Skip to content
Sign in
Artwork for PastMaster: Reshaping History
ComedyLeisureGamesHistoryExplicit

PastMaster: Reshaping History

PastMaster

If you were sent back in time, could you survive and thrive — or would you be burnt at the stake for being a witch?

Welcome to PastMaster, the show that turns history into an interactive adventure game. Each episode, hosts Ryan and Tan are joined by a special guest comedian who is sent back in time with nothing but their modern knowledge and the shirt on their back.

Under the guidance of a benevolent robot Game Master, they navigate to a different era each episode and find out if they’ve got what it takes to reshape the past.

Will it be historically accurate? Will any of it make sense? Will they master the past?

Tune in to find out.

Play
Open in
  • 22 episodes
  • fortnightly
  • Avg 56 min
  • English

Episodes 22

NewestOldestLongest
All20Unplayed20In progress0Played0
Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.
  • S5 · E17
    Monday · 42 min

    Death Wish at King Arthur's Dad's Party ft. Nick Horseman

    London, around 470 CE. Uther Pendragon, future father of King Arthur, is holding a war feast in the smoking ruin of a Roman basilica, and he keeps sending his cup down the table to the Duke of Cornwall's wife. The Duke has noticed. Nick Horseman is back for another Death Wish Speed Run, and this time all three of us take turns at the same job: walk in as a nobody and get the lords of Britain to swear on Uther's dragon standard before Cornwall storms out and half the hall follows him. Before each turn, a single six-sided die decides how many lords need to swear. Between the three of us we bring an encyclopaedic knowledge of card games, a very quick hand with a Rubik's Cube, a stare that bores into the soul and one extremely niche party trick, none of it built for early medieval coalition politics. The Game Master is back on hard mode, the benches are full of armed men who have been drinking since the rain started, and Merlin is somewhere in the smoke, quietly aware that none of us belong. Uther Pendragon belongs to the foggiest stretch of British history, the sub-Roman Dark Ages. Rome stopped defending Britain around 410 CE, Saxon settlers were carving out the east within a couple of generations, and Gildas, the nearest thing to a contemporary chronicler, never mentions a Pendragon at all. The Arthurian legend really gets going with Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae around 1136: a royal feast in London, a king who can't stop staring at Igraine, a furious Gorlois riding home to Cornwall, and Merlin at Tintagel making sure that nine months later there is a King Arthur. History needed a statesman in that hall and got three blokes from the 21st century with a six-sided die. 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 | ~470 CE | Londinium (London), England Featuring: Nick Horseman,comedian and rapper (The Rhyme Scheme, Edinburgh Fringe 2019) Contains: Strong language and some bloody early medieval violence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S5 · E16
    September 14 · 1 hr 37 min

    Napoleon and The Cheese Priest of Corsica ft. Bennet Kavanagh

    Ajaccio, Corsica, August 1790. Napoleon Bonaparte is twenty-one, broke, borrowing money from his mother, and home on suspiciously long leave while the island argues at knifepoint about whether it is French. Comedian Bennet Kavanagh arrives by boat as Pierre, a chevalier travelling with a mule, a mainland trading pass that marks him as a foreigner, and a wheel of Comté that has survived the crossing rather better than he has. The mission: get Pasquale Paoli to look kindly on the Bonaparte family before September's consulta decides which names on Corsica still matter. Pierre's declared skills, in order: a love of cheese, a way with horses, a fierce charisma, and the ability to hold a drink. This is a man who has looked at the birth of the Napoleonic era and concluded that it is, fundamentally, a hospitality problem. The plan runs on Comté, wine, and the confidence of someone who has never once been asked to leave anywhere. Corsica in 1790 was a wound that had not closed: France bought the island from the Republic of Genoa in 1768, broke the Corsican Republic at Ponte Novu the following year, and Napoleone di Buonaparte was born in Ajaccio that August a French subject by barely twelve months. Pasquale Paoli, the father of Corsican independence, had spent twenty years exiled in London and sailed home in July 1790 to a hero's welcome, which made the autumn consulta at Orezza the only room on the island worth standing in. The Buonapartes were minor nobility with a French education, no money, and a reputation for being French when it suited them. History records that Paoli came to loathe them and eventually ran them off the island altogether — but not for another three years, and not before somebody had to get through August. 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 Game Master is strict. The chaos is inevitable. The past will be mastered. Era: Modern | 1790 CE | Ajaccio, Corsica, France Featuring: Bennet Kavanagh — musical comedian (Crank Up the Volume to a Reasonable Level, Edinburgh Fringe debut) Contains: Mild language. EPISODE LINKS Follow Bennet's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com Bennet Kavanagh: Instagram 👉 @bennetkav Bennet Kavanagh 👉 https://bennetkav.com Play PastMaster yourself 👉 https://play.pastmasterpod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S5 · E15
    August 31 · 1 hr 11 min

