The confinement of mid-infrared light in deep subwavelength volumes offers exciting opportunities to control the transport of thermal energy. This talk will describe our recent efforts to program the synthesis and understand the properties of semiconductor nanowires containing chains of mid-infrared plasmonic resonators. I will discuss (i) how the programming of dopant profile enables designer thermal photon absorbers, (ii) that combining the dielectric properties of semiconductors and the 1-D geometry of nanowires leads to very strong near-field interactions, and (iii) that these interactions allow photons to carry as much heat as electrons and phonons in the solid state.