Feral by Design | The Biomimicry Podcast

What happens when you give someone a way of looking, without telling them what to find?

Pia takes one small part of her octopus-inspired innovation method out of the office and sends it on holiday to Zimbabwe with her friend Jane.

The experiment starts at Eastgate Centre in Harare, the termite-inspired building from the previous episode. Jane gets one loose lens: How does this place feel? What can you hear? What do you notice? What surprises you?

Then Pia gets out of the way.

What begins as a visit...

Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe, is one of biomimicry’s most famous buildings. Designed by architect Mick Pearce and inspired by termite mounds, its passive cooling system uses around 90% less energy for heating and cooling than comparable conventionally air-conditioned buildings.

Thirty years later, Feral went inside.

Our first roving correspondent, Jane, went into Eastgate to find out what this famous piece of termite-inspired architecture actually feels like today, how its passive cooling works, and whether the story we’ve been telling about Eastgate for 30 years still holds up.

She found cold air...

Last week, we looked at the biology behind GLP-1 medicines like Ozempic and Wegovy. This revisited Season 1 episode looks at the other half of that moment: the needle itself.

Mosquito mouthparts have inspired researchers and designers working on less painful needle technology, microneedles and medical devices. Their six-part feeding system works very differently from a conventional needle, using multiple tiny structures together rather than one blunt puncture.

When you were a kid, did you ever get jabbed with a needle so big it felt like a medieval weapon? I did, the kind that left welts...

What does Ozempic have to do with a venomous desert lizard that spends most of its life underground?

This story starts at 3am with a unicorn saying the word chocolate fifteen times, and ends with the Gila monster, GLP-1, Ozempic, Wegovy and one tiny molecular difference that helped change modern medicine.

Our bodies already make GLP-1. It works beautifully, then disappears in minutes. The Gila monster carries a remarkably similar molecule called exendin-4, except nature built this one differently enough that the body’s molecular scissors struggle to cut it.

That di...

In 1971, a temp agency ran a print ad for the perfect worker. She never took a vacation. Never asked for a raise. Never got sick. Never stopped. They called her the Never-Never Girl.

Nobody prints that ad anymore. We just say it about each other. Reliable. Committed. Always steps up. But knowing when to stop can be just as important.

This episode starts with a nearly finished episode of this show going in the bin, and then four nights of going back at it, a genuinely new idea every time, and nothing that survived. Every...

A three-year-old turns a stolen maxi pad into a bird, a plane, and a crown - no hesitation, no second-guessing. Three completely different uses for one object in about fifteen seconds.

That moment leads to an unexpected question about risk taking profiles: why do some of us dive straight at the unfamiliar while others hang back and watch? The answer comes from decades of research on a small British songbird with a name that still makes people laugh - the great tit.

Scientists have repeatedly found two distinct exploration styles. Fast explorers move immediately and...

London has just rehired an employee it fired four hundred years ago. No severance. No apology. Just an awkward, "Come back. We clearly can't do your job without you."

Her name's Willow, and she's a beaver.

When five Eurasian beavers were reintroduced to Paradise Fields beside Greenford Tube station in West London as part of the Ealing Beaver Project, they quietly tackled a flooding problem that engineers, councils and commuters had lived with for decades. The story of beavers, flooding and the London Underground sounds almost too neat. But the real story sits...

A 14-year-old boy suffers two brain bleeds in a freak accident at school. He comes home and sleeps 21 hours a day.

To everyone watching, it looks like the world has gone quiet. In nature, that stillness isn't defeat. It's a high-stakes repair cycle we're only just beginning to understand.

This episode sits inside the gap between the crisis everyone rallies around and the long, invisible recovery nobody quite knows how to show up for, when contribution disappears, healing looks like nothing, and sometimes the injury itself can't be seen.

It started with a...

Red wine meets MacBook. Laundry floods. Toilet leaks. All within 24 hours.

Somewhere between staring at flood-damaged laundry cabinets and Googling "how much liquid can a MacBook survive?", Pia realised she'd recently spent a lot of time thinking about forest canopies, distributed load, systems thinking, and what happens when systems become overly dependent on a single point.

Professionally, she spends a lot of time thinking about how systems absorb pressure. Personally, she'd accidentally designed herself as a single point of failure.

Using a biomimicry lens, this episode explores what forest canopies actually...

A homemade billy cart hurtles downhill through a suburban intersection. A keynote slide turns into an entirely new workshop framework. A conference room applauds the removal of friction from modern work. Somewhere in Costa Rica, a sloth hangs completely still above a parked car while a group of humans walk straight past it.

