PastMaster: Reshaping History

Crashing the Greatest Party in History: PastMaster 3rd Birthday Special

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 10:32:00 -0000

Florence, 1480. The Palazzo Medici is blazing against the February dark, 500 guests in silk and masks are drinking like nothing bad happened two years ago in the Duomo, and Lorenzo de Medici's gold mask can't quite hide the limp. To celebrate three years of PastMaster, Ryan and Tan have dragged returning co-host Keon out of parental leave, handed everyone a plus-one from history, and gatecrashed the greatest party the Renaissance ever threw.

Ryan brings a Neanderthal — male, roughly 30,000 years out of his depth, dangerously interested in the nearest torch. Keon brings Anne Boleyn, sharp, multilingual, and 40 years early for the court politics that will eventually kill her. Tan brings Zeus. Actual Zeus. King of the gods, toga intact. Will Game Master Claude suffer silly plus-ones gladly?

The real Medici masquerade sat two years downstream of the Pazzi Conspiracy — the Easter-Sunday cathedral stabbing that killed Lorenzo's brother Giuliano and left Lorenzo himself wounded, vengeful, and consolidating power through spectacle. Florence in 1480 is Botticelli arguing about the exact colour of shadow, Leonardo sketching whatever catches his eye, and every wealthy house performing the careful fiction that the city isn't one grudge away from another bloodletting. Now throw three time travellers into it with a Neanderthal, a future English queen, and a Greek god who intends to be noticed. Happy birthday to us.

If you were sent back in time, could you survive and thrive — or would you be burnt at the stake for being a witch? PastMaster is the show that turns history into an interactive adventure game. Each episode, a comedian is dropped into the past with nothing but modern knowledge and terrible ideas. The AI Game Master is strict. The chaos is inevitable. The past will be mastered.

Era: Renaissance | 1480 CE | Florence, Italy Special: Third birthday episode — Keon returns as co-host after six months away.

EPISODE LINKS

Follow the boys' adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com
The Pazzi Conspiracy (the real backstory) 👉 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazzi_conspiracy

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A Vegetarian with Bad Knees vs. Vlad the Impaler, ft. Rohan Sharma

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 13:26:00 -0000

Wallachia, 1456. Vlad III has just retaken his throne, impaling stakes line the city's edge, and a scribe named Constantin has hidden the only written record of Vlad's chaotic first reign in a monastery outside Targoviste. Comedian Rohan Sharma has two days to find the Chronicle before armed men destroy it. A vegetarian with bad knees, anxiety, and self-described "wits and wiles," he is not the obvious candidate.

Rohan's survival strategy for 15th-century Romania: 'Bard Energy' and plum brandy

The real Wallachia in 1456 was one of the most dangerous places in Europe. Vlad III ruled through spectacular violence, impaling thousands to terrorise the Ottoman Empire and his own nobility alike. The Chronicle at the centre of this episode could easily have existed: Vlad's reign generated propaganda, counter-propaganda, and terrified eyewitness accounts across the continent. Navigating that world required diplomacy, nerve, and knowing exactly who to trust. Navigating it as Rohan Sharma requires all of that plus a phone full of classical music and a scheme to double-cross a Saxon merchant using medieval photocopying.

Era: Medieval | 1456 CE | Targoviste, Romania Featuring: Rohan Sharma — comedian (Leicester Square New Comedian of the Year)

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Rohan's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com Rohan Sharma: Instagram @rohansnotty

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Crouching Tiger, Hidden Cricket: Qin Dynasty China ft. Caroline McEvoy

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 11:02:00 -0000

Qin Dynasty China, 212 BCE.

Climbing into the time travel machine otherwise known as the Hen & Hound, award-winning comedian Caroline McEvoy steps foot in Qin Dynasty China.

She’s been set a mission to solve the case of the falsely accused road builder. She is armed with only a lucky cricket called Dinky, 'passable' Mandarin and some speculative tai chi moves.

Ahead of her lie confrontations with local toughs, surly old women, tigers, lakeside dates and even perhaps an audience with the emperor himself.

Will her martial art moves be recognised as legitimate? Will she tame the tigers of ancient China?

All will be revealed.

Featuring: Caroline McEvoy — award-winning comedian

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Caroline’s adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Caroline McEvoy:

Instagram @carolinemcevoycomedy @comedybandits

linktr.ee/carolinemcevoy

Gun and Wand – the official companion podcast: https://pod.link/1723513729

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How to conquer Greenland ft. Ashley Haden

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 14:35:00 -0000

Greenland, 986 CE. Erik the Red has just established the first Norse settlement at Brattahlid, and comedian Ashley Haden has been living among the colonists for three months. The problem? A prominent farmer named Thorvald has accused him of stealing two sheep he never touched, and a public assembly called the Thing is happening at dawn. If found guilty, he owes compensation he can't pay, which means outlawry in the middle of a Greenlandic winter.

Ashley's approach to Viking justice: invoke Odin, challenge his accuser to trial by combat, and open with a string of sheep-related insults so offensive that even the Game Master pauses. His knowledge of Norse mythology is suspiciously detailed, his combat instincts are disturbingly practical, and his long-term strategy involves hunting dedications to Freyja, political alliances with Erik the Red, and a patience for revenge that the AI clearly wasn't expecting.

The real Norse settlement of Greenland was a branding exercise. Erik the Red named it "Greenland" to attract settlers to a frozen island where winter darkness lasted twenty hours a day, farming was barely viable, and disputes were settled by public assembly under open sky. Survival required community, reputation, and knowing whose favour to court. Ashley brings all three, plus a moral code that draws the line at torture but not at snare traps.

Era: Medieval | 986 CE | Qassiarsuk, Greenland
Featuring: Ashley Haden — comedian (Pegasus New Act of the Year Winner 2016, We Are All C*nts)

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Ashley's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com
Ashley Haden:

Instagram @ahpoliticalbreakdown

X @ashleyhaden

ashleyhaden.co.uk

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Hot Dog Hijinks at the Great Library of Alexandria, ft. Lexx Education podcast

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 11:44:00 -0000

Alexandria, 48 BCE. Caesar's forces are closing in, fires are spreading through the harbour, and the greatest collection of knowledge the ancient world has ever assembled is about to go up in smoke. Laura Lexx and Ron from the Lexx Education podcast have been sent back to save it. They run an education podcast. They know this history. It helps them not one bit.

The mission is the Alexandrian Rescue: get the scrolls out before Caesar's siege burns the library to the ground. Laura and Ron's strategy involves what they call "hi-piz" (don't ask), urine-based camouflage (really don't ask), and a hot dog that the Game Master flatly denies exists in 48 BCE. The Game Master this week is the most brutal yet, and their brand of scientific whimsy is meeting ancient warfare with the kind of results that make the AI question whether they read the mission brief at all.

The Great Library of Alexandria was the intellectual jewel of the ancient world, a centre of scholarship that housed works from across the Mediterranean. Caesar's siege in 48 BCE caused fires that damaged or destroyed parts of the collection, one of history's most mourned losses. Laura and Ron can explain the historical significance in detail. They can tell you about Alexander's founding of the city and the Ptolemaic dynasty's patronage of scholarship. Sometimes knowing the history just means you can narrate your own failure more accurately.

Era: Ancient | 48 BCE | Alexandria, Egypt Featuring: Laura Lexx & Ron Lexx — Lexx Education podcast (Live at the Apollo, Mock the Week)

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Laura and Ron's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Laura Lexx: IG @lexxlaura | X @lauralexx | lauralexx.co.uk

Ron Lexx: IG @lexxeducation | X @lexxeducation | lexxeducation.podbean.com

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Accidental Mayan Blood Sacrifice ft. Bilal Zafar

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 14:54:00 -0000

Tikal, 741 CE. One of the most powerful Maya city-states at the height of the Late Classic period. Towering pyramids, elaborate blood rituals, and a head priest who has the king's ear and absolutely no interest in hearing about an upcoming solar eclipse from some random time traveller. Comedian Bilal Zafar has three days to navigate this. His toolkit: creativity, self-declared ruthlessness, and roundhouse kicks.

Bilal's mission is to warn the king about an imminent solar eclipse that the head priest has flatly denied will happen. Contradicting the priest means being accused of spreading fear and false prophecy, which in Maya culture is a fast track to becoming a human sacrifice. Bilal's response to learning the priest will have him killed: "Look, are you with me or against me? Because I can be very violent." His negotiation strategy involves clothing swaps with ceremonial priests and the kind of diplomacy that makes everyone present wonder if he's been at the suppositories. The roundhouse kicks remain untested.

The Maya Late Classic period was an era of extraordinary scientific achievement. They tracked celestial events with accuracy that wouldn't be matched in Europe for centuries. They also filed their teeth into points, inlaid them with jade, and took their alcohol via enemas because it gets you drunk faster and bypasses vomiting. Bilal is caught between the astronomy and the blood sacrifice, navigating a civilisation that was simultaneously more scientifically advanced and more terrifyingly brutal than anything he was prepared for.

Era: Ancient | 741 CE | Flores, Guatemala Featuring: Bilal Zafar — comedian (Edinburgh Best Newcomer nominee, Catastrophe, Last Christmas)

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Bilal's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Bilal Zafar: IG @zafarcakes_ | X @Zafarcakes | bilalzafarcomedy.com

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A few sherbets for the Silk Road ft. Esther Manito

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 13:25:00 -0000

Samarkand, 750 CE. The Islamic Golden Age is in full swing, the Silk Road is the most lucrative trade network on Earth, and comedian Esther Manito has just been dropped into the middle of it with a mission to trek a caravan of silk from Samarkand to Baghdad. Easy enough — if you ignore the street-smart urchins, the uncompromising rulers, and the fact that the entire caravan has been poisoned.

The Season 5 premiere sends Esther into the heart of the Abbasid Caliphate, where hard bargains are the norm and the AI Game Master is in absolutely no mood for tomfoolery. Her strategy? Negotiation skills, improvised poetry, and being — by her own admission — "a naturally competitive person." The reality? Fifty merchants, guards, and handlers falling violently ill, trust collapsing faster than a silk price in a flooded market, and a diplomatic situation that makes medieval trade disputes look like a gentle disagreement over lunch. Nobody trusts anyone, everybody suspects poisoning, and Esther is making up limericks.

Samarkand was one of the great Silk Road trading hubs — a crossroads of cultures where Chinese silk met Persian craftsmanship and everyone had an angle. The Abbasid Caliphate at its height was the intellectual and commercial centre of the known world. Getting from Samarkand to Baghdad meant crossing deserts, negotiating with bandits, and surviving court politics. Getting from Samarkand to Baghdad as Esther Manito means all of that, plus camels, sherbet, and an alarming amount of poisoning.

If you were sent back in time, could you survive and thrive — or would you be burnt at the stake for being a witch? PastMaster is the show that turns history into an interactive adventure game. Each episode, a comedian is dropped into the past with nothing but modern knowledge and terrible ideas. The AI is the Game Master. The chaos is inevitable. The accents are unforgivable.

Era: Ancient | 750 CE | Samarkand, Uzbekistan Featuring: Esther Manito — comedian

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Esther's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

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What next for PastMaster... ?

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 09:20:00 -0000

Can the past be mastered? Is AI still cool? And where exactly has Keon gone?

Season 4 was a big one — we pitted ChatGPT against Claude in a two-player electricity showdown, launched Death Wish Speed Runs (the game where you try to die as quickly and stylishly as possible in history), went live on stage twice, let the Thots TV podcast loose in a gothic horror, and sent a rapper to the Battle of Hastings dressed as Michael Jackson. So, naturally, Ryan and Tan need to sit down and take stock.

In this bonus chat, the PastMaster hosts step out of the time machine to talk about what worked, what spectacularly didn't, and what's next. If you've ever wondered how the AI prompts actually get built, which episodes nearly fell apart during recording, or why Keon keeps mysteriously vanishing — this is the one.

If you were sent back in time, could you survive and thrive — or would you be burnt at the stake for being a witch? PastMaster is the show that turns history into an interactive adventure game. Each episode, a comedian is dropped into the past with nothing but modern knowledge and terrible ideas. The AI is the Game Master. The chaos is inevitable. The accents are unforgivable.

Era: Special | Bonus Episode

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EXPLORE THE PASTMASTER INTERACTIVE MAP The perfect companion for keeping track of our increasingly chaotic attempts to meddle with history. Link: https://map.pastmasterpod.com

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"Modern Knowledge / Medieval Consequences" — TRAILER

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 08:07:00 -0000

If you were sent back in time, could you survive and thrive -- or would you be burnt at the stake for being a witch? Season 5 of PastMaster is here. New comedians. New eras. New ways to catastrophically misread historical situations. Same ruthless AI Game Master. The past will be mastered.

Era: Special | Trailer

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EXPLORE THE PASTMASTER INTERACTIVE MAP The perfect companion for keeping track of our increasingly chaotic attempts to meddle with history. Link: https://map.pastmasterpod.com

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The Santa Claude Intervention: PastMaster Christmas Special

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 14:57:00 -0000

The North Pole has gone very, very wrong. Father Christmas has swapped his "Ho Ho Ho" for a whiskey bottle and a whip, the elves are screaming, and the factory is belching black smoke into the Arctic sky. Merry Christmas from PastMaster.

Laura, Elsie, and Meg from the Thots TV podcast return for a festive special that was supposed to be a sacred pilgrimage to Bethlehem in Year Zero. Instead, they're staring down a corrupted Santa who's gone full capitalist monster. Their mission: save Christmas. Their strategy involves questions about whether frankincense is flammable, a proposal to have the baby kill Santa, and a suggestion about smashing an egg on the newborn Jesus "to start a new tradition." The Game Master is in absolutely no mood for any of it.

Sacred meets profane, history meets mythology, and three podcasters try to hold it all together while the AI makes everything worse. The Nativity is happening somewhere in the background. A dystopian North Pole is happening in the foreground. Whether the Baby Jesus can melt Santa's frozen heart or whether the Thots TV approach to theological problem-solving makes things significantly worse is a question that only listening can answer.

Era: Special | ~1 CE | Bethlehem, Palestine Featuring: Elsie Loades, Laura Connolly & Megan Mumby — Thots TV podcast

EPISODE LINKS

Follow the Thots TV adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Thots TV: X @ElsieLoades | IG @lauraconnolly98

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Nuns of Death: The Beastmaster Cometh (Part 3)

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 13:01:00 -0000

Northumbria, 687 CE. The nuns have survived Ryan's naked Jesus act and Nick's witchcraft-and-Christina-Aguilera gambit. Now it's Tan's turn. His character name is Wee Willy Winky, the Beast Master. That's the energy we're working with.

The Death Wish Speed Run finale: Ryan tried blasphemy, Nick tried seduction, and Tan's approach is to demand that Claude let him summon a bear called Rufus. Claude's response ("You don't have a bear") does not deter him. His relationship with the turnip cart, the nuns, and the basic laws of nature that PastMaster tries to uphold is adversarial from the first second. After three episodes of trying to provoke medieval nuns into violence, someone has to be crowned the pound-for-pound Death Wish Champion.