    Back to the Past-Future: The 1926 Chicago Do-over ft. Nick Horseman

    Chicago, 1926. Prohibition is on, 500 barrels of bootleg liquor are changing hands in the dark, and Al Capone is waiting on the delivery. Nick Horseman has stood in this yard before: three years ago it was his first PastMaster mission, and it ended with a cordial mob boss and none of the Scorsese gunfight he actually came for. This time he is going back into his own episode to fix it. The rules are Marty McFly, not Quantum Leap. He arrives as himself, at a moment already written, with another version of Nick Horseman walking about a few feet away, about to do something regrettable. Everything before this point is sealed and everything after it is fair game. His plan for improving on his own history runs on hindsight, a Game Master considerably stricter than the one that let him off the first time, and a firm conviction that the whole scene only ever needed a spark. Whether the past enjoys being edited by the man who lived it is a separate matter entirely. Prohibition ran from 1920 to 1933, and Chicago spent it as the most profitable illegal marketplace in America. The Chicago Outfit under Al Capone was pulling an estimated $60m a year out of beer, whisky and speakeasies, the North Side Gang under Bugs Moran was the only thing properly in its way, and the Bureau of Prohibition's Eliot Ness spent years trying to make a charge stick that wasn't tax. It ended in the St Valentine's Day Massacre, a federal conviction for accounting, and a body count nobody kept properly. None of which was ever built to survive a comedian arriving with hindsight and unfinished business. 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 | 1926 CE | Chicago, United States Featuring: Nick Horseman — comedian and rapper (The Rhyme Scheme, Edinburgh Fringe 2019) Contains: Strong language and Prohibition-era gangland violence. EPISODE LINKS Follow Nick's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com Listen to the original first — S1E13, Al Capone and the Windy City Wedding Whisky Plot 👉 https://pastmasterpod.com/episodes/s1e13-al-capone-and-the-windy-city-wedding-whisky-plot-ft-nick-horseman Nick Horseman: X 👉 @rociouspun Nick Horseman 👉 https://opencomedy.com/nickhorseman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • August 17 · 12 min

    Side Quest: Death Wish Speed run ft Caroline McEvoy

    Comedian Caroline McEvoy returns to the PastMaster hot seat to tackle our first Side Quest of the year. It's the return of Death Wish Speedrun! How quickly and stylishly can you get yourself killed in the past? Caroline picked the Tudor era. GameMaster is on its stricter setting, with punishments if the player breaks the rules, and Caroline already clocking that “It's going to be hard for me to kill myself in the game”. Does hard mode in Tudor London actually make dying easier, or does it just make the AI meaner in more inventive ways Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S5 · E13
    July 20 · 1 hr 5 min

    Rasputin's Delicious Cyanide Cakes, ft Daniel McKeon

    St. Petersburg, December 1916. Grigori Rasputin has the ear of the Tsarina, the loathing of half the aristocracy, and roughly a fortnight left to live. Comedian Daniel McKeon drops into the middle of it under the gamertag PoisonNecker56, to find out what a circle of well-born gentlemen intend to do about the Holy Devil. Daniel's qualifications for imperial espionage: a half-remembered GCSE module, a genuine tolerance for vodka, an unbothered relationship with the cold, and a stated willingness to sell absolutely anyone out. Somewhere upstairs on the same street, the man everyone is whispering about is still very much alive. Rasputin was a Siberian peasant mystic who became the most hated man in Russia largely because he was the only person who could calm the haemophiliac Tsarevich. The court he attached himself to was already a slow-motion disaster: 1,300 people crushed to death at Nicholas II's 1896 coronation festival scrambling for free commemorative mugs, a wartime prohibition on vodka that wiped out roughly a third of state revenue overnight, and fifty jewelled Fabergé eggs going out at Easter while the bread queues lengthened. The legend has Rasputin eating enough cyanide to kill a dozen men, shrugging it off, absorbing several bullets and drowning in the Neva. The autopsy found no poison, no water in the lungs, and one contact gunshot wound to the forehead, which is a duller story and somehow a worse 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 Game Master is strict. The chaos is inevitable. The past will be mastered. Era: Modern | 1916 CE | St. Petersburg, Russia Featuring: Daniel McKeon — comedian, writer and storyteller (Boy Boss, Your Next Village Idiot) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S5 · E12
    July 7 · 1 hr 2 min