None of these things seem connected.
Until they do.

Because mental fatigue isn't always about doing too much. Sometimes it's what happens when everything keeps inviting your attention, energy and response, while we've quietly removed many of the natural stopping cues...

Bob Hawke looks down the camera and says: any boss who sacks an employee for not showing up today is a bum.
A nation stops. Beer is raised. A boat wins. A jacket becomes iconic.

That’s what we remember.

But under the surface, something else was happening. Not just a race between boats, but a race in how water itself was being handled. A surface that didn’t fight the flow, but shaped it.

This episode sits inside that moment.

It traces what happens when performance shifts from effort to d...

A man raises a glass for two people he's loved for sixty years. A woman stands in a car park, looking up at the sky, saying, "I don't know what you're trying to tell me." A baby cries, and no one knows why.

None of it looks broken. But something is being lost in translation.

This episode introduces The Firefly Signal, an original biomimetic design concept for understanding dementia behaviour when someone can no longer tell you what they need. Inspired by one of nature's simplest communication systems, it explores whether distress might s...

A friend cancels a trip. Petrol prices climb. A flight route disappears. None of it looks broken, but something doesn’t quite behave normally anymore.

It's April 2026, as the world watches a war reshape ordinary life from thousands of kilometres away.

This episode sits inside that feeling. The strange disorientation of being physically safe, untouched by violence, and already inside its ripple.

Using a biomimicry lens, Pia explores how systems respond to disturbance - not just where the disruption happens, but far beyond it. From the “landscape of fear” in ecology to the way hu...

I could feel them shut down. 

What happens when you feel yourself shift and can’t quite stop it? 

Weakly electric fish navigate murky water by emitting a constant field, and everything in range responds to it. Rose didn't make her team shut down. She emitted a signal. 

How does a system stay intelligent when defensiveness enters the room, without escalating it? Nature has been solving for this for 3.8 billion years. 

In Feral's first ever collaboration, our host Pia sits down with Rose — a leadership coach, longtime friend and closet puffer fish — t...

Most people have heard the word biomimicry.
Very few actually know what it means.

This short field note explains how the ideas in Feral by Design work - how scientists study organisms, uncover the mechanisms behind their survival, and translate those patterns into human design.

Beavers, octopuses, termites… they’re not metaphors.

They’re operating manuals.

And once you see the pattern, you start noticing it everywhere.

Send Pia a note

Follow Feral for new episodes every fortnight.

Instagram / Facebook / YouTube : @feralbydesignpod

f...

Nature has notes. Apparently, sometimes she delivers them in person.

This one arrived as a stunned kingfisher on Pia's porch tiles, moments after flying full-tilt into her window. Literally as she was writing this episode!

How do we speak a language birds can actually read?

From the “system reboot” behaviour of concussed birds to a 100-million-year-old secret hanging in your garden, this episode dives into the origins of ORNILUX. It’s the story of how a German manufacturer looked at the UV-reflective patterns in spider webs, an ancient defence mechanism, and engine...

Why do some problems keep coming back, even after you thought you'd fixed them? It's like scratching the wrong itch.

This episode came from noticing a place where biomimicry could quietly change the way Pia works, thanks to a wombat called Chardonnay.

She’s treated wombats with mange in the wild. Every few days, hiking in, pouring medicine onto the animal, hiking back out. Weeks of this. Sometimes months later, the mange is back. And the cycle begins again.

Because the mites don’t just live on the wombat. They survive in the burr...

 A swim that went wrong.
 A lifesaver’s eyes locked on mine.
 And a question I couldn’t shake.

Most beach safety systems are built for calm moments. But danger rarely shows up when we’re calm. At the beach, water reorganises itself minute by minute, yet the signals we rely on stay exactly the same.

What happens when static signals try to manage moving risk?

From static surf flags to cuttlefish, this is a story about redesigning beach safety around sensing change and signalling state. And what happens when thin...

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

The second episode in the Feral Festive Special drifts into unexpected territory: snowflakes.
 This episode isn’t biomimicry — snowflakes don’t behave — but the pattern they form, shaped by whatever air they fall through, is the part we’re playing with today.

December has its own weather system: family dynamics, big tables, small tables, solo days, first holidays after loss, chaotic joy, quiet overwhelm — often all within the same week. And for some reason, we keep trying to control the whole thing.

Snowflakes don’t.
 They don’t plan or perfect.
 They just respond to the...

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

A pre-Christmas Dopa Drop — one of twelve tiny, under-60-second December dopamine hits from Feral by Design.

