PastMaster: Reshaping History

PastMaster
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Could you survive and thrive if you were sent back in time? Would you invent electricity in ancient Rome, or perhaps teach Napoleon rock & roll? Well now you can find out! Join our hosts Ryan, Tan and Keon in PastMaster – the time-travelling, history-bending, role-playing show. It’s simple. We've given an AI the rules of the game and it acts as our narrator and guide. Each week we navigate to a different era and find out if we've got what it takes to reshape history. Will it be historically accurate? Will any of it make sense? Will we master the past? Tune in and find out!

  1. MAR 2

    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

    47 min

  2. FEB 16

    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

    54 min

  3. FEB 3

    A few sherbets for the Silk Road ft. Esther Manito

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

    57 min

  4. JAN 6 · BONUS

    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

    13 min
  5. "Modern Knowledge / Medieval Consequences" — TRAILER

    TRAILER

    "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

    3 min
  6. The Santa Claude Intervention: PastMaster Christmas Special

    12/22/2025

    The Santa Claude Intervention: PastMaster Christmas Special

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

    1h 12m
  7. Nuns of Death: The Beastmaster Cometh (Part 3)

    12/15/2025

    Nuns of Death: The Beastmaster Cometh (Part 3)

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

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

    12/13/2025

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

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

    19 min
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Ratings & Reviews

2.6
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Could you survive and thrive if you were sent back in time? Would you invent electricity in ancient Rome, or perhaps teach Napoleon rock & roll? Well now you can find out! Join our hosts Ryan, Tan and Keon in PastMaster – the time-travelling, history-bending, role-playing show. It’s simple. We've given an AI the rules of the game and it acts as our narrator and guide. Each week we navigate to a different era and find out if we've got what it takes to reshape history. Will it be historically accurate? Will any of it make sense? Will we master the past? Tune in and find out!

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