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PODCAST

Feral by Design

Feral by Design is a science podcast that steals nature’s smartest strategies for human chaos.Each episode starts with a messy real-world problem, turns to a creature that’s already solved something similar, looks at their strategies and follows the thread you didn’t see coming. Sometimes it lands on one idea, sometimes a few - but it always lands somewhere useful.Grounded in real science, told through self-deprecating stories, and always surprisingly practical.Biomimicry made accessible, useful,

science life sciences

All Episodes

11:15

Ep08 - Reality Bites: How Meerkats Make Learning Stick

Feral by Design ·

2025/12/01

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 that actually sticks 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 p...

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10:57

Ep07 - The Mussel Cup: Here for a Good Time, Not a...

Feral by Design ·

2025/11/24

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? In this episode, Pia takes that everyday eco-anxiety somewhere unexpected: underwater, to the mussel - a creature that quietly solves problems we’ve been wrestling with for decades. From its renewable anchor threads comes a provocative idea for a different kind of cup altogether. Not disposable. Not forever. But something in between: a retiring cup, designed to a...

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12:06

Ep06 - Swooped: What Magpies Know About Handling...

Feral by Design ·

2025/11/17

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. 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 how we can handle tensio...

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10:54

Ep05 - Hooked: How Burrs Inspired Velcro — and Why...

Feral by Design ·

2025/11/11

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 successful biomimicry stories in 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 revolution. Two tiny words did it all: hook and loop. But we’re not stopping at th...

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10:59

Ep04 - The Octopus Method: What Octopuses Know About...

Feral by Design ·

2025/11/04

Ever felt like you’re the bottleneck — the one brain trying to juggle every moving piece until the whole thing collapses? In this episode, Pia shares a true story of running a chaotic innovation project in India… while accidentally locked in a toilet with no reception. That moment of enforced stillness led her to one of nature’s best system designers: the octopus. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons live in its arms, allowing it to sense, decide, and adapt without waiting for head office — a s...

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13:03

Ep02 - How Beavers Master Boundaries

Feral by Design ·

2025/10/28

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 dives into the muddy brilliance of the beaver — nature’s original boundary engineer — to find smarter, saner ways to hold your own. Discover: 🪶 Why most human boundaries snap under pressure 🪶 How beavers build layered, flexible systems that bend instead of break 🪶 What “patch your leaks early” means for emotional energy &n...

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6:32

Ep03 - What Mosquitoes Know About Painless Design:...

Feral by Design ·

2025/10/28

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 ...

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5:50

Ep0 - Introducing Feral by Design

Feral by Design ·

2025/10/17

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 - a little biomimicry, a little human curiosity - and what listeners can expect from this podcast that makes nature and science feel personal and surprisingly useful. Expect short episodes that blend humour, biology, and human messiness - showing how creatures from beavers to octopuses tackle the same challenges we face every...

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0:56

Trailer - Feral by Design

Feral by Design ·

2025/10/09

Feral by Design is a podcast stealing nature’s smartest strategies for everyday chaos. Short, playful episodes grounded in science, storytelling, and human curiosity. Subscribe and join us as we see what happens when nature becomes our mentor.

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29 results

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