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PastMaster: Reshaping History

PastMaster: Reshaping History

Written by: PastMaster
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If you were sent back in time, could you survive and thrive — or would you be burnt at the stake for being a witch? Welcome to PastMaster, the show that turns history into an interactive adventure game. Each episode, hosts Ryan and Tan are joined by a special guest comedian who is sent back in time with nothing but their modern knowledge and the shirt on their back. Under the guidance of a benevolent robot Game Master, they navigate to a different era each episode and find out if they’ve got what it takes to reshape the past. Will it be historically accurate? Will any of it make sense? Will they master the past? Tune in to find out. World
Episodes
  • Teeth of the Revolution ft. Ruby Carr

    Teeth of the Revolution ft. Ruby Carr
    Jul 7 2026
    Paris, October 1789. The Bastille has fallen, the king and queen are under guard at the Tuileries, and bread prices are on every tongue. Into this powder keg steps comedian Ruby Carr, with one mission: get a Parisian dentist's revolutionary porcelain dentures in front of the Académie des Sciences before a rival surgeon-dentist can smear them as brittle frauds. Her cover story? A sugar-free confectioner newly arrived from Geneva, seeking dental expertise. Ruby's survival kit for revolutionary France: a winning smile she swears can make anyone do exactly what she wants, and a tin of sugar-free sweets for an age when most mouths were a disaster of rot. She installs herself as a Genevan lady of the top 2 percent and sets about charming a dentist who has every reason to distrust a stranger with peculiar manners. The problem is that this is Paris in the week after the March on Versailles, where accusing the wrong man of the wrong thing gets him dragged from his house by morning. Ryan takes the Game Master's chair (French accent very much included), and Claude is running realism strict. Whether British charm survives contact with a nervous, revolution-jittery Paris is the whole question. The real history is grim and fascinating in equal measure. The 18th century was a golden age for dentistry: Pierre Fauchard, the French surgeon crowned the father of modern dentistry, improvised his tools from watchmakers and jewellers and pioneered the porcelain dentures and braces that would define the field. By the 1780s Paris was perfecting the first real alternative to teeth carved from ivory or yanked from the mouths of the dead — the so-called Waterloo teeth, harvested from battlefields and cheerfully marketed as such. Ruby has a smile, some sweets, and a plan written in pencil. The birth of modern prosthetic dentistry has never looked less safe. 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: Modern | 1789 CE | Paris, France Featuring: Ruby Carr — comedian, writer and director, and co-host of the Odd Jobs podcast. Her show BITE ME (Invisalign vs OCD) was nominated Best Show at Leicester Comedy Festival 2026. EPISODE LINKS Follow Ruby's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com Ruby Carr: X 👉 @RubyICarr | Website 👉 https://www.rubycarrcomedy.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
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Make America Great – The "true" story of the founding of the USA, ft Liam Heffernan

    Make America Great – The "true" story of the founding of the USA, ft Liam Heffernan
    Jun 22 2026
    As The United States of America celebrates 250 years, we've sent our operative undercover to meet the Founding Fathers and make a few key changes... Philadelphia, October 1774. The First Continental Congress is wrapping up its final sessions inside the Pennsylvania State House, and 56 of the most influential men in the colonies are filing out into the street — tricorn hats, righteous indignation, and a very tall Virginian named Washington who already looks like he's won something. Into this steps Abraham Starsen-stripes, a man who has arrived from the future with a musket, three pounds in his pocket, and an extremely ambitious CV. Liam Heffernan — podcast producer, self-described America obsessive, and the man behind "America: The Story of the USA" — has come on PastMaster to do one thing: become the first US president. His plan is to win over the founding fathers before Washington can consolidate power, using diplomacy, an eye-catching party trick, and a flexible definition of what counts as presidential gravitas. The Game Master notes that the path to the presidency typically runs through reputation and alliances, and probably not juggling. Liam disagrees. The First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia from September to October 1774, as tensions between the thirteen colonies and the British Crown approached breaking point. The Intolerable Acts, Parliament's punitive response to the Boston Tea Party, had united delegates from across the colonies in a way nothing else had managed. What they produced was a petition and a plan; what they didn't produce was a president. That role wouldn't exist for another fifteen years, which means there's technically still a vacancy, and technically still time to apply. 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: Modern | 1774 CE | Philadelphia, United States Featuring: Liam Heffernan — podcast producer (host of America: The Story of the USA, Big Cheese at Mercury Podcasts) EPISODE LINKS Follow Liam's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com Liam Heffernan: America: The Story of the USA podcast 👉 https://mercurypodcasts.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
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Step aside Pokémon, it's Tulip Mania Time! ft Sallyann Fellowes

    Step aside Pokémon, it's Tulip Mania Time! ft Sallyann Fellowes
    Jun 9 2026
    Haarlem, the Dutch Republic, February 1637. Tulip Mania is at fever pitch, and comedian Sally Anne Fellows has been handed a single Semper Augustus bulb worth more than an Amsterdam townhouse. The job: sell it at auction for at least 5,000 guilders before sundown, pocket a fat cut, and get out before the most famous bubble in history finally pops. Sally's qualifications for surviving the floral gold rush: she's good at digging holes, brilliant at shouting her wares, and a self-confessed natural at choosing bright colours. Her actual plan is something else entirely. She decides the way to flog a priceless flower is to tell absolutely everyone she has it, swear them all to secrecy, and let the rumour do the selling. With the market wobbling and a day at most before the panic reaches Haarlem, the only question is whether a Pied-Piper sales pitch can outrun a crash that history already knows the ending to. Tulip Mania ran from 1634 to 1637, when the Dutch Republic had the highest per-capita income on Earth and a single flower bulb became a status symbol worth a fortune. The most prized varieties, the Admirals and the Lords, owed their flamed two-tone petals to a mosaic virus nobody understood at the time, and the rarest bulbs traded hands for the price of a canal house, a herd of livestock, or 15 years of comfortable living. It's widely called the first speculative market bubble: guilders changed hands in taverns over beer and tobacco, prices doubled on a whisper, and then in February 1637 the whole thing collapsed overnight. So what does a comedian do with a Semper Augustus the week before everyone discovers it's worthless? Exactly what you'd hope. 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: Early Modern | 1637 CE | Haarlem, Netherlands Featuring: Sally Anne Fellows — comedian (Leicester Square New Comedian of the Year, co-host of the Weird Biscuit podcast) EPISODE LINKS Follow Sally Anne's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com Sally Anne Fellows: Weird Biscuit podcast 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
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    52 mins
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