    Teeth of the Revolution ft. Ruby Carr

    Paris, October 1789. The Bastille has fallen, the king and queen are under guard at the Tuileries, and bread prices are on every tongue. Into this powder keg steps comedian Ruby Carr, with one mission: get a Parisian dentist's revolutionary porcelain dentures in front of the Académie des Sciences before a rival surgeon-dentist can smear them as brittle frauds. Her cover story? A sugar-free confectioner newly arrived from Geneva, seeking dental expertise. Ruby's survival kit for revolutionary France: a winning smile she swears can make anyone do exactly what she wants, and a tin of sugar-free sweets for an age when most mouths were a disaster of rot. She installs herself as a Genevan lady of the top 2 percent and sets about charming a dentist who has every reason to distrust a stranger with peculiar manners. The problem is that this is Paris in the week after the March on Versailles, where accusing the wrong man of the wrong thing gets him dragged from his house by morning. Ryan takes the Game Master's chair (French accent very much included), and Claude is running realism strict. Whether British charm survives contact with a nervous, revolution-jittery Paris is the whole question. The real history is grim and fascinating in equal measure. The 18th century was a golden age for dentistry: Pierre Fauchard, the French surgeon crowned the father of modern dentistry, improvised his tools from watchmakers and jewellers and pioneered the porcelain dentures and braces that would define the field. By the 1780s Paris was perfecting the first real alternative to teeth carved from ivory or yanked from the mouths of the dead — the so-called Waterloo teeth, harvested from battlefields and cheerfully marketed as such. Ruby has a smile, some sweets, and a plan written in pencil. The birth of modern prosthetic dentistry has never looked less safe. 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 | 1789 CE | Paris, France Featuring: Ruby Carr — comedian, writer and director, and co-host of the Odd Jobs podcast. Her show BITE ME (Invisalign vs OCD) was nominated Best Show at Leicester Comedy Festival 2026. EPISODE LINKS Follow Ruby's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com Ruby Carr: X 👉 @RubyICarr | Website 👉 https://www.rubycarrcomedy.com GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 pastmasterpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S5 · E11
    June 22 · 1 hr 6 min

    Make America Great – The "true" story of the founding of the USA, ft Liam Heffernan

    As The United States of America celebrates 250 years, we've sent our operative undercover to meet the Founding Fathers and make a few key changes... Philadelphia, October 1774. The First Continental Congress is wrapping up its final sessions inside the Pennsylvania State House, and 56 of the most influential men in the colonies are filing out into the street — tricorn hats, righteous indignation, and a very tall Virginian named Washington who already looks like he's won something. Into this steps Abraham Starsen-stripes, a man who has arrived from the future with a musket, three pounds in his pocket, and an extremely ambitious CV. Liam Heffernan — podcast producer, self-described America obsessive, and the man behind "America: The Story of the USA" — has come on PastMaster to do one thing: become the first US president. His plan is to win over the founding fathers before Washington can consolidate power, using diplomacy, an eye-catching party trick, and a flexible definition of what counts as presidential gravitas. The Game Master notes that the path to the presidency typically runs through reputation and alliances, and probably not juggling. Liam disagrees. The First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia from September to October 1774, as tensions between the thirteen colonies and the British Crown approached breaking point. The Intolerable Acts, Parliament's punitive response to the Boston Tea Party, had united delegates from across the colonies in a way nothing else had managed. What they produced was a petition and a plan; what they didn't produce was a president. That role wouldn't exist for another fifteen years, which means there's technically still a vacancy, and technically still time to apply. 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 | 1774 CE | Philadelphia, United States Featuring: Liam Heffernan — podcast producer (host of America: The Story of the USA, Big Cheese at Mercury Podcasts) EPISODE LINKS Follow Liam's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com Liam Heffernan: America: The Story of the USA podcast 👉 https://mercurypodcasts.com GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 pastmasterpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S5 · E10
    June 9 · 51 min

    Step aside Pokémon, it's Tulip Mania Time! ft Sallyann Fellowes

    Haarlem, the Dutch Republic, February 1637. Tulip Mania is at fever pitch, and comedian Sallyann Fellowes has been handed a single Semper Augustus bulb worth more than an Amsterdam townhouse. The job: sell it at auction for at least 5,000 guilders before sundown, pocket a fat cut, and get out before the most famous bubble in history finally pops. Sallyann's qualifications for surviving the floral gold rush: she's good at digging holes, brilliant at shouting her wares, and a self-confessed natural at choosing bright colours. Her actual plan is something else entirely. She decides the way to flog a priceless flower is to tell absolutely everyone she has it, swear them all to secrecy, and let the rumour do the selling. With the market wobbling and a day at most before the panic reaches Haarlem, the only question is whether a Pied-Piper sales pitch can outrun a crash that history already knows the ending to. Tulip Mania ran from 1634 to 1637, when the Dutch Republic had the highest per-capita income on Earth and a single flower bulb became a status symbol worth a fortune. The most prized varieties, the Admirals and the Lords, owed their flamed two-tone petals to a mosaic virus nobody understood at the time, and the rarest bulbs traded hands for the price of a canal house, a herd of livestock, or 15 years of comfortable living. It's widely called the first speculative market bubble: guilders changed hands in taverns over beer and tobacco, prices doubled on a whisper, and then in February 1637 the whole thing collapsed overnight. So what does a comedian do with a Semper Augustus the week before everyone discovers it's worthless? Exactly what you'd hope. 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: Early Modern | 1637 CE | Haarlem, Netherlands Featuring: Sallyann Fellowes — comedian (Leicester Square New Comedian of the Year, co-host of the Weird Biscuit podcast) EPISODE LINKS Follow Sallyanne's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com Sallyann Fellowes: Weird Biscuit podcast GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 pastmasterpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • May 28 · 1 hr 17 min

