We're all watching and processing what's happening in D.C.

For the latest news, tune into your local NPR station or go to npr.org.

For now, we thought this Life Kit episode would be useful.

Stay safe.

First, it was the radio.

Then television.

And now, the radio. Then, television, and now the internet. Bringing news of the outside world into our homes. Wait, Corey, what is this? That was pretty good, right? Is this? I thought this was Life Kit. That was my announcer voice. I'm doing an old news reel. Oh, okay, Great. Well, we're talking about news in our homes, right?

Oh, yes, yes, yes. Okay, so we are. So, yes, we are all taking in news all the time, this crazy 24-hour news cycle.

But what we don't always realize is that our children are often listening right alongside us. And sometimes that's not so great.

I was really little during the Vietnam War.

Alison Alquan grew up in rural Louisiana.

My dad was in favor of the war and watching the news in the evening after work. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence,

the optimists who have been wrong in the past.

Allison says her mom didn't want her watching the daily drumbeat of Vietnam coverage, but... The way that our house was set up, it was sort of impossible for me to completely miss it.

I was just disallowed from like sitting down in front of the television and watching.

And I think that my mom thought that she was doing a better job of protecting me from it than she

actually was.

Every time the Americans tried to move through the embassy yard, the hidden Vietnam.

So I would catch sort of glimpses of the film from Vietnam and, you know, just sort of words.

And one of those words, confused and terrified her.

Where a squad of U.S. 8th Cavalry is ambushed by an entire regiment of Yetong guerrillas.

Several hundred of the estimated 2,000 guerrillas are slain.

...