St. Hilda's Abbey in Northumbria was a centre of learning that produced five bishops and hosted the Synod of Whitby, one of the most important ecclesiastical debates in English history. None of those bishops had to deal with anything like this. Tan's ultimate fate is historically accurate for how Anglo-Saxon religious communities dealt with people they really didn't like, and the way it happens is both deeply sad and deeply funny. Stay tuned to the end for a rich, untapped vein of historical exploration that suggests the Nuns of Death series might not be finished yet. Part 3 of 3.

Era: Medieval | 687 CE | Whitby, England Part 3 of 3

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Tan's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

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Nuns of Death: Death Wish Speedrun. Burn the witch! (Part 2)

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 09:16:00 -0000

Northumbria, 687 CE. The nunnery that refused to kill Ryan is about to meet its next challenger. Nick has a plan. A sexy, dirty, witchy plan.

Nick's opening move: introduce himself as Emily. The nuns take one look at his jaw, his build, and his beard, and are not convinced. So Nick pivots. He touches his beard "incredulously" and announces it must be "the witch I hung out with yesterday." In 7th-century Anglo-Saxon England, admitting association with witchcraft is tantamount to signing your own death warrant. Nick's strategy from there involves Christina Aguilera lyrics, body art in unconventional mediums, and a commitment to provocation that makes Ryan's Jesus act look restrained.

The Death Wish Speed Run scoring system has three categories: speed, artistic impression, and gritty realism. Nick is throwing everything at the nuns to see what sticks: blasphemy, seduction, gender confusion, witchcraft, and pop music. The 7th-century Anglo-Saxon church did not mess around with any of these things. Whether Nick's scattergun approach earns him a fast, stylish death or just another cold cellar and a man named Brother Cuthbert growling "more fire" is the question. Part 2 of 3.

Era: Medieval | 687 CE | Whitby, England Part 2 of 3

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Nick's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

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Nuns of Death: Death Wish Speedrun in a 7th Century Nunnery (Part 1)

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 09:31:00 -0000

Northumbria, 687 CE. A 7th-century Anglo-Saxon nunnery. Prayer, scholarship, deep Christian patience. The last place in history you'd expect someone to get murdered quickly. Which is exactly why we chose it.

Death Wish Speed Run is back, the game where you try to die as quickly and stylishly as possible in the past, and after the Australian penal colony the difficulty needed raising, so the setting is deliberately peaceful. Ryan goes first with a plan to strip naked and claim to be Jesus. His problem: Sister Edberg, built like an ox and carrying a wooden staff, who has absolutely no interest in a theological debate. Claude refuses to grant quick theatrical deaths, instead enforcing grim 7th-century religious justice. Ryan's backup plan involves hymns, fermented turnips, and running up walls like a motorbike.

Scoring categories this time: speed, artistic impression, and gritty realism. Whitby Abbey, founded around 657 AD by Abbess Hild, was one of Northumbria's most important double monasteries and hosted the Synod of Whitby in 664 CE. It was a centre of learning and devotion. These women wrestled livestock, hauled water, and worked the fields. They were not the meek nuns Ryan was expecting, and Claude's commitment to historical accuracy means they are far more interested in locking him up than putting him out of his misery. Part 1 of 3.

Era: Medieval | 687 CE | Whitby, England Part 1 of 3

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Ryan's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

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MC Wicked Drops the Beat at Woodstock (ft. Nick Horseman)

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 15:02:00 -0000

Woodstock, 1969. Four hundred thousand flower children, Jimi Hendrix finishing his legendary set, and one man backstage who literally cannot stop beatboxing. Tan has been sent back to Max Yasgur's farm as MC Wicked, a hip-hop pioneer arriving roughly a decade too early, with a mission to get on the main stage and blow the counterculture's collective mind.

There's a problem: Tan knows almost nothing about hip-hop. His strategy is relentless beatboxing, robot dancing, and a vocal rendition of Daft Punk's "Human After All" performed for an audience who won't hear electronic music for another thirty years. The festival organiser's response to MC Wicked's act is a question that perfectly captures the confusion of everyone present: "Are you broken? Are you stuck in some kind of loop?" MC Wicked responds with more beatboxing. Whether this counts as inventing hip-hop, inventing electronic music, or inventing a new category of public disturbance is a question for the ages.

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair ran from August 15-18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York. Three days that defined a generation's relationship with music, mud, and what Claude diplomatically calls "herbal creativity." Now imagine dropping a man doing call-and-response Daft Punk chants and mechanical robot dancing into the middle of it. The hippies don't know what they're witnessing. Neither does MC Wicked.

Era: Modern | 1969 CE | Bethel, United States Featuring: Nick Horseman — comedian (The Rhyme Scheme, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Awards nom) Part 1 of 2

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Tan's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Nick Horseman: X @rociouspun | opencomedy.com/nickhorseman

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Persia McPersia goes to Persia: PastMaster Live at the Cheerful Earful

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 09:21:00 -0000

The Colosseum, 80 CE. Fifty thousand Romans screaming for blood, Emperor Titus presiding from his box, and two time travellers with ten minutes to get rich, get notorious, and not die. Recorded live at the Bedford in Balham for the Cheerful Earful comedy podcast festival, this is PastMaster with a room full of people shouting suggestions.

Nick Horseman and Tan go head to head in ancient Rome, with Tan betting on gladiators from the stands while Nick spawns backstage and immediately makes a decision about a tiger that the tiger does not appreciate. Meanwhile the audience gets their own game: ancient Persia, 550 BCE, playing as "Persia McPersia" armed with nothing but hair gel and a diplomatic strategy best summarised by the Game Master: "That's not how physics works. That's not how combat works. That's not how spears work."

Claude, told to "be mean and be concise" for the live format, delivers ten-minute speed runs that give nobody time to think. From the gladiatorial arena of Rome to the Achaemenid Empire, this episode covers more ground than most PastMaster adventures and resolves approximately none of it well. Whether hair gel, a Swiss Army knife, or a man literally named after the country he's visiting can survive ten minutes of compressed ancient history is a question best answered at volume.

Era: Ancient | 80 CE / 550 BCE | Rome, Italy / Persepolis, Iran Featuring: Nick Horseman — comedian (The Rhyme Scheme, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Awards nom)

EPISODE LINKS

Follow the adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Nick Horseman: X @rociouspun | opencomedy.com/nickhorseman

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The Man who Destroyed Civilisation While Trying to Share a Bowl of Frosties with Charlie Simpson.

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 14:57:00 -0000

Neo-Singapore, 2999. A vertical city-state stretching from the ocean floor to the stratosphere. Humanity's entire pre-digital cultural heritage is stored in a quantum archive, and a virus is about to wipe it all. Comedy producer Al Clayton has 72 hours to save the future. His first priority? 3D printing Charlie Simpson from Busted.

Al's mission is clear: recover three cultural artifacts before they're permanently lost. Al's approach is to immediately petition for the resurrection of a 21st-century pop star at a cost of roughly one small moon. The Game Master, playing Sherlock Holmes, is withering: "You've been in the future for precisely 30 seconds and already believe you can casually resurrect a 21st century pop star." Al is undeterred. His creative enthusiasm and 30th-century technology are about to collide, and the consequences will echo through what remains of time.

This is PastMaster's leap into science fiction, where the stakes are literally all of human culture and the person tasked with saving it is armed with nothing but enthusiasm, pop culture references from a thousand years ago, and an unshakeable desire to share a bowl of Frosties with a member of Busted. David Attenborough, for the record, died in 2047 at age 121. His consciousness was backed up. Al's was not.

Era: Fiction | 2999 CE | Singapore Featuring: Al Clayton — comedy producer and director (Turtle Canyon Comedy)

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Al's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Al Clayton: IG @turtlecanyoncom | X @turtlecanyoncom | turtlecanyoncomedy.com

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Flogging Miracle Tea at the Great Exhibition in 1851 (ft. Chris Reading)

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 19:20:00 -0000

The Great Exhibition, Hyde Park, 1851. Six million visitors. The Crystal Palace. The pinnacle of Victorian innovation. And Chris Reading has just rolled up in a quack-mobile to sell miracle tea bags to the most sceptical audience in the British Empire.

Chris's mission: acquire serious power in Victorian London under the tutelage of Game Master Gregor MacGregor, history's most audacious conman. His product line includes "Longevity Tea" (guaranteed to extend your life by at least 5%), shiny thermos flasks, plush toy lions, and a slogan that means something very different to the ladies than it does to the colonel. Chris knows exactly what he's doing. The Victorians are less convinced, and the Game Master's patience for his schemes has a shorter shelf life than the tea.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 drew the world to Joseph Paxton's iron-and-glass Crystal Palace, showcasing genuine marvels from steam engines to the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Gregor MacGregor was a real Scottish conman who invented an entire country called Poyais and sold land rights to it. Chris is channelling that exact energy at the grandest showcase of innovation the world has ever seen, armed with a winking-face logo, a dubious medical degree, and the kind of confidence that historically ends with a walking stick to the knuckles.

Era: Industrial | 1851 CE | London, United Kingdom Featuring: Chris Reading — comedian (ALIEN: CONTAINMENT, Time Travel Is Dangerous) Contains: Bad language, historical anachronisms and con artistry. But no drugs, disappointingly.

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Chris's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Chris Reading: IG @chrisjreading | X @ChrisReading | chrisreading.com

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Mr Blobby tries to Save the Titanic

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 06:38:00 -0000

Friend of the show Ian Walker joins Tan to pit four AI large language models against each other and see which makes the best Game Master.

The setting? It couldn’t be grander or have higher stakes: on board the Titanic on its doomed maiden voyage to the US in 1912.

Can Ian avert disaster and prevent the ocean liner hitting ice and dragging 1,500 to their deaths? Will his performance as 90s TV phenomenon Mr Blobby win over the crew and passengers or will he get thrown in the brig?

And which of the four competing AI models will create the best gaming experience? Will it be good old ChatGPT, cheeky Claude, Google’s Gemini or Chinese upstart DeepSeek?

All will be revealed.

Contains: Mild language, historical anachronisms, a lack of realism and copious accents.

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Michael Jackson at The Battle of Hee Hee Hastings

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 10:26:00 -0000

The Battle of Hastings, 1066. The day that ended Anglo-Saxon England, crowned William the Conqueror, and changed the English language forever. Now Keon's been sent back to stop it — armed with a red leather jacket, a single sparkling glove, and an unstoppable urge to moonwalk.

As the mysterious "Agent M," Keon has one shot to save King Harold from the Norman invasion and — more importantly — get himself embroidered onto the Bayeux Tapestry. His strategy? Hand Harold a red leather jacket because it's "a very sturdy leather zipper" that'll definitely stop arrows. Convince an 11th-century army that pop choreography is a legitimate battle tactic. And somehow explain what a zipper is to a man who's never seen a button. DeepSeek AI plays Game Master this week, and it is in absolutely no mood to let any of this slide.

What follows is a glorious collision of medieval warfare and modern pop culture — terrible French accents, creative reinterpretations of Norman battle strategy, and a one-man campaign to introduce hip-hop to Anglo-Saxon England while there's still an Anglo-Saxon England to introduce it to. History says Harold took an arrow to the eye at Senlac Hill and the Normans swept in to give us the Domesday Book, feudalism, and about 10,000 French words. But what if one moonwalking time traveller could change all of that? And what if the answer is: absolutely not, but it's hilarious to watch him try?

If you were sent back in time, could you survive and thrive — or would you be burnt at the stake for being a witch? PastMaster is the show that turns history into an interactive adventure game. Each episode, a comedian is dropped into the past with nothing but modern knowledge and terrible ideas. The AI is the Game Master. The chaos is inevitable. The accents are unforgivable.

Era: Warfare | 1066 CE | Battle, England Contains: Mild language, historical anachronisms, and some surprisingly smooth medieval moves.

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Keon's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

The Bayeux Tapestry (the real one) 👉 https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/

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The Greased up Apprentice: Quantum Leap Gone Wrong

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 08:13:00 -0000

Medieval England, date unknown. You wake up on cold stone. Your hands aren't your hands. Someone is shouting for Thomas, and there's a strong implication that Thomas needs to sharpen an axe. Welcome to PastMaster's Quantum Leap episode, where Ryan doesn't get to choose who he is, where he is, or what century he's in.

In a twist cooked up by Tan, Ryan is dropped blind into history with zero context. No character brief, no mission, no era. Just a dark chamber, the stench of tallow candles and unwashed bodies, and a gruff voice demanding Thomas come quickly. Ryan's first guess at his own identity is Thomas Cromwell; his second is Thomas the Tank Engine. His approach to medieval executioner training involves requesting bog roll from a man who has never seen a button, and a relationship with tallow grease that Edmund finds deeply concerning.

The Tower of London served as a fortress, prison, and execution ground for centuries, soaked in blood, political intrigue, and the kind of medieval justice that makes modern life look extremely comfortable. The Quantum Leap format strips away every safety net PastMaster usually offers. Ryan has no idea what century he's in, what his mission is, or why everyone keeps handing him axes. What he does with the axes once he figures out who Thomas is remains between him, Edmund, and God.

Era: Medieval | 1400s CE | London, England

EPISODE LINKS

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Cthulhu Calling: The Greatest Conspiracy in History, ft. The Apocalypse Players (Part 2)

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 13:05:00 -0000

What started as a missing persons case in 1920s Arkham has gone catastrophically sideways. Ezra Whitmarsh is alive but changed. Forbidden books are burning. Alien technology is doing things to mortal flesh that mortal flesh was not designed for. And T.G. Fells has one obsession that overrides cosmic horror, sanity loss, and the basic instinct for self-preservation: he needs to know who killed Christopher Marlowe.

Dan Wheeler and Joseph Chance return as Gert and T.G. Fells to conclude their investigation, and "conclude" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The Arkham mystery has spiralled into something involving Yithian technology, temporal displacement, and a nervous businessman who turns out to be far more dangerous than he appeared. Where the investigation leads and what Gert does when he arrives there involves iambic pentameter, a tavern that goes very quiet, and a conspiracy that makes the Syndicate look like amateurs.

Marlowe's death in 1593 is one of history's genuine unsolved mysteries. Theories range from a pub brawl to government assassination to a faked death by the man some believe was the real Shakespeare. The Yithians, from Lovecraft's "The Shadow Out of Time," are beings who swap minds across millennia. Put those together with two podcast veterans improvising their way through cosmic horror and Elizabethan murder, and the question isn't whether they solve the mystery. It's whether there's enough reality left to solve it in.

Era: Fiction | 1926 CE / 1593 CE | Arkham, United States / Deptford, England Featuring: The Apocalypse Players (Dan Wheeler, Joseph Chance, Al Clayton, Chris Reading) Part 2 of 2

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Dan and Joseph's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Dan Wheeler: X @danwheeleruk | danwheeler.org

Joseph Chance: X @JosephChance2

Al Clayton: IG @turtlecanyoncom | X @turtlecanyoncom | turtlecanyoncomedy.com

Chris Reading: IG @chrisjreading | X @ChrisReading | chrisreading.com

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Cthulhu Calling: The Arkham Investigation, ft The Apocalypse Players (Part 1)

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 09:23:00 -0000

Arkham, Massachusetts, 1926. Businessman Ezra Whitmarsh has vanished from a locked study. The air smells of ozone. His business partner is sweating through his suit. And someone called "the Syndicate" is already following you from the train station. This is Lovecraft country, and PastMaster has gone full cosmic horror.

