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...

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...

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...

Comedian and actor Sunil Patel (Alice & Jack (C4) The Witchfinder (BBC), This Time with Alan Partridge (BBC), Stath Lets Flats (C4) is back in the hot seat for another blast through the past. As our first guest back in Season 1 Sunil is a veteran of exploring the markets and brothels of history’s muddy waters. This time he’s headed back to Rome to make a name for himself amongst the Roman elite. But will GameMaster allow him to wander around punching senators without consequences? And...

First Sherlock Holmes then Hercule Poirot and now Inspector Klaus. Keon pits himself against the greatest crime-solving detectives in a special MurderMysteryMaster edition of PastMaster. We've powered up GameMaster to deliver a veritable Cluedo feast of a whodunnit. But will we ever find out who delivered the fate of the recently deceased Lord Jasper Cavendish Brown? Tune in and find out Get in touch with us: Instagram 👉 @PastMasterPod (check out our AI-generated art illustrating...

Disney's "Dark Ages" typically encompasses the late 1960s to the late 1980s. During this time the quality and success of Disney animated films suffered and it wasn’t until 1989’s The Little Mermaid that things turned around. But what happened? Why was one of the most successful studios of all time in decline? The answer likely lies with the man himself, Walt Disney, whose untimely death at 65 left the company struggling to find creative leadership that could fill his shoes. It turns out...

We're back with Season 3 of PastMaster! This week's episode is PastHard with a Vengeance as Ryan tries to turn the tables on Tan with his version of a harder, stricter game. Tan gets sent back to Ancient Sparta against his wishes and has to survive amongst the muscle-bound warriors with only the movie 300 starring Gerard Butler as his reference point material. Will he survive? Or will he be smited and ridiculed? Tune in and find out. Get in touch with...

The PastMaster crew are back with Season 3. And it's promising to be more Past-ery and more AI-y than ever before. Featuring upgraded GameMasters, Murder Mystery solving, Regency period dramas, Walt Disney, Samurais, Area 51, Cockneys, Drug Lords and so much more We've also got a whole slew of guests this season including fellow podcasters Verbal Diorama and Fetch the Smelling salts. Plus comedians Sunil Patel, Nick Horseman and more. You can also see our lovely faces as we attempt...

Looking back on highlights of season 2, Ryan, Keon and Tan pick out the good, the bad and the tremendously ugly. Phallic AI art and GameMaster’s double standards feature prominently, alongside successes such as ‘hard mode’, the mission to dismantle the Berlin Conference and improvements in AI over the course of the series. ‘King George’ makes his debut as the voice of GameMaster, and we also hear stories of chilli disaster from our hosts. Also includes as a teaser for what is coming up in...

The PastMaster team joins the fateful final voyage of the Mary Celeste, the merchant ship whose crew vanished without a trace in the Atlantic Ocean in 1872. Determined to find out the truth behind one of the world’s great unsolved mysteries, ‘Third Mate Tan’ joins the crew and bears witness to the events leading up to the abandonment of the ship. Everything from mutiny and insurance fraud to a giant squid, calm or stormy weather and even aliens has been proposed as a possible cause of the...

This week the team head to the Palace of Versailles to host a fantasy dinner party attended by the good (Jesus and Gandhi), the bad (Hitler, Stalin and Mao) prominent historical female leaders (Elizabeth I and Cleopatra) and wild card Liz Truss. Roleplaying the Hostess with the Mostest, Tan unveils a tempting but symbolic menu for the assembled guests, trying to get them to see eye to eye. Breaking the ice with a question about wrestling, Tan gets the party off to a good start, but with...

In the ultimate battle of man vs machine, we pit our human guide against artificial intelligence for an adventure through time. But who will emerge as more insightful and knowledgeable? In the human corner we have the excellent Marc Zakian from Extraordinary Stories of Britain podcast, and in the machine corner we have our trusty AI GameMaster. Marc is a Blue Badge Guide and runs regular tours in the British Museum and the Tower of London and counts Shakespeare among his specialities. For...

Besieged by PastMaster fans asking for the game to be made harder, Tan updates the rules of the game, giving us all new ‘hard mode’. This is an attempt to revert to the original concept of the game: to test whether you could truly survive and thrive in the past armed just with the knowledge in your head and the shirt on your back. Ryan sets out to test this new game with his unique brand of death-wish chaos. Jumping into Boston 1773, with the colony itching to break free from the English...

