EP66: Dug North ↣ Surviving Alone in South Africa & Customizing Tools for the Wild

The Wild Dispatch

In this episode Robin chats with Dug North about his experiences on the latest season of The Alone Show - the first time ever in Africa. (Final is live on History Channel this Thursday Aug 21st 2025).

Dug is a person of a great many talents, blessed with laser focus and the wild enthusiasm it takes to become skilled at something very quickly. A creative and maker on many levels, and armed with a sharp sense of humor, it's easy to see why they invited him onto the show. In this episode Robin and Dug, discuss the nitty gritty of Alone in general, along with the particularly nuanced challenges that come with this season being in the hottest and driest location yet. We also cover a bunch of other topics including, Dug's past, Ancient skills , building traditional tools, Modifying modern tools, The political and global importance of water, the remarkable survival skills of ancient man, mental health, Pemmican and almost everything between.

A huge thank you to Dug North for sharing his time with us today!

Be sure to follow Dug on Instagram and YouTube... check out his website too.

Also thanks to Alone and The History Channel for giving me access to Dug and this season's imagery.

But that's not the only imagery we used, Kielyn from Episodes 33 and 39 happened to take the photo we're using for this episode's album cover.

Photo credit for the images is: ©️2025, A&E Television Networks, LLC photo: Rose Marie Cromwell

Photo credit for the key art is: ©️2025, A&E Television Networks

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