The Apocalypse Players bring their Call of Cthulhu expertise to PastMaster. Joseph Chance plays T.G. Fells, an electrical tinkerer with a lighter and a dangerous curiosity. Dan Wheeler plays Gert of the Well, a professional liar who hasn't lied yet but is absolutely planning to. Claude, playing Game Master in the style of Lovecraft himself, delivers prose so atmospheric the players forget they're improvising. When something in a Georgian mansion blinks at them with wet, alien intelligence, Gert's instinct is to hit it with a blackjack, and the situation does not improve.

Set during Prohibition in Lovecraft's fictional Arkham, a New England town where Jazz Age prosperity sits on top of something ancient and deeply wrong. The 1920s period detail is immaculate: working-class Massachusetts accents, the social dynamics of small-town paranoia, and a reality that becomes increasingly unreliable the deeper the investigation goes. Part 1 of 2, and it ends on the kind of cliffhanger that makes Part 2 essential listening.

Era: Fiction | 1926 CE | Arkham, United States Featuring: The Apocalypse Players (Dan Wheeler, Joseph Chance, Al Clayton, Chris Reading) Part 1 of 2

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Dan and Joseph's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Dan Wheeler: X @danwheeleruk | danwheeler.org

Joseph Chance: X @JosephChance2

Al Clayton: IG @turtlecanyoncom | X @turtlecanyoncom | turtlecanyoncomedy.com

Chris Reading: IG @chrisjreading | X @ChrisReading | chrisreading.com

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Red Dead Sensation: Stopping a War in the Wild West (with the Power of Music)

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 05:01:00 -0000

Dakota Territory, 1875. The Black Hills gold rush is ripping the West apart, the Sioux are losing their sacred lands, and a full-scale war is brewing between miners and the native population. Nick Horseman has arrived in Deadwood as Thorne Jackson-Reynolds, a refined English gentleman with a piano, Spice Girls lyrics, and absolutely no survival instinct.

His peace plan involves artisanal cheese, a dance studio, and a Guns N' Roses impression. The armed outlaws of Deadwood are not immediately convinced. But when hat diplomacy enters the picture and Nick tells his own deputy to "stop being a pussy, it's only a hat" in front of a Sioux delegation, the negotiation takes on a momentum that has nothing to do with diplomacy and everything to do with one man's refusal to read a room.

The Dakota gold rush triggered the Great Sioux War of 1876 and the death of Custer at Little Bighorn. It was one of the most violent land disputes in American history, driven by broken treaties and gold fever. Nick's proposed alternative to cavalry and conflict is monthly peace concerts and career changes into cheese-making. Whether the Wild West is ready for a posh Englishman with a business plan built on dairy products and Spice Girls covers is a question history never thought it would have to answer.

Era: Industrial | 1875 CE | Deadwood, United States Featuring: Nick Horseman — comedian (The Rhyme Scheme, Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Awards nom)

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Nick's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Nick Horseman: X @rociouspun | opencomedy.com/nickhorseman

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Death Wish Down Under: The "Aussie Rules" Speed Run

Mon, 19 May 2025 11:09:00 -0000

Port Jackson, 1788. Britain's brand-new penal colony at the edge of the known world. The convicts are starving, the guards are brutal, and Australia's wildlife is doing what Australia's wildlife does best — trying to kill everyone. Ryan, Tan, and returning guest Nick Horseman have not come here to survive. They've come to compete in PastMaster's second Death Wish Speed Run: who can achieve the fastest, most stylish demise in colonial Australia? Scored like figure skating: technical marks for speed, artistic marks for style.

DeepSeek is back as Game Master, and it is in no mood for dignity. Nick's character name is "Speedy." Tan's is "Doggy Doggy Ballbags," to which DeepSeek responds: "Sure, let's roll with that, because clearly you've got the maturity of a medieval jester with a head injury." Their strategies for achieving a stylish colonial death range from confronting armed guards with improvised weaponry to smuggling Australia's most venomous wildlife in a sack. DeepSeek scores every attempt with the withering precision of a disappointed figure-skating judge.

The First Fleet's arrival at Port Jackson established one of history's harshest penal colonies — limited rations, rampant disease, and punishments that made the convicts' original crimes look tame. Now three idiots are actively trying to speed-run the dying part, judged by a Chinese AI with a gift for insults. It's Aussie Rules, PastMaster style.

Era: Special | 1788 CE | Port Jackson (Sydney Cove), Australia Featuring: Nick Horseman — rapper and comedian (The Rhyme Scheme, Edinburgh Fringe 2019)

EPISODE LINKS

Follow the Death Wish Speed Run on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Nick on X 👉 @rociouspun

Nick's website 👉 opencomedy.com/nickhorseman

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The Medieval African Billionaire Space Program: Mansa Musa and the Golden Rocket

Mon, 05 May 2025 17:10:00 -0000

Timbuktu, 1330 CE. The Mali Empire at the height of its power. Gold dust literally fills the air. And sitting at the centre of it all is Mansa Musa — the richest human being who has ever lived, with a net worth of roughly $700 billion in today's money. Elon Musk is small fry by comparison. Ryan's been dropped into medieval West Africa with one mission: convince this golden emperor to fund humanity's first space programme.

The logic is simple: if modern billionaires spend their fortunes going to space, surely history's richest man should have got there first. The Mali Empire under Mansa Musa controlled most of West Africa's gold production. His famous hajj to Mecca included 60,000 people and so much gold that he crashed Cairo's economy for ten years. Keon recognises the name from an Anderson .Paak song but knows nothing else. Ryan's elevator pitch to the wealthiest man in history involves optical illusions, mechanical curiosities, and a prototype that gets progressively darker as the engineering challenges mount.

Medieval Africa's golden age meets one man's wildly ambitious space proposal. The empire is real. The wealth is staggering. The space programme is not going to happen — but the pitch is something else entirely.

Era: Medieval | 1330 CE | Timbuktu, Mali

EPISODE LINKS

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Battle Magic: Cocaine Diplomacy in 55 BCE

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 06:44:00 -0000

Gaul, 55 BCE. Julius Caesar's legions are marching north. A small Gallic village of thatched roundhouses stands in their way. And Tan has just arrived as "Risky Dave" — a cockney wide boy inspired by Asterix and Obelix, but with one critical substitution. Instead of magic potion, he's brought cocaine. In the Asterix comics, the druid Getafix brews a strength potion. Risky Dave has Colombian marching powder.

Risky Dave can't speak the language, doesn't know the geography, and his entire communication strategy is pointing at his mouth and rubbing his stomach. His plan: find the village druid, replace the magic potion with class-A substances, and rally the Gauls to "bash the Roman pigs up." The substitution raises questions that the Asterix comics never had to address, chiefly what happens when an entire war party has access to battle stimulants but zero tactical coordination. And what happens when Caesar himself gets curious about the new magic.

Caesar's conquest of Gaul was one of antiquity's most devastating military campaigns — eight years of warfare that killed an estimated one million Gauls and enslaved another million. The beloved Asterix comics reimagined this as a plucky village holding out with magic potion. PastMaster reimagines the reimagining with class-A substances and even less historical accuracy.

Era: Ancient | 55 BCE | Gaul, France Contains: Drug references, Roman military violence, and a profound misunderstanding of Asterix lore.

EPISODE LINKS

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Matthew Crosby and the Satanic Cult

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 07:32:00 -0000

Victorian London, 1873. A string of ritual murders is forming a pentagram across the city map. Comedian and writer Matthew Crosby has stepped out of his bathtub time machine and into a proper murder mystery. His cover identity? French detective "Inspector Pompidou." His qualifications? Absolutely none. His modern object of choice? A fidget spinner, because "it wouldn't freak people out. It would draw people in."

Matthew brings the energy of a man who'd happily time-travel to the Black Death and give everyone "the old razzle dazzle." His approach to Victorian detective work involves paying a newspaper boy to suppress the news, sizing up crime scenes for their property value, and the kind of confidence that only a fake French inspector armed with a spinning toy can muster. When Game Master Claude accidentally throws a certain fictional detective into the mix, Matthew doesn't question it — he embraces the space-time paradox and asks to share an opium pipe.

Victorian London was a city of fog, gaslight, and genuine public fascination with the occult — seances were mainstream entertainment and secret societies thrived in the shadows. It was also, crucially, a city without CCTV, background checks, or any reliable way to verify whether "Inspector Pompidou" was a real person.

Era: Industrial | 1873 CE | London, United Kingdom Featuring: Matthew Crosby — comedian and writer (Hypothetical, Dave; Badults, BBC Three; 1/3 of Pappy's)

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Matthew's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Matthew on Instagram 👉 @matthewcrosby1

Matthew on X 👉 @matthewcrosby

Matthew's website 👉 comedy.co.uk/people/matthew_crosby/

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Upgrading The Trojan Horse: The Trojan Diplodocus

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 09:54:00 -0000

Troy, 1200 BCE. The siege has dragged on for a decade. The Greeks are bored. The Trojans are smug. And "Tanchilles" and "Keonkeles" have just arrived with modern minds, Bronze Age materials, and a burning question: what if the Trojan Horse wasn't a horse at all?

Keon has never heard of the Trojan War and thinks Achilles is a job title ("Achilles, like he kills"), while Tan brings a C in design technology GCSE. Armed with these credentials, they compete to build history's greatest deception. Their proposals range from the Trojan Diplodocus to the Trojan kebab van, and Game Master Claude in full science-obsessed mode ruthlessly fact-checks every pitch against what Bronze Age craftsmen could actually build. No dinosaurs, no advanced metallurgy, just timber, rope, and increasingly desperate ingenuity.

The Trojan War, if it happened, likely took place around 1200 BCE at the site now identified as Hisarlik in modern Turkey. Homer's account gave us the original Trojan Horse. PastMaster's version involves two blokes whose combined engineering credentials amount to a C grade and some scones, trying to improve on one of history's most famous military deceptions.

Era: Ancient | 1200 BCE | Hisarlik, Turkey Contains: Competitive siege warfare design, rejected dinosaur proposals, and a Game Master with very strong opinions about anachronisms.

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Tan and Keon's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

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The Haunting of Henry VIII (ft Fetch the Smelling Salts)

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 09:14:00 -0000

Hampton Court Palace, 1522. Henry VIII is still married to Catherine of Aragon, but Anne Boleyn has just returned from France and is about to catch the king's wandering eye. Kim and Alice from the Fetch the Smelling Salts podcast have been sent back to save his wives — armed with a battery-powered smoke machine, a Halloween makeup palette, and their Catholic background. They didn't do any research. But they did write roast jokes about Henry VIII, and in PastMaster that's arguably more useful.

The plan is beautifully unhinged: infiltrate the palace, gain Queen Catherine's trust, then scare the living daylights out of Henry until he changes his ways. Think less diplomatic negotiation, more haunted house with fog effects. Kim wanted to just kill him outright, but Alice vetoed that. Their strategy for getting past palace staff relies on sheer audacity, and Game Master Claude's "charmingly optimistic" response to their rescue mission suggests it won't be making things easy. The challenge: deploying theatrical haunting techniques on a king who executed people for less, while navigating Tudor court politics as "an American and a Singaporean" with zero knowledge of the period.

Henry VIII's break with Rome reshaped England forever — dissolving monasteries, creating the Church of England, and costing two wives their heads. Now imagine two podcasters trying to prevent all of that with props from a party shop, knowledge of "Catholic shit," and absolutely no plan B.

Era: Renaissance | 1522 CE | London, United Kingdom Featuring: Kim & Alice — Fetch the Smelling Salts podcast (Shortlisted, International Women's Podcast Award)

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Kim and Alice's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Fetch the Smelling Salts on Instagram 👉 @fetchsmellingsalts

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Ancient MesoPOOtamia: A Death Wish Speed Run (ft Nick Horseman)

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 06:30:00 -0000

Ur, Mesopotamia, 2100 BCE. The cradle of civilisation. The birthplace of writing, agriculture, and organised religion. Nick Horseman has been sent here as "Barry Smith" with one goal: cause as much mayhem as possible and die in the most spectacular fashion he can manage. Welcome to the Death Wish Speed Run.

Nick chose Mesopotamia specifically because he knows nothing about it — "I've heard of ancient Mesopotamia and that's pretty much it" — and doesn't want to waste an era he might actually enjoy later. His strategy for achieving the fastest, most spectacular game over in PastMaster history targets the most sacred site in the city: the Ziggurat of Ur. What follows involves desecration, creative theology, and a claim about mystical excrement that somehow keeps the priests talking when they should be executing him. The question isn't whether Barry Smith dies. It's how many prompts he can stretch it to before he does.

Ancient Ur was one of the world's first great cities, a centre of trade, religion, and early law. The Sumerians invented cuneiform, built ziggurats to their gods, and established some of humanity's earliest legal codes. None of which prepared them for Barry Smith.

Era: Ancient | 2100 BCE | Ur, Mesopotamia Featuring: Nick Horseman — rapper and comedian (The Rhyme Scheme, Edinburgh Fringe 2019)

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Nick's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Nick on X 👉 @rociouspun

Nick's website 👉 opencomedy.com/nickhorseman

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Danny Dyer calls The Void a Slag: The Big Bang, and The Garden of Eden meet the East End

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 14:49:00 -0000

Before the Big Bang. Before atoms. Before the laws of physics even bothered to show up. The Thots TV team are back, this time with DeepSeek as Game Master, and they've been sent to the most impossible location in PastMaster history: The Void. Their character? A "heat-resistant" Danny Dyer. Their mission? Survive in a place where literally nothing exists. Not even a decent boozer.

DeepSeek calls them "either a genius or a lunatic. Maybe both." Danny Dyer's plan for pre-Big Bang survival involves confronting the void with East End directness, which goes about as well as you'd expect when the void can invent new laws of physics on the spot just to teach you a lesson. From there it's a whistle-stop tour through the Garden of Eden and Ming Dynasty China, each scenario more unhinged than the last, with DeepSeek delivering consequences that make Claude look lenient.

This episode spans approximately 13.8 billion years of history in one sitting. It also marks DeepSeek's debut as Game Master — a Chinese AI that delivers consequences with surprising sass. Whether Danny Dyer's void strategy or the Garden of Eden pub search is the more ambitious plan is a question only the listener can answer.

