10 Years and 500 Episodes: The Story of BibleProject Podcast

Summary

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BibleProject Podcast

Episode: "10 Years and 500 Episodes: The Story of BibleProject Podcast"

Date: December 31, 2025

Episode Overview

This milestone 500th episode celebrates a decade of the BibleProject Podcast, tracing its origins from humble beginnings—conversations between two friends in a closet—to a global platform with hundreds of thousands of listeners. The episode offers an engaging behind-the-scenes narrative of how the podcast grew, shaped its creators, adapted to new challenges, and touched listeners around the world. Through stories, anecdotes, and interviews with team members, the BibleProject reflects on its journey, the foundational values that continue to guide it, and its vision for the future.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins: Two Friends, Big Questions

• No initial plan for a podcast:
  • The conversations began as creative, exploratory sessions to help make their Bible videos.
  • “There was no plan to start a podcast, but we started having these conversations as a part of making the videos.” (John Collins, 00:16)
• Early setting:
  • Weekly half-day meetings, sustained by the generosity of Tim’s church and fueled by honest curiosity, in a windowless room “with plywood walls,” a designer couch, and chocolate lollipops that left a memorable stain (Tim Mackie, 02:56 – 04:37).
• The foundation of trust:
  • Candid, judgment-free questioning about theology became the bedrock of their collaboration.
  • “From the very beginning, this whole project was built on trust. The kind of trust between two friends who could ask hard questions about God and the Bible without fear of judgment.” (Lindsey Ponder, 06:58)

2. From Side Project to Team Effort

• Gathering a creative team:
  • The move to a new office allowed them to bring in animators and illustrators, beginning the collaborative atmosphere.
  • “[There] wasn't a ton of rules already set in place. It was like, you get to help craft something... which was also really exciting.” (Robert Perez, 08:17)
• Early challenges:
  • Prototype videos took years, with scripts sprawling across ten pages, before finally distilling to their first releases: “Heaven and Earth” and “Genesis 1–11.” (John Collins, 09:06 – 09:17)

3. Starting the Podcast: Scrappy Beginnings

• No studio, no gear:
  • The first episodes were recorded under the stairs in a storage closet.
  • “Think Harry Potter, but with microphones instead of magic.” (Lindsey Ponder, 11:27)
• Raw audio and DIY editing:
  • John taught himself editing, initially unaware of the poor sound quality until listeners pointed it out.
  • “To me it was, it's the content... I would just edit for that. And as long as it was loud enough, that was fine.” (John Collins, 13:25)
• Dan Gummel joins as audio engineer:
  • A perfect-timing email from listener and NPR producer Dan led to higher production values and new creative opportunities (e.g., field recordings in Nashville). (15:27 – 17:30)

4. Impact and Listener Connections

• First realization of the podcast's impact:
  • A friend’s heartfelt appreciation underscored the significance of their vulnerable, inquisitive approach. “That moment really left the mark on me thinking, okay, this is significant.” (John Collins, 18:23)
• Growing production team:
  • To prevent bottlenecks and cover for illnesses (e.g., during COVID), production expanded to include a dedicated engineer (Tyler) and managing producer, with a finely-tuned postproduction workflow (19:52 – 21:29).

5. Going Global: Localization

• Advance from translation to localization:
  • The project’s vision for accessibility spurred efforts to localize the unscripted podcast into Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, French, and more, adapting idioms and stories to new cultures.
  • “We're not just looking for word for word, direct translation. We want to consider the cultures, the regions, and all the contexts...” (Angela Kiter, 23:36)
• Unexpected partnerships and impact:
  • The Argentinian studio was a surprise success for the Spanish localization—an answered prayer for its founder, who had no clients before BibleProject. (Anna Weich, 25:45)
• Challenges:
  • Localizers must creatively adapt American idioms (like “the friendly skies”) and discuss topics that resonate differently across languages and cultures. (28:13 – 29:30)

6. How and When Listeners Engage

• Podcast listeners tune in while walking dogs, commuting, cooking, mowing lawns, or exercising.
• Personal testimonies show the podcast’s role in deepening understanding, making theology accessible, and building confidence in reading and sharing the Bible (30:20 – 31:52).

