Andrew MacIntosh: 0:00

After the tune, a conversation with Amanda Matheson of Biorbic on escape rooms for science, communication and engagement.

Andrew MacIntosh: 0:16

Conservation Behavior Primatology.

Andrew MacIntosh: 0:24

Primatology Typically, primates Become the monkey. Hey everyone and welcome to the PrimateCast. I'm your host, andrew McIntosh of the Weiler Institute, calgary Zoo, and for this podcast it's my job to chat with experts in primatology, wildlife science and beyond and share their stories with you. Before getting into today's show, I want to take a moment to thank Ryzam and Sleuts. That's with a dollar sign at the end there to indicate something I can only guess at. Sorry about that, but they each left comments about the show Posting on Spotify. Ryzam says an excellent podcast from an excellent, verbose and well-read human being. Looking forward to seeing hearing what the new iteration of the podcast looks and sounds like. I'll take that verbose comment as a compliment rather than a veiled criticism, but you and me both in the future of the show there and Sloot$ adds on Apple Podcasts always fantastic guests, well-spoken and informed hosts thoroughly enjoy the podcast. For many reasons I love it and I couldn't agree more about the guests. They're absolutely the reason a show like this can exist and I have a large amount of gratitude for their time and willingness to share their stories with me. So thanks to you both for sharing those reassuring comments and I'm looking forward to reading and seeing more from you out there in the days and weeks to come. So if you're listening, please get out there and post something about the show. And, while you're at it, if you're able to, I'd be extremely appreciative of your financial support as well, either through a small donation or a low fee monthly membership. You can find links in the podcast show notes or on the website at either theprimatecastcom or theprimatecastinfo. But it's because of supporters like you that the Primate Cast can have an exciting future, but I do need your help to keep sharing these informational and inspirational stories with the world, so I sincerely thank you for all your support.

Andrew MacIntosh: 2:17

Now to the interview. Today's conversation is going to be with Biorbic's Head of Public Engagement, education and Communications. Going to be with Biorbic's Head of Public Engagement, education and Communications, amanda Matheson. I met Amanda in November 2023 at the annual Japan SciComm Forum Conference that year. For anyone who's interested, you can check out the JSF website at japanscicom to learn more about what they do. But their annual conference is a great chance for science communicators in Japan to get together and share their activities, all in English. I was invited that year to give a workshop on podcasting for science communication at the event.

Andrew MacIntosh: 2:53

I've done a lot of public speaking in my time, teaching at universities, presenting at academic conferences. I was recently even joking with a coworker about the time I filled in for a MIA auctioneer to sell art at a Canadian Parks and Wilderness Gala in support of nature protection. I'd even run or co-run a science communication workshop for grad students at Kyoto University for something like 12 or 13 years, but this was the first time I'd represented the Primae cast and shared tips and tricks for science podcasting with a group of science communicators. I had so much fun there and I think what really stands out about science communicators in general is just how important we all think sharing our excitement for science is with the public. And it kind of helped that 2023's conference was also based in Okinawa, at the Okinawan Institute for Science and Technology or OIST, and that was just such an incredible setting for the event. But Amanda was there visiting Japan from her home in Ireland and she gave a really stimulating talk. It was a lightning talk, so quite short on science escape rooms. I fell in love with that idea right away and made a point of inviting her on the show to talk more about it In addition to her role at Biorbic, which, by the way, she'll introduce in the interview so I won't introduce now.

Andrew MacIntosh: 4:09

Amanda is also a coordinator for STEAM Summer School, which produces or sorry, provides practical training in communicating science to the arts, and it's based in Malta Again, like really incredible setting there, if you check out their website. But she's also currently doing a PhD on play at University College Dublin's Earth Institute. So Amanda's had a really interesting career path and I wanted to flush that out a bit in the conversation to help any aspiring science communicators find their way forward. But I really think that the idea of escape rooms specifically for science engagement is brilliant, especially now that I'm based at an organization that's literally for communicating science to the public and, of course, doing a lot of incredible conservation work.

Andrew MacIntosh: 4:52

But in an article that Amanda published in the journal Research for All, titled STEM Escape Rooms for Public Engagement, she writes that in an engagement scenario, perceived learning may be more valuable than actual learning, and this relates to self-efficacy and the likelihood of continued engagement. I love this quote and the idea that how we feel about our engagement with scientific information can be so powerful in whether we're likely to engage with such information in the future. The goal is obviously to work toward a more scientifically literate society, and Amanda notes that in the interview her real motivation is not so much to teach people about scientific facts but to help them become more scientific thinkers, to look at the world through a scientific lens that will help them discern the world around them in a more critical way. We do land on, of course, some of the specific science-themed escape rooms that she's been part of, that she's designed, helped design and implement, and you're really going to want to hear about those and no doubt you'll want to participate as well. But for that you'll have to look Amanda up yourself or find a science-themed escape room near you. Maybe a primatologically-themed one is on the horizon somewhere out there. Primatologists, help me out here. Just promise me it won't have any hyper-aggressive, head-smashing gray gorillas like the ones rampaging around the lost city of Zinj in Michael Crichton's Congo.

Andrew MacIntosh: 6:13

By the way, that's for Ryzam, if you're out there listening. Thanks again for the comment. But Amanda also talks more generally about her role or the role of play in science, engagement more generally, even learning, through video games like Age of Empires and board games like Pandemic or Daybreak. She leaves us with a bit of a teaser about the results of her PhD work which she's piloting, by the way in early 2025. So maybe a round two interview is definitely in the cards. In the meantime, here's my conversation with science escape room pioneer Amanda Matheson Can you just tell me what is BioOrbic?

Amanda Mathieson: 6:49

Yeah, that's a good question. So BioOrbic is a research center focused around the bioeconomy. So instead of being a physical center that's based in one location, we're actually a center that's focused around one topic. So we bring together researchers from all across ireland um under this one topic and the idea is that, you know, if researchers are working kind of in different institutions but on the same thing, they're maybe not talking to each other as well as they could be. So our center gives them an opportunity to collaborate much more cohesively um so that it can catalyse those big issues.

Amanda Mathieson: 7:27

So our topic is bioeconomy, which most people haven't heard of. The word bioeconomy it's an old concept but it's becoming increasingly important. So what the bioeconomy is? It's basically all the parts of the economy that rely on biological resources, so plants, animals, microbes, basically all the parts of the economy that rely on biological resources.

