Walter Cronkite: "And That's The Way It Is!"

October 25, 2025·28 min·2 clips

Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, emerges from his grave to critique today's fake news era.

Host Stephen Kunis introduces Walter Cronkite as one of history's most significant broadcast journalists, noting his 19 years anchoring the CBS Evening News and his receipt of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The portrayed Cronkite, voiced by Frank Girard, begins from Mount Moriah Cemetery in Kansas City saying he is bored underground and glad for the invitation. He shares his biography: born in St. Louis in 1916, son of Walter Cronkite Sr., a dentist; moved to Houston at age ten; edited his high school newspaper at San Jacinto High; attended the University of Texas at Austin before dropping out after sophomore year. He started as a sports announcer in Kansas City under the name Walter Wilkinson, calling it shitty. He met his wife Betty there. He joined UPI and covered World War II, flying in B-17 bombers and once firing a machine gun at a German fighter jet. He contrasts this with what he dismisses as Dan Rather's battlefield performances. He later hosted You Are There, re-enacting historical events with blacklisted screenwriters. He declined Edward R. Murrow's initial offer from CBS in 1950 before accepting. He became the CBS Evening News anchor in 1962. The following year he broke the news of JFK's death on air, wiping tears, and says he took longer than other outlets to confirm the death because he was hoping it wasn't true. He discusses LBJ's quote about losing Middle America if he had lost Cronkite, and reveals his slow speech pace — 124 words per minute versus the normal 165-200 — was developed to avoid slurring when he came home drunk to his wife. He identifies as a frustrated song and dance man who did impromptu striptease at dinner parties. Callers and a journalism student from the Cronkite School at ASU ask about the evolution of broadcast news, with Cronkite noting the CBS Evening News was 27 total minutes and he was on air for only 14. He calls modern news propaganda and tells a vending machine caller that if they watched five channels about an event they personally witnessed, they would see five different versions. He reflects on his autobiography's framing of objective journalism versus opinion columns. The episode closes with a satirical Cronkite-style news report on the Ukraine war, riffing on Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

As heard by us

A deadpan Cronkite send-up turns broadcast legend into comic confession.

Stephen Kunis treats Walter Cronkite with mock-grand seriousness, and that pose gives the piece its bite. The newsroom authority, the cemetery staging, and Cronkite's own stories about drunken late nights, an impromptu striptease, and reckless cars-and-boats tales all work…

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Why you'd press play

You want Cronkite history, cemetery deadpan, and an interview that keeps swerving into the weird.

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