7. The Philosophy and DNA of the Podcast

• Numbers don’t drive the work:
  • Tim and John focus on the integrity of the conversation, not the size of the audience.
  • “If the mic wasn't on, we would have to have these conversations anyway.” (Tim Mackie, 34:25)
• Community reading as the goal:
  • The hope is to encourage listeners to read, discuss, and meditate on scripture in community, following the model set by Tim and John. (John Collins, 35:37; Tim Mackie, 36:28)
• Continued wonder at impact:
  • The hosts remain “astounded” and grateful that their personal intellectual and spiritual journey benefits others. (Tim Mackie, 34:48)

8. Looking Ahead

• Next steps for the podcast:
  • Future plans include deep-diving into entire scrolls or books of the Bible in long-form, instead of only thematic series.
  • “We haven't really walked through a book of the Bible like that in long form detail. I'd like to experiment with that in the future.” (Tim Mackie, 37:50)
• Inspiration to continue:
  • The shared joy of creating “the thing I want”—a resource John and Tim wish they had—and the process of working out ideas in real time, which continues to shape and surprise even themselves. (39:12; Tim Mackie, 39:56; 40:31)
• Community expansion:
  • The episode closes with voices from around the world and reiterates the enduring mission: to help people experience the Bible as a unified story leading to Jesus (41:24 – end).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On vulnerability and curiosity:

  • “I remember specifically feeling free to ask certain questions that I wouldn't dare ask. And I just remember you giving me permission through the way you would answer the question. Cause you'd push it further.”
    — John Collins (05:58 – 06:18)

• On being audience-focused (or not):

  • “As a matter of principle, it's not something I focus on. I think one, because I would get nervous... It's just better not to. And then I can shift into a posture of just pure delight and surprise.”
    — Tim Mackie (32:42)

• On collaboration and process:

  • “It truly is a distillation and a re-presentation. And it's a real dialogue. It's not scripted. You know, we're not reading anything.”
    — Tim Mackie (14:33 – 14:40)

• On the podcast's global reach:

  • “BibleProject podcast was number one on Japanese Spotify upon release. And there's just a hunger for the word of God in Japan.”
    — Angela Kiter (27:42 – 28:04)

• On localization challenges:

  • “So many of the stories that Tim and John tell are unique to Portland, Oregon, Pacific Northwest, which doesn't always translate well to other cultures.”
    — Anna Weich (28:13)

• Listener impact:

  • “What really happened to the Bible Project is that it was more defined of what being in the image of God would be and how we can get deeper into the Bible and find out that wisdom underneath.”
    — Listener via Tim Mackie (31:08)

• On never-ending learning:

  • “A couple times I've gone back and listened to series from, like, four or five years ago that I've forgotten most of it. Like, I'm learning from our past selves as if it's not ourselves. It's really strange.”
    — Tim Mackie (40:10)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |------------|--------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:16 | Beginnings—informal, unplanned conversations | | 02:56 | Early work sessions—couch story, creative process | | 05:58 | Trust and vulnerability in early theological discussions | | 08:17 | Bringing on creative team; Robert Perez reflects | | 09:06 | Early struggles with video production | | 11:27 | Podcast recording in a closet under the stairs | | 13:25 | John’s approach to early editing, discovery of audio issues | | 15:27 | Dan Gummel joins as audio engineer | | 18:23 | First realization of podcast’s emotional & spiritual impact | | 19:52 | Growing team, complex process, addition of Tyler | | 23:36 | Localization vs. translation explained | | 25:45 | Story of Argentine studio and the Spanish podcast | | 27:42 | Japanese podcast tops charts; localization expansion | | 28:13 | Localization challenges—cultural relevance | | 31:03 | Listener testimonials—diverse ways people engage | | 32:42 | Reflections on reaching a growing audience | | 35:37 | Podcast’s goal: modeling community Bible reading | | 37:50 | Future plans: long-form book-by-book study | | 39:12 | Motivation: making the podcast they themselves wanted | | 41:24 | Global community voices; enduring mission restated |

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Tone & Style

Throughout the episode, the tone is warm, reflective, and humble—mixing humor (the infamous chocolate lollipop stain) with earnestness and wonder at the podcast’s impact. The dialogue is candid and unscripted, marked by genuine affection between the founders and their team.

