3 Questions: Communicating about climate, in audio and beyond

Since her first journalism fellowship covering energy and the environment at the NPR station in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Madison Goldberg has been drawn to science communication and audio storytelling. Now, after reporting on topics from solar storms to sewer systems to cryptography, she's bringing her passions to MIT as the new host of the Institute's climate change podcast.

Launched in 2019 as TILclimate, the show began its eighth season this year with a new name: Ask MIT Climate. But the podcast's mission remains the same: teaming up with scientists and subject matter experts to bring listeners clear, accessible information on climate change topics in 15 minutes or less.

In this interview, Goldberg talks about her path to science communication, the ideas she thinks it's important for climate communicators to convey, and what makes MIT an exciting place to share knowledge with the world.

Q: Did you always know that you wanted to be a science communicator?

A: I didn't! My first love in science was astronomy. I grew up looking at the stars a lot, and I was very lucky to do an internship in high school at UC Santa Cruz with a professor in their astronomy department. Space kind of puts everything in the biggest possible perspective, and for me, that's a very calming thing.

And then in college, I wanted to do something closer to home, so to speak. I found that Earth science was very exciting to learn about, because pretty much all the sciences are somehow involved. You know, you've got chemistry, biology, physics ... everything all rolled into one. Also, I still got to tap into a lot of what I loved about astronomy, in terms of exploring deep time and big scales. And I was very motivated by a lot of the problems in Earth and climate science, because they tie so closely to people's lives.

I expected to continue with research, but I discovered that what was especially compelling to me was learning about this stuff and then talking to people about it. And in my senior year of college I learned that science communication, and science journalism, was a field that you could be in.

I took a science podcasting course that year - which I still can't believe even existed - and I got my first taste of interviewing people and working in audio, which was just incredible. I had loved podcasts for so long, and so the medium felt really familiar.

Q: What is important for science communicators to convey about climate change?

A: One of the ideas that I try to always keep in mind, and that I think is really important to convey, is that climate change affects every single aspect of our lives. And we need to communicate about it accordingly.

I think it's crucial to consider the ways climate change intertwines with all these other realms of people's experiences; it affects where we live, it affects what we eat, it affects the economy, it affects our health. Approaching it in isolation doesn't seem to be the most productive framework. As communicators, we have a responsibility to listen and learn and talk about all these many and varied ways that climate change shows up in people's lives.

This idea of things intertwining also reminds me of a really central theme in Ask MIT Climate: that working towards climate solutions not only allows us to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, but it can also help make people's lives better in other ways. And we get to think expansively about the future we want to build.

Q: What makes MIT an exciting place to be engaged in climate communication?

A: The folks that I've talked to at MIT are just so kind and generous with their time. And these people are so busy! They have so much on their plates, and yet, somehow, even when I have a million follow-up questions, extremely prominent researchers will hop on a Zoom or exchange emails to answer them. I feel so lucky to be part of this community.

Related to what I mentioned earlier, I also appreciate the interdisciplinary climate work that happens at MIT. Tackling climate change is a generational challenge, and it requires inputs from all kinds of fields. And at MIT we have, for example, the Climate Project, the Climate Policy Center, the Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy, the Living Climate Futures Lab - all of these ways to approach the issue and bring folks into the conversation who have different expertise, experiences, and perspectives. I think it's really special to be at MIT, to see that happen in real-time, and to see students, faculty, and staff working to bridge across subject matter boundaries.

Above all, I've been shown such generosity, and I'm so grateful. I feel like I can never express enough gratitude for the people inside and outside of MIT who have spoken to me about their work and about their lives. All I can hope to do is to communicate that information faithfully. Because I think there's a huge number of people who are curious about climate change and what we can do about it, and who want to learn.