Audible Heat

A meditation by Milo Thesiger–Meacham on the sound of the cicada as "audible heat" in human history and culture. Featuring spoken contributions by writer and translator Cristina Viti and filmmaker Ahmed Yassin Aldaradji, field recordings, original music and a smattering of celebrity interviews.

This new and extraordinary documentary ranges across continents – from the sound-induced fears of early colonists in Northeastern America and the apocalyptic premonitions of the indigenous Wampanoag to Greek tongue twisters, Medieval Moorish poetry, Socrates's dread of dehydration in Plato's Phaedrus, the hurdy-gurdy, Geronimo's hatred of telegraphy.

And then on to contemporary and historical entomology, the body language of Clint Eastwood, Sergio Leone's Spanish Westerns, the botanist Donald C. Peattie's terror of the inescapable buzz of mortality, and ancient cooking implements.

Commissioned and originally broadcast by Radiophrenia at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, September 2023.