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Final Thoughts

The BibleProject Podcast’s 500th episode is more than a nostalgic look back—it’s a vibrant, heartfelt exploration of how community, curiosity, and openness can spark a global movement around the Bible’s story. For newcomers and veterans alike, the episode models humble inquiry, celebrates the diversity and unity of its expanding audience, and promises even deeper engagement with scripture for years to come.

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Memorable Closing:

“We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus.”
— Repeated by Lindsey Ponder, Tim Mackie, Angela Kiter, John Collins, and listeners (42:18–42:25)

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Transcript

[Tim Mackie]

Okay. So I don't need to be looking at anything.

[John Collins]

Oh, is there a coaster?

[Tim Mackie]

There is. It's fun to be like, what are we gonna talk about?

[John Collins]

We're rolling.

[Tim Mackie]

Okay.

[John Collins]

Hey, Tim.

[Tim Mackie]

Hey, John. Hello.

[John Collins]

There was no plan to start a podcast, but we started having these conversations as a part of making the videos. We're starting a new theme.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah, these are good days.

[John Collins]

I'm really excited about this new series.

[Tim Mackie]

Me too. These are really fun conversations. When the fox meets up the bay and when sirens call your name.

[John Collins]

I was enjoying these conversations so much. I thought it would be great to record them so other people can enjoy them too.

[Tim Mackie]

We are starting a new conversation.

[John Collins]

What are we talking about?

[Tim Mackie]

You know, I have all this stuff in my head right now.

[John Collins]

Yeah. There was no other strategy than that, and I didn't have a plan for it becoming anything more.

[Lindsey Ponder]

As we wrap up 2025, the Bibleproject podcast is celebrating two big 10 years and 500 episodes of exploring the Bible together. To mark the occasion, we're taking a little stroll down memory lane to see how it all began. How does a side project recorded in a closet turn into a decade long global conversation?

[John Collins]

This was a new paradigm for me.

[Tim Mackie]

The series will be exploring Genesis chapters one through three.

[John Collins]

It has become the favorite chapters for me to read in the Bible.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Over the past 10 years, this podcast has reached hundreds of thousands of listeners who've joined us in discovering the Bible as one unified story that leads to Jesus. On today's episode, we're sharing how this project continues to shape us and this community of Bible readers that's grown over the past decade. I'm Lindsey Ponder, the producer for the podcast and your host for today. Thanks for joining us. Here we go.

[Tim Mackie]

Raising all your men. Does you're never quite confessed. Now you are a troll. You're free. Sweet pot.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Before there was a podcast, before the animated videos, before there was even an organization called bibleproject, there were two friends just having a conversation. It all started there. Tim and John met in Bible college and for years would process what they were learning about the Bible together. In 2012, they decided to combine Tim's biblical expertise and John's experience making explainer videos to create videos about the Bible. By the time they decided to start a podcast, they had already been having the conversations that became the podcast. For three years, we would sit in.

[Tim Mackie]

This room with no windows, with plywood walls. Yep. And this is one of my first memories of us sitting in there. We sat in there for like three hours talking and writing and making Notes. And maybe there was a whiteboard. I was really stimulating. It was super fun. I think we were both like, well, this is cool. We just burned three hours. And then we sat on this couch that was like this metal box frame with cushions made of military uniforms.

[John Collins]

It's a Stephen Ken couch.

[Tim Mackie]

Okay. There you go. Which is very special. And when I walked into the office that day, there was this jar full of chocolate lollipops. Like a ball of chocolate on the end of a little stick.

[John Collins]

And I was like, which Starbucks has now made famous?

[Tim Mackie]

Oh, really?

[John Collins]

You could go to a Starbucks and get a cake pop.

[Tim Mackie]

Cake pop?

[John Collins]

Yeah.

[Tim Mackie]

Okay. Yeah.

[John Collins]

But this was pre Starbucks cake pops.

