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 signal pain, panic, or something in the environment.

It sits inside the quiet, relentless task of trying to read someone who can't tell you what they need. Of making calls with incomplete information. Of choosing a direction and not knowing if it's right until much later, when you're already tired, and they're already more distressed.

Using a biomimicry lens, Pia explores what happens when signals blur. Not just in dementia care, but at both ends of life, before language arrives and as it starts to leave.

From the rhythm of fireflies to the people trying to read the room, this episode explores at home dementia care, caregiving, and the difficult communication problem carers are actually trying to solve.

Not to diagnose. Not to cure. Just to find a better first move.

It’s a different approach to carer support, using patterns and changes in dementia behaviour to help make that first move a little less blind, with potential relevance anywhere someone has to interpret distress without words, including parents trying to understand what a baby needs.

Because when something's wrong, and you don't know what kind of wrong it is, where you start matters.

Biology: Fireflies use bioluminescent light patterns to communicate through rhythm, allowing individuals to recognise meaningful signals even in low visibility.

Principle: When direct communication breaks down, meaningful changes become easier to detect when there is a clear baseline and a recognisable pattern.

Application: The Firefly Signal re-imagines how carers might recognise whether distress is more likely to be physical or environmental, helping guide a better first move when someone can no longer explain what they need.

S2E07

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Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

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 human systems subtly reconfigure under pressure, this is an attempt to understand what we’re actually sensing. Not to solve it. Not to make it feel better. Just to see it more clearly.

Because when systems shift, the effects don’t stay local. And noticing that isn’t nothing.

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feralbydesign.com

Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

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 — to let the weakly electric fish show us the way.

Name it. Contain it. Date it.

A practical way to recognise defensiveness, contain the signal and stop spreading it through the room. 

Nature owns the patent. We get to copy it.

Follow Feral for new episodes every fortnight.

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feralbydesign.com

Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

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.

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feralbydesign.com

Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

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 engineered a modern solution to the 100-million-bird-strike problem.

It’s a story about communication design, locally attuned signals, and what happens when we finally ask what the receiver can actually see.

Biology: Orb-weaver spiders use UV-reflective silk patterns to make webs visible to birds and prevent collision.
Principle: Signals must be designed for the receiver’s sensory system, not the sender’s intent.
Application: ORNILUX glass uses UV patterns to make otherwise invisible surfaces detectable to birds.

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feralbydesign.com

Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

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 burrow.

Treat the host, ignore the habitat, and reinfection undoes everything.

One day, driving home from the mountains, it hit her. She’d been doing the exact same thing with clients. Training teams, watching them transform, then coming back months later to find old behaviours back in place. Not because the training failed. Because the conditions pulled them back.

That’s the pattern behind so many recurring problems: we intervene where the problem shows up, while leaving the conditions that keep recreating it untouched.

This episode sits inside that pattern. The places where we keep scratching the wrong itch.

This isn’t motivation or mindset. It’s a design flaw.

Nature owns the patent. We get to copy it.

Biology: Sarcoptic mange mites survive both on wombats and within their burrows, enabling reinfection even after the host is treated.
Principle: Intervening at the point of impact is insufficient if the conditions that regenerate the problem remain unchanged.
Application: Shifting focus from individual behaviour change to redesigning the surrounding system or “habitat” to prevent recurring failure.

Note on the wombat work:
The fieldwork described in this episode is done with the Blue Mountains Wombat Conservation Group, a volunteer-run organisation treating sarcoptic mange in wild wombats.

S2E02

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feralbydesign.com

Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

 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 things that don’t move are designed to manage those that do.

Not about sharks.
Not about following rules.

But about what it would feel like if our safety signals could change state, the way cuttlefish do.

Nature owns the patent. We get to copy it.

Biology: Cuttlefish dynamically change colour, contrast and texture to signal internal state in real time, making changes instantly visible to others.
Principle: Signals should reflect changing conditions, not fixed states, so that risk is communicated in real time.
Application: Reimagining beach safety systems such as beach signals or wearable devices that change state with conditions, enabling people to sense and respond to risk as it emerges.

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Follow Feral for new episodes every fortnight.

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feralbydesign.com

Created and hosted by Pia Williams
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.