Amanda Mathieson: 7:48

So plants, animals, microbes, and obviously right now our economy is very petrochemical, so we're heavily dependent on fossil fuels and most people think that's just fuel, transport and maybe plastics. They might think of that, but actually it's so much more than that. There's solvents, dyes it's in our cleaning agents, it's in our um, let me think plastic fibers in our clothes and rubber, glues it's basically in everything. If you were to look at it around this room right now, you'd be really hard pressed to find something that doesn't have a petrochemical component in it, and so that's why we really need a bioeconomy. So obviously we need to rely on the bioeconomy for traditional things like agriculture, maybe medicines, building materials and so on, but the more we can transition away from those petrochemical components to biological ones things like bioplastic the easier it will be to move away from fossil fuels. So the bioeconomy is big. It's kind of the new economy, if you like. It's the old economy in a way, but it's also what we need to go back to and develop into a new economy as well.

Andrew MacIntosh: 8:57

What is the kind of historical placement of that in Ireland, for example? So I mean, are there specific topics within bioeconomy that are more a focal point for your institution, for the country, and what are the kind of like international trends as well, and is there a lot of collaboration between? Is it UCD? I guess would be the right way to say yes, yes, so University College.

Amanda Mathieson: 9:17

Dublin. Ucd is our host institution, so most of the operations team of our research center is based in UCD. We have a lot of researchers in UCD, but then we have researchers in all the other institutions across Ireland and we connect them together kind of virtually, which obviously they meet in person and so on. And then the other question in terms of Ireland and its kind of part that it plays in the bioeconomy Ireland has a really strong agricultural industry. Um, it also has a lot of marine area around it and so the marine industry is quite good as well.

Amanda Mathieson: 9:53

And Ireland actually produces a lot of, um, food and agricultural products. So Ireland, I think, exports 90% of its food, so it's a big exporter. So in a way, ireland's in a really good position to develop a bioeconomy because we've got so much in terms of natural resources that we can rely on, we've got the infrastructure there. So if we were to think of somewhere that could develop these products take the waste, say, from the agricultural processes and turn that into, you know, glues, dyes, paints, whatever it might be then Ireland has that wealth of resources as well. So I guess that's why bioeconomy is such a big focus in Ireland, but the bioeconomy is kind of developing everywhere. If you kind of look online, you can see there's now a policy map of countries that either have a policy on about bioeconomy policy statement or um. They're developing one um and it's it's kind of growing, definitely in europe, definitely in america, um. So yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely the future, is is where it was headed, yeah okay.

Andrew MacIntosh: 11:03

So I kind of brought you on the primary cast so we could talk about something that I I learned about you at a recent conference in okinawa, at the japan sci-com forum 2023, which is about escape rooms in in science. Yes, that that'll be like the teaser we'll get to that in a minute, but I kind of want to work a little bit uh of the way towards that. So in you, um, as far as I understand it, you have a background in science communication.

Amanda Mathieson: 11:29

Yes.

Andrew MacIntosh: 11:29

But maybe you can. So bioeconomy is now kind of where you're sitting at the moment in your current role. But what was your kind of pathway to becoming a science communicator and what interested you about that?

Amanda Mathieson: 11:39

Yeah, so I actually I did plant science as an undergraduate and what really interested me about plant science is there was only seven people on the course, like there was biology, zoology, you know there's like 80 people, and then plant science was like seven and there was a lot of plant scientists in the university. So it was like the ratio of you know teaching stuff to students was really good and you know there's lots of jobs opportunities as well. So that's why I kind of got into it. But then what I realized was, as I was studying plant science, whenever somebody would ask me what I was studying and I would say plant science, they'd be like oh so what do you do with that? Is that gardening or what is it for? And I was like wow, I mean only everything like food, fuel, building materials, the oxygen you're breathing right now, like everything.

Andrew MacIntosh: 12:31

You know it's ironic because I have a similar story. But it's like why do you want to be a primatologist?

Amanda Mathieson: 12:37

What are you going to do with that Like when are you?

Andrew MacIntosh: 12:38

going to grow up. I don't really have as many great answers as that.

Amanda Mathieson: 12:42

Right right have as many great answers as that right.

Andrew MacIntosh: 12:44

They don't give us the oxygen we breathe. I'm sure we could think of some cool things they do, like dispersing the seeds for the plants that you might be really interested in. Yeah, yeah, and obviously we came from them, so well, of course we have the human connection, exactly, yeah, so really, really important.

Amanda Mathieson: 12:57

But yeah, it just kind of like shocked me how, how much of a disconnect there was and that made me really interested in communicating more about science. Because I thought, you know, people need to understand this connection a little bit more and understand more about where things come from and their environment and so on. Just yeah, people need to be more engaged with science. I felt like so when I finished my undergraduate there was either the option to do a PhD in something science-related and I'd be stuck in a lab, which is not really where I find suits me very well, or I could go out and talk to people about science. So I kind of took on a communications role in a hospital for a while. But then Manchester University of Manchester, which is where I did my undergraduate they actually started their first master's in science communication the following year and I was like, great, that's me, that's, I'll sign up for that. And so I did the master's in science communication there, and then I actually was just looking for any job, any job that was science communication related. I'd just come out of the university and you know how it is like just just give me a job, let me prove myself. And I found this job in Malta, working with um Dr Edward Duker, um in University of Malta and doing um basically EU projects that were focused on science communication, um, and it was great. There was two main projects I worked on. One was creations and that was about bringing art into the science classroom. So we had to there was 16 countries, I think it was, and we were all developing activities that blended art and science and then trialed them in schools and see if they worked and evaluated them. And then there's a list of all these activities somewhere online on the Creations website now. So that was really interesting.

Amanda Mathieson: 14:49

And then the other project was STEAM, and this was about blending the art and science, but this time for science communication and science engagement. So there was kind of two parts to it. One was STEAM Summer School, which is a short intensive course where we train researchers, educators, science communicators how to communicate their science through the arts. It's very, it's kind of quite theatre and performance based, but basically they come to Malta and we do this training. But the point of STEAM is that you apply the learning as soon as you're learning it.

Amanda Mathieson: 15:27

So, um, we, we might do say a section on um how to design an activity and then they're designing their own own activity um, we might do a bit on communicating and promoting it and then they're promoting their actual event. So the point is that they arrive and within nine days they have to deliver a performance event to a live, real audience. That they have to, you know, somehow accumulate and and it's really great, like it's definitely intense. People definitely get a little bit like they're excited initially and then they get a bit stressed by like day seven, but then it always goes really well. They always have like a fantastic event and it's always a different event as well. Like we've had theater, we've had um food. Um, what was it like? A food? What do you call it now? Um, like a food taster evening type thing. Um, we had one of those.

