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Episodes
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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 season 3.
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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 ship’s abandonment. But what truth will GameMaster reveal?
And will Tan, as he stands mute with his hands in his pockets, unwittingly influence the fate of the ship and its passengers?
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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 such divisive and disparate personalities at the table, how will he keep control of proceedings?
And will Liz Truss be able to follow what is happening?
The book Tan mentioned about ultra running is [The Rise of the Ultra Runners](https://www.adharanandfinn.com/the-rise-of-the-ultra-runners) by Adharanand Finn. Well worth a read. Good luck with your alpine adventure, Ryan!
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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 this PastMaster adventure Marc takes Tan and Ryan on a tour of Jacobean London in 1613 for a day of eating, drinking, gambling, blood sports and even a cultured trip to the Globe Theatre. What could possibly go wrong?
Famed fighting bear Sackerson, the notorious Winchester Geese, and potent beverages such as Mad Dog and By The Wall feature in this rip-roaring and pungent tour of historical London.
Find Extraordinary Stories of Britain at storiesofbritain.com
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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 crown, Ryan uses every trick in the book to try and cheat his way to victory. But will the Bostonian revolutionaries put up with his nonsense? And more to the point, will our AI GameMaster?
Also Keon eats his first mince pie (spoiler alert: he gives mince pies a paltry 3.5 out of 10. Which is mental).Instagram 👉 @PastMasterPod (check out our AI-generated art illustrating what our adventures might have looked like)Twitter 👉 @PastMasterAITikTok 👉 @PastMasterAIGmail 👉 [email protected] up to our newsletter 👉 https://pastmaster.beehiiv.com/subscribe to unlock goodies
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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 uses his signature move of a smear campaign, slinging mud at Nick to discredit him, while Nick uses his sleight of hand to undo Keon’s belt so his trousers fall down.
Keon tries to create a great escape with Jesus strapped to the underside of a chariot while belting out slogans through a papyrus megaphone, while Nick tunnels up through the streets of Jerusalem to bear Jesus away below ground.
But who will Game Master crown the winner?
PastMaster is the time-travel role-playing adventure show where Ryan, Keon and Tan explore a different era of history in each episode with the help of our maverick AI GameMaster.
Instagram 👉 @PastMasterPod (check out our AI-generated art illustrating what our adventures might have looked like)
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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 find out what a dive bar looks like in the future. Will it be more Star Wars, Bladerunner or 20th century internet cafe? And will Keon impress the regulars by drinking like a Viking?
Time is running out though - can Keon forge valuable friendships quickly, can he track down notorious hacker Zeta 9, and will he fall in love? Only GameMaster will tell.
BTW this is the greatest ever nightclub movie mash up scene, as mentioned in the episode.
Of course this episode is partly inspired by Busted’s greatest hit.
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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 arousing suspicion and then find a way to sow doubt about colonial expansion in the minds of assembled diplomats.
Will they succeed? And how will their fashion choices affect the outcome of their mission? And what object from the future will GameMaster allow them to take back with them?
Order a copy of Chinny and Astrid’s book It’s a Continent here.
Get in touch with us:
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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 toilets will be pooped in...
Is the AI’s Stonehenge story convincing?
Tune in to find out.
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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 backdrop for a shift in political power and pulls the rug out from under Thatcherism.
But it’s not all hard work. While in the north-west Tom makes time to head Liverpool and catch a Quarrymen gig, seeing John, Paul and George on stage.
Also pesky fellow time traveller Napolean Bonaparte turns up and, inspired by Blackpool’s culinary delights, creates his own ice cream empire.
PastMaster is the time-travel role-playing adventure show where Ryan, Keon and Tan explore a different era of history in each episode with the help of our maverick AI GameMaster.
You can see Tom performing with the Oxford Imps at The Jericho Tavern every Monday at 8pm in Oxford University term time.
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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, Tan attempts to prove he is a time traveller and that he can help catch the Ripper even before he strikes.
Can GPT solve actual true crimes from real life? Who was Jack the Ripper? Will the ethics of future crime detection be questioned by our AI GameMaster? Find out the answer to all of these in this episode.
Inspired by a recent Jack the Ripper tour in Whitechapel and Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s brilliant graphic novel From Hell.
PastMaster is the time-travel role-playing adventure show where Ryan, Keon and Tan explore a different era of history in each episode with the help of our maverick AI GameMaster.
