Nick Horseman returns to PastMaster, becoming refined English gentleman Thorne Jackson-Reynolds. He arrived in the lawless Dakota Territory with an impossible mission: establish a cattle ranch while preventing war between gold-hungry miners and the Sioux tribe. What follows is pure PastMaster chaos as modern pop songs collide with the Old West, featuring piano performances of Spice Girls hits, interpretive dance routines, and the world's first combination cattle ranch/cheese factory/dance studio...
Jul 07, 2025•55 min•Season 4Ep. 15
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! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 02, 2025•59 sec
PastMaster takes a dark turn as Ryan, Tan, and guest Nick Horseman compete in a 'Death Wish Speed Run' at Port Jackson's newly established penal colony. Using DeepSeek's surprisingly sassy AI as game master, our time travellers attempt increasingly outlandish ways to meet their maker—from attacking guards with rusty spoons to unleashing venomous creatures on colonial officials. Who will claim the dubious honour of the fastest, most stylish demise in this brutal historical setting? In 1788, the F...
May 19, 2025•38 min•Season 4Ep. 14
Step back to 1330 and meet the richest person who ever lived - Mansa Musa, with a net worth of $700 billion in today's money! Can Ryan convince this golden emperor to fund humanity's first space mission? In this wild historical adventure, Ryan transports himself to the heart of the Mali Empire during its golden age. Armed with pocket watches and eyeglasses, he must impress the notoriously wealthy Mansa Musa without getting executed as a witch. But when introducing simple technology succeeds, Rya...
May 05, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 4Ep. 13
What happens when you replace Asterix's magic potion with cocaine? Risky Dave finds out the hard way when he tries to help a Gallic tribe resist Julius Caesar's invasion in 55 BCE Inspired by the beloved Asterix and Obelix comics, Tan creates a character named 'Risky Dave' who attempts to help a Gallic village resist Roman occupation. But instead of magic potion, he brings cocaine as 'battle magic.' The results are predictably disastrous as the drug-fueled warriors charge into battle with plenty...
Apr 28, 2025•40 min•Season 4Ep. 13
Comedian and writer Matthew Crosby steps out of his bathtub time machine to join us on a murder mystery adventure in Victorian London. When mysterious ritual murders start appearing across the city, Matthew is called up to investigate. Posing as French detective 'Inspector Pompidou,' Matthew discovers a satanic cult attempting dark and mysterious deeds in the centre of London. Armed with holy water, a crucifix, and his quick wit, he must infiltrate the cult before darkness consumes Victorian Lon...
Apr 21, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 4Ep. 11
What if the Trojan Horse...wasn't a horse at all? In this epic battle of wits, Tan and Keon compete to design history's greatest deception at the walls of Troy. The siege of Troy has dragged on for a decade when our contestants arrive with modern minds but Bronze Age materials. Under the watchful eye of a science-obsessed Game Master (channeling Bill Nye), Tan and Keon's increasingly desperate attempts to create the perfect Trojan deception face the harsh scrutiny of historical accuracy. From ti...
Apr 14, 2025•55 min•Season 4Ep. 10
Oh hey girl hey, its the diarrhea service! That's how to convince a maid in Henry VIII's royal palace that you're just one of the staff and not a time travelling spy on a mission. At least according to Kim and Alice from Fetch The Smelling Salts podcast who are back in PastMaster hot seat this week. Their mission – save Henry VIIIs wives from divorce and beheadings. Equipped with a smoke machine, Halloween makeup, and their Catholic background, their plan is to infiltrate the castle, gain Queen ...
Apr 07, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 4Ep. 9
In this unseen episode, from PastMaster’s darkest vault, rapper and comedian Nick Horseman sets course for Ur in the ancient kingdom of Mesopotamia. He has one thing on his mind: cause mayhem and achieve Game Over as quickly as possible. It's a death wish speed run. Can you play Grand Theft Auto in Mesoptamia? What’s the best way to insult the guard captain’s mother? And how quickly can Horseman be thrown into jail? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 24, 2025•39 min•Season 4Ep. 8
The Thots TV team are back in the hot seat with the most impossible challenge yet. Travelling back to before the Big Bang. Embodying a "heat-resistant" Danny Dyer, can they survive in a place where the rules of physics don't even exist? Plus what would the Garden of Eden have been like? We took a quick trip over their to check out the local boozers. We also debut Chinese upstart DeepSeek as GameMaster, bringing a unique flavour to proceedings. Join us for a hilarious journey through creation myt...
Mar 17, 2025•45 min•Season 4Ep. 7
It's a battle for the ages as Keon and Tan go head-to-head in a shocking two-player PastMaster showdown! In this electrifying episode, we travel back to 1890s America to determine the fate of electricity itself during the infamous War of the Currents. With Keon channeling Nikola Tesla (backed by ChatGPT) and Tan embodying Thomas Edison (powered by Claude), they'll square off in a proper technological tussle that'll make your hair stand on end. Marvel as they deploy utterly mental promotional tac...