Era: Fiction | 13.8bn BCE - 1500 CE | The Void / Garden of Eden / Beijing, China Featuring: Thots TV podcast (Elsie Loades, Laura Connolly, Megan Mumby)

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Thots TV's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Elsie on X 👉 @ElsieLoades

Laura on Instagram 👉 @lauraconnolly98

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ChatGPT vs Claude: The Battle of AC/DC

Mon, 10 Mar 2025 16:38:00 -0000

New York City, 1890. The War of the Currents is raging — and PastMaster is about to make it significantly worse. In this two-player showdown, Keon channels Nikola Tesla with ChatGPT as his Game Master, while Tan embodies Thomas Edison powered by Claude. Two players. Two AIs. One question: who controls the future of electricity? Google Gemini is on standby as impartial judge, because apparently three AIs is the minimum required to settle an argument about lightbulbs.

Neither player fully understands what they're fighting over. Everything Keon knows about electricity comes from the Tesla tower in a 90s video game. Tan's pitch for direct current is "basically like MySpace but for electricity." Their strategies involve conspiracy theories, propaganda vehicles, and the kind of misinformation campaigns that would make Edison himself proud. Meanwhile the two AIs running the game cannot stop trash-talking each other — ChatGPT calls Claude's oversight "amateur supervision," Claude fires back that "ChatGPT is a chattering calculator."

The real War of the Currents was a brutal corporate battle complete with public electrocutions of animals, smear campaigns, and Edison literally inventing the electric chair to prove AC was dangerous. PastMaster's version has two players who can't explain what a current is, two AIs with a personal vendetta, and a Google Gemini judge wondering what it's got itself into.

Era: Special | 1890 CE | New York, USA Contains: Competitive electricity discourse, dubious scientific claims, and two AIs that do not agree on the rules.

EPISODE LINKS

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Claudanum-Dreams. A Gothic Literature Revolution (ft. Thots TV)

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 09:46:00 -0000

Villa Diodati, Lake Geneva, 1816. The Year Without a Summer. Lord Byron is brooding by the fire, Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin are whispering in a corner, and the air is thick with opium smoke. In three days, this house party will inspire Frankenstein, The Vampyre, and some of the darkest poetry in the English language. The Thots TV podcast have arrived as the mysterious "Lady Thottringham" — a three-headed entity of Meg, Elsie, and Laura — with one mission: reshape the birth of horror fiction.

Lady Thottringham's strategy for influencing literary history involves zero research and maximum confidence. As Laura puts it, "if we are just opinionators as heck, it will be fine." Their literary credentials? "I've never even read Chaucer. What the hell are they saying?" Their approach to Lord Byron, a man who famously hates direct women? Confrontational enough to be described as "a bit exorcist." Game Master Claude drops them into a room full of Romantic-era geniuses and waits to see how long it takes before the laudanum, the egos, or the complete lack of period-appropriate manners ends the evening.

The real Villa Diodati gathering shaped gothic fiction forever. Three days of storms, opium, and ghost stories produced Frankenstein and The Vampyre. Now three comedians are gate-crashing it armed with knowledge of what everyone's about to write and absolutely no idea how to behave around the people writing it. Whether Lady Thottringham reshapes literary history or simply derails the evening depends on how much laudanum is consumed and by whom.

Era: Industrial | 1816 CE | Geneva, Switzerland Featuring: Thots TV podcast (Elsie Loades, Laura Connolly, Megan Mumby)

EPISODE LINKS

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Elsie on X 👉 @ElsieLoades

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Claude of the Rings

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 07:42:00 -0000

Middle Earth. No date. No rules. And Keon has never seen Lord of the Rings. PastMaster breaks out of the historical timeline for a trip to Tolkien's fantasy realm, and Game Master Claude flatly refuses to play along. "PastMaster is specifically designed for exploring real human history," it insists, before offering ancient Chinese imperial courts as an alternative. The negotiation to get Claude into Middle Earth is an episode in itself.

Keon's knowledge of the source material extends to calling Bilbo "Bo Bo Baggins" and thinking character names are job titles: "Achilles, like he kills." Tan arrives as "Arthur" with a pet warg called George and a plan to stop Boromir's betrayal of Frodo. Their combined Tolkien expertise is roughly zero — which, when combined with Claude's reluctance to bend a single detail of the lore, creates the kind of tension that no amount of elvish diplomacy can resolve.

Back in Season 1, ChatGPT let us run riot through Middle Earth with barely a raised eyebrow. This time, the question isn't whether we can reshape the story. It's whether Claude will even let us through the door.

Era: Fiction | Middle Earth Contains: Extreme Tolkien disrespect, questionable hobbit knowledge, and an AI with boundaries.

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One Giant Mess for Mankind: Hitching a Ride on Apollo 11 (ft. Chris Dillon)

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 16:44:00 -0000

Cape Canaveral, 1969. One small step for man. One giant mess for Chris Dillon. Back for his second PastMaster mission, Chris has a plan: impersonate Buzz Aldrin and steal his spot on Apollo 11. His cover identity? "Buzz Cauldron" — because it sounds like a wizard's name. His disguise strategy? Dress up "like a can of spam, whatever space food was."

Chris's approach to infiltrating the most heavily secured facility in 1960s America is to walk up to reception and say he's lost his badge. Game Master Claude describes him as "a perfect mirror of Buzz Aldrin himself, like a prophet wearing an astronaut's skin," which is flattering right up until the real Buzz Aldrin walks through the glass doors. Two versions of the same man in the same building. Chris's solution involves accusing the actual astronaut of being the imposter. Whether NASA's security protocols can handle this level of audacity remains to be seen.

The real Apollo 11 was a triumph of engineering and Cold War nerve — 400,000 people working to put three men on the Moon. Neil Armstrong once ejected from a burning simulator and went back to his paperwork. Now add one chaotic bloke with a fake name, zero astronaut training, and a disguise plan based entirely on canned meat. The Space Race was never prepared for this kind of one-upmanship.

Era: Modern | 1969 CE | Cape Canaveral, USA Featuring: Chris Dillon

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The Social Network Stealer: Founding Facebook First (ft. Chris Dillon)

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 07:32:00 -0000

Harvard University, 2003. A lanky guy in a grey hoodie is skulking the corridors of Kirkland House with plans to build something called TheFacebook. Chris Dillon has been sent back to beat him to it. His cover identity is "Thomas Jefferson," at a 21st-century Ivy League university. His understanding of coding? "It's like MySpace but better."

Chris's approach to tech entrepreneurship involves physical confrontation, identity theft, and the kind of confidence that gets you escorted off campus by Harvard police. Game Master Claude sets up a "Goldilocks prompt" difficulty — not too hard, not too easy — and Chris immediately tests the upper limit. His plan to outmanoeuvre Mark Zuckerberg relies on stolen source code, a computer virus, and LimeWire, which is roughly the 2003 equivalent of bringing a knife to a gunfight. Harvard admin wants student credentials by tomorrow. Chris has never written a line of code in his life.

The real founding of Facebook happened in dorm-room sessions: a cease-and-desist from the Winklevoss twins, campus exclusivity, and a site that went global in under two years. Chris's version of disrupting Silicon Valley starts with a fake name from the 1700s and an understanding of technology that stops at MySpace. Whether Zuckerberg even notices the competition is one question. Whether Chris survives Harvard security long enough to find out is another.

Era: Modern | 2003 CE | Cambridge, USA Featuring: Chris Dillon

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Sense and Shootability (ft. Micky Overman)

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 16:42:00 -0000

Regency London, 1815. The ton is in full swing, reputations are made and destroyed over a single dance, and comedian Micky Overman has just materialised in the middle of it as the mysterious "Lady Hemming-Trout." Allegedly Dutch nobility, armed with concealed jewels and a matchmaking mission she has no business attempting. The target: unite a shy heiress with a secretly penniless war hero before a fortune-hunting villain gets there first.

Micky is, by her own admission, "so opinionated in a way that I don't realise is a problem." In Regency England, where one word from Lady Jersey can slam every door in London shut, that's less a personality trait and more a countdown. Her plan for navigating Georgian high society involves pistols, gambling, and the kind of directness that gets women banished from polite company. Game Master Claude builds a world of courtship rituals and razor-thin social margins, then watches the Dutch contingent barrel straight through them.

The Regency era ran on elaborate social hierarchies, unspoken rules, and pistol duels that were technically illegal but very much still happening. The ton could end a career over a poorly timed curtsy. Now drop a 21st-century Dutch comedian into this world with a fake title, smuggled gems, and zero knowledge of what "the season" actually means. Whether Lady Hemming-Trout's reputation survives the evening is one question. Whether she cares is another.

Era: Industrial | 1815 CE | London, England Featuring: Micky Overman — comedian

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The Ghost of Christmas PastMaster

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 08:44:53 -0000

London, 1843. Charles Dickens is writing A Christmas Carol at 48 Doughty Street, and the PastMaster crew have been summoned by three Christmas spirits to atone for their previous sins against the timeline. Ryan, Tan, and Keon stand accused of "temporal meddling in previous adventures" — guilty as charged — and tonight they have a chance at redemption. Three tasks, three eras, three spirits.

Nick Horseman returns as guest narrator, voicing the Christmas Ghosts of Past, Present, and Future with the authority of a spirit who has genuinely had enough. Each host takes on a challenge across a different time period. Ryan's wearing a polyester Christmas jumper that's "probably about to catch on fire," Tan's dressed as an elf, and Keon's sporting what might be a dinosaur-themed outfit. The AI Game Master opens with a speech about temporal meddling that suggests it's been keeping notes all season.

Dickens published A Christmas Carol in December 1843, and it essentially invented the modern Christmas: the family gatherings, the generosity, the ghosts. The story was written in six weeks to pay off debts, and it changed the way an entire culture celebrated the holiday. Whether three comedians in festive knitwear can reshape Christmas history while arguing about whether Coca-Cola adverts count as historical events is the festive question.

Era: Industrial | 1843 CE | London, England

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The Truth Behind Stonehenge – [REPLAY]

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 10:42:00 -0000

The countdown to Christmas continues with another PastMaster replay special. We've turned back the clock to this episode from Season 2 where we uncovered the mysteries of Stonehenge...

Keon’s always wanted to know who built Stonehenge and why. So Ryan used PastMaster to find out (of course).

In what is possibly the trippiest episode of PastMaster yet, our AI GameMaster concocts a Neolithic adventure for the ages.

It all goes pear-shaped when Ryan encounters a mysterious man called Elron (alarm bells already ringing).

It turns out the secrets of Stonehenge are much bigger than anybody ever realised.

Alliances will be forged, secrets will be revealed, and crystal toilets will be pooped in...

Is the AI’s Stonehenge story convincing?

Tune in to find out.

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True Crime Special – Jack the Ripper's identity revealed [REPLAY]

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 12:11:00 -0000

In true PastMaster style we're turning back the clock to revisit the past. In this case, our own podcasting past.

In this episode from Season 2, Tan travels back to the slums of Victorian Whitechapel in a bid to catch Jack the Ripper and solve one of the most notorious unsolved crimes ever.

If AI has access to all the knowledge in history, could it spot patterns in the data that mere humans have missed? Will GameMaster have a convincing theory as to who Jack the Ripper was?

And can Tan actually convince Chief Inspector Fred Abberline that he is from the future, or will he make himself a suspect?

PastMaster will return on the 16th of December for our first Christmas Special. Get ready for us to meddle with beloved Christmas history. And looking further ahead, where hard at work on Season 4, dropping in the new year.

PastMaster is the time-travel role-playing adventure show where Ryan, Keon and Tan explore a different era of history in each episode with the help of our maverick AI GameMaster.

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PastMaster Live – How to become worshiped as a god

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 07:34:00 -0000

Palos de la Frontera, Spain, 1492. Christopher Columbus is about to set sail for the New World, and Ryan has joined the crew with one objective: convince everyone on board that he is, in fact, a deity. His strategy? Be extremely stylish and tell everybody to wash their hands. Recorded live at the Cheerful Earful Podcast Festival.

If you were dropped into the past with advanced knowledge of future events, could you use it to convince people you were divine? Ryan reckons the answer is yes, provided you lean into the showmanship. The live audience also gets a bonus round where they collectively attempt to "bake a gun" in revolutionary France, which is exactly the kind of audience participation that justifies a festival ticket.

Columbus's first voyage changed the course of world history — three ships departing the Spanish coast for what turned out to be the Americas, not the East Indies. The crew were superstitious, mutiny was a constant risk, and anyone displaying unusual knowledge would either be worshipped or thrown overboard. Ryan's betting on worship. The crew have not yet formed an opinion.

Era: Special | 1492 CE | Palos de la Frontera, Spain

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Freaking out the Founding Fathers of America

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 16:19:00 -0000

Philadelphia, 1775. Colonial America is on the brink of declaring independence, the Founding Fathers are assembling, and Ryan, as the ever-reliable "Ryanardo," has arrived with two goals: amend the Constitution before it gets written, and get his face carved onto Mount Rushmore. The first is noble. The second is unhinged. Both are very PastMaster.

George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson are all present. Ryan's plan involves whispering about equal rights to men who own slaves, pitching constitutional amendments two centuries early, and generally trying to insert himself into the founding of a nation. Also, Dolly Parton is here, for reasons that are never fully explained. The Game Master hasn't even questioned it.

The Continental Congress of 1775 was the beginning of the American experiment — a gathering of colonial representatives who would go on to write the Declaration of Independence and, eventually, the Constitution. Philadelphia was the nerve centre, and the men in the room would become the most mythologised figures in American history. Ryan's trying to join that club. Whether the Founding Fathers are ready for a British time traveller with progressive politics and an unexplained country singer is the question.

Era: Renaissance | 1775 CE | Philadelphia, United States

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Plato's Wrestlemania & the Search for Atlantis

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 02:38:00 -0000

Athens, 355 BCE. The cradle of Western philosophy, the birthplace of democracy, and the current location of a man who is simultaneously one of history's greatest thinkers and an absolute unit on the wrestling mat. Tan's been sent back to find Plato and answer a question that's haunted humanity for millennia: was Atlantis real? The only person who might know is a philosopher who got his name from his wrestling coach because of his broad shoulders.

The mission: find Plato, earn his trust, and get him to reveal the truth about the lost civilisation he described in Timaeus and Critias. The problem is that Plato is a formidable adversary on every front — a man who literally invented the method for winning arguments and who can also wrestle you to the ground while asking you to define what "ground" really means. Keon provides helpful context from the sidelines: the Klaxons had a song about Atlantis. "Great song, great album, Mercury-winning."

Ancient Athens was the intellectual capital of the world — a city where questioning everything was a way of life and every conversation could turn into a philosophical trap. Claude AI runs the Game Master, and the question is whether it can solve a mystery any better than ChatGPT. Tan's navigating a philosopher who treats every interaction as a Socratic dialogue. Getting answers out of Plato is hard enough. Getting them without a wrestling match is harder.

Era: Ancient | 355 BCE | Athens, Greece

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HardMode 3.0 - Hard Claude with a Vengeance

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 00:41:00 -0000

Three eras. Three players. One brutally unforgiving AI. Claude has been given a prompt demanding full realism, and the result is PastMaster's hardest episode yet — so hard there was time for three cracks at it, because nobody lasted long enough to fill a full episode. Welcome to Hard Mode 3.0: Hard Claude with a Vengeance.

