Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

From CBS News headquarters in New York, this is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

Armstrong is on the moon, Neil Armstrong, 38-year-old American, standing on the surface of the moon. From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently

official President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time. 2 o'clock Eastern Standard Time,

some 38 minutes ago. Walter Cronkite.

For a generation, he was the voice of America.

Uncle Walter, they called him.

Night after night, he brought to American living rooms

the ups and downs and rights and wrongs

of a rapidly changing world,

signing off with his customary line,

and that's the way it is.

Cronkite's reputation, his calm but authoritative voice, carried so much weight that in

1968, one of the most chaotic years in American history, he had the power to persuade

the American public that we weren't winning the war in Vietnam.

The first person he had to convince, though, was himself.

Up until 1968, Cronkite wasn't all that skeptical about America's role in Vietnam.

He had taken over the CBS Evening News anchor chair during the Cold War.

Like most journalists of his generation,

he embraced the fight against communism and understood why the United States had intervened

in the Civil War raging in Vietnam. And then came the Ted Offensive, a surprise and brutal

attack by the Viet Congorillas and the North Vietnamese against 100 South

...