A short, deliberate experiment playing with different dopamine triggers and pacing across the mini series — so the style shifts on purpose.
Not a biomimicry episode — just quick, nature-tinted perspective for the days when December does December.

If one of these gives you a lift, please share it with someone else in December mode.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

Part 1 of the Feral Festive Special: the prawn. Yes, really.

This festive run goes rogue - nature-inspired, not biomimicry - a deliberately Feral detour for December's chaos. We're diving into the prawn's soft-shell phase: that blink-and-you-miss-it moment where they ditch their old shell, stretch like hell, and grow before anyone notices. Chaotic. Unprotected. Maximum transformation.

Tell me that's not peak December energy.

If you're rolling into the end of the year feeling overcooked, under-armoured, or weirdly molten inside, this episode will make you laugh, wince, and feel slightly better without trying.

...

Ever taken a course, nailed the theory… and then fallen apart the moment it gets real? Same. And it turns out the fix lives in the Kalahari.

In this episode, Pia heads into meerkat country to uncover a quietly brilliant system for learning new skills that actually stick under pressure - not just in your head, but in your bones. No hacks. No feel-good fluff. Just nature-tested design principles for building capability in the real world, without the chaos or the panic.

From small “reality bites” to why purpose matters more than motivation, this is a surp...

Ever felt that tiny stab of guilt when you toss a takeaway coffee cup into the bin, even when you’re trying to do the right thing?

Four minutes of usefulness. Centuries of consequence.

We’ve engineered one of the most over-engineered disposable objects on the planet, and then asked people to solve it at the bin.

This episode follows that tension underwater, to the mussel, a creature that holds on in chaos through a repeatable cycle: use, release, renew. Mussel glue works underwater, using biological adhesion that lets mussels atta...

Ever been swooped by a magpie? Turns out, you weren’t being attacked — you were being communicated with. And you probably missed the whole conversation. What can magpies teach us about handling conflict before tension turns into a blow-up?

Magpies avoid real fighting through communication — using graduated conflict signals to regulate tension and maintain social balance. They’ve mastered something we humans rarely do: tiered cues, pattern-based memory, and conflict used as maintenance rather than meltdown.

In this episode, Pia uses biomimicry to explore handling conflict: 

- why every argument today trains a pattern f...

Hooked: How Burrs Inspired Velcro -  and Why Curiosity Is The Real Innovation.

Ever spent an hour on your kitchen floor pulling burrs out of your dog’s fur while questioning your life choices?

Those annoying little hitchhikers accidentally sparked one of the most famous biomimicry stories in product design history - the invention of Velcro.

In this episode, Pia unpicks the legend: a Swiss engineer, a hunting trip, and a microscope moment that turned frustration into a global, nature-inspired design breakthrough. It's one of those classic biomimcry examples where the sol...

Ever felt like you’re the bottleneck, the one brain everything has to run through until the whole thing grinds to a halt?

In the middle of a chaotic innovation project in India, Pia found herself locked in a basement toilet with no reception, cut off from the team, the decisions, and the work itself.

And just like that, everything stalled.

This episode sits inside that moment, when one point of control becomes the point of failure, and asks what octopus intelligence can teach us about doing things differently.

Using biomimicry, Pi...

Tips for Dam Good Boundaries

You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you’re jealous of a rodent’s boundary skills.

This week on Feral by Design, Pia Williams uses biomimicry and a rather talented beaver to tackle a classic self improvement problem: how to build boundaries that actually work.

Most advice tells us to make boundaries stronger. Beavers do something more interesting. They build layered, flexible systems that bend, leak, adapt and get repaired before small failures become big ones.

Discover:

When you were a kid, did you ever get jabbed with a needle so big it felt like a medieval weapon? I did — the kind that left welts and trauma in equal measure.

Turns out, the real master of painless penetration was buzzing around my head the whole time.

This episode of Feral by Design dives into what mosquitoes know about pain-free design — and how their six-part mouthpiece has inspired biomimicry researchers and product designers re-thinking needles, medicine, and even human ingenuity.

It’s a classic biomimicry story: brute force vs. elegance, pain vs. pr...

Nature owns the patent. We get to copy it.

Not another true-crime podcast… unless you count Grand Theft Bio!  In this 6-minute intro, Pia shares why she’s obsessed with stealing nature’s best strategies, and what happens when human insight meets biology.

Feral by Design brings biomimicry, human-centred design and innovation together, to look at familiar human problems differently. 

Expect short episodes that blend humour, biology and human messiness, showing how creatures from beavers to octopuses tackle challenges we face every day. Sometimes that leads to a better product or process. Sometimes it chang...