It conjures an image that is both immediate and ancient: the acrid smell of sulfur, the ringing in your ears after a Colt .45 discharges, and the hazy, low-hanging cloud that lingers in the air long after the gunslinger has hit the dust. For most, Gunsmoke is the quintessential American Western—the radio and television juggernaut that ran for two decades, starring James Arness as the laconic Marshal Matt Dillon.

How a black-and-white Western from the 1950s teaches us about the boundless nature of justice, loneliness, and the human soul.

Gunsmoke ran for 635 episodes. That is not a TV show; that is a civilization. Over twenty years, audiences watched Matt Dillon age. They watched the black-and-white morality of the 1950s dissolve into the cynical, anti-hero culture of the 1970s.