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, it's only a hat" in front of a Sioux delegation, the negotiation takes on a momentum that has nothing to do with diplomacy and everything to do with one man's refusal to read a room.

The Dakota gold rush triggered the Great Sioux War of 1876 and the death of Custer at Little Bighorn. It was one of the most violent land disputes in American history, driven by broken treaties and gold fever. Nick's proposed alternative to cavalry and conflict is monthly peace concerts and career changes into cheese-making. Whether the Wild West is ready for a posh Englishman with a business plan built on dairy products and Spice Girls covers is a question history never thought it would have to 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: Industrial | 1875 CE | Deadwood, United States

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Nick Horseman: X @rociouspun | opencomedy.com/nickhorseman

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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 character name is "Speedy." Tan's is "Doggy Doggy Ballbags," to which DeepSeek responds: "Sure, let's roll with that, because clearly you've got the maturity of a medieval jester with a head injury." Their strategies for achieving a stylish colonial death range from confronting armed guards with improvised weaponry to smuggling Australia's most venomous wildlife in a sack. DeepSeek scores every attempt with the withering precision of a disappointed figure-skating judge.

The First Fleet's arrival at Port Jackson established one of history's harshest penal colonies — limited rations, rampant disease, and punishments that made the convicts' original crimes look tame. Now three idiots are actively trying to speed-run the dying part, judged by a Chinese AI with a gift for insults. It's Aussie Rules, PastMaster style.

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 | 1788 CE | Port Jackson (Sydney Cove), Australia

EPISODE LINKS

Follow the Death Wish Speed Run on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Nick on X 👉 @rociouspun

Nick's website 👉 opencomedy.com/nickhorseman

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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 Empire under Mansa Musa controlled most of West Africa's gold production. His famous hajj to Mecca included 60,000 people and so much gold that he crashed Cairo's economy for ten years. Keon recognises the name from an Anderson .Paak song but knows nothing else. Ryan's elevator pitch to the wealthiest man in history involves optical illusions, mechanical curiosities, and a prototype that gets progressively darker as the engineering challenges mount.

Medieval Africa's golden age meets one man's wildly ambitious space proposal. The empire is real. The wealth is staggering. The space programme is not going to happen — but the pitch is something else entirely.

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 | 1330 CE | Timbuktu, Mali

EPISODE LINKS

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Gaul, 55 BCE. Julius Caesar's legions are marching north. A small Gallic village of thatched roundhouses stands in their way. And Tan has just arrived as "Risky Dave" — a cockney wide boy inspired by Asterix and Obelix, but with one critical substitution. Instead of magic potion, he's brought cocaine. In the Asterix comics, the druid Getafix brews a strength potion. Risky Dave has Colombian marching powder.

Risky Dave can't speak the language, doesn't know the geography, and his entire communication strategy is pointing at his mouth and rubbing his stomach. His plan: find the village druid, replace the magic potion with class-A substances, and rally the Gauls to "bash the Roman pigs up." The substitution raises questions that the Asterix comics never had to address, chiefly what happens when an entire war party has access to battle stimulants but zero tactical coordination. And what happens when Caesar himself gets curious about the new magic.

Caesar's conquest of Gaul was one of antiquity's most devastating military campaigns — eight years of warfare that killed an estimated one million Gauls and enslaved another million. The beloved Asterix comics reimagined this as a plucky village holding out with magic potion. PastMaster reimagines the reimagining with class-A substances and even less historical accuracy.

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 | 55 BCE | Gaul, France

EPISODE LINKS

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Victorian London, 1873. A string of ritual murders is forming a pentagram across the city map. Comedian and writer Matthew Crosby has stepped out of his bathtub time machine and into a proper murder mystery. His cover identity? French detective "Inspector Pompidou." His qualifications? Absolutely none. His modern object of choice? A fidget spinner, because "it wouldn't freak people out. It would draw people in."

Matthew brings the energy of a man who'd happily time-travel to the Black Death and give everyone "the old razzle dazzle." His approach to Victorian detective work involves paying a newspaper boy to suppress the news, sizing up crime scenes for their property value, and the kind of confidence that only a fake French inspector armed with a spinning toy can muster. When Game Master Claude accidentally throws a certain fictional detective into the mix, Matthew doesn't question it — he embraces the space-time paradox and asks to share an opium pipe.

Victorian London was a city of fog, gaslight, and genuine public fascination with the occult — seances were mainstream entertainment and secret societies thrived in the shadows. It was also, crucially, a city without CCTV, background checks, or any reliable way to verify whether "Inspector Pompidou" was a real person.

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: Industrial | 1873 CE | London, United Kingdom

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Matthew's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Matthew on Instagram 👉 @matthewcrosby1

Matthew on X 👉 @matthewcrosby

Matthew's website 👉 comedy.co.uk/people/matthew_crosby/

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Troy, 1200 BCE. The siege has dragged on for a decade. The Greeks are bored. The Trojans are smug. And "Tanchilles" and "Keonkeles" have just arrived with modern minds, Bronze Age materials, and a burning question: what if the Trojan Horse wasn't a horse at all?

