Listen to The Takeaway for a discussion of metaphor, political rhetoric, and violence… “Back in March Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords made a statement responding to Sarah Palin’s anti-healthcare reform campaign, saying, ‘We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list. But the thing is the way that she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun site over our district.’ Could metaphors in that statement have had an effect on who Jared Loughner targeted in Arizona over the weekend? Our guest James Geary, a journalist and author of the upcoming book, I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World, says that metaphors in political rhetoric and imagery have a profound and largely non-conscious effect on us.”