uh the Slovenia said uh instead of broadcasting the song contest, we will play Palestinian films all night. You know, I love it.

Leilani Farha 7:54

So I love it. It's I didn't hear that. That's amazing. When is this Eurovision? When does it happen?

Fredrik Gertten 8:01

I should know. It's quite soon, I guess. It's got there is so much every day about it. So I but I I don't Oh, I haven't been following.

Leilani Farha 8:09

I have to start following.

Fredrik Gertten 8:10

We had uh we had it here in Malmo last year, was it? So it was it was a militarized city also because of the presence of Israel. But it's now it's really breaking out. So a lot of countries are not participating if Israel is there. Right. And this is big because this competition is important for many broadcasters. It's where they get a lot of audience. It's very popular. So it there it comes with a cost.

Leilani Farha 8:36

And do you think that Spain taking the position it has politically has encouraged this whole pushback against Eurovision and Israel's participation?

Fredrik Gertten 8:49

I I think Spain is a part of it. Also, Ireland is important because Ireland was also really a country where the Eurovision very early on, this is from the 760s, like this competition is really old. And I think the Irish really loved it very early on. So they have a tradition of you know winning and coming with good songs and so on. If you can call it good songs, it doesn't matter, but but um yeah, so interesting about occupation or being occupied. Uh that will occupy a lot of space in our newspapers for sure.

Leilani Farha 9:29

Yeah, yeah. And I liked what you said about financialization as a form of occupation, occupying cities, this big money, big capital coming in, and I think that's quite right. I talk about that as a new form of colonialism. I talk about that in my forthcoming book.

Fredrik Gertten 9:47

What's the title of your new book?

Leilani Farha 9:49

Not telling you. Gotta wait. Beginning of June, it'll be announced.

Fredrik Gertten 9:53

Uh-uh-uh-uh. Okay. So now it's time for me to hit you all over again. I will give you a springtime word. Are you ready?

Speaker 1 10:03

Mm-hmm.

Fredrik Gertten 10:04

Dandelion.

Leilani Farha 10:05

Oh. Dandelions are the um Cinderella of flowers. Let's put it that way. I know they're considered a weed, but they're so beautiful. You know, that deep yellow color. If you get a field of dandelions, which you know a lot of North Americans would be like, oh, dandelions, they're ruining my lawn. But I love the look of all these dandelions.

Fredrik Gertten 10:33

I also love them.

Leilani Farha 10:34

Yeah.

Fredrik Gertten 10:35

We have this image of dandelions that could kind of break through asphalt, you know, they are they're they are surviving everything. So they are in some way also rebellious, you know. Yes. They don't take shit, they just go and and make seeds. Yep.

Leilani Farha 10:53

Yep. I remember um one of the first times I was in Geneva, well before I was special rapporteur, uh, I remember on a menu seeing dandelion salad. And I was like, you know, North American. I'm like, oh, dandelion salad, yuck. And then someone's like, no, no, no, you have to, I forget who I was with, but a woman from Quebec, and she said, um, oh no, you must try it. And I tried it. It was, of course, delicious. And then I grew to love the dandelions. And I get dandelions. I have a lawn, a backyard with a lawn, and I get dandelions because it's moist and I live near a river. And I do pluck them. I don't eat them. I don't think these are the good ones to eat.

Fredrik Gertten 11:36

No, and there's they're hard to pluck also because they will not survive so much long time at home. But they're beautiful. It's they're beautiful. And you know, the the poster for uh my latest film breaking social, we have a dandelion.

Leilani Farha 11:49

Oh, yes. Which is like Which is a different kind of dandelion, the one there's I guess there's two oh no, it's that's where it grows into this big ball that's like the ball, yeah.

Fredrik Gertten 12:02

And then you can blow it, and then the the seeds are spreading through the wind. Yeah, and it's uh it's a symbol of good thoughts spreading out.

Leilani Farha 12:13

You know what's funny, Frederick, about those that puffy light dandelion. You know, I have a dog, his name is Bean. He's in fact in Push the Film. Bean loves to eat the tops of those dandelions, this fluff.

Fredrik Gertten 12:30

Yeah, yeah.

Leilani Farha 12:31

He goes, I don't know if it's that he wants to eat it or if it's like a game for him that he snaps at it and then it disappears. That's good. I like that.

Fredrik Gertten 12:41

Do you know that the dandelion is one of the two most common species in the world? I don't know which the other one is if if there are any listener knows who the other species is that is so spread. And uh the Latin word for it is taraksakum, which then comes from Arabic Tarakshakun, which means bitter herb.

Leilani Farha 13:06

Oh.

Fredrik Gertten 13:07

So you see, and so it's possibly Arabic term with Persian origin. So we're back into the region uh where somebody wants to bump them down to another kind of history.

Leilani Farha 13:21

This is, I mean, just to speak about that for a second, what what I find so remarkable is the lack of respect, knowledge, the ignorance around the culture of what people call the Middle East, I call the Arab world, the the history, the fact that we were the seat of civilization, the the incredible um the Prussians wouldn't like to be called Arab world, though. No. But what do we call it? The well, I don't know what to call it, but Middle East is an invention of the colonized.

Fredrik Gertten 14:02

That's the British way of describing the world, of course.

Leilani Farha 14:05

Yeah. But just to say, like, I find it breathtaking that the United States and Israel would be bombing these ancient and beautiful historic places in Iran. You know, like I've dreamed of going to Iran. I've never been there. I'm sure you have, have you? No. No, you haven't. I also would love to go.

Fredrik Gertten 14:31

I mean, now it's been really dangerous for a long time because they have uh an extremely hostile fascist regime. So, and then they take people as hostages and put them, you know.

Leilani Farha 14:44

I mean, it's yes, no, no, it's uh been dangerous for some time.

Fredrik Gertten 14:50

I I know a lot of Iranian people both living in Iran and or living in exile, but I mean it's there's a lot of yeah, it's a it's a culture with a deep tradition and deep and beautiful.

Leilani Farha 15:03

I mean, the architecture, even the modern architecture. I saw an exhibit of some of the um ways they're using brick now in um taking old brick and repurposing it and building beautiful, beautifully designed buildings. And it's like, can we please separate a regime from the role it's played in history, the current regime versus the beautiful historical sites in a place like Iran or a place like Lebanon or a place like Palestine? I mean, the idea that governments think it's okay to just destroy this history, I find it honestly, Frederick, I find it breathtaking. Like what we're losing, right? What we're losing.

Fredrik Gertten 15:50

And I gave you the word dandelion, and now you're talking about that's me, not linear, not a linear thinker.

Speaker 1 16:00

I may be a lawyer, but I'm not linear.

Fredrik Gertten 16:02

It's all good. It's all good. But you know that dandelions are immigrants to North America.

Leilani Farha 16:08

Ah, I did not know that. You've done your dandelion research.

Fredrik Gertten 16:12

Yeah, I do that. So you didn't have them before you guys came over.

Leilani Farha 16:20

Right.

Fredrik Gertten 16:21

So it's uh it's uh imported from Europe, but now it's a part of your backyard all over North America. It is, and that's the power of immigration.

Leilani Farha 16:35

There we go.

Fredrik Gertten 16:36

Yeah, so immigrants they also bring beauty like dandelions, absolutely, and they also bring rebellions like dandelions can inspire to. So long live all the fields of dandelions.

Leilani Farha 16:54

Okay, that's a nice place to end. Thanks, Frederick.

Fredrik Gertten 16:58

Thank you. 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. That's all. See you soon, Leilani.

Leilani Farha 17:21

See you later.

Kirsten McRae 17:26

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