The Pacifist: Gunsmoke (June 3, 1956)

“The Pacifist” is an episode of Gunsmoke, the old-time radio show, first broadcast June 3, 1956. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

Marshal Dillon helps a stranger named Hook Hardin fix his wagon on the prairie and later encounters him working at the saloon in Dodge. When two drifters named Bill Sanders and Ed Hoegler arrive in town, they recognize Hook from a raid on Lawrence, Kansas twenty years earlier, and they seem to have trouble in mind for him.

Dodge City, Kansas and the surrounding prairie, 1956

Characters: Matt Dillon, Chester, Kitty, Hook Hardin, Bill Sanders, Ed Hoegler

Listen for: The tense confrontation between Hook and the two drifters who knew him from his violent past, and whether they will carry out whatever threat they have in mind.

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.