About this podcast
Step back to radio’s golden age—curated classics in comedy, mystery, drama, westerns, and adventure from the 1930s–1950s. Drawn from a library of 46,000+ restored episodes, with new selections added regularly.
Episodes
The newest 50 of 378 episodes
- Old Time Radio Comedy — Bing Crosby Show: "Rosemary Clooney" (1953) | Full Episode · 29 minSunday nights on CBS in 1953, General Electric gave Bing Crosby the easiest half hour on the air, and the Sunday before Thanksgiving he opened with a hoedown. "Y'all Come," with…
- Old Time Radio Comedy — Bing Crosby Show: "Peggy Lee" (1949) | Full Episode · 30 minWednesday nights on CBS in 1949, Bing Crosby ran the easiest half hour in radio, and on October 12 he threw out the script entirely. "Tonight's chirping for Chesterfield isn't…
- Old Time Radio Detective — Casey, Crime Photographer: "Source of Information" (1954) | Full Episode · 30 minFlashgun Casey, ace cameraman of the Morning Express, covers the crime news of a great city in this 1954 CBS revival starring Staats Cotsworth. Grove Snyder, once the most famous…
- Old Time Radio Detective — Casey, Crime Photographer: "Too Many Angels" (1947) | Full Episode · 30 minAce Morning Express cameraman Casey and reporter Ann Williams head to a Broadway preview after bartender Ethelbert confesses he's sunk $100 into the musical 'Angel Face' as one…
- Old Time Radio Comedy — Phil Harris-Alice Faye: "The Vaccinations" (1950) | Full Episode · 30 minPhil Harris and Alice Faye are about to sail for Europe, where Phil and Jack Benny will play the London Palladium, and everyone needs a smallpox shot first. Alice tells Phil the…
- Old Time Radio Comedy — Phil Harris-Alice Faye: "Frankie's Foster Son" (1949) | Full Episode · 30 minThe Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show was NBC's Sunday-night family comedy, with bandleader Phil Harris and movie star Alice Faye playing themselves at home, flanked by Elliott Lewis…
- Old Time Radio Comedy — Phil Harris-Alice Faye: "The First Show for Rexall" (1948) | Full Episode · 30 minThe Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show was NBC's Sunday-night family comedy, with bandleader Phil Harris and movie star Alice Faye playing themselves at home, flanked by Elliott Lewis…
- Old Time Radio Detective — Broadway Is My Beat: "Decker Murder Case" (1954) | Full Episode · 29 minBroadway Is My Beat was CBS radio's noir portrait of New York's "gaudiest, most violent, loneliest mile in the world," with Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover and scripts by…
- Old Time Radio Detective — Broadway Is My Beat: "The Georgia Gray Murder Case" (1951) | Full Episode · 30 minBroadway Is My Beat was CBS radio's noir portrait of New York's "gaudiest, most violent, loneliest mile in the world," with Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover, scripted by…
- Old Time Radio Detective — Broadway Is My Beat: "The Jane Darnell Murder Case" (1949) | Full Episode · 30 minBroadway Is My Beat was CBS radio's noir portrait of New York's "gaudiest, most violent, loneliest mile in the world," with Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover, scripted by…
- Old Time Radio Adventure — Escape: "The Follower" (1951) | Full Episode · 30 minEscape was CBS radio's half hour of high adventure, "exciting stories of man's escape from his everyday world." This February 1951 broadcast, featuring William Conrad, follows a…
- Old Time Radio Adventure — Escape: "She" (1948) | Full Episode · 30 minEscape was CBS radio's half hour of high adventure, and this July 1948 broadcast tackles H. Rider Haggard's immortal romance of the lost African kingdom ruled by Ayesha, "She Who…
- Old Time Radio Horror — Escape: "Dead of Night" Original Audition (1947) | Full Episode · 30 minMonths before Escape became CBS radio's half hour of high adventure, this was the very first pilot, broadcast on February 28, 1947 under the name Out of This World. The story is…
- Old Time Radio Drama — NBC University Theater: "The Kreutzer Sonata" (1951) | Full Episode · 30 minIn its final season NBC University Theater, billed on air as the NBC Theater, was still bringing a great novel to radio every week from Hollywood. Tonight it is Leo Tolstoy's…
- Old Time Radio Drama — NBC University Theater: "The Portrait of a Lady" (1949) | Full Episode · 60 minBy the fall of 1949 NBC University Theater (now billed simply as the NBC Theater) was broadcasting a full hour of a great novel from Hollywood every Sunday, with college courses…
- Old Time Radio Drama — NBC University Theater: "A Farewell to Arms" (1948) | Full Episode · 60 minNBC University Theater brought the great novels to radio from Hollywood, with film stars in the leads. This hour is Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms," adapted by Ernest…
