Illuminated - The Metaphor Consultant
Download The Metaphor Consultant
Time is a journey - the future ahead of us, the past behind.
Our burdens are a weight that we carry, our problems are a puzzle that we solve.
Metaphor is at the heart of how we understand our existence. In a period of huge change and global uncertainty, are we outgrowing the metaphors we have lived by?
The poet Jack Underwood is offering his services as a metaphor consultant, for a very reasonable fee.
Featuring conversations with poet and psychoanalyst Nuar Alsadir; Dr Stephen Flusberg, the Director of the Framing, Reasoning And Metaphor (FRAME) Lab at Vassar College; computer scientist Melanie Mitchell; the philosopher Dr Julia Ng; and the linguist and author of Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff.
Location recording by Mitra Kaboli, Kristina Loring, Gustavo Martinez and Donelle Wedderburn
Produced by Eleanor McDowall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
Published on Sunday, 18th January 2026.
Available Podcasts from Illuminated
We are not the BBC, we only list available podcasts. To find out more about the programme including episodes available on BBC iPlayer, go to the Illuminated webpage.