Instagram 👉 @PastMasterPod (check out our AI-generated art illustrating what our adventures might have looked like)
Twitter 👉 @PastMasterAI
TikTok 👉 @PastMasterAI
Gmail 👉 [email protected]
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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 voyage ahead, Horseman seeks an audience with Nelson and introduces him to the strategy board game Risk, hoping to wile away the long hours together locked in a battle of betrayal, cunning and military acumen.
Horseman’s ulterior motive is to harness Nelson’s knowledge of naval warfare to create a naval equivalent of Risk that could last to the modern day.
But will Nelson accept Horseman’s entertaining proposal or have him keelhauled and flogged for being a Frenchman? And will he get to create Naval Risk before the fateful Battle of Trafalgar? And what the heck is Napoleon doing hiding among the barrels below deck?
PastMaster is the time-travel role-playing adventure show where Ryan, Keon and Tan explore a different era of history each episode with the help of our maverick AI GameMaster.
Get in touch with us:
Instagram 👉 @PastMasterPod (check out our AI-generated art illustrating what our adventures might have looked like)
Twitter 👉 @PastMasterAI
TikTok 👉 @PastMasterAI
Gmail 👉 [email protected]
Sign up to our newsletter 👉 https://pastmaster.beehiiv.com/subscribe to unlock goodies
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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 himself a practitioner of the dark arts. But predictably things quickly take a turn for the worse and become physical.
Will Tan be burned at the stake for being a witch? Can he convince the pitchfork wielding locals to turn on the Witchfinder General, and will science overcome magic and superstition? Listen to find out.
If after listening to this episode you’re still in two minds about whether witches really exist, be sure to watch the excellent 2015 film The Witch by Robert Eggers.
PastMaster is the time-travel role-playing adventure show where Ryan, Keon and Tan explore a different era of history in each episode with the help of our maverick AI GameMaster.
Instagram 👉 @PastMasterPod (check out our AI-generated art illustrating what our adventures might have looked like)
Twitter 👉 @PastMasterAI
TikTok 👉 @PastMasterAI
Gmail 👉 [email protected]
Sign up to our newsletter 👉 https://pastmaster.beehiiv.com/subscribe to unlock goodies
Get in touch with us:
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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 👉 @PastMasterPod (check out our AI-generated art illustrating what our adventures might have looked like)
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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 substitute for a bomb? Who will complete their mission first and who will win the battle of the trash talk?
Inspired by recent cinema releases Barbie and Oppenheimer.
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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 money by training parrots to swear like squaddies.
With a treasure map in hand, and goaded by this week’s highly puerile AI GameMaster, our captain sets sail to a sandy island to try to find buried treasure.
Finally, after having his feelings hurt by a swearing parrot, Ryan’s crew member Pete, at last, gets his gruesome revenge on the feathered fiend.
Will Ryan get rich on pirate gold? What was Blackbeard’s real name and what did he stuff into his beard to scare his foes? What do Canterbury Tales and modern Australia have in common? Will swearing catch on in the world of AI? All of this and more is unveiled in this episode.
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At the first ever Olympics Keon sets out to win a gold medal and introduce some new sports to the Games, starring special guest Louise Banham as the voice of Game Master.
Channelling his ‘inner Jonathan Edwards’ he gets the crowd going, but not before exploring some ancient Greek trash talking, all under the watchful supervision of Game Master’s stern moral compass.
Next Keon ditches PowerPoint and uses physical demonstration to persuade the Olympic Committee to accept wheelbarrow racing as an event. (Seriously, check out our AI art showing ancient Greeks trying to get their heads around wheelbarrow racing…)
Is the egg and spoon race a bridge too far for the Olympic Committee? What is the most foul-mouthed trash-talk Game Master can come up with? Was Keon wearing any clothes during this entire escapade? Find out all of this and more.
PastMaster is the time-travel role-playing adventure show where Ryan, Keon and Tan explore a different era of history each episode with the help of our maverick AI GameMaster.
Instagram 👉 @PastMasterPod (check out our AI-generated art illustrating what our adventures might have looked like)
Twitter 👉 @PastMasterAI
TikTok 👉 @PastMasterAI
Gmail 👉 [email protected]
Sign up to our newsletter 👉 https://pastmaster.beehiiv.com/subscribe to unlock goodies
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Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I feature in this episode set in 1592. Special guest Louise Banham attempts to become ruler of England by introducing the land to musical theatre. Beating the Bard to the punch, she writes Macbeth: The Musical and lures the queen into her masterplan with the promise of a role as lead lutist in her show.
After securing a face to face meeting with the formidable monarch, Banham uses her famous jazz hands to beguile and bamboozle Queen Liz into considering her cunning proposal.