Amanda Mathieson: 16:22

We had like a, an alien treasure hunt where like aliens had crashed down to earth and they had to, like, do this kind of um, treasure hunt, mini escape room type thing, um, which was great. So, yeah, it's always really interesting. So that that's part of steam. And then the other things I was doing with steam was developing innovative activities for engagement. So how can we use arts to really get people engaged with science and broaden the audience as well, because not everybody is interested in science. But if we can kind of blend it with things that people are interested in, then that might open it up to new people who might not be there otherwise. So that's where I started working on things like escape rooms, because escape rooms at the time they were super popular it was.

Amanda Mathieson: 17:14

I was thinking it was 2016 and they just exploded everywhere and everybody was doing them and I thought, well, that would be a really great way to to engage people with science, because you know it's all puzzle based and surely you can incorporate some science into that. So I thought, you know, that might be a way to make it fun for people to like come and, you know, test their skills at some kind of science challenges in a way that is interesting and has a story around it and has some theatrical elements and so yeah. So then then yeah, so we, we did the steam project there and then, yeah, ever since, I've just been working in science communication sorry, that's a really long-winded answer into science communication yeah, and from that I'm trying to decide whether we jump into escape rooms now or first go back a little bit.

Andrew MacIntosh: 18:01

But I think I'm going to go back yeah so I'll apologize to the people listening who want to get into the music, but uh, just I'm kind of interested in so this master's in science communication. Um, this was at the University of Manchester, but now of course, there are degrees in science communication all over the world yes, but what?

Andrew MacIntosh: 18:17

what was the kind of, what were the kind of things that you learned in that program? Um, what was the kind of focus? Did you have some opportunity to do your own projects as well within that master's degree? What did it actually look like?

Amanda Mathieson: 18:29

Yeah, so I will say that it was the first year they were running it, so I think it's probably quite different now. But the place that the department that ran the science communication master's in University of Manchester was the Centre for History of Science, technology and Medicine, so they had. The teaching staff there were quite well versed in science history. So actually we learned a lot about science history, funnily enough. So there were a lot of modules about that which I guess wasn't really as what I expected. It wasn't something that interested me as much. It was great, great stuff.

Amanda Mathieson: 19:07

But I wanted to focus more on the the practical side. But there was then one module that was more around science communication theory and that got very into social science studies, which for somebody who'd come from a kind of a standard science background experimental science, you know life sciences it was definitely a transition. You know, going from you know here's your method, your results, your analysis, to here's a long-winded like eight-page, like monologue of my theories. That was definitely a challenge to transition, transition to but I think it's nice to to kind of experience both. Yeah, um, and then we did have some um more practical sessions where they brought in, say, people who worked in a museum to talk about that. They brought, brought in a journalist to talk about that and we had um, a final um. You could either do a paper like a, a dissertation, or you could do a project, and because I'm very practical, I was like I want to do a project.

Amanda Mathieson: 20:15

I think I did a documentary series about fracking, which was quite in the news at the time and I wanted to really explore it from an unbiased perspective, like in my head, I was very anti-fracking, but I kind of wanted to put that aside and explore, well, what's actually the real science here, what are the pros and cons? You know, completely taking the politics out of it and present that to the audience to say, look, here's the facts. Now you make up your own mind. You know, I'm not here to tell you what to think, I'm just telling you what we've discovered, um, in in this documentary. So that was my, my project, for that, yeah did it?

Andrew MacIntosh: 20:56

was it? Did it stay private or have you tried to distribute that? It's your one of your first psycom endeavors?

Amanda Mathieson: 21:03

I think it's on youtube somewhere. Um, I'm not sure if it's private or, at the very least, unlisted, but it's definitely on youtube somewhere like if people are interested, I could definitely make it unprivatized, I'm sure at this point, um, in fact, like I talked to three different academics, um, and I'm sure they would be more than happy because they signed up for me to like be doing a documentary that could promote their research.

Andrew MacIntosh: 21:28

So yeah, yeah, okay, well, yeah, maybe we'll have to unearth that then in the show notes of this podcast at some point. Um. So the theme that that seems to be coming up here is you're very interested in getting kind of practical with this science communication and, you know, reaching different kinds of targets. So maybe that's the segue into the escape room idea. But when I saw you present at this um Japan SciComm Forum in November, uh, it was something that I hadn't thought of ever. I hadn't come across that idea.

Andrew MacIntosh: 21:58

So it was initially just really drawn to it, thinking wow, what a, what a wonderful idea, basically because, as you said, it was so popular. I have done one escape room in my life. Oh yay, it was for a stag night for a friend in Tokyo, and yeah, it was I don't remember the name of the place, but one place in Tokyo. And you know spoiler alert we didn't get out, we didn't escape and I felt, you know, intellectually damaged. After that, thinking, here's somebody coming?

Andrew MacIntosh: 22:28

from Kills University. You know, maybe I should uphold the reputation of the school and ace this thing. I did contribute but yeah, in the end we didn't quite make it. But it was neat. It was kind of more historical, like very Japan themed. You know, some of the activities were piecing together this samurai armor to learn some kung fu in one of the doors.

Andrew MacIntosh: 22:49

Um, so we were kind of in this dusty library type room and and and that was really fun, but, uh, it hadn't occurred to me that this would also be a great way to engage people in, you know, topics that you want to expose them to, like science. So, um, maybe you can kind of walk us through. You already started the story of thinking this was an explosion of escape room around the world, and while you thought the same thing, it would be a great idea to push some science themes in there. So what was the process then of thinking about that and actually making something happen? What was your very first science escape room?

Amanda Mathieson: 23:19

Yeah, so I will jump into that. But I just wanted to also touch on what you said. Said about you were thinking oh, you know, I work at university, I should be able to beat this escape room.

Amanda Mathieson: 23:30

I think that's what most people assume, but actually what I really like about escape rooms is it really levels the playing field and sometimes you know the people who you expect to do well actually find themselves going down different tangents and rabbit holes that waste time, and then other people are able to do better. And there's more it's. It's more than just intellect, it's also like organization of the team and being able to spot things quickly and, yeah, see patterns and things like that. So it's, it's more than just academics, which is nice, and I think that that kind of gives people a chance to excel at something that is science-based. But they might think, oh, wow, I did that.

