Words for Sale!

Michael Rosen explores how language has become an online commodity, with Dr Pip Thornton, Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Dr Thornton explains, with the help of auction props and a receipt machine, what happens to the words that we put into an online search and how the engines make money from our words and phrases. We discover why William Wordsworth's daffodils and clouds have had their context 'stolen', how Lewis Carroll wrote an incredibly 'cheap' poem and why mesothelioma is the most 'expensive' word. Plus Michael proposes a new form of poetry - the Monetised School of Poetry. Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Ellie Richold