Returning to PastMaster for another crack at the past is rapper and comedian Nick Horseman. Nick (AKA Cat R Pillar) and Keon (AKA Colin Winkleforth) face off in a two-player competition to save Jesus from being arrested and crucified by the Romans. Our AI Game Master, perhaps predictably, struggles to run a game with two players in the same scenario, instead creating two co-existing realities. But to spice things up our heroes try to sabotage each other’s efforts. Keon reverts to type and...

Keon flexes his muscles and updates his Insta profile pic before jumping into the time machine and darting off to the 30th century. Landing in a year when data is apparently more valuable than gold, Keon must find a way to stop the ‘Great Data Breach’ before it can happen. (TBF the Great Data Breach sounds like something very plausible at Northamptonshire County Council in the 21st century.) Egged on by his sci-fi-friendly teammates Tan and Ryan, Keon heads to a local cybernetic cafe to...

Special guests Chinny Ukata and Astrid Madimba from It’s a Continent podcast join the PastMaster crew for a mission at the Berlin Conference of 1884. Taking aim at the event widely regarded as the point when European nations gave themselves the green light to seize Africa for themselves, Chinny and Astrid plunge into the heart of the action. Aiming to disrupt the conference and put a stop to the European colonisation of Africa, our heroines must first think of a way to get inside without...

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 bells already ringing). It turns out the secrets of Stonehenge are much bigger than anybody ever realised. Alliances will be forged, secrets will be revealed, and crystal...

Comedian and writer Tom GK returns to the PastMaster studio, taking the hot seat for his first time as a player. Heading to the Labour Party conference in Blackpool in 1959, Tom plans to alter the course of British politics and improve life for everyone in the country for decades to come. After an initial display of hopeless incompetence from our AI GameMaster, Tom finally gets to take the microphone. With a deft surgical incision into the Labour Party’s home ownership policy, Tom sets the...

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. Donning his detective gear and using the moniker Inspector Nathaniel, Tan marches into Scotland Yard in the summer of 1888 and demands to speak to Chief Insp Fred Abberline. Using his knowledge of future events, such as the eruption of Mt Bandai in Japan, the emergence of touch typing, and a fire at the Main Building in Wells College, New York,...

Special guest rapper and comedian Nick Horseman returns to PastMaster in the year 1805 for an adventure aboard the HMS Victory en route to the Battle of Trafalgar. With a surreal curveball, Admiral Horatio Nelson’s nemesis, the time travelling Napoleon Bonaparte, turns up below deck on the Victory, blending in among the barrels. Horseman, fearing he might be branded a traitor, uses his keen sense of smell to implicate Napoleon and prove his allegiance to the crown. Next, with a long sea...

PastMaster is back for season 2 and for this Halloween special Tan takes on the Witchfinder General himself in a bid to end the persecution of witches. Starring special guest comedian and writer Tom GK as the voice of GameMaster. Tan finds himself in the spooky surrounds of Suffolk town of Bury St Edmunds during the English Civil War it isn’t long before Witchfinder Matthew Hopkins and Tan are locked in a battle of words to decide whether witches really exist and to test whether Tan is...

We’re wrapping up Season 1 of PastMaster with a look back on some of the highlights of our adventures so far. Joining us “live, in-person” for the very first time is GameMaster itself, being voiced by various AI voices ranging from wheeler-dealer ‘Dave’ to creepy, patronizing ‘Thomas’ And finally, in a break from the past, we look ahead to FutureMaster and tease what’s coming up next. We'd love your thoughts and feedback on where to take this in Season 2. Get in touch with us: Instagram...

Barbie and Ken try to prevent nuclear war by sabotaging the bomb in our first two-player game of PastMaster. Barbie, played by Keon, goes deep undercover in New Mexico, using her knowledge of physics and her charm to get past the US scientists and into the lab. Meanwhile Ken, played by Tan, goes so deep undercover in Germany that he almost forgets his mission and hunkers down into a simple life of farming. Will the pop culture icons get to meet Oppenheimer? Can you use bananas as a...

EXPLICIT CONTENT WARNING: While we have bleeped out the worst of the swear words, this episode is definitely not safe for work or those who don’t wish to hear bad language Ryan finally gets Chat GPT to swear and puts it to the test in an adventure full of grimy pirates, squawking parrots and buried treasure. After assembling a malodorous crew of cutlass-rattling sea-dogs, Ryan (AKA Captain F*ck-C*ntle) tries his luck wooing Belch-Breathed Bella. Next, he gets serious with a plan to make...