PastMaster: Reshaping History

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 GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. 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: 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 GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. 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: 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 GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. 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: 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 GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. 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: 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 GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. 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: Medieval | 687 CE | Whitby, England Part 3 of 3 EPISODE LINKS Follow Tan's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. 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: Medieval | 687 CE | Whitby, England Part 2 of 3 EPISODE LINKS Follow Nick's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. 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: Medieval | 687 CE | Whitby, England Part 1 of 3 EPISODE LINKS Follow Ryan's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Part 1 of 2. 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: 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 GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. 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: 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 GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. 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: 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 GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. 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: 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 GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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/ GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices