PastMaster: Reshaping History

Harvard University, late October 2003. Mark Zuckerberg is a sophomore in Kirkland House, a week away from building FaceMash, and Chris Dillon is back to stop him for a second time. Last time Chris arrived after FaceMash, when Zuckerberg already had the wind in his sails. This time he's going in earlier with a plan that has nothing to do with code: find Zuck a girlfriend, turn him into a normal person, and maybe social media never happens at all.

The Game Master has other ideas. It won't even allow meeting the real Zuck and instead sets up...

Pompeii, 21 August 79 AD. Three days before Mount Vesuvius buries the town in ash, comedian Sallyann Fellowes is back for a Death Wish Speed Run, where the real goal is to lose the game as fast as humanly possible. The Game Master hands her a job anyway. A banker in the forum has just watched her total his wax tablets faster than his own clerk, and he needs her to find 8,000 sesterces that vanished from a dead wine merchant's estate auction before he has to pay the heirs in front of a magistrate.

Sallyann's declared...

The Battle of Hastings turns 960 this week. On 14 October 1066, one afternoon on a Sussex hillside ended Anglo-Saxon England, kicked off the Norman Conquest and handed the crown to William the Conqueror. To mark the anniversary, we're revisiting our Season 4 episode where Keon went back to stop it, armed with a red leather jacket, a single sparkling glove and an unshakeable faith in the moonwalk.

Keon has two objectives: keep King Harold alive, and get himself stitched into the Bayeux Tapestry. It's one of the most pivotal days in history. The day that changed the...

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...

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, i...

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...

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 m...

It’s 1985 and Wall Street is teeming with greed and corporate excess. Enter today’s guest Nikola McMurtrie, who is on a mission to climb the greasy pole while dodging sleaze, corruption and toxic masculine competitiveness.

Armed with magic (in her own head at least), a *perfect* New Yoik accent and disarming offers of cocaine, she’s on a mission to uncover the rat at the heart of an insider trading scheme.

Will she succeed? You must listen to find out.

Nikola’s show Mothman: A Romance Musical is currently (August 2026) playing at the Edin...

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...

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 f...

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 po...

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...

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...

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...

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 fo...

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...

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 le...

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...

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...

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...

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 to...

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 Pa...

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.

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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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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?

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 l...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The PastMaster crew is on summer vacation to recharge the batteries of our time machine. We'll be back at the start of July with adventures to the Wild West, the Battle of Hastings and a disturbing investigation of the occult in 1920s Massachusetts.

Until then, have a great June and see you when we get back!

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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 ch...

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 Em...