Shooting Stopover: Gunsmoke (August 30, 1959)

“Shooting Stopover” is an episode of Gunsmoke, the old-time radio show, first broadcast August 30, 1959. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

Marshal Matt Dillon must transport a prisoner wanted for murder by stagecoach to the next town. When a schoolteacher boards the coach objecting to his harsh treatment of the shackled prisoner, tensions rise between Dillon's duty to prevent escape and her pleas for human dignity.

Dodge City and a stagecoach traveling between towns in the Old West

Characters: Matt Dillon, Chester, Doc, Kitty, Bernie, Schoolteacher

Listen for: A moral debate about how prisoners should be treated, set against the backdrop of a stagecoach journey carrying both a dangerous criminal and innocent passengers

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.