The Young Pioneer Podcast

Young Pioneer Tours made its name as one of the few companies organizing group trips into North Korea, and their podcast extends that adventurous, slightly irreverent brand into audio. Host Justin Martell and the YPT crew talk about their experiences leading tours to Pyongyang and beyond, alongside episodes covering other hard-to-reach destinations like Somaliland, Transnistria, and Papua New Guinea. With 25 episodes across 4 seasons, it is a compact listen. The North Korea content is what makes this show unique in the podcast space. These are people who have been on the ground in the DPRK dozens of times, eaten in the restaurants, attended the Mass Games, visited the DMZ from the northern side, and navigated the elaborate minder system. Their observations are granular and specific -- the kind of details you simply cannot get from analysts working with satellite photos. Episodes feature interviews with journalists, fellow travelers, and people connected to the Pyongyang Film Festival. The show has a perfect 5.0-star rating from 8 reviewers, and the production quality is solid for a small independent outfit. The obvious caveat is that a tour company has commercial incentives around how it frames North Korea tourism, and the show does not always grapple with that tension. But for pure on-the-ground color about what it is actually like to visit the most isolated country in the world, nothing else comes close.