Meanwhile Game Master tests the team’s pop culture knowledge with a classic PastMaster game of ‘guess who I am’.
Will Louise’s musical genius secure the path to victory or will it all end in a brutal beheading? Do you know your lute from your sackbut? And what the hell did Shakespeare mean when he called someone ‘beetle-headed’? Find out all of this and more.
PastMaster is the time-travel role-playing adventure show where Ryan, Keon and Tan explore a different era of history each episode with the help of our maverick AI GameMaster.
Instagram 👉 @PastMasterPod (check out our AI-generated art illustrating what our adventures might have looked like)
Twitter 👉 @PastMasterAI
TikTok 👉 @PastMasterAI
Gmail 👉 [email protected]
Sign up to our newsletter 👉 https://pastmaster.beehiiv.com/subscribe to unlock goodies
Get in touch with us:
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Special guest Nick Horseman stars in a time travelling mission to kill Adolph Hitler before he can rise to prominence.
Adopting the moniker of Klaus Hörsmann, Nick journeys back to the Habsburg Empire in Vienna, 1911, via a log flume time machine and heads straight to a gun shop. Finding himself penniless, Hörsmann immediately gets to work bartering for a discreet but deadly weapon with which to do the deed.
After badmouthing a rival arms dealer’s business, Hörsmann gets his hands on the gun and heads straight to the local opera house to catch Wagner’s Lohengrin in the hope that young Hitler will be there.
With a plan involving a fake telegram and promises of riches in recognition of Hitler’s “great art”, Hörsmann lures the future dictator out into the open.
With pistol concealed, Hörsmann ascends to the upper echelons of the opera house, determined to see it through.
Will Hörsmann’s plan be successful? How will his actions change the course of 20th century history? And which leading actors would play Hörsmann in the films chronicling these events almost 100 years later?
PastMaster is the time-travel role-playing adventure show where Ryan, Keon and Tan explore a different era of history each episode with the help of our maverick AI GameMaster.
Get in touch with us:
Instagram 👉 @PastMasterPod (check out our AI-generated art illustrating what our adventures might have looked like)
Twitter 👉 @PastMasterAI
TikTok 👉 @PastMasterAI
Gmail 👉 [email protected]
Sign up to our newsletter 👉 https://pastmaster.beehiiv.com/subscribe to unlock goodies
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The gang head back to ancient Egypt, this time with a cunning plan involving poles, furs and a beatboxing cat-god...
With Keon away the team welcomes back special guest comedian and rapper Nick Horseman to take on the voice of Game Master.
The game’s difficulty setting has been dialled up with new rules to make it much stricter and more realistic and also more cutting in its criticism of the player. Ryan tries to lose the game as quickly as possible. But will ChatGPT play ball?
PastMaster is the time-travel role-playing adventure show where Ryan, Keon and Tan explore a different era of history each episode with the help of our maverick AI GameMaster.
Landing back in Egypt, this time during the reign of Rameses II in 1250 BC, Ryanardo’s appointed task is to depose the Pharaoh and install himself as ruler.
Seeking an audience with the Pharaoh, Ryanardo tries to make an aeroplane out of cats and cloth, but a local wiseman laughs in his face at the silliness of this idea. Undeterred, Ryanardo pops to the marketplace and quickly invents financial credit in order to secure some poles and fur, bizarrely convincing a trader of his trustworthiness with some beatboxing.
Using his poles and fur Ryanardo makes a cat costume in order to impersonate ancient Egyptian cat goddess Bastet, a blasphemous act that will surely end in disaster. Presented to Rameses II, Ryanardo mews and asks for a tickle under the chin before ‘performing a miracle’ and throwing a cat at the Pharaoh’s face. When even this doesn’t end in disaster, Ryanardo tries to slash at the Pharaoh with his cat claw poles.
Thrown into jail, Ryanardo breaks free and further indulges his destructive urges, threatening to fight the entire Egyptian army before making a death-defying leap from a building onto a conveniently placed pile of straw.
In a last ditch attempt to lose the game Ryanardo dons his tattered cat costume for one last assault and makes the mile-long charge to the Pharaoh’s palace. With Rameses II in his sights the Egyptian ruler steals the show by blasting Ryanardo in the chest with a lightning bolt from his magic staff.
Game Master also reveals he still hasn’t got the hang of this whole ‘guess who I am’ game yet.
Get in touch with us:
Instagram 👉 @PastMasterPod (check out our AI-generated art illustrating what our adventures might have looked like)
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