    Founding a Welsh Heaven in South America, ft. Sunil Patel

    Patagonia, 1865. A boat called the Mimosa has dumped 153 Welsh settlers onto a treeless, waterless stretch of Argentine scrubland, sold to them as a lush green paradise where the Welsh language might finally escape the English. Comedian Sunil Patel, back in the time-travel studio, has been dropped into the colony as a pioneer with one job: keep Y Wladfa alive long enough to become a country. Sunil's strategy for surviving a marketing-lie of a colony is half eager settler, half man slowly realising he's been mis-sold a property. He's also been handed a chaos wildcard he can play exactly once, and neither he nor the Game Master has any idea what it actually does. The promised lush valleys are a desert. The Atlantic crossing has taken a year. The locals haven't shown up yet. And the chaos card is sitting there, untested, waiting. The real Y Wladfa is one of the strangest footnotes in modern history. In 1865 a Welsh preacher named Michael D. Jones convinced 153 of his countrymen to sail the Mimosa from Liverpool to Argentine Patagonia, ruling out the United States and Australia because there were already too many English there. The early years brought failed crops, washed-away houses, and a colony begging Buenos Aires to let them leave — until the Tehuelche taught them to hunt guanaco and a farmer's wife reinvented irrigation by watching the Chubut river flood its banks. Welsh is still spoken in pockets of Patagonia today. Whether it survives an untested chaos mechanic and one comedian with a building-society fact-check addiction is a separate question entirely. 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. Era: Modern | 1865 CE | Chubut, Argentine Patagonia Featuring: Sunil Patel — actor and comedian (Things You Should Have Done, Alice & Jack, A Whole Lifetime with Jamie Demetriou) EPISODE LINKS Follow Sunil's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com Sunil Patel: Instagram @sunilpatelcomedy | X @sunilpatel | sunilpatelcomedy.com GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 pastmasterpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S5 · E8
    May 13 · 1 hr 22 min

    The Singing Grave Diggers of The Black Death, ft The McPherson Twins

    Bristol, 1348. The Black Death is two days from sealing the city, bodies are being carted through the mud, and a desperate merchant needs a sealed letter carried to London before the gates close. Patrick and Hugo McPherson, sketch comedy duo Pear, have three days, a horse, two silver coins, and an absolute refusal to begin the mission until the haggling is settled. Their survival strategy for plague-era England is built on three certainties: they are six foot seven, they are Australian, and they have famously powerful bladders. Patrick plays grade-three guitar in the key of C; Hugo handstands; both refuse to drink the doctor's prescribed remedy because they know, with full historical hindsight, that the piss man is wrong. The real 1348 was apocalyptic. Half of Europe died, peasants got rich enough to wear posh clothes, and physicians genuinely prescribed bathing in faeces. 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 | 1348 CE | Bristol, England Featuring: Patrick & Hugo McPherson — sketch duo Pair (Edinburgh Comedy Awards Best Show nominee 2025, four sold-out Fringe runs) EPISODE LINKS Follow Pair's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com Pear: Instagram @hugopatrickpear GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 pastmasterpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S5 · E8
    April 27 · 1 hr 24 min

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

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

  • April 13 · 1 hr 1 min

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

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

  • March 30 · 1 hr 1 min

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

    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 👉 pastmasterpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S5 · E4
    March 16 · 1 hr 1 min

    How to conquer Greenland ft. Ashley Haden

    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 👉 pastmasterpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S5 · E3
    March 2 · 46 min

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

    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 👉 pastmasterpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S5 · E2
    February 16 · 54 min

    Accidental Mayan Blood Sacrifice ft. Bilal Zafar

    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 👉 pastmasterpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • January 6 · 12 min

    What next for PastMaster... ?

    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 👉 pastmasterpod@gmail.com 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

  • Dec 30, 2025 · 3 min

    "Modern Knowledge / Medieval Consequences" — TRAILER

    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 👉 pastmasterpod@gmail.com 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

Showing 1–20 of 22 episodes