[Tim Mackie]

Okay. Apparently this was 2013. So somehow, in the course of us talking, I had that lollipop and I must have put it down. Cause I wanted to start typing, you know, some ideas on my computer. I thought I had maybe put it on the wrapper next to me, but I looked down 45 minutes later and it was like this half melted chocolate pop on this really nice designer couch in your office. And I felt so bad. And I was like, oh, I'm sorry, man. I'm so sorry. And that couch has moved with us now. It's still here. Still here.

[Lindsey Ponder]

And just for the record, that couch really is still around. It's made the rounds over the years and now lives in our classroom soundstage. And if you ever visit the office, you can have a seat on it, if you dare. Chocolate stain and all.

[Tim Mackie]

And the stain? The stain's there.

[John Collins]

It is.

[Tim Mackie]

Yes. That's awesome. So somehow that memory is locked into my mind about the beginning of how we started to talk about videos and make scripts.

[John Collins]

We had a half day. I think it was Wednesday mornings.

[Tim Mackie]

Wednesday mornings.

[John Collins]

Because your job at the local church, basically, we negotiated a half day of your time.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah.

[John Collins]

Or they just kind of generously gave it.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah, I forget. Maybe I asked for it, but the elder team at Dwarf Hope Church said, go for it.

[John Collins]

So you would ride your bike downtown to my office, and then we would have basically three hours and then lunch. So most of that time was just talking through the ideas that we wanted to turn into scripts. And my experience up to that point writing explainer videos, a large part of that was interviewing an expert to understand what it is we're going to write. And so I just really enjoy that part of the process.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah.

[John Collins]

And we just would talk.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah. It was so fun.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Despite the fun Tim and John were having, these weren't just casual chats. They were working sessions, deep dives into Themes, stories and words. The goal was to get on the same page before they could ever write a video script. The process was imperfect, it was slow, and it was also transformative.

[John Collins]

I remember specifically feeling free to ask certain questions that I wouldn't dare ask.

[Tim Mackie]

That you wouldn't have asked maybe growing up in your church community.

[John Collins]

Yeah. And I would kind of start to broach a question, and I just remember you giving me permission through the way you would answer the question. Cause you'd push it further.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah.

[John Collins]

For example, you know, I had a big question about heaven in relation to Jesus, saying, there's not gonna be any marriage in heaven. And so for me, that feels really uncomfortable to talk about. And I kinda was tiptoeing around it, and I think you just plunged in in a way that for me was really startling at first. But then I was like, oh, we get to just do this. We get to just have this conversation. And that was really exhilarating to me.

[Tim Mackie]

I can't remember a lot of those details.

[John Collins]

No.

[Tim Mackie]

I Wonder what my 12 year ago self said about that.

[John Collins]

Yeah.

[Lindsey Ponder]

From the very beginning, this whole project was built on trust. The kind of trust between two friends who could ask hard questions about God and the Bible without fear of judgment. That trust became the foundation for everything that followed.

[John Collins]

If I feel censored and what I'm worried about is, am I going too far? Am I going to make Tim uncomfortable? Am I going to broach a subject that is off limits? Off limits?

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah.

[John Collins]

Then I'll start to feel like I have to tiptoe around. And most of my energy now is in tiptoeing around versus just trying to understand. And I think it just, for me, signified, like, cool. I think this is gonna work.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Within a couple of years, Tim and John's Bible project had gathered enough momentum for them to bring in a few trusted others.

[John Collins]

So we moved across the river and we were in the basement. I just remember. Just the cement floors.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah. The East Bank Exchange building.

[John Collins]

Yeah. We started to bring animators and illustrators to come work with us in that space. And so we started just building out desks and we kind of had our first office there.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah, we did.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Neither the space nor the team was big, but it buzzed with creative energy and a shared vision. Our art director, Robert Perez, remembers it like this.

[John Collins]

As an artist, you really want to commit yourself to something that you believe in and to do something fun. And this project, obviously being the Bible project, I'm hugely passionate about the message and the mission and the ability to start at the Ground floor of something was also really exciting, and so there wasn't a ton of rules already set in place. It was like, you get to help craft something. You get to help build something that could be really awesome or it could go nowhere. But that potential was enough for me to be like, okay, I really want to at least try. And it's so important to at least try and go after things that you feel are really important in your life.

