In 2012, CEU Medieval Radio was launched as an effort not only to bring medieval music to everyone but also to make complex, high-quality scholarship more approachable to the general public. Over seventy interviews were recorded for CEU Medieval Radio's program "Past Perfect!" with the intent of bridging the gap between "ivory tower" academia and the listeners at home. In this volume, sixteen first-rate scholars kindly sat down before the microphone and got the chance to explain their work in a friendly and accessible way. Scholars like Natalie Zemon-Davis and Patrick Geary represent some of the international guests, János Bak and József Laszlovszky discuss amazing new research from Central European University, while Richard Unger and Benedek Láng are part of the CEU Medieval Radio team's personal favorites, talking about topics such as beer, queens, and code-breaking. From Apocalypses to Zooarchaeology, CEU Medieval Radio's long time host, Christopher Mielke, asks the tough questions that have made this program so memorable!

CHRISTOPHER MIELKE he was awarded in 2017 a PhD in Medieval Studies from Central European University receiving a “magna cum laude” for his dissertation “Every hyacinth the garden wears: the archaeology of medieval queens of Hungary, 1000-1395.” This was an archaeological study of the material culture and space of Hungarian queens of the Árpádian and Angevin dynasties. From 2012 to 2017, he was the host, organizer, and lead correspondent for CEU Medieval Radio (www.medievalradio.org), having interviewed over 70 guests for the biweekly program “Past Perfect!”. Most recently, he has led the charge for updating exhibits at the Beverly Heritage Center, including a reconstructed floorplan of the original 1808 Randolph County Courthouse, and including information about the Underground Railroad in the Exhibit about the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike. He is also part of negotiating the opening of Beverly’s first public library. 

STEPHEN POW has recently completed his Ph.D. at Central European University with the dissertation, "Conquest and Withdrawal: The Mongol Invasions of Europe in the Thirteenth Century." This study involved an interdisciplinary revisiting of the historical problem of the Mongol evacuation of Hungary in 1242 after a swift occupation. He has volunteered as a member of the team at CEU Medieval Radio for over half a decade - activities which culminated in the publication of the present volume. His publications include research on environmental history, ethnogenesis, military history, and the literary-historical origins of Arthurian knights like Sir Lancelot. In addition, he has taken part in several co-authored translation projects. 

TAMÁS KISS is a historian of the early modern Ottoman Empire, software and web developer, as well as a digital humanist with a research focus on natural language processing models optimized to Ottoman Turkish. He founded CEU Medieval Radio in 2012, and completed his doctoral dissertation on the Cyprus War of 1570-71 and its Venetian and Ottoman political and cultural historical contexts at Central European University in 2016. He taught Digital Humanities (DH), early modern historical and literary courses at Queen Mary University of London (2004-2008) and Central European University (2011-18). Currently, he works as an IT project manager in charge of DH, language technological and repository projects. At the same time, he continues academic research as a member of Eötvös Loránd University's Centre for Digital Humanities (ELTE_DH).