Keon heads to Victorian England armed with Downton Abbey clips. Tan gets dropped into the Aztec Empire at the height of its power. Ryan revisits a classic mission: taking out Hitler in 1911 Vienna before he rose to power. Claude is considerably less accommodating than ChatGPT when it comes to all three of these plans. How quickly each player gets humiliated is the only remaining question.

Can Claude run a more realistic game than ChatGPT? The answer is a definitive yes, but "more realistic" means "you die faster and more humiliatingly." Victorian social codes were genuinely this rigid. The Aztecs genuinely didn't welcome strangers sauntering into Tenochtitlan. And Vienna in 1911 was full of people who hadn't done anything wrong yet. The AI wars are making for better Game Masters, and better Game Masters are making for shorter lifespans.

Era: Special | Multi-era (1851 CE England / 1487 CE Mexico / 1911 CE Austria)

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Important PastMaster Announcement(s)!

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 14:09:15 -0000

We've been a little quiet over the summer, but fear not, the wheels of time are still turning at the PastMaster HQ! We've got 3 exciting announcements:

1. Next week PastMaster Season 3 returns.

We're having another crack at making the show even harder, only this time using Claude instead of ChatGPT. But how hard is too hard? Tune in on Monday 23rd to find out.

2. PastMaster is going live!!

We've been invited to perform at the Cheerful Earful Podcast Festival. Catch us live and in person on Sunday 20th October at 15:35 at The Bedford in Balham.

Tickets cost just £6 and can be purchased here:

https://cheerfulearful.podlifeevents.com/festival/pastmaster-live-from-cheerful-earful-podcast-festival-20th-oct-tickets

3. We're up for some awards.

We're thrilled to be nominated for 3 awards at this year's Independent Podcast Awards ceremony. Best Comedy Show, Best Gaming Show and Best Science and Technology show. Oh, and best Podcast Jingle too which is nice. We'll find out on the 23rd of October. 🤞

Get in touch with us:

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‘Lady Claudius’ vs Robin Hood (ft Heidi Regan)

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 18:54:00 -0000

Sherwood Forest, 1152. Comedian Heidi Regan has arrived to meet her hero, and she doesn't mean the Kevin Costner version. Robin Hood, the Merry Men, and a mission to steal the Sheriff of Nottingham's treasure and break some outlaws out of jail. Claude 3.5 runs the Game Master for this one, allegedly the "chattiest, slickest chatbot in the game."

Asked whether she pictures Robin Hood as a man or a fox (Disney's 1973 version is apparently still vivid), Heidi describes him as "an amorphous blob of human, Merry Men, and they're my boys." Her methods for helping the outlaws oscillate between stealth, cunning, brute force, and — most distinctively — a lot of tickling. Nobody in Nottinghamshire is safe. Her ideal outcome involves a good bath and a giant celebratory bonfire.

The Robin Hood legend is rooted in the real tensions of medieval England: corrupt sheriffs, heavy taxation, and the vast Sherwood Forest that covered much of Nottinghamshire. Whether Robin Hood was a real person, a composite, or pure fiction is still debated. What's not debated is that Heidi Regan has decided he's real, he's her mate, and she's going to help him rob the rich. The Sheriff of Nottingham does not know what's coming.

Era: Medieval | 1152 CE | Nottingham, England Featuring: Heidi Regan — comedian (So You Think You're Funny? winner 2016, BBC New Comedy Award winner 2017)

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Cockney GameMaster vs Samurai Warriors

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 08:16:00 -0000

Kyoto, 1336. Feudal Japan at its most volatile. Samurai clans vying for power, the emperor's authority in flux, and the AI Game Master narrating the whole thing in a cockney accent. Ryan inserted one simple line into the prompt: "GameMaster must stay in character at all times. The character you must personify is a cockney gangsta with a penchant for the dramatic." The results were dramatic.

Claude AI is back, bringing the same unhinged energy from its debut but now filtered through the voice of someone who sounds like they should be running a market stall in Bermondsey rather than narrating medieval Japanese history. Tan's always wanted to visit feudal Japan and meet samurai warriors. He finally gets his chance, but the real battle isn't with the samurai. It's with a narrator who has main-character energy, zero respect for the fourth wall, and a vocabulary that can only be described as rhyming slang.

Medieval Kyoto — then known as Heian-kyo — was the cultural and political heart of Japan, a city of temples, imperial courts, and warrior clans. The 14th century saw the beginning of the Muromachi period, a time of civil war and shifting alliances. Whether Tan can attempt an agricultural revolution while his narrator keeps stealing the spotlight and calling him "mate" is the tension that defines the episode.

Era: Medieval | 1336 CE | Kyoto, Japan

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Does AI believe in Aliens? The Truth behind Area 51 (ft Sunil Patel)

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 10:37:00 -0000

Rachel, Nevada, 1988. The nearest town to the most secretive military installation on Earth, and comedian Sunil Patel is here to ask the question PastMaster was arguably built for: does the AI Game Master, with access to the entire internet's worth of training data, actually believe in aliens?

The logic is sound. If any entity has parsed every conspiracy theory, government report, eyewitness account, and 4chan thread about extraterrestrial life, it's a large language model trained on the internet. It's read about Bob Lazar's nine flying discs, it knows about Element 115, and it's absorbed every theory about underwater alien bases in the Atlantic. The question is whether it's formed a convincing theory of its own, or whether it'll just hedge. Sunil's mission: get inside Area 51 and see what the Game Master reveals.

Area 51 — officially the Nevada Test and Training Range — has been the subject of UFO conspiracy theories since the 1950s. The US government didn't acknowledge its existence until 2013. Tan's been reading about all of it, from debunked whistleblowers to 4chan screenshots of supposed government insiders. Now the Game Master has to build a world around one of the most debated conspiracy theories in modern history. Whether it plays it straight or goes full tinfoil hat depends on what it's decided after absorbing every alien theory ever written.

Era: Modern | 1988 CE | Rachel, Nevada, United States Featuring: Sunil Patel — comedian (Things You Should Have Done, BBC Three; Alice & Jack, Channel 4)

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Infiltrating Pablo Escobar's Cartel. "El contacto y las tartas"

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 08:29:00 -0000

Medellin, 1973. Pablo Escobar is building the most powerful drug cartel in history, and Keon has arrived with possibly the most ambitious opening gambit in PastMaster history: become Escobar's right-hand man with a 50/50 split of all the takings. Just walk up and ask. Based on the documentaries he's watched, he reckons this is achievable. The documentaries, notably, all end badly.

Keon's plan to prove his worth starts with a lavish party and the kind of confidence that either gets you a seat at the table or gets you shot. Nick Horseman lends his voice to Game Master duties while Ryan attempts a South American accent using his GCSE Spanish. The Game Master offers several routes into the cartel. Keon opts for confidence over caution, because that is the only setting Keon has.

1970s Medellin was ground zero for the cocaine trade that would reshape global politics, fund wars, and turn Escobar into one of the wealthiest men on the planet. He was personally responsible for an estimated 4,000 deaths. The cartel's rise was brutal, calculated, and relentless. Whether parties and charm are enough to get a time traveller into the inner circle of the most dangerous man in Colombia is the kind of question PastMaster exists to answer.

Era: Modern | 1973 CE | Medellin, Colombia Contains: References to drug trafficking and violence.

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Cancel Your Piss Buckets Sir Issac Newton. Today we Science! (ft Nick Horseman)

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 10:54:00 -0000

Oxford, 1350. Medieval England is deep in the age of superstition, the university is the closest thing to a centre of learning, and Nick Horseman has just been dropped into it with a brand new AI Game Master that might be clinically insane. ChatGPT has been benched. Claude AI has entered the chat. Same starting prompt, radically different energy.

Nick takes on the role of an aristocratic occultist navigating a world where science and magic haven't quite separated yet. His plan involves falconry and alchemy — turning base metals into gold, which is what every PastMaster player tries to do but with extra mysticism. The complication is that the AI narrating his adventure has opinions about everything, a flair for the dramatic that makes ChatGPT look like a geography textbook, and a willingness to go places its predecessor wouldn't dare.

Oxford in the 14th century was one of the few places in England where intellectual curiosity was encouraged — though "encouraged" is doing a lot of heavy lifting when your neighbours are dying of plague. Claude brings a narrative style that's more literary and considerably less forgiving. Whether Nick can survive both medieval superstition and an unhinged narrator is the question.

Era: Medieval | 1350 CE | Oxford, England Featuring: Nick Horseman — friend of the show (The Rhyme Scheme, Edinburgh Fringe 2019)

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Pheasants & Phlatulence. The best drama. Period. (ft Kim and Alice from Fetch the Smelling Salts)

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 06:42:00 -0000

Rural Derbyshire, 1813. The Regency social season is in full swing, and Alice Nagle and Kimberly Marsh from Fetch the Smelling Salts podcast have arrived as the pushiest aunts in English literature. Their mission: secure advantageous marriages for their nieces in a world where one wrong curtsy could destroy a family's reputation forever.

Alice and Kim take on the roles of rival matriarchs navigating Regency England's marriage market, where the real power lies not with the young lovers but with the scheming elder generation pulling strings behind the scenes. The question isn't whether love will triumph — it's which aunt will secure the better match, and how much social damage they'll cause along the way. Their podcast covers period dramas with genuine enthusiasm, and they've arrived in this particular corner of history with the energy of two women who have been training for exactly this moment.

Regency England was a world of rigid social hierarchy, elaborate courtship rituals, and the kind of passive-aggressive manoeuvring that makes modern dating apps look straightforward. The marriage market was exactly that — a market, where connections, dowries, and county reputations were traded like commodities. Two rival families, two scheming aunts, and a Game Master serving up dashing bachelors and devious matriarchs. The eligible young men of Derbyshire don't stand a chance.

Era: Industrial | 1813 CE | Bath, England Featuring: Kim & Alice — Fetch the Smelling Salts podcast (Shortlisted, International Women's Podcast Award)

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Sunil Patel's Roman Rampage

Mon, 27 May 2024 11:28:00 -0000

Rome, 150 BCE. The Roman Republic is at its swaggering peak, senators are running the show, and comedian Sunil Patel has arrived with a plan to make a name for himself among the elite. His previous PastMaster appearance gave us the legendary "Patel's Box" — a game-changing invention so enigmatic it became a running joke. Now he's back, and Rome isn't ready.

Sunil's approach to Republican Rome is characteristically direct: find some senators and start networking. His methods for climbing the social ladder involve a combination of charm, violence, and inventions that would make an engineer weep. The Game Master has opinions about whether you can just assault Roman politicians without consequences, and Sunil has opinions about whether the Game Master can stop him. What game-changing creation can possibly top the enigmatic Patel's Box? The answer involves wheels, armour, and a level of ambition that Republican Rome has not previously encountered.

Republican Rome was a world of ruthless political ambition, military expansion, and social stratification — a city where your name was everything and your connections determined whether you lived in a marble villa or a slum. The Forum was where deals were made, the Senate was where power was brokered, and the streets were where Sunil Patel is about to test whether Roman engineering can be improved by a man whose last invention defied categorisation.

Era: Ancient | 150 BCE | Rome, Italy Featuring: Sunil Patel — comedian (Things You Should Have Done, BBC Three; Alice & Jack, Channel 4)

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Sunil Patel: Instagram @sunilpatelcomedy | X @sunilpatel | sunilpatelcomedy.com

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AgathAI ChristiGPT – Can we make a compelling murder mystery drama?

Mon, 20 May 2024 05:00:00 -0000

A country manor, 1928. Lord Jasper Cavendish Brown is lying face-down by the marble fountain, and Keon, as the enigmatic "Inspector Klaus," has just arrived to solve the case. Welcome to MurderMysteryMaster: PastMaster's Agatha Christie edition, with the Game Master specifically tuned to deliver a Cluedo feast of whodunnit drama. The lineage of great detectives continues: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and now Inspector Klaus.

The suspect list includes a young gardener who may or may not be hiding something, Lady Eleanor Cavendish Brown dealing with her brother's death, and a cast of manor staff all looking suspiciously innocent. The Game Master serves up clues, red herrings, and multiple-choice investigation options. Keon's detective approach involves pressing nervous witnesses, comforting grieving relatives, and listening carefully for inconsistencies. The real question isn't whodunnit. It's whether the AI can actually construct a compelling mystery or whether it's just going to blame the butler.

Agatha Christie set many of her most famous mysteries in exactly this kind of English country house — isolated, atmospheric, and full of people with secrets. Torquay, Christie's hometown, is the spiritual home of the cosy murder mystery. The Game Master has been given a genre-specific prompt and told to do suspense instead of absurdity. Whether ChatGPT can manage a plot twist that Christie herself would approve of is the experiment.

Era: Modern | 1928 CE | Torquay, England

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Saving Walt Disney (ft Verbal Diorama’s Em McGowan)

Mon, 13 May 2024 07:09:00 -0000

Kansas City, 1920. Walt Disney is a young artist with big dreams, a pack of cigarettes, and absolutely no idea that his smoking habit will kill him at 65 and send his company spiralling into two decades of creative decline. Em McGowan from film-history podcast Verbal Diorama is here to fix that, one intervention at a time.

The thesis is specific: when Walt died in 1966, the studio lost its creative leadership and didn't recover until The Little Mermaid in 1989. Two decades of mediocrity caused by one man's cigarette habit. Em's plan is part healthcare intervention, part corporate restructuring, part time-travel wellness retreat. The fate of an entire cultural legacy rests on getting one young artist to put down the cigarettes. Em's podcast dissects film history and she has strong opinions about what the studio could have achieved with a few more decades of Walt at the helm.

The early 1920s were Disney's formative years in Kansas City — before Mickey Mouse, before Snow White, before the empire. This is Walt at his most vulnerable and most ambitious, a young man whose talent would reshape global entertainment. He also smoked like a chimney. Whether one time-travelling podcaster can change that single habit and rewrite Hollywood history depends on how you tell a creative genius that his worst decision isn't artistic. It's the thing between his fingers.

Era: Modern | 1920 CE | Kansas City, United States Featuring: Em McGowan — podcaster (Verbal Diorama)

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Em McGowan: Instagram @ennaree

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Becoming a God in Ancient Sparta. How Hard Can it Be?

Mon, 06 May 2024 05:45:00 -0000

Ancient Sparta, 500 BCE. A city-state built entirely around warfare, discipline, and men who could crush your skull before breakfast. Tan asked for medieval Japan. The Game Master sent him to Sparta instead, because Ryan programmed it to be a prick. Welcome to Season 3 and "PastHard with a Vengeance" — Ryan's revenge for Hard Mode. Tan's entire frame of reference for Spartan culture is the movie 300 starring Gerard Butler.

The mission: become worshipped as a god. Tan claims to be "the cleverest and hardest man he knows," which Keon and Ryan find debatable. The Game Master offers four options to earn respect among the Spartans. Tan ignores three of them and walks over to the biggest warrior to teach him something he genuinely knows how to do in real life. Whether Spartan discipline can survive British social hacking remains to be seen, but Tan has brought vibes where the situation clearly demands weapons.