[Lindsey Ponder]

The team was coming together, literally and figuratively, but it didn't happen overnight.

[John Collins]

You know, we had been prototyping a few videos for, like, two years, I think, to the point where you started to wonder, are we actually gonna make a video?

[Tim Mackie]

I did wonder that.

[Dan Gummel]

Yeah.

[Tim Mackie]

At some point. Yeah.

[John Collins]

Because I didn't fully understand what we were making yet. Some of our early scripts were, like, 10 pages long, and it's kind of all over the place, and I don't fully remember that journey. But at some point, we got to our first two videos, Heaven and Earth and Genesis 1 through 11, and we released those, and then we immediately started working on the next set of videos, which was Genesis 12:50 and the Messiah. Yeah, so we're working on Messiah. So that script was written, and it was at that point I thought, let's record these conversations. And I could edit those down and put them on this slick technology called podcasting, which I was a pretty early adopter of. Podcasts. When did you start listening to podcasts?

[Tim Mackie]

Probably around then. Maybe because you were like, hey, we should do one.

[Dan Gummel]

Oh, yeah, I would.

[Tim Mackie]

I was like, what are they really?

[John Collins]

Okay.

[Tim Mackie]

Oh, actually, no, I remember this. Yeah, it was around the same time, because I was looking for podcasts that were about stuff that I thought was interesting and cool about Bible and biblical theology. And I couldn't find anything that I was interested in. And I was like, man, would be so cool if there was a podcast that worked through ideas from one end of the Bible to the other. That would just be rad if that existed.

[John Collins]

While I'm telling you that's what I want to do.

[Tim Mackie]

Well, I just remember there was a feeling, and I was acquainting myself with the podcast app and how it worked and was searching and found all kinds of religion podcasts, but nothing that was all sermons. That's right. Yeah, we're monologue. So it ended up being that we created the thing that I wished existed.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Thus, the bibleproject podcast was born. Things were scrappy in those days, to put it lightly. When John first suggested recording their conversations, there was no studio, no Gear closet, no soundproofing. Just a tiny storage space tucked under the stairs of Bible Project's first Portland office. The first podcast series Tim and John recorded was about the law.

[John Collins]

My name is John Collins and this is the first episode of the Bible Project podcast on the law.

[Lindsey Ponder]

The law was recorded in that storage space under the stairs. It was quite literally a closet. Think Harry Potter, but with microphones instead of magic.

[Tim Mackie]

And you go down these stairs and it was more spare Dungeness. And underneath them was this closet door closet. A tiny room when you'd go into it, had the slanted wall and that's where you set up recording equipment.

[John Collins]

It's the only place that had like a room in the whole space.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah, an enclosed room.

[John Collins]

Yeah. But yeah, we just sit side by side and I would just start recording.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Without a true recording studio, John and Tim had the option to record just about anywhere. And sometimes they did.

[Tim Mackie]

And we have some friends and patrons of the project and they had offered a house that they have kind of in a rural suburb of Portland if we ever wanted to go there and do some concentrated work time. So that's what we did. I think it was just one night, two full days.

[John Collins]

Yeah, sounds right.

[Tim Mackie]

But we wanted to work out the wisdom series. I think it was just the job conversations we had there. Yeah, there was this window nook overlooking a field and we got these lav mics and cool evening beverages and posted up in the window nook and we recorded the job conversations that way.

[John Collins]

Cool. So does job. Does that name have a meaning in Hebrew? Hmm. It was a small little nook.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah, exactly. And what I remember was that was awesome. And that was so fun. I can't believe that this is what we get to do. Get to talk about the Bible at a cabin with my friend with a mic. And I think why the audio for the job conversations is so poor, Markedly.

[John Collins]

Worse than the others.

[Tim Mackie]

I should go back and just listen to that to sample. I haven't listened, listened to those in years. Okay.

[John Collins]

Signing off.

[Lindsey Ponder]

In those early days, John did it all. Recording, editing, learning the software as he went. He was a one man audio department.