Mar 10, 2025•49 min•Season 4Ep. 6
The Thots TV podcast join us for a gothic adventure full of literary titans, a 'haunted house' and lashings of laudanum. It's 1816, the year without a summer. Lord Byron, Mary (not yet) Shelly and friends are stuck in Villia Diodati for 3 days in stormy weather. The party that inspired Frankenstein's Monster, The Vampyr and Darkness is in full swing. Meg, Elsie and Laura arrive as the mysterious Lady Thottringham. Their mission? Stop Mary Shelley from writing Frankenstein and inspire her to crea...
Mar 03, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Season 4Ep. 5
We're breaking out of the historical timeline for a quick trip back to Middle Earth. Back in Season 1 we took ChatGPT on a quick excursion here, so how will GameMaster Claude react when we try and break the rules of PastMaster and venture into the realm of fiction? Co-host Keon is notoriously not a fan of films, especially fantasy ones. So today we thought we'd educate him all about "Bo Bo Baggins" and the gang. But Claude is a little reluctant to change Tolkien's masterpiece without a bit of pe...
Feb 24, 2025•41 min•Season 4Ep. 4
Return guest Chris Dillon joins us for another historical misadventure as he attempts to infiltrate one of humanity's greatest achievements - the Apollo 11 mission. Armed with nothing but confidence and his character "Buzz Cauldron," Chris discovers that impersonating Buzz Aldrin is considerably more challenging than anticipated, especially when the real Buzz Aldrin shows up. What follows is a cascade of increasingly chaotic events featuring fights, airlocks, spacecraft control mishaps, and unex...
Feb 17, 2025•42 min•Season 4Ep. 3
In this episode, the Zuck stops with us. Journalist and writer Chris Dillon joins us in the recent past to reshape tech history! The year is 2003, and a young Mark Zuckerberg is skulking the corridors of Harvard, his mind deep into plans to create TheFacebook. Will our tallest guest ever succeed in his mission to derail Mark Zuckerberg's social media empire, or will Harvard's surprisingly zealous campus security get in the way? Chris discovers that changing the course of tech history is harder t...
Feb 10, 2025•51 min•Season 4Ep. 2
Comedian Micky Overman joins PastMaster for the Season 4 premiere, heading to Pride & Prejudice times to give sexism a punch on the nose. Micky steps back into Georgian-era London for a tale of romance, social intrigue, and pistols at dawn. Taking on the role of the mysterious "Lady Hemming-Trout," She must navigate a delicate matchmaking mission to unite two star-crossed lovers while outmaneuvering fortune hunters and sharp-tongued society matrons. When a shooting contest with an arrogant n...
Feb 03, 2025•51 min•Season 4Ep. 1
It's that time of the year and the PastMaster crew have pulled out all the stops to go on a festive adventure for the ages. Tinsel ✅ Santa hats ✅ Christmas Ghosts delivering time travel rebukes ✅ Returning guest, comedian Nick Horseman narrates the three Christmas Ghosts of Past, Present and Future. Ryan, Tan and Keon are set a series of festive challenges across three different eras. Can they make their mark on Christmas history? Or is it lumps of coal and eternal banishment to the naughty list...
Dec 16, 2024•57 min•Season 3Ep. 15
The countdown to Christmas continues with another PastMaster replay special. We've turned back the clock to this episode from Season 2 where we uncovered the mysteries of Stonehenge... Keon’s always wanted to know who built Stonehenge and why. So Ryan used PastMaster to find out (of course). In what is possibly the trippiest episode of PastMaster yet, our AI GameMaster concocts a Neolithic adventure for the ages. It all goes pear-shaped when Ryan encounters a mysterious man called Elron (alarm b...
Dec 09, 2024•54 min
In true PastMaster style we're turning back the clock to revisit the past. In this case, our own podcasting past. In this episode from Season 2, Tan travels back to the slums of Victorian Whitechapel in a bid to catch Jack the Ripper and solve one of the most notorious unsolved crimes ever. If AI has access to all the knowledge in history, could it spot patterns in the data that mere humans have missed? Will GameMaster have a convincing theory as to who Jack the Ripper was? And can Tan actually ...
Dec 01, 2024•39 min
In our first-ever live show, Ryan tries to persuade a boatful of explorers that he is a deity. Plus our live studio audience attempts to "bake a gun" in revolutionary France. If you were sent back in time you could persuade people of all sorts of things given your advanced knowledge of future events. But could you persuade them to worship you as a deity? This is the victory condition set out by GameMaster in today's episode of PastMaster. It turns out GameMaster (powered once again by Claude) ha...
Nov 11, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 3Ep. 14
With American politics constantly in the news right now PastMaster heads back in time to visit the first presidents of the USA to see what they were like. The year is 1775. Colonial America is on the brink of declaring independence from Britain. Ryan has arrived on the scene with two goals in mind: 1) Can he make some changes to the constitution before it gets enshrined? 2) Can he make such a big mark on history that they put his face on Mount Rushmore? Continuing our exploration of Claude-power...