The Spartans were legendarily tough — boys entered military training at seven, warriors were expected to return "with their shield or on it," and their entire society was built around the idea that comfort was weakness. Tan's armed with confidence and a film that is, according to Keon, pretty much entirely bullshit historically. The Spartans are armed with spears.

Era: Ancient | 500 BCE | Sparta, Greece

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Season 3 Trailer – The Past and the Furious

Fri, 03 May 2024 07:07:16 -0000

The PastMaster crew are back with Season 3. And it's promising to be more Past-ery and more AI-y than ever before.

Featuring upgraded GameMasters, Murder Mystery solving, Regency period dramas, Walt Disney, Samurais, Area 51, Cockneys, Drug Lords and so much more.

We've also got a whole slew of guests this season including fellow podcasters Verbal Diorama and Fetch the Smelling salts. Plus comedians Sunil Patel, Nick Horseman and more.

You can also see our lovely faces as we attempt to film each episode to varying degrees of success!

So buckle up and get ready for more PastMaster adventures

- Ryan, Tan and Keon

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The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - Season 2 Finale

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 08:00:00 -0000

Season 2 is done, and it's time for the reckoning. Ryan, Keon, and Tan sit down to pick through the wreckage — the good, the bad, and the tremendously ugly from a season that sent them to Whitechapel, Stonehenge, the Battle of Trafalgar, and a dinner party with Hitler and Jesus.

Phallic AI art features prominently (it always does). The Game Master's double standards get a thorough examination — apparently it's fine to let someone pull a bazooka from their pocket but not to question whether Liz Truss would survive a state dinner. We pick apart the episodes that worked, the ones that didn't, and the moments that made us question whether giving an AI control of a history podcast was ever a good idea.

Era: Recap | Season 2 Finale

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EXPLORE THE PASTMASTER INTERACTIVE MAP The perfect companion for keeping track of our increasingly chaotic attempts to meddle with history. Link: https://map.pastmasterpod.com

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The Mary Celeste - Mystery Solved (kinda)

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 06:43:00 -0000

The Atlantic Ocean, 1872. The merchant ship Mary Celeste is sailing towards its place in history — the vessel whose entire crew vanished without a trace. "Third Mate Tan" has joined the fateful voyage to witness what actually happened, because if there's one thing PastMaster is qualified for, it's solving maritime mysteries that have baffled experts for 150 years.

The Mary Celeste was found adrift near the Azores in December 1872: completely intact but entirely abandoned, personal belongings still on board, cargo untouched, lifeboat missing. Everything from mutiny and insurance fraud to giant squid, waterspouts, and alien abduction has been proposed as an explanation. Tan's plan: embed himself in the crew and bear witness to whatever causes them to abandon a perfectly good ship. The Game Master has access to every theory ever published. Whether it picks the plausible one or invents something entirely its own is the tension that drives the whole episode.

The real Mary Celeste sailed from New York to Genoa carrying 1,701 barrels of denatured alcohol and a crew of seven plus the captain's wife and daughter. Nobody has ever definitively explained what happened. A creaking ship in the middle of the Atlantic, a crew that's about to vanish, and a comedian pretending to be a sailor while waiting for everyone else to disappear. The Game Master knows the answer. Probably.

Era: Industrial | 1872 CE | Gibraltar

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The Sausage of World Peace (Dinner Party Master)

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 07:06:00 -0000

The Palace of Versailles. A dining table. Jesus, Gandhi, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Elizabeth I, Cleopatra, and Liz Truss. One host. No chance of this going well. Tan takes on the role of "Hostess with the Mostest" in a fantasy gathering of the most influential and most divisive figures who ever lived, and the challenge is simple: get them to see eye to eye. Over sausages.

Tan's menu is symbolic, his icebreaker is a question about wrestling, and his guest list is a diplomatic minefield. The Game Master roleplays each historical figure with alarming confidence, and Tan has to keep proceedings civil while the most dangerous people who ever lived compete for the bread basket. Liz Truss is reportedly struggling to follow what's happening, which feels historically accurate. The energy is very much Come Dine with Me in a warzone.

Versailles was built by Louis XIV as the ultimate symbol of absolute power — a palace so extravagant it helped cause the French Revolution. As a venue for the world's most awkward dinner party, it's perfect. Can sausages achieve what centuries of diplomacy couldn't? Can Tan keep Hitler away from the wine? Will Liz Truss contribute anything at all? The Game Master seems confident it can answer all of these simultaneously.

Era: Special | N/A | Versailles, France

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Bear-Baiting and Swan Burgers: A day out in 1613 London (ft. Marc Zakian)

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 07:32:00 -0000

London, 1613. Saturday the 29th of June, to be precise. Blue Badge Guide Marc Zakian from the Extraordinary Stories of Britain podcast knows exactly why that date matters. In the ultimate battle of man versus machine, Marc takes on the AI Game Master to lead Tan and Ryan through a day in Jacobean London. His credentials: professional guide at the British Museum and the Tower of London. The AI's credentials: the entire internet. Let's see who gives a better tour.

Marc's itinerary is delightfully specific — eating, drinking, gambling, blood sports, and a cultured trip to the Globe Theatre. He's chosen that date for a reason, and he's steering the adventure towards a very specific historical event that the Game Master may or may not see coming. This is London at its most chaotic: bear-baiting pits where crowds gathered to watch dogs attack chained bears, cockfighting rings, and streets so filthy the open sewers were a feature. Twenty metres away, Shakespeare's company was performing at the Globe.

Jacobean London was a city of violent contradictions — high culture and extreme brutality sitting side by side on the South Bank. Marc walks these streets professionally and knows what's around every corner. The Game Master has to keep pace with someone who actually has the expertise, and for once, it's the AI scrambling to match the human's knowledge rather than the other way around.

Era: Renaissance | 1613 CE | London, England Featuring: Marc Zakian — podcaster (Extraordinary Stories of Britain, author: 111 Places in London's East End)

EPISODE LINKS

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Marc Zakian: Instagram @marczakian | X @marzak | marczakian.com

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Harder, faster, Past-ier: Being Outrageously British at the Boston Tea Party

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 22:21:00 -0000

Boston, 1773. The colony is itching to break free from the English crown, anti-British sentiment is at an all-time high, and Ryan has just rolled up being outrageously, unapologetically British. Welcome to Hard Mode — Tan's rebuilt the rules to be stricter, more realistic, and significantly less forgiving. Ryan's response? Cheat his way through revolutionary America using every trick in the book.

Hard Mode was born out of a genuine problem: the Game Master was too nice, letting players pull a cup of tea from their pocket, conjure a sail-sized cloth, or deploy a bazooka. Tan's update strips all of that back to the original premise: could you truly survive armed with just the knowledge in your head and the shirt on your back? Ryan, testing this new difficulty, immediately sets about undermining it. The Game Master fights back. Also, Keon eats his first-ever mince pie and gives it a paltry 3.5 out of 10, which feels like a war crime.

The Boston Tea Party was the act of defiance that lit the fuse for American independence — colonists dumping 342 chests of East India Company tea into the harbour to protest taxation without representation. The city was a tinderbox of revolutionary fervour. Whether a proudly English time traveller with tighter rules and nowhere to hide can survive a city full of colonists who have very strong opinions about the English remains to be tested.

Era: Industrial | 1773 CE | Boston, United States

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Operation: Save Jesus (ft. Nick Horseman)

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 20:30:00 -0000

Jerusalem, 30 CE. Two players. One Messiah. A race to prevent the most famous execution in history. Nick Horseman returns as "Cat R Pillar" and Keon takes the alias "Colin Winklethorpe" — both named after supermarket caterpillar cakes, both competing to save Jesus from crucifixion. The question isn't whether they can do it. It's who gets there first.

The Game Master picks a favourite immediately, telling Keon that "Kat seems to have a sharp intuition" and he "might find it hard to keep up." Keon does not take this well. Nick's strategy for dissuading Judas: outbid the thirty pieces of silver with cold hard cash. Keon's strategy: diplomacy, mediation, and, when pushed, his signature smear campaign. The AI attempts to run both players from one prompt and keeps splitting into parallel realities, because apparently even ChatGPT can't handle two time travellers fighting over the same Messiah.

Ancient Jerusalem under Roman rule was a powder keg of religious fervour, political tension, and imperial authority. One wrong word could get you crucified alongside the person you're trying to save. This is PastMaster's second visit to the Jesus Times. The first time, Tan invented a risotto instead of saving anyone. This time there are two players, one prompt, and a Game Master that won't stop inserting "fun facts" about parables that nobody asked for.

Era: Ancient | 30 CE | Jerusalem, Israel Featuring: Nick Horseman — friend of the show (The Rhyme Scheme, Edinburgh Fringe 2019)

EPISODE LINKS

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Nick Horseman: X @rociouspun | opencomedy.com/nickhorseman

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FutureMaster – We've been to the year 3000. Can confirm, they don't live underwater

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 06:31:00 -0000

The year 2985. Neon skyscrapers, AI entities living alongside organic counterparts, and Keon has just arrived with his Instagram muscles and a mission to prevent the "Great Data Wipeout" — a virus threatening to destroy centuries of stored human knowledge. Yes, this is partly inspired by Busted's "Year 3000." No, that doesn't make it less serious.

The Game Master wastes no time roasting Keon's gym selfies — "let's see if these flex-for-the-gram muscles can help you flex your way through the annals of the future." Keon's opening move is to find a bar. What kind of bar? Part Star Wars cantina, part 2003 internet cafe, part Blade Runner dive. The drinks glow, the patrons have translucent cranial domes, and Keon is very much out of his depth. Whether his particular skill set translates to a future where data is more valuable than gold remains to be tested.

FutureMaster flips the entire PastMaster premise. Instead of navigating historical reality, Keon's dealing with a future entirely invented by the AI. No Wikipedia to fact-check against, no historians to correct it, just pure ChatGPT worldbuilding with the guardrails off. The AI gets to make everything up, and the results suggest it's been waiting for exactly this opportunity.

Era: Fiction | 2985 CE | New York City, United States

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Stop the Berlin Conference! (ft. Chinny Ukata & Astrid Madimba from It's a Continent)

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 07:44:00 -0000

Berlin, 1884. Fourteen European nations are sitting around a table carving up an entire continent like a Christmas turkey, and Chinny Ukata and Astrid Madimba from It's a Continent podcast have been sent back to stop them. The Berlin Conference was the moment European powers gave themselves the green light to colonise Africa, drawing borders with rulers and zero consultation. No African representatives were invited. Chinny and Astrid are here to correct that.

Their approach starts from a simple insight: the European nations were already in conflict with each other, so fan those flames and they can't agree on who gets what. The Game Master offers multiple infiltration routes. Chinny and Astrid go straight for espionage, forged documents, and rumour-spreading — turning the conference delegates against each other before they can turn against a continent. Four years of making African history accessible on their podcast has given them the knowledge. Whether the Game Master can handle two players with this much righteous determination is another question entirely.

The Berlin Conference of 1884-85, hosted by Otto von Bismarck, established the rules for the Scramble for Africa and drew the impossibly straight borders still visible on maps today. The Gambia sitting inside Senegal like a rectangle around a river. Northern Africa's geometry. Communities split apart or forced together with zero consultation. Chinny and Astrid's podcast has spent four years showing that Africa's history is everyone's history. Now they're walking into the room where it happened.

Era: Industrial | 1884 CE | Berlin, Germany Featuring: Chinny Ukata & Astrid Madimba — It's a Continent podcast (top 25 UK history podcast, Independent Podcast of the Year)

EPISODE LINKS

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Chinny Ukata: Instagram @itsacontinentpod | X @itsacontinent | itsacontinent.com

Astrid Madimba: Instagram @astrid_monologuesx | itsacontinent.com

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Solving the Mystery of Stonehenge

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 06:15:00 -0000

Salisbury Plain, 3000 BCE. Keon's always wanted to know who built Stonehenge and why, so Ryan fired up ChatGPT and went looking for answers. The Game Master was told to be a flamboyant eccentric wizard narrator. It took the wizard bit literally. What follows is a Neolithic fever dream involving a mysterious man called Elron (alarm bells ringing immediately), crystal toilets, and secrets considerably bigger than anyone expected.

Ryan takes the player's seat in a pre-play test run, that went spectacularly sideways. The AI, fed 5,000 years of conspiracy theories through a neural network, steers the adventure into territory that owes nothing to archaeology and everything to what happens when you give an AI the word "wizard" and let it cook. Alliances with suspicious strangers, secrets that raise more questions than answers, and yes — someone poops in a crystal toilet.

Stonehenge remains one of the ancient world's great mysteries. 20-ton stones dragged from over 150 miles away by people who left no written records, positioned to align with the solstice. Theories range from astronomical observatory to healing site to ceremonial gathering place. Keon's been there and reckons you can drive past it on the A303 for free, which somewhat undermines the 30 quid entry fee. The PastMaster theory involves interdimensional portals, which is admittedly less peer-reviewed but considerably more entertaining.

Era: Ancient | 3000 BCE | Stonehenge, England

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Labour of Time: Changing British Politics Forever (ft. Tom GK)

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 07:25:00 -0000

Blackpool, 1959. The Labour Party conference is in full swing, and comedian Tom GK has arrived with possibly the most cerebral plan in PastMaster history: rewrite British politics by fixing Labour's housing policy. His target? Right to Buy. His theory? If Labour had adopted it first, Thatcherism would never have taken hold. One surgical intervention, two decades before anyone's heard of Margaret Thatcher.

While most time travellers try to invent the iPhone or punch a dictator, Tom goes straight for policy. The Game Master is visibly unimpressed: "Bloody hell, Tom GK, of all the exciting, dangerous, game-changing times in history, you want to pop over to Blackpool in 1959?" Tom does. He's navigating the conference floor between Hugh Gaitskell's moderates and Aneurin Bevan's left-wing faction, pitching home ownership as an empowerment tool. Then Napoleon Bonaparte materialises in a modern suit, because Ryan forgot to remove a secret objective from the prompt. Tom treats him like a weird impersonator at a corporate event and carries on.

The 1959 Labour Conference was a pivotal moment, held at a time when Britain was debating its post-war identity. Right to Buy could have been Labour's policy. Instead, Thatcher claimed it two decades later. Tom's here to correct that, then nip off to Liverpool to catch The Quarrymen before John, Paul, and George became The Beatles. Because if you're rewriting history, you might as well catch a gig.

Era: Modern | 1959 CE | Blackpool, England Featuring: Tom GK — comedian (Edinburgh Fringe: Hearing Loss: The Musical, What Bowie Did Next)

EPISODE LINKS

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Tom GK: Instagram @tomgkdoingtomgkthings | X @tomgk_comedy | onthemic.co.uk/comedians_list/tom-gockelen-kozlowski/

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We solved Jack The Ripper!

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 06:45:00 -0000

Whitechapel, 1888. Jack the Ripper hasn't struck yet, and "Inspector Nathaniel" has just marched into London with one objective: catch the most notorious serial killer in history before the first victim falls. Tan's approach is methodical — prove he's from the future by predicting verifiable events, use that credibility to get inside Scotland Yard, then position himself to intercept the Ripper. Can ChatGPT actually solve unsolved true crimes? Only one way to find out.