[John Collins]

I had to learn pro tools, had to learn how to do audio editing. Yeah, I'm not like a, I'm not an audio guy, so I didn't even recognize how bad the audio was to even like think about. I gotta do something to make it better. To me it was, it's the content, there's is the idea there and does it flow and am I getting bored or am I Getting frustrated. I would just edit for that. And as long as it was loud enough, that was fine. I remember at one point, pretty early in, I got an email that was like, hey, I listen to the podcast, and I love it. The audio's horrible. And that was the first time I was like, oh, audio's horrible. That's something to pay attention to.

[Tim Mackie]

Okay. Yeah, right.

[John Collins]

Yeah.

[Tim Mackie]

I remember you edited those first conversations, and you sent them to me, and I listened to them, and I was so surprised at how on point and smart we sounded. Yeah. Taking out all the pauses and coughs and ums and. And then also I was like, wait, remember that one thing that we talked about? And you're like, oh, yeah, I just took that out.

[John Collins]

Oh, okay.

[Tim Mackie]

It truly is a distillation and a re presentation. And it's a real dialogue. It's not scripted. You know, we're not reading anything.

[John Collins]

Yeah. Because it sounds so refined, like we know where we're going. And it's not because it's scripted. It's because it's edited.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah. It's good editing. Yeah. It's like, wow, this makes us sound like we have the next cool, interesting thing to say, like, right on the tip of our tongue all the time.

[John Collins]

Right.

[Anna Weich]

Right.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Around the time John realized he might need some help with audio production, help arrived from a listener who happened to be a professional audio producer. Talk about perfect timing. Enter Dan Gummel, who eventually became the podcast's first dedicated audio editor. I sat down with both Dan and John separately to hear their various sides of what they remember about their first time working together. Here's that story.

[John Collins]

It was pretty early on. Dan emailed me and said, I really like what you're doing with the podcast.

[Dan Gummel]

I was working out of an NPR station in Ohio, and I just emailed, hey, I'm a public radio producer. Here's a couple of resources that we use and linked them to some workshops and some different types of materials they could find. And this is, like, 2015, so not a lot of podcasting was being done outside of radio.

[John Collins]

Dan told me that he'd love to help, and I think I just said thanks, and I filed that away. And then I thought it would be cool to interview Greg Ballmer and John Cortinez about their story that turned into a book called God of Money. I then decided I was going to go to Nashville, where they were and interview them.

[Dan Gummel]

And a few days later, I looked down, and my phone was ringing, and it was from a Portland area code. I didn't know anybody in Portland. I thought it was spam. I almost didn't answer it. And I picked it up and it was like, hey, this is John@Bibleproject. And I said, oh, it's great to hear from you, dude. So he started asking me questions about the podcast and he was like, hey, I want to try and make these kind of cool stories on the podcast and I could use some help. This is like early in the year, in February, he's like, I'll be in Nashville in the fall. Would you like to come to Nashville with me? And I was like, sure, I can put that on my calendar. I just pulled up the email. He says, September 25th and 26th. Like, it's in this email.

[John Collins]

And months go by and it's getting closer and closer to the date. Dan might remember better than me. I think it's like a few days.

[Tim Mackie]

Before.

[Dan Gummel]

And then I get a couple of like, quick emails and texts in.

[John Collins]

Succession, like, hey, Dan, just checking in, like, I'm gonna be there.

[Dan Gummel]

Haven't heard from you. I still plan to come to Nashville.

[John Collins]

It turns out I'd given Dan the.

[Dan Gummel]

Wrong dates and I was like, oh, shoot. And I really want to work with John and so I'll just figure it out. So I changed my schedule.

[John Collins]

Dan dropped everything, got in his car and just started driving.

[Dan Gummel]

I drove down to Nashville.

[John Collins]

That's the first time I met Dan. And he helped me do the field recordings and I had a great time.

[Lindsey Ponder]

After the Nashville trip and the production of the now classic God and Money episode, still one of our most listened to episodes of all time, Dan quickly became essential to the Bible Project podcast.

[John Collins]

I started having him edit episodes of the podcast. And then at some point it was enough work and he was interested in moving out here, that I was like, cool, we could hire you to do this. So that was Dan.

