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Comment by abraxas | Hacker News Reader

Awesome blast from the past. I wonder if this was ever featured on the legendary Polish TV program called "Sonda" (English title would "The Probe")? "Sonda" was a great pop-science show when those were much more science and much less pop. Just two dudes sitting and discussing new and future technology and its implications.

Damn, I miss "Sonda" so much and this clip took me right down that memory lane.

Here's the amazingly great intro music clip from the start of that show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHT8u52bSVE&ab_channel=Dukat...

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You might enjoy this: https://archive.org/details/sonda

Wow, awesome. Thank you. I'll definitely watch a couple of these for the old time's sake.

The best thing about Sonda was that one of the hosts took a position on the episode's theme, and the other - an opposite one, even if just for the sake of discourse.

I was just a kid in the 80s, but indeed remember watching "Sonda" - it was fantastic! Going through some episodes now on youtube, does bring back memories. There was another show in the late 80s called "Bliżej świata" (English: "Closer to the World"), which would run for an hour or so on a Sunday night and show snippets from western tv shows. The contrast to the (usually) very bleak communist Polish TV, was striking. For me, back then, watching both of these shows felt like looking through a window into a different world.

Yes! Though Sonda was the early 80’s no?

Sonda definitely had little oversight and no screenwriting, but it was very honest and well intentioned in that old school Polish-Socialist Politechnika Engineer sort of way. Definitely a breath of fresh air, even today. Makes one wonder if this was the same in other Socialist Republics or was unique to Poland.

I'm sure they had something. However, I never heard from any other geek from the socialist bloc mention any show that had the cult following of Sonda among us, Poles.

Speaking from ex-SU side, not sure about shows, but some 'science' related magazines had cult following. Copies of 'Eureka' were a great read in my childhood. It was a yearly book-length magazine about new technologies.

Some covers from it here — http://publ.lib.ru/ARCHIVES/E/%27%27Evrika%27%27/_%27%27Evri...

And to imagine we had lost most of the episodes, as the tape was reused :(

> "The Proble"

Typolice: I'm pretty sure you meant "The Probe"

Yep, fixed

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