Feral by Design

Pia Williams

Feral by Design is a podcast stealing nature’s smartest strategies for our everyday chaos. Short, playful episodes grounded in real science, told through messy, self-deprecating stories. Some dive into real-world examples, others explore fresh frameworks inspired by nature. It's Biomimicry with the door left open: smart ideas from nature, made relatable, practical, and surprisingly fun. Nature owns the patent - we get to copy it.

  1. FEB 9

    S2E02 Scratching the Wrong Itch: Wombats, mange and why our systems won’t heal

    This episode came from noticing a place biomimicry could quietly change the way I work, thanks to a wombat called Chardonnay. I've treated wombats with mange in the wild. Every few days, we hike in, pour medicine on the animal, hike back out. Weeks of this. And 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 me: I'd been doing the exact same thing with my clients. Training teams, watching them transform, coming back months later to find old behaviours back in place. Not because the training failed. Because the conditions pulled them back. This episode is about recognising your own reinfection cycles, the places where we keep scratching the wrong itch. This isn’t motivation or mindset. It’s a design problem. Feral by Design. Where nature shows how systems actually work. Please share with someone you think might be scratching the wrong itch. 🎧 New episodes every fortnight. Follow Feral by Design.  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. If you’d like to learn more about the work, the group has a Facebook page - Blue Mountains Wombat Conservation Group. 🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod | Created and hosted by Pia Williams Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

    15 min

About

Feral by Design is a podcast stealing nature’s smartest strategies for our everyday chaos. Short, playful episodes grounded in real science, told through messy, self-deprecating stories. Some dive into real-world examples, others explore fresh frameworks inspired by nature. It's Biomimicry with the door left open: smart ideas from nature, made relatable, practical, and surprisingly fun. Nature owns the patent - we get to copy it.