Body Snatch: Gunsmoke (February 15, 1959)

“Body Snatch” is an episode of Gunsmoke, the old-time radio show, first broadcast February 15, 1959. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

Listen to Gunsmoke free, live around the clock: every episode, in the order it first aired. No sign-up.

What happens

A drifter named Red is arrested for grave robbing from an Indian burial ground. When Doc Adams is unavailable, a well-trained physician named Dr. Milford Brand arrives in Dodge City and offers to treat Red's injured leg. Doc Adams welcomes the prospect of having medical help in the growing town, but Dr. Brand makes it clear he intends to practice medicine professionally and scientifically, not as a mere assistant.

Dodge City, Kansas - the jail, Miss Kitty's Longhorn Saloon, and Doc Adams's office

Characters: Marshal Matt Dillon, Chester Proudfoot, Miss Kitty, Sam (bartender), Doc Adams, Red (the grave robber), Dr. Milford Brand

Listen for: The tension between Dr. Brand's formal, scientific approach to medicine and Doc Adams's pragmatic frontier doctoring style; the mysterious circumstances surrounding Dr. Brand's arrival in Dodge City.

Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.