- Old Time Radio Western — Gunsmoke: "Kitty Caught" (1954) | Full Episode · 30 minGunsmoke brought the adult Western to radio, with William Conrad as Matt Dillon, U.S. Marshal of Dodge City. In "Kitty Caught," Chester comes back from Wichita with word that the…
- Old Time Radio Western — Gunsmoke: "Gone Straight" (1953) | Full Episode · 30 minGunsmoke brought the adult Western to radio, with William Conrad as Matt Dillon, U.S. Marshal of Dodge City. In "Gone Straight," a special deputy for the New Mexico Stock Raisers…
- Old Time Radio Comedy — Fibber McGee and Molly: "Numerology" (1943) | Full Episode · 30 minFor ten dollars, a numerologist over a barbershop promises to put Fibber McGee in harmony with the universe by giving him a new name: Homer K. Frink, eleven letters, a prime…
- Old Time Radio Comedy — Fibber McGee and Molly: "McGee Sells Watches" (1941) | Full Episode · 30 minA package marked FRAGILE, insured for $800, lands at 79 Wistful Vista, and inside is a leather sample case stamped in gold: Fibber McGee, special representative of a fancy watch…
- Old Time Radio Detective — Johnny Dollar: "Milford Brooks III (Audition)" (1948) | Full Episode · 30 minBefore Bob Bailey, before Charles Russell, there was Dick Powell. In this December 1948 audition, never broadcast, Powell plays Johnny Dollar, the freelance insurance…
- Old Time Radio Western — The Lone Ranger: "The Boss of the Tarantulas" (1942) | Full Episode · 29 minThe Lone Ranger and Tonto have jailed four of the knife-throwing Tarantula gang with help from Texas Jack of the Border City Cafe, and now Jack hands over a dead sheriff's letter…
- Old Time Radio Western — The Lone Ranger: "Hold Up Stagecoach" (1940) | Full Episode · 30 minCaleb Saxon and his wife Edith ride the stage to Basin City hoping to leave the whispers back East behind them: a court cleared Caleb, but everyone still believes he stole the…
- Old Time Radio Western — The Lone Ranger: "The Osage Bank Robbery" (1938) | Full Episode · 30 minThe Brogan brothers, two of the most wanted killers in the West, rob the bank at Osage and shoot the banker for no reason at all, then vanish without leaving a trail. The…
- Old Time Radio Mystery — Suspense: "The Lodger" (1940) | Full Episode · 30 minLondon, 1888. A quiet, soft-spoken man takes the upstairs room at the Buntings' boarding house, pays in advance, keeps odd hours, and asks that his landlady never touch the black…
- Old Time Radio Adventure — John Steele, Adventurer: "Cargo Unknown" (1949) | Full Episode · 30 minLou Cardone flew 71 fighter missions over Europe and came home too restless to sit still, so he bought a surplus twin-engine ship and called it the Anything, Anywhere Airline…
- Old Time Radio Horror — Escape: "Dead of Night" (1947) | Full Episode · 24 minBefore Escape ever became CBS radio's half hour of high adventure, it was auditioned with this: a chilling half hour adapted from the ventriloquist segment of the 1945 British…
- Old Time Radio Adventure — Escape: "The Man Who Would Be King" (1947) | Full Episode · 29 minEscape was CBS radio's half hour of high adventure, and this is the night it began: the series premiere of July 7, 1947, produced and directed by William N. Robson. Les…
- Old Time Radio Adventure — The Green Lama: "Adventure of the Perfect Prisoner" (1949) | Full Episode · 30 minJethro Dumont spent ten years in a Tibetan monastery and came home as the Green Lama, a crime fighter who never carries a gun. In the final broadcast of the 1949 CBS series…
- Old Time Radio Western — The Lone Ranger: "The Magic Belt" (1942) | Full Episode · 28 minThe Lone Ranger is an iconic radio western serial about a masked former Texas Ranger and his Native American companion Tonto who right wrongs in the Old West. In this classic…
- Old Time Radio Adventure — The Green Lama: "The Man Who Never Existed" (1949) | Full Episode · 32 minJethro Dumont spent ten years in a Tibetan monastery and came home as the Green Lama, a crime fighter who refuses to carry a gun. In this audition recording of the CBS series'…
- Old Time Radio Drama — Biography In Sound: "Meet Ernest Hemingway" (1954) | Full Episode · 55 minBiography in Sound, a CBS documentary series produced by Norman Corwin, presented biographical profiles of notable American figures through dramatizations, interviews, and…
- Old Time Radio Mystery — Lives of Harry Lime: "Mexican Hat Trick" (1951) | Full Episode · 29 minOrson Welles reprises Harry Lime, the charming racketeer of The Third Man, in this 1951 series that tells the con man's adventures before that fatal night in Vienna. In "Mexican…