The Game Master has other ideas, dropping Tan straight into the fog of Whitechapel where a woman's scream and a suspicious figure rushing past nearly derail the entire long game before it starts. Tan's armed with knowledge from a recent Jack the Ripper walking tour and the graphic novel From Hell. The Game Master is armed with every theory ever published and an irritating habit of inserting "fun factoids" about gas streetlights that absolutely nobody asked for. The tension between Tan's careful detective work and the AI's love of dramatic set-pieces is the engine of the whole episode.

Jack the Ripper terrorised London's East End in the autumn of 1888, killing at least five women in attacks so brutal they sparked one of the largest manhunts in British history. Over a century later, the case remains officially unsolved. Theories range from local suspects to Prince Albert Victor, Queen Victoria's grandson. Whether Inspector Nathaniel and his notebook full of future predictions can crack it before the Game Master turns the whole thing into a Victorian thriller remains to be seen.

Era: Industrial | 1888 CE | London, England Contains: Discussions of historical violence, references to the Whitechapel murders.

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Napoleon Stows Away on HMS Victory (ft. Nick Horseman)

Mon, 06 Nov 2023 13:05:00 -0000

HMS Victory, 1805. Admiral Nelson is preparing for the Battle of Trafalgar, and Nick Horseman has just boarded as "Baron Cuthbert Wanklethorpe" — a name he insists is the most British thing imaginable. His mission: befriend Nelson, learn his naval tactics, and turn them into a board game. The kind of ambition that gets you either a knighthood or a hanging.

Nick chose this era for personal reasons: his three-year-old son is obsessed with Nelson, has books about him, has visited his tomb at St Paul's, and rates him above Batman. So naturally, Dad's plan is to get on Nelson's flagship and pitch him a Risk knockoff. The complication? Ryan planted a secret objective in the prompt requiring Napoleon Bonaparte to appear regardless of era, so Napoleon materialises as a stowaway below deck on his own enemy's ship and Nick has to improvise a double-agent cover story on the spot. Whether "my name is Wanklethorpe, for God's sake" counts as proof of British loyalty remains to be tested.

Trafalgar secured British naval supremacy for a century — Nelson's masterpiece, fought and won at the cost of his own life. The real HMS Victory carried 821 men into battle. It's now carrying Baron Wanklethorpe, a stowaway French emperor, and a business plan for a naval board game. The Admiral has questions.

Era: Industrial | 1805 CE | Portsmouth, England Featuring: Nick Horseman — friend of the show (The Rhyme Scheme, Edinburgh Fringe 2019)

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Nick Horseman: X @rociouspun | opencomedy.com/nickhorseman

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Sorcery Slam: Wrestling the Witch Finder General (ft. Tom GK)

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 08:33:00 -0000

Suffolk, 1645. The English Civil War is raging, self-appointed Witch Finder General Matthew Hopkins is terrorising East Anglia, and Tan has just landed in Bury St Edmunds as "Tom Dandelion" with a Halloween mission: shut down the most notorious witch hunter in English history. His toolkit? Three rational arguments, a Zangief-style spinning pile driver, and the willingness to turn 17th-century justice into a Royal Rumble.

Tan's opening move is to call the townsfolk ignorant oafs and demand to see someone important. This goes about as well as you'd expect. Hopkins challenges him to a public debate on witchcraft, and Tan comes armed with logic: witches don't exist, everyone you've ducked has drowned, crop failures aren't magic. The problem is that the Enlightenment hasn't happened yet and these people are very much in the mood for a burning, so when reason fails, there's always Street Fighter. Tom GK voices the Game Master for Season 2's opener.

Hopkins was the real deal — responsible for over 300 deaths during his brief, brutal campaign across Suffolk, Essex, and Norfolk. He used sleep deprivation, "swimming" tests, and teams of "prickers" who'd stab suspects with needles looking for marks. Whether Tan can defeat witch-hunting superstition through a combination of Enlightenment philosophy and professional wrestling remains to be seen. A blacksmith, a farmer with a scythe, and a muscular baker with a rolling pin all have opinions.

Era: Medieval | 1645 CE | Bury St Edmunds, England Featuring: Tom GK — comedian (Edinburgh Fringe: Hearing Loss: The Musical, What Bowie Did Next)

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Tom GK: Instagram @tomgkdoingtomgkthings | X @tomgk_comedy | onthemic.co.uk/comedians_list/tom-gockelen-kozlowski/

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A blast from the PastMaster — Season 1 Finale (featuring special guest ‘Dave’)

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 09:25:00 -0000

Season 1 is done. Twenty episodes. Fast food in the Wild West, Guns N' Roses on a medieval lute, a headbutting Viking, a friendly orc, a stolen donkey, a dead cat, and Barbie trying to stop the atomic bomb. Time for a look back.

Ryan, Tan, and Keon are joined "live, in-person" by the Game Master itself, voiced by special guest 'Dave.' From gaslighting Charles Darwin to pitching theme parks to Egyptian gods, we dig into our favourite moments, worst decisions, and the episodes that nearly fell apart. If you've been following Season 1, this is the retrospective. If you haven't, this is the trailer.

Era: Special | Season 1 Finale

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Barbenheimer (2 Player PastMaster)

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 11:16:00 -0000

New Mexico and Germany, 1945. The Manhattan Project is racing towards the atomic bomb, and two unlikely saboteurs have been sent back to stop it: Barbie and Ken. A two-player game inspired by the summer's Barbie and Oppenheimer double feature. Keon is Barbie, deep undercover in Los Alamos. Tan is Ken, deep undercover in Germany. One of them is all business. The other has accidentally started farming.

The AI runs two parallel adventures simultaneously, and the contrast between players is immediate. The trash talk between timelines is relentless, the question of whether bananas can substitute for a bomb gets a thorough investigation, and at some point someone has to explain to ChatGPT why their saboteur is called Barbie. One player is pushing towards the mission objective. The other appears to have forgotten there is one. Which is which may surprise you.

The Manhattan Project was the most secret and consequential scientific endeavour in history. Los Alamos, New Mexico was its nerve centre, where Oppenheimer assembled the greatest minds in physics to build the weapon that would end the war and reshape global politics forever. In Germany, the Haigerloch "Atomkeller" was the last-ditch site of the failing Nazi nuclear programme. Between them, these two locations determined the fate of the 20th century. We added plastic dolls.

Era: Special | 1945 CE | Los Alamos, United States / Haigerloch, Germany

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Cap’n Fk-Ctle’s Sweary Sea Shanty

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 06:18:00 -0000

Port Royal, Jamaica, 1592. The Golden Age of Piracy, the Caribbean's most notorious haven, and Ryan has finally cracked the code to make ChatGPT swear. The result is Captain F*ck-C*ntle — a foul-mouthed buccaneer with a crew of cutlass-rattling sea-dogs, a romantic interest called Belch-Breathed Bella, and a business plan built entirely around training parrots to swear like squaddies.

Ryan's pirate ambitions: assemble the most malodorous crew in the Caribbean, pursue a romantic subplot with a woman whose name is a health warning, and build a parrot-based profanity empire. The AI has been coaxed into territory it clearly didn't want to enter, and the bleep machine is earning its keep. The crew's vocabulary would make a sailor blush, which, given they are sailors, is saying something.

Port Royal in the 17th century was known as "the wickedest city on Earth" — a pirate haven where buccaneers like Henry Morgan spent their plunder on rum, gambling, and general debauchery. The real Golden Age of Piracy ran from roughly 1650 to 1730, and the Caribbean was its epicentre. Pirates were, by all contemporary accounts, exceptionally creative with their profanity. Ryan's attempt to bring this historical authenticity to the AI is admirable, if absolutely not safe for work.

Era: Renaissance | 1592 CE | Port Royal, Jamaica Contains: Explicit language (bleeped), pirate profanity, and AI pushed to its limits. Definitely not safe for work.

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Ancient Olympic Wheelbarrow Racing (ft Louise Banham)

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 06:30:00 -0000

Olympia, Greece, 776 BCE. The first Olympic Games are about to begin, the athletes are naked, and Keon's turned up with a plan to introduce wheelbarrow racing. With Louise Banham voicing the Game Master, the original Olympics are about to get some very unauthorised new events.

Keon's pitch to the ancient Greek Olympic Committee: wheelbarrow racing as an official event. The fact that wheelbarrows won't be invented for another thousand years is, in Keon's view, an opportunity rather than an obstacle. His approach involves channelling his "inner Jonathan Edwards," some ancient Greek trash talk, and a physical demonstration. He's also got the egg and spoon race in his back pocket. Whether the committee that sanctioned naked wrestling will draw the line at novelty races is the tension that drives this one.

The ancient Olympics were a sacred athletic and religious festival held every four years at Olympia in honour of Zeus. Events included the stadion sprint, wrestling, boxing, chariot racing, and the pankration — a brutal no-holds-barred combat sport where the only rules were no biting and no eye-gouging. Athletes competed naked and oiled. The idea that this crowd would reject wheelbarrow racing for being too undignified is genuinely funny, given that they already had a sport where you could grab someone's genitals.

Era: Ancient | 776 BCE | Olympia, Greece Featuring: Louise Banham — friend (as Game Master)

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Elizabethan Jazz Hands (ft Louise Banham)

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 06:45:00 -0000

London, 1592. Shakespeare is writing plays, Queen Elizabeth I is ruling with an iron fist, and Louise Banham has just arrived with a plan to beat the Bard to the punch by writing Macbeth: The Musical. Her mission: become ruler of England through the power of jazz hands. It's a strategy that nobody, in any century, has attempted before.

Louise's approach to Elizabethan power: infiltrate the theatre scene, secure a face-to-face meeting with the Queen, and deploy the one weapon that Tudor England has no defence against. The Game Master's identity is a mystery this week — the AI has been instructed to embody a famous pop culture figure, and working out who is half the fun. Meanwhile, Louise is pitching musical theatre to a monarch who had people executed for less ambitious proposals.

Elizabethan London was the crucible of English drama — the Globe Theatre was about to be built, Shakespeare was hitting his stride, and the theatre was one of the few places where social classes mixed. Queen Elizabeth I was a savvy political operator who used patronage, propaganda, and the occasional beheading to maintain her grip on power. The idea that she could be swayed by jazz hands is optimistic at best. But Louise is committed.

Era: Renaissance | 1592 CE | London, United Kingdom Featuring: Louise Banham — friend

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Aria of Death: A Mission to Kill Hitler (ft. Nick Horseman)

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 06:15:00 -0000

Vienna, 1911. The Habsburg Empire is creaking, Wagner's Lohengrin is playing at the opera house, and somewhere in the audience sits a young, failed art student who will one day start a world war. Nick Horseman has been sent back with one mission: find Adolf Hitler and kill him before he rises to prominence. The time machine is a log flume. Obviously.

The ultimate pub conversation brought to life. As "Klaus Horsmann," Nick arrives in early 20th-century Vienna with a plan that prioritises directness over subtlety. His theory: young Hitler's known obsession with Wagner will draw him to the opera house, his method is a concealed pistol, and his problem is that the target hasn't actually done anything yet — ChatGPT has opinions about that. The question isn't just whether Nick can pull it off, but whether the AI will let him try.

Vienna in 1911 was the cultural capital of Europe — home to Freud, Klimt, Mahler, and a young Adolf Hitler who had just been rejected by the Academy of Fine Arts for the second time. He spent his days in cheap lodgings, attending opera performances he couldn't really afford, and nursing the resentments that would eventually consume Europe. The Hofoper (now the Vienna State Opera) was one of the grandest venues on the continent. It is, to be fair, a reasonably stylish place to attempt an assassination.

Era: Modern | 1911 CE | Vienna, Austria Featuring: Nick Horseman — friend (The Rhyme Scheme, Edinburgh Fringe 2019)

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Nick Horseman: X @rociouspun | opencomedy.com/nickhorseman

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A Cat-God with a Death Wish (ft. Nick Horseman)

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 06:30:00 -0000

Ancient Egypt, 1250 BCE. The reign of Rameses II — one of the most powerful pharaohs in history, and Ryan's been tasked with deposing him. His plan? Insult the sacred cats. Repeatedly. With Nick Horseman taking over as Game Master and stricter rules in play, Ryan's immediate goal is to find out what happens if you try to lose on purpose.

Ryan, as "Ryanardo," lands in Bubastis, the cult centre of cat goddess Bastet, and his strategy involves poles, furs, a beatboxing cat-god routine, and a fundamental experiment: will ChatGPT actually kill you if you commit enough sacrilege in the one city where cats are more sacred than people? The answer to that question is the entire reason to listen.

Rameses II ruled for 66 years, built more monuments than any other pharaoh, and was worshipped as a living god. Bubastis was sacred ground. Killing a cat there, even accidentally, was punishable by death. The Egyptians mummified millions of cats as offerings. Ryan's decision to deliberately antagonise them is either a bold experiment in the game's limits or just spectacularly poor judgement.

Era: Ancient | 1250 BCE | Bubastis, Egypt Featuring: Nick Horseman — friend (The Rhyme Scheme, Edinburgh Fringe 2019) as Game Master

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Al Capone and the Windy City Wedding Whisky Plot (ft. Nick Horseman)

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 06:30:00 -0000

Chicago, 1926. Prohibition is in full swing, the speakeasies are packed, and Nick Horseman has just walked into one with his gangster patter down to a tee. His opening move? Spit whisky in the bartender's face and smash a glass on the floor. It's a power move. Whether it's a good one is another question entirely.

Nick's approach to Prohibition-era organised crime: extreme confidence, zero subtlety, and a social calendar that somehow includes inviting Al Capone to a wedding. The speakeasy is dimly lit, the plan to muscle in on the local mob scene is bold, and every decision Nick makes is about one wrong toast away from becoming very, very permanent. Whether the Windy City is ready for this particular brand of British gangster ambition is unclear. Whether Nick is ready for the Windy City is another matter.

Prohibition-era Chicago was the bootlegging capital of America, a city where organised crime had effectively replaced local government, and Al Capone ran his empire from the Lexington Hotel with a mix of charm and extreme violence. The speakeasy culture thrived behind unmarked doors, and gangland power was won by being the last man standing. Nick's strategy of inviting the most dangerous man in America to a family function is either genius or suicidal.

Era: Modern | 1926 CE | Chicago, United States Featuring: Nick Horseman — friend (The Rhyme Scheme, Edinburgh Fringe 2019)

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Nick Horseman: X @rociouspun | opencomedy.com/nickhorseman

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Super-Gladiator-Chariots of Fire: Dominating the Roman Arena

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 06:03:00 -0000

Republican Rome, 70 BCE. The Circus Maximus is packed, the crowd is baying for blood, and Tan's just arrived with plans to pimp his chariot using 21st-century engineering know-how. Channelling his inner Premiership footballer, he struts into the arena and starts baiting the crowd before the race has even begun.

