Hi, I'm Joe Wiley. And I'm Soie Ball. And we're here to tell you about a brand new podcast, Digit.

Digit is all about the things that Joe and I love. From the kids to the parents and all the stuff in between.

There's a lot going on when you get to this age. Listen wherever you get your podcasts and watch every episode on Spotify. Dig it. Every week. Every week.

For the rest of time. Yes. Okay. Good.

This is John Batchel. Conversation with colleague Anatoly Zach, who keeps the Russian Space Web,

reviewing the 50-year anniversary of the Apollo

Soyuz rendezvous mission in low-earth orbit in July of 1975.

Anatoly's memory of it, however, is wonderful childlike when he was a young teenager on television,

a color television from space,

the first time I'd seen that in Moscow.

On television, all the kids were glued to the events starting in mid-July

and culminating in the rendezvous on the 19th. But what was most important to the children,

young people, and eventually everybody, was memorial cigarettes that were issued to celebrate the

Soyuz Apollo-Souye's mission, Apollo-Soyuz mission. And Antoley explains that they were really good cigarettes compared to what they were used to,

and therefore an education tool, a collector's item,

I wonder if anybody has those cigarettes or an empty pack of them on eBay.

I'll go check.

They were memorable in Moscow and still are for Anatoly. Here he is to explain the cigarettes of

Apollo Soyuz, July, 1975, 50 years ago today like last night. More of this tonight. And what went

wrong on the mission and how lucky they were and how they corrected

things that weren't right. Lots of drama. Okay, I was at home at Moscow at that time. It was a really

fun time. It was all over this mission was all over television, radio and all the mass media

...