Keon has never heard of the Trojan War and thinks Achilles is a job title ("Achilles, like he kills"), while Tan brings a C in design technology GCSE. Armed with these credentials, they compete to build history's greatest deception. Their proposals range from the Trojan Diplodocus to the Trojan kebab van, and Game Master Claude in full science-obsessed mode ruthlessly fact-checks every pitch against what Bronze Age craftsmen could actually build. No dinosaurs, no advanced metallurgy, just timber, rope, and increasingly desperate ingenuity.

The Trojan War, if it happened, likely took place around 1200 BCE at the site now identified as Hisarlik in modern Turkey. Homer's account gave us the original Trojan Horse. PastMaster's version involves two blokes whose combined engineering credentials amount to a C grade and some scones, trying to improve on one of history's most famous military deceptions.

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 | 1200 BCE | Hisarlik, Turkey

EPISODE LINKS

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Hampton Court Palace, 1522. Henry VIII is still married to Catherine of Aragon, but Anne Boleyn has just returned from France and is about to catch the king's wandering eye. Kim and Alice from the Fetch the Smelling Salts podcast have been sent back to save his wives — armed with a battery-powered smoke machine, a Halloween makeup palette, and their Catholic background. They didn't do any research. But they did write roast jokes about Henry VIII, and in PastMaster that's arguably more useful.

The plan is beautifully unhinged: infiltrate the palace, gain Queen Catherine's trust, then scare the living daylights out of Henry until he changes his ways. Think less diplomatic negotiation, more haunted house with fog effects. Kim wanted to just kill him outright, but Alice vetoed that. Their strategy for getting past palace staff relies on sheer audacity, and Game Master Claude's "charmingly optimistic" response to their rescue mission suggests it won't be making things easy. The challenge: deploying theatrical haunting techniques on a king who executed people for less, while navigating Tudor court politics as "an American and a Singaporean" with zero knowledge of the period.

Henry VIII's break with Rome reshaped England forever — dissolving monasteries, creating the Church of England, and costing two wives their heads. Now imagine two podcasters trying to prevent all of that with props from a party shop, knowledge of "Catholic shit," and absolutely no plan B.

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: Renaissance | 1522 CE | London, United Kingdom

EPISODE LINKS

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Fetch the Smelling Salts on Instagram 👉 @fetchsmellingsalts

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Ur, Mesopotamia, 2100 BCE. The cradle of civilisation. The birthplace of writing, agriculture, and organised religion. Nick Horseman has been sent here as "Barry Smith" with one goal: cause as much mayhem as possible and die in the most spectacular fashion he can manage. Welcome to the Death Wish Speed Run.

Nick chose Mesopotamia specifically because he knows nothing about it — "I've heard of ancient Mesopotamia and that's pretty much it" — and doesn't want to waste an era he might actually enjoy later. His strategy for achieving the fastest, most spectacular game over in PastMaster history targets the most sacred site in the city: the Ziggurat of Ur. What follows involves desecration, creative theology, and a claim about mystical excrement that somehow keeps the priests talking when they should be executing him. The question isn't whether Barry Smith dies. It's how many prompts he can stretch it to before he does.

Ancient Ur was one of the world's first great cities, a centre of trade, religion, and early law. The Sumerians invented cuneiform, built ziggurats to their gods, and established some of humanity's earliest legal codes. None of which prepared them for Barry Smith.

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 | 2100 BCE | Ur, Mesopotamia

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Nick's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Nick on X 👉 @rociouspun

Nick's website 👉 opencomedy.com/nickhorseman

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Before the Big Bang. Before atoms. Before the laws of physics even bothered to show up. The Thots TV team are back, this time with DeepSeek as Game Master, and they've been sent to the most impossible location in PastMaster history: The Void. Their character? A "heat-resistant" Danny Dyer. Their mission? Survive in a place where literally nothing exists. Not even a decent boozer.

DeepSeek calls them "either a genius or a lunatic. Maybe both." Danny Dyer's plan for pre-Big Bang survival involves confronting the void with East End directness, which goes about as well as you'd expect when the void can invent new laws of physics on the spot just to teach you a lesson. From there it's a whistle-stop tour through the Garden of Eden and Ming Dynasty China, each scenario more unhinged than the last, with DeepSeek delivering consequences that make Claude look lenient.

This episode spans approximately 13.8 billion years of history in one sitting. It also marks DeepSeek's debut as Game Master — a Chinese AI that delivers consequences with surprising sass. Whether Danny Dyer's void strategy or the Garden of Eden pub search is the more ambitious plan is a question only the listener 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: Fiction | 13.8bn BCE - 1500 CE | The Void / Garden of Eden / Beijing, China

EPISODE LINKS

Follow Thots TV's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com

Elsie on X 👉 @ElsieLoades

Laura on Instagram 👉 @lauraconnolly98

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