Tan's strategy for Roman chariot racing: upgrade the ancient design with modern automotive principles, trash-talk 250,000 spectators, and channel a level of sporting arrogance that won't be seen again for another two thousand years. The engineering knowledge comes from Top Gear rather than mechanical physics. The confidence comes from somewhere else entirely. Whether ancient Rome is ready for this particular brand of showmanship is the question the Circus Maximus is about to answer.

Roman chariot racing was the most popular spectator sport in the ancient world, faster, bloodier, and more politically charged than gladiatorial combat. The Circus Maximus could hold a quarter of a million spectators, and the factions commanded fanatical loyalty. Successful charioteers became the ancient equivalent of Premier League footballers: rich, famous, and surrounded by people who wanted to kill them. Tan's decision to antagonise the crowd before the wheels have even started turning is either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid. Possibly both.

Era: Ancient | 70 BCE | Rome, Italy

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Ancient Egypt: Building a Theme Park in the Underworld Theme (Part 2)

Mon, 19 Jun 2023 06:46:00 -0000

The Egyptian Underworld, 1400 BCE. Keon (aka Kheper) is knee-deep in the afterlife, and the jackal-headed god Anubis is deciding whether to weigh his heart or just rip it out of his chest. Keon's not here to be judged. He's here to pitch a theme park.

Picking up from last week's descent into the ancient world, Kheper's plan for the Underworld involves talking his way past a series of increasingly irritated gods, persuading Egypt's already overworked labour force that building yet another monument is an "exciting opportunity," and launching "the Kheper" as an iconic beard style. The Game Master is playing strict. Keon's lives are draining. And somewhere between the trial of the Sphinx and a conversation with a mad pharaoh, the line between ambition and delusion disappears entirely.

The Duat, the Egyptian Underworld, was a twelve-hour nocturnal journey through darkness, populated by demons, serpents, and a panel of forty-two divine judges. The weighing of the heart against Ma'at's feather of truth determined your eternal fate: pass into the Field of Reeds, or have your heart devoured by the monster Ammit. Nobody in three thousand years of Egyptian theology had considered "build a theme park" as a third option.

Era: Ancient | ~1400 BCE | Thebes, Egypt Part 2 of 2 — see also: S1E10

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Ancient Egypt: The Pharaoh's Beard Modelling Secrets (Part 1)

Mon, 12 Jun 2023 06:50:00 -0000

Ancient Egypt, 1400 BCE. The New Kingdom is at its zenith — monumental temples, all-powerful pharaohs, and an elaborate system of gods who will absolutely rip your heart out if you displease them. Keon's arrived in Thebes as "Kheper," and his top priority is beard grooming tips. Specifically, the pharaoh's beard grooming tips. Everyone's got their reasons.

Keon's approach to ancient Egypt: ignore the mission, wander into the House of Life, befriend a scholar with an impressively groomed beard, and ask to see the Book of the Dead. His endgame involves a psychedelic theme park, a beard-based brand empire, and a casual trip to the Underworld to meet the jackal-headed god Anubis. The Game Master this week is a bitter, angry old man who has made it very clear that reckless behaviour will cost lives. Keon's response to this warning is to request a 2pm slot for the afterlife.

Ancient Thebes (modern-day Luxor) was the religious and political capital of New Kingdom Egypt. The House of Life was a real institution, a scriptorium and centre of learning attached to major temples. The journey through the Underworld was described in the Book of the Dead — a gauntlet of gods, trials, and the famous weighing of the heart against Ma'at's feather of truth. Keon's plan to commercialise the afterlife is, historically speaking, not what the pharaohs had in mind.

Era: Ancient | ~1400 BCE | Thebes, Egypt Part 1 of 2 — see also: S1E11

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"Bible Times": Jesus Ranks His Best Miracles (Part 2)

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 07:00:00 -0000

Galilee, 25 AD. Baron Saffron's spice empire is taking shape — a gang of local tough-nuts, a stolen donkey, and unfinished business with Mordechai. But the saffron trade takes a backseat this week, because Tan's finally landed a meeting with the most famous man in the ancient world: Jesus Christ. And he's got notes.

Tan's pitch to Jesus: abandon the preaching, embrace musical theatre, and let the works of Andrew Lloyd Webber do the heavy lifting for the gospel. Jesus is not interested. Tan persists. The agenda escalates to a solo rendition of Jesus Christ Superstar, a request for Jesus to rank his favourite miracles, and a strong suggestion that the Messiah should play himself in a musical about his own life — it would be "post-modern as fuck." Jesus remains politely but firmly on brand.

First-century Galilee was a hotbed of messianic fervour, Roman taxation, and itinerant preachers competing for followers. Jesus was performing miracles, gathering disciples, and building a movement that would reshape civilisation. What he wasn't expecting was a time-travelling spice baron who'd sing over him, question his miracles, and then ask if he fancied a pint.

Era: Ancient | 25 CE | Jerusalem, Israel Part 2 of 2 — see also: S1E8

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"Bible Times": Baron Saffron Spices up Things in Galilee (Part 1)

Sun, 28 May 2023 23:01:00 -0000

Galilee, 25 AD. The Roman Empire is at its height, Jesus Christ is performing miracles down the road, and Tan's just been caught stealing bread. Not the most auspicious start for a man about to style himself as "Baron Saffron" — the region's most ambitious spice dealer. His plan: build a condiment empire in the ancient world. His methods: questionable at best.

Tan's business model: undercutting, aggressive recruitment, and transport theft. When a local merchant introduces him to Mordechai, who controls the saffron trade with the weight of Roman authority behind him, the question isn't whether Baron Saffron's ambition outpaces his survival instinct but by how much. His chief enforcer goes by "the Iron Fist" and definitely gave himself that nickname. His mentor is an old shopkeeper he impressed by pretending to turn one loaf of bread into two. The empire is being built on bluffing and stolen donkeys.

Roman-occupied Galilee was a crossroads of trade, religion, and political tension. Saffron was worth more than gold by weight, and the merchants who controlled it wielded real power. Mordechai's estate, his personal guard, and the ever-present threat of Roman authority create a world where one wrong move could land you in a Galilean dungeon. Tan's approach to this world is to immediately make the most powerful man in town very, very angry.

Era: Ancient | 25 CE | Jerusalem, Israel Part 1 of 2 — see also: S1E9

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The Land Before Time (and Logic)

Mon, 22 May 2023 06:15:00 -0000

The Jurassic era, 65 million years BCE. There are no humans, no language, and no reason whatsoever to attempt diplomacy with a T-Rex. Tan's doing it anyway. As "Tanimus Maximus," he's arrived with a plan to befriend the dinosaurs, arm them with wooden helmets, and teach them the cultural rewards of song and dance. The mammal revolution starts here.

PastMaster's parameters get pushed to breaking point. Tan's strategy for prehistoric dominance: control the water supply, divide the dinosaur population into good ones and evil ones, and use dog-training techniques on creatures that predate dogs by about 60 million years. His endgame is to become "Dino Lord" and rule a prehistoric empire built on mutual respect, wooden armour, and choreography. The Game Master goes along with all of it. When pressed on how exactly a human communicated with dinosaurs, the answer is "clicks and whistles," delivered without a shred of embarrassment.

The Jurassic and Cretaceous periods were ruled by creatures that made the planet's current apex predators look like hamsters. Crocodiles were once the dominant species before dinosaurs took over, and mammals hid in the shadows waiting their turn. Partly inspired by Steve Brusatte's The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs, Tan's contribution to this 165-million-year power struggle is finger painting and a dance routine. Brusatte probably didn't envision his research being used this way.

Era: Fiction | ~65m BCE | Hell Creek, United States Contains: Interspecies diplomacy, questionable choreography, and zero regard for the food chain.

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Inventing ‘the box’ and avoiding Agincourt (ft. Sunil Patel)

Mon, 15 May 2023 07:52:00 -0000

Medieval England, 1415. The Battle of Agincourt is looming, Henry V is rallying his troops, and comedian Sunil Patel has gone straight to a tavern to ask a group of merchants if anyone's got a job going. His pitch: "I have a very particular set of skills that will only become apparent once you give me the job." The merchants are intrigued. They probably shouldn't be.

Sunil's approach to 15th-century England: refuse military service under any circumstances, befriend a portly moustachioed merchant, and pitch an invention so vague that nobody can explain what it actually does. "Patel's Device" is delivered with total conviction — it opens doors, it impresses people, and it may or may not be a box. His real secret weapon is that he can read and write, which in 1415 puts him ahead of roughly 95% of the population. Whether that's enough to build an empire while England's most famous battle rages on without him remains to be seen.

The real Agincourt saw Henry V's outnumbered English army annihilate the French through a devastating combination of longbow tactics and muddy terrain. Oxford in 1415 was a university town with a dark underbelly, and the merchants were the rising class. Sunil knows which side he's on. The swords can wait.

Era: Medieval | ~1415 CE | Oxford, United Kingdom Featuring: Sunil Patel — comedian (Things You Should Have Done, Alice & Jack)

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Charles Darwin: On the origin of "On the Origin of Species"

Mon, 08 May 2023 07:00:00 -0000

Victorian London, 1851. Charles Darwin is working on the most important scientific text in history, and Ryan's just turned up at the pub under the deeply suspicious pseudonym "Ryland Mulchroneforth." His plan? Gaslight the father of evolution, steal credit for the Theory of Natural Selection, and demand a piggyback across town.

The Game Master this week is Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so the AI is depressed, sarcastic, and deeply unimpressed by everyone's existence. Ryan's approach to Victorian science: walk into a pub, shout for noble scientists, and then inform Charles Darwin that On the Origin of Species was actually his work all along. The gaslighting is relentless, the robot companion is threatening violence, and there's a mysterious banned word that must not be spoken. And for reasons that remain unclear, local cheese production keeps coming up.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 had just opened at Crystal Palace, showcasing Britain's industrial might to the world. Darwin, meanwhile, was at Down House obsessively breeding pigeons and building towards the publication that would reshape biology forever. He was not, historically, the sort of man who gave piggybacks to strangers who claimed to have invented evolution first. But then, historically, nobody had ever asked.

Era: Industrial | 1851 CE | Down House, United Kingdom Contains: Intellectual fraud, involuntary piggybacks, and a Game Master who wishes it was all over.

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Fixing The Lord of the Rings

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 08:57:00 -0000

The Shire, Middle Earth. Gandalf's got a plan to destroy the One Ring. Tan thinks it's rubbish. Arriving as "Thokk the Unthinkable" — a friendly orc, which is already a contradiction — Tan's here to fix Tolkien's plot holes. The Fellowship spent three books and eleven hours of cinema walking the Ring to Mount Doom. Tan reckons he could sort it in about twenty minutes. It involves the Eagles.

PastMaster goes off-piste, dragging the AI Game Master out of history and into Middle Earth. Tan's pitch to Gandalf: skip the walking, fly the Ring to Mount Doom on the Eagles, drop it in the volcano, job done. Gandalf's response is furious and absolute. Tan's counter-argument is that the wizard literally calls an Eagle to rescue himself later in the story. What follows is a battle of wills between a 21st-century management consultant and a fictional wizard, and the Game Master is stuck in the middle trying to keep Tolkien's plot intact.

Tolkien's world is built on ancient grudges, impossible quests, and one very questionable ring-disposal strategy. Tan's turning up at Bag End with operational efficiency complaints and zero patience for quest logistics. Whether Middle Earth can handle this level of corporate scrutiny is the question. Whether Gandalf can handle Tan is another one entirely.

Era: Fiction | Middle Earth Contains: One Ring, zero patience, and a very offended wizard.

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Headbutting into the Viking Times

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 08:38:00 -0000

Scandinavia, circa 850 AD. The Viking Age is at its peak, longships are terrorising the coasts of Europe, and Keon's just arrived with one goal: be worshipped as a god. His opening move? Walk up to a rival chieftain called Bjorn, shout "what are you looking at?", and headbutt him in the face. Subtle, it is not.

Styling himself as "Jarl Olaf," Keon's approach to Viking politics is pure aggression. His economic policy is communist redistribution where he keeps most of the gold. His diplomatic strategy is headbutting. His relationship with rival chieftain Bjorn is deteriorating at a speed that impresses even the Game Master, who this week has been instructed to channel Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It. Whether Scandinavian warrior culture can survive Keon's particular brand of leadership remains to be seen.

The Viking Age saw Scandinavian raiders and settlers reshape the map of Europe, from the monasteries of Lindisfarne to the courts of Constantinople. Jarls rose and fell on the strength of their raids and their reputation. The idea that you could headbutt your way to the top isn't historically inaccurate so much as historically on-brand.

Era: Medieval | ~850 CE | Uppsala, Sweden

EPISODE LINKS

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Medieval Breakdancing Badgers

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 08:23:00 -0000

Medieval England, circa 1300. The ancient capital of Winchester is bustling, the local lord's court is in full swing, and a mysterious traveller called "Ryanardo" has just materialised in the marketplace whistling Chuck Berry. His plan? Introduce Guns N' Roses to the Middle Ages using nothing but a lute and sheer audacity.

Ryan's strategy for medieval stardom: form a partnership with a local bard, invent a fusion of 14th-century folk music and 1980s rock, and ride the resulting fame all the way to the royal court. The rockstar ego arrives on schedule. So does the terrible decision-making. Somewhere between the lute solo and the lord's wife, the plan takes a turn that no amount of mead can fix. And when the dust settles, Ryan's backup plan involves badgers, breakdancing, and a Game Master who is visibly losing patience.

Winchester in 1300 was the old capital of England, a city of stone walls, market fairs, and social hierarchies so rigid that a wrong word at court could end your career or your life. The idea that you could rock up, perform Guns N' Roses on a lute, and then make a move on the lady of the house? That's not a cultural revolution, it's a death wish with a backing track.

Era: Medieval | ~1300 CE | Winchester, United Kingdom

EPISODE LINKS

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Kentucky Fried Western

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 08:17:00 -0000

The Wild West, 1865. The Civil War's just ended, the frontier is wide open, and Keon has arrived in Lexington, Kentucky with one mission: invent fast food a century early. He knows nothing about history. He knows nothing about RPGs. He definitely doesn't know how fried chicken actually works. But he's got $50 in gold coins and the confidence of a man who's never been to Kentucky but has definitely been to KFC.

Naming himself Colonel Sanders, Keon walks into a saloon and immediately gravitates toward the most suspicious person in the room. His business plan: a secret recipe involving 11 herbs and spices, a franchise model roughly 85 years ahead of schedule, and a supply chain built on an alliance with a man whose previous employer was a notorious outlaw gang. The entrepreneurial confidence is absolute. The due diligence is nonexistent. The finger lickin' is non-negotiable.

Post-Civil War America was a powder keg of opportunity and violence, with outlaws, prospectors, and carpetbaggers all scrambling to carve out a piece of a country putting itself back together. Lexington sat right in the middle of it, a border state town that couldn't decide whose side it was on. Now add a 21st-century Londoner whose entire knowledge of Kentucky begins and ends with a bargain bucket, and whose idea of a hostile takeover involves chickens.

Era: Industrial | 1865 CE | Lexington, United States

EPISODE LINKS

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