Amanda Mathieson: 24:16

I beat that, even though, like, I wouldn't consider myself a sciencey person. Um, in fact, we had uh, so I did an escape room where there was a puzzle about bioplastics, and at the time it was during the pandemic and I was working at Biorbix. So we have like a lot of kind of props that we used to use for engagement purposes and I found this like molecule. I had no idea what it was, but I thought, oh well, that'll look nice for like decoration or something, so I put it there and then there was actually a scientist who did did the escape room.

Amanda Mathieson: 24:53

It was all online, it was on zoom and because it was during the pandemic and she spotted the molecule and she was like that's a bioplastic polymer and so so there must be something to do with that and I was sat there thinking it's got nothing to do with that and she wasted so much time on it and I was like, oh, I feel really bad, but in the same time, that's, that's really cool, that, like you know, because you would think, oh, she's bioplastic scientist, she would, uh, she would know, and then do it really quickly. But, um, yeah, it can end up. It can end up um causing detriment sometimes.

Andrew MacIntosh: 25:19

So well, first of all, thank you for letting me off the hook. Second of all I'm going to say that there was probably a monkey somewhere in a picture in the escape room and I got too distracted.

Amanda Mathieson: 25:27

Yeah, exactly yeah, that's what you'll say.

Andrew MacIntosh: 25:30

I couldn't pry my mind away from that, so I went down the wrong rabbit hole.

Amanda Mathieson: 25:32

You were too academic, but yeah. So how did they come about? So the original escape room was way too elaborate. Like I was way too ambitious. Like I will, I was way too ambitious. It was um. What I really wanted to do was bring young people onto the campus and get them kind of used to the campus and make it a more familiar environment. So my idea was it was actually a pandemic, and this was before covid um, so just my little hip before it was cool, um, but yeah, um but yeah. So it was a pandemic. The idea was that there was a neurotoxin in, um, the shrimp in the bay, um, you, you know the, the movie the birds, um which alfred hitchcock?

Amanda Mathieson: 26:19

yeah, of course yeah exactly so that actually he was inspired because there was a neurotoxin in these shrimp that don't really affect the shrimp, but when the birds eat the shrimp and they go crazy and so and he saw all these birds going, going wild, and that's how he came up with this idea for that movie. And so I was thinking maybe I could have like a zombie thing, but actually based on science, where there's something in the water, there's some kind of neurotoxin that is getting into people's drinking water, and because Malta actually filters a lot of its marine water for because it doesn't have much groundwater, so the idea was that there's a neurotoxin, it's getting into people's drinking water and it's turning them into zombies. And so you have to come to the university, you're invited by your colleague to come and help discover what the cause of this is, and the first puzzle was like a biology puzzle, where you had to analyze a Western blot and figure out what this pathogen was getting into, which had the neurotoxin in it, and then, once you'd solved that, the internet went down because obviously everything was going crazy. So then you had to go into another room, into the servers, a server room, to then solve an IT puzzle to get the internet back online, and then you had to go to the chemistry lab to figure out how to purify some water so that you would have drinking water for your escape, and basically you were going around the whole university and it was so elaborate it was, you know, every room had to be like completely set up in terms of props to make it look good. So that was a lot of effort.

Amanda Mathieson: 27:59

And then, if you can imagine, you've got players going around these rooms and each room has to be reset, and so we had, like people kind of hiding in the hallways and as soon as, like, somebody had solved a puzzle, okay, like run in and reset that room, but don't be seen by anybody, you know. And so it was. It was, um, it was quite elaborate and in the end we couldn't get many people through the room, through the puzzles, because we had to space them out so much. So after that I really narrowed it down, um, into one room, and we actually did it at science center. They gave us two rooms to borrow for the space of a week or so and we ran two identical rooms concurrently, and that I would recommend because then you could get more players through.

Amanda Mathieson: 28:43

But that was a space station and so basically there was scientists up on a space station, they'd all died and you had to go up and basically figure out what had happened to the scientists. That was a really fun one. We had a video One of my colleagues was one of these, like head of the space agency, who was like briefing you on your mission. So they had to watch this video and then they would go up in the elevator and that would be the space shuttle. So yeah, it was really fun.

Amanda Mathieson: 29:17

We also had like a plot twist at the end that one of the scientists was actually alive and had murdered all of the other ones and if you didn't figure this out in time, he set off a gas leak to kill you. So basically, if you didn't solve the room in time, we had this fog machine that we would put just under the door and all of this smoke would come in and the actor would run to the door. It wasn't locked, but they would pretend they couldn't open the door. They're like, oh my God, we're dying Now.

Andrew MacIntosh: 29:44

I know you had also some pretty young participants.

Amanda Mathieson: 29:47

We did.

Andrew MacIntosh: 29:49

We did, yeah, yeah.

Amanda Mathieson: 29:53

Hopefully, no children were traumatized during the making of this game. They loved it. They loved it. In fact, the murder weapon was these two. What was it like? Syringes of these chemicals? And as soon as one of the kids discovered it, they stuck it into the actor and murdered the actor. So they, they loved all the brutality of it, actually like they were having such a good time the kids of today yes, that was funny, because when you come out, when they come out, we're like, oh, did you survive?

Amanda Mathieson: 30:22

um, and the actor was like they survived, I didn't. So, yeah, that was great.

Andrew MacIntosh: 30:33

To me the actor is like a really interesting piece of this as well. So maybe later I'll ask you about scaling, like how this kind of thing can scale more broadly. But I think, if I read correctly, the actor that you had is somebody with like some improvisation background as well. Yeah, and so how do you find that person and, and you know, make that kind of work for, for these escape rooms and just kind of more generally?

Amanda Mathieson: 30:52

yeah, I think it has to be somebody who is from an arts background or has some experience of that. Like, usually I actually look at local improv groups and there's people who who do improv because they love it. You know, that's the thing they they like to do in their spare time anyway, um, and usually I bring them on board and it doesn't really matter if they don't understand the science, because a lot of the time they're not meant to um understand things, because obviously you don't want them to give it away anyway, um, so the less they understand, the better. Right, usually there's some kind of story. So the actor in the space station, for example, um was the engineer who, who had almost died, but um had amnesia. Basically it had a foggy head and really didn't understand what had happened, and they were like, oh, you know, sometimes they would um kind of nudge people in the right direction if they really struggle. They'd be like, oh, I feel like I remember something about X.