Oct 07, 2024•49 min•Season 3Ep. 13
Is Atlantis real? That's the question we've been pondering as Tan takes to the PastMaster hotseat to try and uncover the truth. Travelling back to ancient Athens, the first priority is to seek out a man who is a philosopher, and yet most famously known by his wrestling name - Plato. Will Plato give us the answers? Will GameMaster Claude be any better at solving mysteries than GameMaster Chatty G? Is Plato any good at wrestling? Tune in and find out. Don't forget, tickets are onsale now for the f...
Sep 30, 2024•39 min•Season 3Ep. 12
Is Claude a more realistic GameMaster than ChatGPT? This week we're bringing back 'Hard Mode' to PastMaster. We've crafted a particularly difficult prompt that requires full realism, or else... It turns out, Claude is very hard indeed, so much so that we had enough time for 3 cracks at it! Keon heads to the Victorian era to claim some lands from a nobleman. Tan has a little jolly in the ancient Aztec empire. And Ryan brings a throwback to Season 1, Episode 15 where we tried to 'take out' Adolf H...
Sep 23, 2024•41 min•Season 3Ep. 11
We've been a little quiet over the summer, but fear not, the wheels of time are still turning at the PastMaster HQ! We've got 3 exciting announcements: 1. Next week PastMaster Season 3 returns. We're having another crack at making the show even harder, only this time using Claude instead of ChatGPT. But how hard is too hard? Tune in on Monday 23rd to find out. 2. PastMaster is going live!! We've been invited to perform at the Cheerful Earful Podcast Festival. Catch us live and in person on Sunda...
Sep 17, 2024•2 min
Comedian Heidi Regan joins the PastMaster team for the chance to meet her hero Robin Hood. Sent on a mission to steal the Sheriff of Nottingham’s treasure and free the Merry Men from jail, will she use stealth and cunning or brute force (or a little of both?) Expect lots of tickling, plenty of gold and if all goes to plan a good bath and a giant celebratory bonfire in Sherwood Forest. This is PastMaster’s debut with Claude 3.5, currently the chattiest, slickest chatbot in the game (allegedly). G...
Jul 09, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 10
GameMaster Claude is back and is as weird as ever! Tan has always wanted to return to feudal Japan to meet some Samurai warriors. He finally gets his chance, but will GameMaster let him play? Tan finds himself in a battle against the Samurai warriors and GameMaster itself, who insists on inserting into the story with main-character energy. Who can win in a battle of wit and brawn? In concocting a special prompt for this Claude-powered episode Ryan inserted one simple line: "GameMaster must stay ...
Jul 01, 2024•53 min•Season 3Ep. 9
Aliens. Living amongst us. Possibly. What does GameMaster think? Surely with access to all the knowledge on the internet, our AI-powered guide has parsed the data, found the patterns and come up with a convincing theory? Comedian and actor Sunil Patel (Alice & Jack (C4) The Witchfinder (BBC), This Time with Alan Partridge (BBC), Stath Lets Flats (C4)) joins us again to explore the murky goings-on inside Area 51. Get in touch with us: Instagram 👉 @PastMasterPod (check out our AI-generated ar...
Jun 24, 2024•43 min•Season 3Ep. 8
This week Keon takes the reins to explore 1970s Medellín, Colombia. The mission: Become Pablo Escobar’s right-hand man with a 50/50 split of all the takings. Ambitious as ever, but Keon has… a unique plan to get his way. First, how do you prove your worth to the biggest cartel leader in history? A lavish party may be in order... Nick Horseman joins us once again to lend his voice to GameMaster, which returns to ChatGPT after our crazy diversion to Claude last week. Get in touch with us: Tell us ...
Jun 17, 2024•43 min•Season 3Ep. 7
GameMaster - the AI-powered narrator of PastMaster adventures - gets a makeover in today's episode. ChatGPT has been benched and replaced by a competing tool known as Claude.ai We've given Claude the same starting prompt we usually feed to ChattyG. So how will it compare? Well, it turns out Claude brings a unique energy to the proceedings! Friend of the show Nick Horseman returns to the hot seat for another crack at the past, only this time he's being guided by a radically different (possibly in...
Jun 10, 2024•43 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Brace yourself. We're heading to rural Derbyshire in 1813 with Alice Nagle and Kim Marsh from @fetchsmellingsalts for a romp through Regency England's high society. While all eyes are on the debutantes and bachelors, it is the wily elder generation calling the shots. Alice and Kim take on the roles of pushy aunts with a mission – can they find an eligible bachelor for their nieces? Expect a full helping of dashing bachelors, an ensemble of blushing debutantes and lashings of devious matriarchs...
Jun 04, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 3Ep. 5
