Taylor Swift, storytelling, and climate communication

Joseph Romm’s journey has taken him from a physics Ph.D. student to the author of an award-winning climate change blog to a podcaster and Swiftie helping people improve their storytelling skills.

Romm, a senior research fellow at the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, started the podcast “Decoding Taylor Swift” in July with his 18-year-old daughter, Toni, which has reached number two in the music category on Apple Podcasts. And on Oct. 16, as part of Climate Week at Penn, he’s holding the workshop Communication is a Climate Solution: How Taylor Swift can Level Up Your Storytelling.

“Think about your ‘hero’s journey’ story,” Romm says. “You’re at UPenn. You’re studying a field. Why?” People want to hear the story of how people became passionate about their subject and acquired knowledge, he says, and he wants people to know that storytelling is an acquirable skill. “If you don’t tell your own story where you’re the hero, someone will tell the story where you’re the villain,” he says.

But Romm didn’t always have this passion and skill set in climate communication.

Two decades ago, however, while he was consulting in clean energy when Hurricane Katrina destroyed his brother’s home in Mississippi. Romm decided to learn more about climate change, and as he delved into the field, he thought that scientists could do better at communicating it in the media. Around the same time, he asked his then 3-year-old daughter what she meant when she said, “blah blah blah.” He got the response, “It’s when Daddy says something that doesn’t matter.” That hit him hard.

“Figuring out what words matter became my mission,” Romm says. He landed at Penn in 2023 and says he has tried to find ways to teach people about storytelling in an accessible manner. Enter Taylor Swift. Regardless of one’s feelings about her and her music—Romm is a fan—she gets a lot of public attention. He gave a TED Talk last year about the ingredients of powerful storytelling, including examples from Swift.

As he prepares to speak about the topic as part of the Climate Week event on campus, Penn Today caught up with him to discuss how Swift uses some of these storytelling ingredients—and how they can be applied to climate communication.

Use ‘but’ instead of ‘and’

Several of Swift’s lyrics employ the “but” instead of “and” rule, Romm notes: “But I’ve got a blank space, baby, and I’ll write your name.” “I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror.” “I cry a lot, but I am so productive.”

He says the rule was popularized by “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. “The word ‘but’ or ‘yet’ is essential in storytelling,” says Romm. It works because “it’s introducing a twist. People use too many ands, ‘I did this and I did this and I did this.’ It’s just boring.”

In the realm of climate communication, Romm points to Greta Thunberg, who populates her speeches with “but” and “yet.” He references an example from her 2019 speech to the United Nations: “I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones.”

Add figures of speech

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Romm encourages scientists communicating about their work to use figures of speech, such as analogies and metaphors. Swift does this, for example, in the line “Loving him is like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street” in the song “Red,” and in the descriptions of herself as a mirrorball in the song of the same name.

The purpose of a metaphor or analogy, Romm says, is to describe something people might not understand to something they do comprehend. Romm notes one example of this used in climate communications is comparing the impact of greenhouse gases on the planet to the weight of heavy blankets. “The more coal, oil, and gas we burn,” he says, “the more blankets, we pile on the Earth.”

Making comparisons, he says, is one way for scientists to be more memorable in their phrasing. “You want to be quoted in the media? Give them a quote that’s quotable,” says Romm.

Offering another tip, Romm cites the use of repetition in Swift’s songs. “Think ‘We are never, ever, ever getting back together’ or ‘Cuz the players gonna play, play, play, play, play,’” he says. “Repetition works. Repetition is the most effective way of persuading people.”