Amanda Mathieson: 31:52

And then that would kind of help people along. So the actor is there to kind of provide a buffer. Basically, you know, some people are really good at science or interested in science, or you know they feel like a sciencey person and and they're really they're doing well. Um, in fact, scratch that. Can we delete that bit?

Amanda Mathieson: 32:12

some people are really good at escape rooms and they're really good at solving the puzzles and they're going through them really quickly. Other people they get kind of stuck or they might get intimidated by the science and they might part. That might stop them in their tracks a little bit. So the actor is there to kind of provide that buffer for people who might be struggling a little bit too much. If they're just given a little nudge in the right direction, then all of a sudden they get the ball rolling and then they build confidence and then usually after that they do really well. So I think it's important to have the actor for that, especially with these science-based escape rooms, in case people are like oh, that looks like an equation. I don't know if that's for me, but yeah, and they also really help in terms of, like you say, the theatrical elements making it a big memorable experience. You know, like I say, these little improvised things, like when the, the, the young, the young girl kind of killed the actor with the syringes, you know, these little kind of impromptu things that you wouldn't have otherwise, makes it a unique experience for them. Um, so I think that's really good.

Amanda Mathieson: 33:20

And also, if you're not, um, if you've got not got a professional budget to do these escape rooms. They're not permanent structures either. You're kind of doing them just as an engagement piece. Often you don't have high-quality props and things like that that would maybe stand kids messing about with them too much or drawing on things and things like that. So having an actor in the room is really good as well if you want to protect some of your materials, like the actor, for example, can say oh, we're not allowed to touch those because of why?

Amanda Mathieson: 33:57

Reason like um, one of my escape rooms is about time travel and uh, the the actor is basically the head of this time-travelling team. They're going back into the past to solve research about climate change, so that climate change doesn't happen in the future. So one of the lines that he always used to use was oh, let's not touch too many things, because you know we don't want to affect too many things in the future. So, yeah, you can. Usually the actor's really good at improvising things and making it work when there's certain, you know, constraints. So I would recommend having a good story, a good actor, because then you can get over those limitations quite easily so these, uh, what you were just talking about, these escape rooms with the space station.

Andrew MacIntosh: 34:42

They were done at a science center in malta.

Andrew MacIntosh: 34:44

I believe, and so you had this, I guess, a good audience of people coming with some interest in the science center itself, but not necessarily a strong interest in any specific science or even in science. And I know that one of the I'm just referencing now this paper that you wrote, STEM Escape Rooms for Public Engagement in the journal Research for All, where you have this quote, which is really great In an engagement scenario, perceived learning may be more valuable than actual learning, as this relates to self-efficacy and the likelihood of continued engagement, which I found really interesting because I think a lot of times we think of science communication as a way to kind of impart knowledge.

Andrew MacIntosh: 35:29

Communication, as you know, a way to kind of impart knowledge but actually what might be more important is that how people feel about science and their experiences, and then maybe that, you know, could kind of open a door to future learning opportunities, even if this learning opportunity wasn't, you know, the most kind of fact gathering of exercises, which again might not be the goal. So I wonder if you could just talk about that a little bit.

Amanda Mathieson: 35:46

Yeah, I really do strongly believe that.

Amanda Mathieson: 35:48

I think, you know, for people who may not be as engaged with science, you know, just even just doing something that's science-based is different for them, you know. So, and a lot of the times, I think, with engagement activities, like you say, we're trying to impart knowledge. And you know, say, the science festival, you might be like imparting all of these facts on a person, but that's like the maybe the 10th stand that they've been to that day. And how much of that information are they really going to retain? Information are they really going to retain, um, you know, these short-term interventions that we have. We only get a short amount of time and there's so much going on in people's lives. So for me, I think what's more, um, what's going to have more of an impact is having some kind of really positive experience. Um, you know, establishing some sort of positive association or memory in somebody's mind that, oh, that was really fun, you know. And the more, the more we can make science fun and interesting and have those positive associations and even build people's confidence. Like, oh, I did a science escape room and actually I beat it and actually my score was quite good.

Amanda Mathieson: 37:01

Um, you know, the more we can build that, the more I feel like they're more likely to seek out other engagement opportunities.

Amanda Mathieson: 37:08

So I think you know you have your kind of preaching to the choir audience who are already interested and probably they are going to remember things because they're really they're already building their science knowledge through all of these other you know they might watch science documentaries, they might read popular science books and so on.

Amanda Mathieson: 37:26

But if it's just like that snapshot, you've got an hour with this person who never does any science otherwise, you know, just building that positive memory I think is a really good thing, because then they might be like oh, there's a science thing on, I enjoyed the escape room last time. Let's go and check that out. So I think I think that's what we can do. Is, uh, is do that, because not everybody, you know, I don't think everybody can be interested in everything, but we can at least appreciate things and and be um engaged with things. And when we see, you know science in the news and things like that, if we have a positive association with yes, I like science, I like scientists I don't know much about it, but I'm sure they're doing a good job like that, that that in itself is is important as well, I think yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on where you are at this psycom forum.

Andrew MacIntosh: 38:16

That came up in the panel discussion that we had about the fact that I think you asked the question actually about if SciComm in Japan doesn't have a long history, why is it that people are so pro-science is maybe the wrong way to think about it, but why is there so little kind of anti-science, anti-scientist rhetoric within the society? And I think that's true.

Andrew MacIntosh: 38:41

People do tend to think that the information that's coming being generated by science is probably pretty robust and yeah, there's there's much less kind of, you know, bad sentiment towards it, but that's that's not obviously the case everywhere yeah, yeah, exactly yeah, and so I kind of wonder maybe that was the background, like in the examples you've given so far.

Andrew MacIntosh: 39:03

We had the space station issue of trying to figure out what happened to all these scientists. Time travel. You have the figuring out a pandemic cause and sorting that out. That became very important now that we're in a pandemic. But do you have any learning targets as well when you design these escapes? So maybe there are things. You started this interview by talking about the bioeconomy and what.

Andrew MacIntosh: 39:28

BioOrbic's kind of role in that is in disseminating information and facilitating research collaborations. But are there any examples then, of whether it's escape rooms or something similar where you actually have specific learning targets or outcomes? That you want to kind of influence sentiment around.

Amanda Mathieson: 39:45

That's a really good question, actually, because actually all of my escape rooms do have learning outcomes, even though it's not so much about the facts and the figures, and they all have key messages, and that's what I really want people to take away. You know, similar to kind of TED talks, where you're trying to get a message across, a key message, and I think if you have a key message in your escape room, that's the thing that can really last and have an impression on someone. So, for example, with the climate themed escape room, you know they're from the future, where, um, the climate crisis wasn't resolved, um, and they're living in a horrible, horrible environment. You know, there's very little food, there's very little nature around, there's not so much green things, uh, the weather's atrocious, um, this was this fighting, um, and the only thing they can do at that point, because things are so terrible, is to go back in time to where we are now and to to finish off this research so that, um, they can figure out how to resolve it, so that the future is bright, and the message of that is that we're in this time. Now we do still have time to figure things out. So that's what I want people to take away is that we need to act now because we don't want that future and a lot of the puzzles. They are based on real research projects and even though I think in an escape room you're kind of under time pressure and you just want to figure things out, it's really difficult to take things in in that way in that kind of environment, but at the very least it can be a prompt for discussion afterwards.

Amanda Mathieson: 41:20

So often what we do now in our escape rooms is afterwards we'll have a discussion with people and we'll talk about those puzzles. So, for example, there's a puzzle where we're talking about farm biodiversity and they have to figure out how to increase the biodiversity of this farm. Afterwards we sit down and we talk about also did you know anything about farm biodiversity? You know before? You saw that? And that can kind of then cement a bit more of the of the learning, the message of the, the research sometimes we even have the researchers present to a bit more of the of the learning, the message of the, the research.

Amanda Mathieson: 41:50

Sometimes we even have the researchers present to talk about some of the puzzles, which is really nice as well, and that adds an element that you wouldn't get in a normal standard escape room, um, and I think as well, uh, it kind of is a good way to build people's curiosity, because if you just go up to people and say, hey, can I tell you about my research, you know it's like, uh, why would I be interested in that? But then if they do an escape room and they've, you know, they have some reason to be intrigued by us. You know, oh, we just did a puzzle. Um, then it's, you know, can I tell you what's behind that puzzle? Then they've got a link to it, they've got a reason to be like, yeah, actually, actually, yeah, tell me about it, what was that about? So I think it's a good pathway to kind of making it more coming from them, the questions, rather than us kind of forcing the information onto them, as we're sometimes wanting to do.

Andrew MacIntosh: 42:46

Yeah, for sure. No, it's brilliant. And you know, yesterday I was with my, my daughter, in a shopping center and um just checking out a hobby store and I noticed they had on the shelf this origin of species board game yeah and so I know that in I don't know the last decade you see this kind of proliferation of those kinds of so game gamifying knowledge um, yeah knowledge acquisition, yeah, the process of learning science, which seems really exciting.

Andrew MacIntosh: 43:13

Um, I don't know if that game itself is that great. I've seen various ones like that are similar with conservation messages or with biodiversity messages, um, or just, uh, other things, space themed things, time themed things, whatever yeah but they all look pretty fun. Do you have any, by the way, any board science board games that you recommend that you've played?

Amanda Mathieson: 43:32

um, I think there is one about the pandemic um maybe it's called pandemic. And there is one. Um god, my colleague's gonna kill me now because I've forgotten the name of it there's. There's one about, um climate change, um, in fact, I'll tell you afterwards and you can add it.

Andrew MacIntosh: 43:48

I'll add it to the show notes.

Amanda Mathieson: 43:49

Yeah yeah, yeah, but there's, uh, it's. It's quite new and my colleague's just been sent like a kind of preemptive copy of it oh cool um, but it's by the same guys that did the the pandemic uh board game, right, so yeah, so it should be really good, I think yeah, so board games, it seems like that's.

Andrew MacIntosh: 44:06

It's scalable in a way. If they get some popularity, it's pretty easy for people to pick them up and play them at their kitchen table.

Amanda Mathieson: 44:12

Yes.

Andrew MacIntosh: 44:13

With escape rooms. It might be a bit different, but I know you've also experimented with or run them online and you talked about that during the pandemic. So just for the listeners, what would that actually look like if you were doing an escape room online?

Amanda Mathieson: 44:24

Yeah, so that's actually how we started the climate-themed escape room. We realized, okay, that's actually how we started the climate themed escape room. Um, we realized, okay, it's going to be on zoom, because that's what everybody's using. Um, it's going to be on some online video conferencing software. So, um, they're not actually going to be in the room, um, and luckily, as I say, I always have an actor anyway. So I thought, okay, the actors in the room, they control the actor.

Amanda Mathieson: 44:47

Um, how, how can we explain this? How can we get away with this in the way that would fit into a story so that it still makes it immersive? So that's where the original storyline came from, that the actor is traveling from the future into the past and they're from the future as well. So, basically, the actor is the only one traveling into the past and they're watching him and they're telling him what to do in the past, like giving him um, and we had some kind of uh, what was it? A severe jet lag, because he's traveled in the past like by decades, yeah, severe time like. So he's like, uh, very kind of his mind's, very foggy at the minute. So that's why you, you're the research team you have to help him and tell him what to do. Um, and so, yeah, basically they would log in on zoom and they would ask him to look in a cupboard or try that key or try this.

Amanda Mathieson: 45:42

Um, and we had we wanted to make it a bit more interactive as well. So we would have, um, we had this ai called skivvy bot, and skivvy bot would be able to scan things in the room and digitize them. Um, and obviously this was just like on google docs, and skivvy bot would scan it quote, unquote, scan it but then we basically just drop it into the folder and they'd be like oh, it's scanned, now we can read this document or we can interact with it. So, um, basically it was just that they would. They would unlock a puzzle in the room and it would be some email or printed email or something like that, and then it'd be scanned and then they'd be able to interact with it.

Andrew MacIntosh: 46:18

On the, on Google Docs, yeah, this is, I mean, with the current level state of IT and AI. I mean it sounds like probably there's so many opportunities yeah make this just incredible yeah but I wonder if you know, since you've been doing this and now you've published about it as well, have you had people coming to you and asking for like we want to? We think this is a great idea. We want to set up a scape room. Help us out. Are you doing any kind of consulting for?

Andrew MacIntosh: 46:41

that yeah what kind of ideas are out there that you might talk about.

Amanda Mathieson: 46:51

It's typical of anything like. When I had this idea, I had no idea if anybody else was doing it.

Amanda Mathieson: 46:53

I thought, oh, I might be the first one to do it, um, but I'm definitely not. There's other people doing it and doing it in interesting ways as well. Like some of the more interesting ones, um, in fact, one that's like really low in terms of resources was somebody made a google form where it was more like a choose your own adventure story, so you, you select. It's like a, like a, yeah, like a google form where you select multiple choice and then it takes you to a different section based on what you chose, and so that's a really easy way of doing it. And then there was one that I really liked, um, in uh, it was imperial college london, some guys in the chemistry department did something called breaking bag.

Amanda Mathieson: 47:30

Where it was Imperial College London, some guys in the chemistry department did something called breaking bag where it was basically they had a rucksack and each rucksack partition had a lock on it and you had to solve the chemistry puzzles to get deeper into the bag. So I loved, I loved that idea. But yeah, there's so many ways that you can do it and there's. There's a few people out there know that. You know, whenever I've spoken at a big conference like pcst um, and I'm there talking about my escape rooms that they lump me in with like one or two other people who are also talking about escape rooms. So I'm like, okay, there's definitely other people doing it then that's cool yeah, so yeah, are there any?

Andrew MacIntosh: 48:04

are there any examples of like you know, whether they're science centers or museums who've kind of done it larger, who have like exhibits, for example, for escape rooms for science that you know of?

Amanda Mathieson: 48:14

there. There definitely will be. I know that um it was. It wasn't a science museum, it was a history museum. But a history museum put out a tender where they were asking someone to design an escape room for them that would go into their museum as kind of a semi permanent um exhibit or activity. So I would say that they probably aren't the only ones doing it. There aren't particular ones that I know of, but I think definitely, you know, that's something that a science center could definitely have absolutely as an activity.

Andrew MacIntosh: 48:46

Yeah yeah, I mean so immersive and you can just imagine with the right kind of funding.

Amanda Mathieson: 48:50

Yes, amazing yeah.

Andrew MacIntosh: 48:52

Yeah, Super cool. So to all the primatologists out there listening has an idea about a primate themed escape room? You can get in touch with the primate gas or Amanda directly and and throw around some ideas.

Andrew MacIntosh: 49:04

Um yeah, so that's super fascinating to me. Um, I love these kind of. Like I said, it was a bit of an off the wall idea to me, but obviously it's being done. It's been done and I think people are getting a lot of engagement out of it. But I want to maybe transition, as we kind of start to close this conversation out, to SciComm more broadly. So I know you also during the pandemic you started a podcast called SciComm Stories, and so I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about that and then maybe you can touch on some of the not in detail, but just some of the things that you learned doing that and from other science communicators.

Amanda Mathieson: 49:44

Yeah, definitely. So when the pandemic hit, I had loads of time on my hands and, like everybody else and their dog, I started a podcast. Yeah, basically out of boredom and the fact that I had time. But I also felt, like you know, I feel like I'm really lucky in that I get to go to conferences, I get to travel and I get to meet people who are doing all kinds of cool things in terms of science communication, because you see them, you know when you, you know, whenever everyone gathers at a conference, you can see, oh, this person's doing this in Portugal. Like when would I ever find out about that? Which is really amazing.

Amanda Mathieson: 50:22

And I remember back when I was an undergraduate, I didn't even know science communication was a job, and now it seems to be growing and growing. But at the same time, I think probably a lot of young people maybe don't know that science communication is a job. So what I wanted to do was make it a bit more open and accessible to people. You know, if they can't go to the conferences themselves, maybe they can at least hear from the people who are doing these things. So the point of it was to for each episode to interview someone who's done something interesting, something different in terms of science, communication and then, um, yeah, just just promote that, you know, put it out to to more people. Um, and it was really great doing it. I really enjoyed it. I met so many different people through that podcast. I learned about so many cool things, and some of them that come to mind would be um, there was a guy in edinburgh who did um a science harry potter themed okay treasure hunt kind of thing.

Amanda Mathieson: 51:21

So people came to the I think it was the royal botanical gardens, and they had harry potter themed classes like potions, um, and herbology and care of magical creatures. But it was, all you know, real science based and which was really cool. And and I think from that I learned, if you take people's fantasy worlds that they're already kind of bought into, like harry potter, and combine science with that, that definitely reaches more people. And then there was another guy in Scotland who who does science ceilidh, so that's a traditional Scottish dance, and he gets people to figure out a choreography for a dance that will describe some sort of science phenomena, so, for example, a solar eclipse. How can you do a dance that would demonstrate a solar eclipse or like maybe it's a metabolic reaction or something, um, so that that was really cool. Um, what else did we do?

Andrew MacIntosh: 52:19

I'm trying to think of other people that I should mention that, um, there was you I noticed that you had some interviews with folks who are trying to engage people with maths.

Amanda Mathieson: 52:34

Yes, and.

Andrew MacIntosh: 52:36

I think that's maybe even more so than science. Maths seems to be something that so many people, if not most people, have a distaste for. It's very unfortunate. So I know there's a gosh I'm not going to remember her name either, but there was a recent book. The book title is Is is math real? And it's a British author and mathematician uh, abstract mathematician, theoretical mathematician. He's been really taking uh, or making um uh a kind of priority on just getting out that message that math is not as scary as it it could be.

Andrew MacIntosh: 53:09

And you know there are all these different ways of teaching, engaging people with it and understanding it and it's just really kind of connecting, trying to connect with people in different ways so that they they lose that kind of fear of it. But I, you know, I wonder if you have any thoughts on that from yeah, maths is.

Amanda Mathieson: 53:22

Maths is an interesting one because, yeah, people do find it kind of like a bit intimidating sometimes. But there was, there was one guest on the podcast called Katie Steckles, and the way I met her was we were doing this history tour about women who'd contributed to science in some way and were based in Manchester. So this was when I was at the University of Manchester and she did a portion of the tour about a famous female mathematician. But I just remember that basically, when she so we would pick people up from one location and take them to the next. And she came to pick people up from my location and took them to her location, but she showed them a Rubik's Cube at the beginning. When she picked them up, she was like, by the time we reach the next location, I will have solved this like really, and she was just talking like she wasn't even looking at the thing I don't feel like

Amanda Mathieson: 54:19

and then by the time we got there, she'd solved it and then she was doing like some fun, um, what I would call mathemagic. Um, we had someone actually, it seems, summer school um, who so as part of the summer school, we do like an open mic night where they can do any sort of form of entertainment for five minutes, and one student did Mathemagic. So basically like figuring out what number people had guessed in their heads, using all of these like behind the scenes maths, but to you looks like magic, so that's really good. I think that's one way of inspiring people. And another thing that another activity that I thought was really good was there's a guy in Greece who's doing what was it?