- Old Time Radio Adventure — Challenge of the Yukon: "The Stolen Pups" (1947) | Full Episode · 29 minChallenge of the Yukon follows Sergeant Preston of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and his lead sled dog, Yukon King, as they keep the peace in the Klondike. In "The Stolen…
- Old Time Radio Adventure — Challenge of the Yukon: "Sam's Gold" (1947) | Full Episode · 29 minChallenge of the Yukon follows Sergeant Preston of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and his lead sled dog, Yukon King, as they keep the peace in the Klondike. In "Sam's Gold," a…
- Old Time Radio Western — The Lone Ranger: "Double For An Outlaw" (1942) | Full Episode · 30 minThe Lone Ranger is an iconic masked western hero who fights for justice alongside his Native American companion Tonto. Broadcast throughout the 1930s-1950s, this classic radio…
- Old Time Radio Sci-Fi — Mercury Theater On The Air: "War of the Worlds" (1938) | Full Episode · 59 minOrson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air present H. G. Wells's tale of a Martian invasion, adapted by Howard Koch and told as a live dance-band broadcast that keeps being…
- Old Time Radio Thriller — Suspense: "The Diary of Sophronia Winters" (1943) | Full Episode · 30 minSuspense presents Lucille Fletcher's first original script for the series, a study in terror told through a diary. Sophronia Winters is forty, freed by her father's death, and on…
- Old Time Radio Detective — Sam Spade: "The Bouncing Betty Caper" (1948) | Full Episode · 25 minA fussy English butler named Carruthers walks into Sam Spade's office, tidies his ashtray, and hires him to go undercover as a chauffeur at Bleakcliff, a clifftop estate near…
- Old Time Radio Horror — Lights Out: "It Happened" (1938) | Full Episode · 30 minJean Taylor is a spoiled rich girl from New York on a chaperoned art tour of Paris, and she is bored stiff. She slips away from the Louvre looking for fun and finds a smooth…
- Old Time Radio Western — The Lone Ranger: "Murder Strikes Thrice" (1942) | Full Episode · 30 minThe Lone Ranger and Tonto ride into Excalibur, a dusty frontier town where somebody is killing men on their birthdays. A year ago, three witnesses swore away the alibi of a young…
- Old Time Radio Western — Have Gun Will Travel: "Strange Vendetta" (1958) | Full Episode · 25 minThe very first radio episode of Have Gun Will Travel, with John Dehner as Paladin, the cultured San Francisco gunman of CBS's "thinking man's Western." San Francisco, 1875…
- Old Time Radio Western — The Six Shooter: "Britt Ponset's Christmas Carol" (1953) | Full Episode · 29 minJimmy Stewart rides the winter trail as Britt Ponset, the easygoing drifter of NBC's The Six Shooter. With Christmas coming on, he comes upon Johnny, an orphaned runaway who…
- Old Time Radio Comedy — The Jack Benny Program: "Jack and the Bean Stalk" (1954) | Full Episode · 25 minSpring has come to Beverly Hills, and Jack Benny is out in the backyard in overalls and long white gloves, planting string beans again — last year's crop was so small the bugs…
- Old Time Radio Comedy — Abbott & Costello: "Return to P.S. 15" (1944) | Full Episode · 29 minBud Abbott and Lou Costello were the fastest, loudest comedy act in America, and their weekly NBC show turned every broadcast into a scheme that got away from them. In this…
- Old Time Radio Comedy — The Jack Benny Program: "Dennis Wants to Join the Air Force" | Full Episode · 25 minFor more than twenty years Jack Benny ran the best-loved comedy in American radio, and the joke was always himself: vain, penny-pinching, stuck forever at 39, and hopeless on the…
- Old Time Radio Comedy — Our Miss Brooks: "Rare Black Orchid" (1950) | Full Episode · 30 minConnie Brooks teaches English at Madison High, dodges her blustering principal, and never quite gets a date with the biology teacher. In this May 1950 broadcast, Mr. Conklin's…
- Old Time Radio Thriller — Lights Out: "Execution" (1943) | Full Episode · 29 minLights Out was radio's premier horror series, and it reached its best-remembered form when writer-director Arch Oboler brought it back to CBS in 1942 — a half hour of dread…
- Old Time Radio Detective — Sam Spade: "The Sinister Siren Caper" (1951) | Full Episode · 29 minThe Adventures of Sam Spade let Dashiell Hammett's hardboiled private eye tell his own stories — every case dictated back at the office to his secretary Effie Perrine, period…
- Old Time Radio Horror — Quiet, Please: "Whence Came You" (1948) | Full Episode · 30 minQuiet, Please was radio's quietest horror show and its strangest — Wyllis Cooper wrote and directed every episode, and Ernest Chappell told them to you in a calm, confiding voice…
