Radiolab Wants Your Help To Track The Once-Every-17-Year Cicada "Swarmageddon"
Magicicada Wikimedia CommonsThe roar of the millions-strong Magicicada is due back on the east coast this summer--the first time in 17 years. Here's how to track it. Every few summers in the heavily wooded section of southern Pennsylvania where I grew up, we'd have about a week in which everything we did--hiking through the parks, climbing trees, walking dogs, buying hoagies--would be accompanied by the roar of cicadas. It's not like a chorus of birds, or even the noise of New York City traffic. It's louder, more constant, a hissing, crackling noise like the screaming of the wind itself. Eventually it fades into white noise, but if you leave town for a weekend and come back, you can't believe anyone is talking about anything else. It's like a biblical plague transmitted only in audio. An even rarer beast is hatching this year. The Magicicada is a genus of cicada with either...