PastMaster: Reshaping History

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 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Patagonia, 1865. A boat called the Mimosa has dumped 153 Welsh settlers onto a treeless, waterless stretch of Argentine scrubland, sold to them as a lush green paradise where the Welsh language might finally escape the English. Comedian Sunil Patel, back in the time-travel studio, has been dropped into the colony as a pioneer with one job: keep Y Wladfa alive long enough to become a country. Sunil's strategy for surviving a marketing-lie of a colony is half eager settler, half man slowly realising he's been mis-sold a property. He's also been handed a chaos wildcard he can play exactly once, and neither he nor the Game Master has any idea what it actually does. The promised lush valleys are a desert. The Atlantic crossing has taken a year. The locals haven't shown up yet. And the chaos card is sitting there, untested, waiting. The real Y Wladfa is one of the strangest footnotes in modern history. In 1865 a Welsh preacher named Michael D. Jones convinced 153 of his countrymen to sail the Mimosa from Liverpool to Argentine Patagonia, ruling out the United States and Australia because there were already too many English there. The early years brought failed crops, washed-away houses, and a colony begging Buenos Aires to let them leave — until the Tehuelche taught them to hunt guanaco and a farmer's wife reinvented irrigation by watching the Chubut river flood its banks. Welsh is still spoken in pockets of Patagonia today. Whether it survives an untested chaos mechanic and one comedian with a building-society fact-check addiction is a separate question 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. Era: Modern | 1865 CE | Chubut, Argentine Patagonia Featuring: Sunil Patel — actor and comedian (Things You Should Have Done, Alice & Jack, A Whole Lifetime with Jamie Demetriou) EPISODE LINKS Follow Sunil's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com Sunil Patel: Instagram @sunilpatelcomedy | X @sunilpatel | sunilpatelcomedy.com GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bristol, 1348. The Black Death is two days from sealing the city, bodies are being carted through the mud, and a desperate merchant needs a sealed letter carried to London before the gates close. Patrick and Hugo McPherson, sketch comedy duo Pear, have three days, a horse, two silver coins, and an absolute refusal to begin the mission until the haggling is settled. Their survival strategy for plague-era England is built on three certainties: they are six foot seven, they are Australian, and they have famously powerful bladders. Patrick plays grade-three guitar in the key of C; Hugo handstands; both refuse to drink the doctor's prescribed remedy because they know, with full historical hindsight, that the piss man is wrong. The real 1348 was apocalyptic. Half of Europe died, peasants got rich enough to wear posh clothes, and physicians genuinely prescribed bathing in faeces. 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 | 1348 CE | Bristol, England Featuring: Patrick & Hugo McPherson — sketch duo Pair (Edinburgh Comedy Awards Best Show nominee 2025, four sold-out Fringe runs) EPISODE LINKS Follow Pair's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com Pear: Instagram @hugopatrickpear GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Florence, 1480. The Palazzo Medici is blazing against the February dark, 500 guests in silk and masks are drinking like nothing bad happened two years ago in the Duomo, and Lorenzo de Medici's gold mask can't quite hide the limp. To celebrate three years of PastMaster, Ryan and Tan have dragged returning co-host Keon out of parental leave, handed everyone a plus-one from history, and gatecrashed the greatest party the Renaissance ever threw. Ryan brings a Neanderthal — male, roughly 30,000 years out of his depth, dangerously interested in the nearest torch. Keon brings Anne Boleyn, sharp, multilingual, and 40 years early for the court politics that will eventually kill her. Tan brings Zeus. Actual Zeus. King of the gods, toga intact. Will Game Master Claude suffer silly plus-ones gladly? The real Medici masquerade sat two years downstream of the Pazzi Conspiracy — the Easter-Sunday cathedral stabbing that killed Lorenzo's brother Giuliano and left Lorenzo himself wounded, vengeful, and consolidating power through spectacle. Florence in 1480 is Botticelli arguing about the exact colour of shadow, Leonardo sketching whatever catches his eye, and every wealthy house performing the careful fiction that the city isn't one grudge away from another bloodletting. Now throw three time travellers into it with a Neanderthal, a future English queen, and a Greek god who intends to be noticed. Happy birthday to us. 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 | 1480 CE | Florence, Italy Special: Third birthday episode — Keon returns as co-host after six months away. EPISODE LINKS Follow the boys' adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com The Pazzi Conspiracy (the real backstory) 👉 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazzi_conspiracy GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wallachia, 1456. Vlad III has just retaken his throne, impaling stakes line the city's edge, and a scribe named Constantin has hidden the only written record of Vlad's chaotic first reign in a monastery outside Targoviste. Comedian Rohan Sharma has two days to find the Chronicle before armed men destroy it. A vegetarian with bad knees, anxiety, and self-described "wits and wiles," he is not the obvious candidate. Rohan's survival strategy for 15th-century Romania: 'Bard Energy' and plum brandy The real Wallachia in 1456 was one of the most dangerous places in Europe. Vlad III ruled through spectacular violence, impaling thousands to terrorise the Ottoman Empire and his own nobility alike. The Chronicle at the centre of this episode could easily have existed: Vlad's reign generated propaganda, counter-propaganda, and terrified eyewitness accounts across the continent. Navigating that world required diplomacy, nerve, and knowing exactly who to trust. Navigating it as Rohan Sharma requires all of that plus a phone full of classical music and a scheme to double-cross a Saxon merchant using medieval photocopying. 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 | 1456 CE | Targoviste, Romania Featuring: Rohan Sharma — comedian (Leicester Square New Comedian of the Year) EPISODE LINKS Follow Rohan's adventure on the PastMaster Interactive Map 👉 https://map.pastmasterpod.com Rohan Sharma: Instagram @rohansnotty GET IN TOUCH Sign up to our newsletter 👉 www.pastmasterpod.com Instagram 👉 @pastmasterpod TikTok 👉 @pastmasterpod X 👉 @pastmasterAI Email us 👉 [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices