Guest: Matt Hancher was the guest for this special Wednesday Space Show program. We began our discussion with an explanation of the Yuri's Night global celebrations. For more information on this event, please visit their main web page www.yurisnight.net. From their website, you can find where the parties are located in the United States as well as around the world. If you find there is no party near you, you can start one. Just follow the instructions on the website and add your party's information. After Matt explained the origins of Yuri's Night and we discussed the organization and its parties on the large scale, we focused on the party to be held at NASA Ames in Mountain View, CA (near San Francisco). Matt told us about the event, the programs, and there were several listener questions asking about the event, bringing children to NASA Ames, the possibility of an Ames tour, and much more. As we learned, there will be no Ames tours but you will want to hear about the other positive aspects of this event hosted at Ames. To visit the NASA Ames Yuri's Night website, go to http://sf.yurisnight.net/. Matt also told us more event information would be added to the site as we get closer to April 12. From this site, you can purchase your tickets and find out more about what is planned for this 12 hour party on April 12, 2PM-2AM PDT! You will want to hear about the entertainment, the installations, and much more as Matt takes us through the event details for this particular Yuri's Night celebration. Later in the show, we turned to topics related to Matt's robotic work and his background in this field. We discussed state-of-the-art technologies in robotic development, we talked about both robotic and a human space program and how to more successfully blend the two together to capitalize on the strengths of both, not just focusing on one or the other. We also fielded questions and discussed robotics in education, even the best path of study in high school for those wanting to study robotic engineering in college. In response to a question about the best high school path, Matt said to focus on physics and calculus, but do extra things to give you an edge as you enter college. If this field of study interests you or someone you know, you will definitely want to hear what Matt has to say. Another topic we touched on was the line between robotics and animatronics as used in movies. Matt had some very interesting stories to tell us about working with movie stuntmen and people who design and make animatronics and he clearly defined the line between robots and animatronics. This is a fascinating discussion you will not want to miss. If you have questions or comments about the Yuri's Night celebration at NASA Ames, please send them to info@yurisnightbayarea.net. If you have questions for any other Yuri's Night event, use info@yurisnight.net. If you have questions or comments for Matt, please put The Space Show in the subject line and use Matthew.D.Hancher@nasa.gov.