Amanda Mathieson: 55:00

Cooking with numbers, cooking with the numbers it was called, and basically it was for students who are struggling with maths, but like cooking for students who are struggling with maths, but like cooking. So you have to use your maths to measure out the ingredients, to figure out the nutrition, to, to do the recipe. Basically, and that's a another way of like. If you combine something people are confident in and that they like with something that maybe they feel less confident in, I feel like that can be the bridge to getting them over that barrier.

Andrew MacIntosh: 55:31

Okay, so I think we can wind this down here, but I have one kind of last question, which is we've already talked about a whole bunch of different ways to engage people with science. What is it that you're kind of working on right now that you're really excited about, and maybe that involves, like a new escape room that you're envisioning, or something else.

Amanda Mathieson: 55:50

Well, I'm actually right now I'm studying a doctorate at Trinity College Dublin. It's in the School of Education and my focus is play, obviously.

Andrew MacIntosh: 56:01

I mean.

Amanda Mathieson: 56:02

I love escape rooms, I love play. I think play is such a wonderful way to learn. I know that when I was younger, you know, I used to play a lot of video games and most people at the time, especially, would say, oh, what a waste of time, you know, spending all evening playing video games. But I learned a lot from those video games. Like, there was a pirate game where I basically learned north, east, south and west from that and you were kind of exploring this map and the map was quite reminiscent of the globe. So, like you know, you'd have, uh, cultures that were a little bit like african cultures in in that region. You know the far east would be quite similar to kind of east asian cultures. So I kind of learned a little bit about geography and where these different cultures were from that game.

Amanda Mathieson: 56:47

And there was another game called Age of Empires where you had to build your own civilization and you had to do campaigns as well that were related to history, like the Spanish conquests in America and so on. So I learned a bit of history from that. But also there were skills that I learned, I feel like, or maybe concepts that were a little bit more abstract. So, for example, when I was building these civilizations, you start with just two villages and you have to acquire wood, you acquire materials, you build like markets, you build a military base and all of that kind of stuff. And then in history we had to write an essay, I remember, about World War II from the perspective of the prime minister and the government who were running things at the time. And I wrote this essay and my teacher said it was really great, and they were like you really understand how to run a country, and I was like I've run entire civilizations, like I've got a load of experience, but like you know.

Amanda Mathieson: 57:47

So I think games can really really build these skills that you wouldn't you know, and how you have these experiences that you wouldn't otherwise. So I'm really interested in in that, and so one of the things I want to do for my project is to develop a game that would teach students how to be scientists, like if you were scientists and you had to solve all of these environmental issues like excess plastic, like excess CO2, like biodiversity loss. You know the planet is in this horrible state. You are scientists, how are you going to fix it? And so I wanted to design a game that secondary school students would play over, say, 10 weeks, and they have to do all the things that scientists do. They have to engage with industry, they have to talk to the public, they have to apply for funding, like all of these different things that you would think um a kind of side to the science, but really they're. They're so much part of it and I want to kind of give them that experience of what it's like to be a researcher.

Andrew MacIntosh: 58:47

So I don't know if anyone will have fun with the module on applying for funding.

Amanda Mathieson: 58:53

It will be soul-crushing.

Andrew MacIntosh: 58:55

Teach resilience as well in the process.

Amanda Mathieson: 58:57

Yeah, exactly, yeah, resilience is the whole idea, I think.

Andrew MacIntosh: 59:02

I mean, it's fascinating and while you were talking I was just thinking, you know one of the most immersive examples of a game that had a crazy outcome Science fiction, orson Scott Card. I said Orson Scott Card, ender's Game have you read Ender's Game?

Amanda Mathieson: 59:16

I haven't read it, but I've heard of it. I saw like the end of the movie once when somebody else was watching it and it looked really cool. So, yeah, I would definitely read that. Yeah.

Andrew MacIntosh: 59:25

I mean it's a bit of a spoiler alert, but the. Yeah, I mean it's a bit of a spoiler alert, but the whole idea there is this society is looking for the perfect general to destroy this alien race that the human race is at war with and rather than having.

Andrew MacIntosh: 59:36

well, the kind of reveal at the end is that the whole training system that this kid genetically engineered for that purpose, the whole training system that he engaged in, was actually the real war. So by the end of it he kind of defeats the game, but actually they defeated the alien civilization wow and so I imagine, with what you were talking about is kind of like an example of that.

Amanda Mathieson: 59:58

Yeah, how can you get these people to like you know that end point, but the whole time they think it's like this fun kind of game or this experience where yeah so that's really interesting without the kind of dystopic ideas yeah, yeah, that would be more like how do we solve and help the planet, rather than how do we just imagine like can we put these people in training programs to like solve the climate crisis?

Andrew MacIntosh: 1:00:17

you know knowing that they're actually doing it as they go that would be really cool.

Amanda Mathieson: 1:00:21

Yeah, because you can test things um without well, yeah, if you, if you were really doing it, I suppose, yeah, you can't just like, oh yeah, just throw this genetic variant out into the world and see what happens? No, probably not.

Andrew MacIntosh: 1:00:31

Yeah, no, but yeah, I mean, that sounds really interesting and, um, I know you're just at the start of that, that PhD journey right now. But I wish you the best of luck in that.

Amanda Mathieson: 1:00:40

Oh, thank you, I'll need it.

Andrew MacIntosh: 1:00:42

Maybe we'll have a I'll have you back on at some point. We can talk about some of the results that you're finding yeah, definitely how the games were going. But, amanda, is there anything else that you didn't mention or you want to come back to from this conversation to leave people with?

Amanda Mathieson: 1:00:54

no, I just want to say thank you for having me on and um, just to tell everybody to play more. I think there's so many benefits to it, um, not just kind of via mental health, but also in terms of you, you know, developing skills, developing knowledge. It's so much more productive than we give it credit for. And it's not just children who should play. We should all play, we should all be playing.

Andrew MacIntosh: 1:01:18

Amanda Matheson. Thank you so much for being on the Prime 8 cast Wonderful message to close.

Amanda Mathieson: 1:01:23

Thank you very much.