[Lindsey Ponder]

With the addition of Dan, there was now an official team supporting the podcast. Still, podcasting can feel like talking into the void. There's no faces to observe, no follow up conversations, no instant feedback. There was no simple way for John and Tim to know how the podcast was landing for listeners. But one day, John had an experience that made him realize their conversations were having a greater impact than he had imagined.

[John Collins]

We had just finished the overview videos and we were celebrating end of 2016. Jason Nightingale came and recited the revelation. Yeah, and then we played the video and then he performed the second half. Then we played the final video. It was kind of our first event we ever did. And a friend of ours from college who I hadn't seen in years came up. And she said with kind of this look of like joy and sadness together came, and with so much sincerity was like, thank you for the podcast. I love it and I'm listening to it and it's helping me so much. And that really shook me because one, it was the first time I ran into someone who was like, I listened to the podcast, but I could tell it was so meaningful to her. It shook me too, because she came out of the same educational environment that I came out of. And I think I felt kind of alone a little bit and like I didn't learn the things I was supposed to learn during that time, I just felt like, yeah, that's right, we're all figuring this out. And that moment really left the mark on me thinking, okay, this is significant.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Bibleproject podcast was growing on two fronts at once. On the outside, more and more listeners from across the globe were joining the conversation. And on the inside, the show that was produced by John and then later with Dan's help, expanded to include even more team members.

[Dan Gummel]

I remember going through Covid, realizing that essentially, like, if I were to have gotten sick or something, nobody knew where anything was, Half of the stuff was still sitting on my external hard drive.

[Lindsey Ponder]

So John and Dan decided to hire more help. Over time, the team came to include a day to day producer, that's me, a managing producer, and a full time audio engineer and editor, Tyler. The process to produce a podcast episode has increased in complexity too. The first person to touch a podcast episode is typically Tyler, who hits record. Here's Tyler in his own words.

[Dan Gummel]

I'm right there with everybody in hearing, listening, being impacted. And the only difference is, and it's a really privileged position is I get to hear it first and experience it in real time. We're in a room, I don't know, about the size of a studio bedroom. And then there's another room on the other side of a double wall with speakers and a computer. And that's where I sit and watch the meters, make sure everything's recording. Sometimes I respond to things I experience the version of the conversation which is full of ums, us, coughs, sneezes, stomach growling, and I'm like, man, you sound so hungry. But here's the thing that I do get to experience that's really precious is the journey that John and Tim go through and the real hangups that you feel John has. I experience myself, actually. If you were to look at me sometimes, I'm just like, please asks this question. And then he asks it and you know, I'm just like, with them what everyone's probably doing on the receiving end. The only difference is I'm doing in real time.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Gone are the days when the podcast was managed by just one or two people. We've made some changes that we believe improve the content and its presentation, which means behind the scenes, there's a lot that happens and it goes a little something like this. Once an episode is recorded, John performs a high level content edit of the audio where he cuts the down and rearranges his conversation with Tim for greater clarity. Then a script is written and recorded for the episode's opening summary and closing credits. After that, Tyler does a fine tune edit and mix of the audio, and then the episode moves down the production pipeline. Show notes are written, episode is titled, and additional editorial content is created for the app. Audio gets transcribed and that transcript gets edited and proofread. And all of this has to happen before the episode gets scheduled for release every single week. And that's just the version in English. From day one, bibleproject has cared deeply about making our content accessible in as many languages as possible. We'd been localizing our videos for years, but in 2021, a new idea surfaced. What if we tried to do that with the podcast too? Localizing a long, unscripted conversation is no small task, but our global team decided to give it a shot, starting with Spanish. I sat down with Anna and Angela from our global team to interview them about our efforts to localize the BibleProject podcast into other languages. So, Anna and Angela, I know who you are, but why don't you introduce yourselves so our listeners can know who you are too?

[Anna Weich]

I'm Anna and I oversee all the content that we localize into Spanish.

[Angela Kiter]

I am Angela, and I help lead a handful of our localization projects. Right now, that's primarily Portuguese and French and then helping wind down a few other projects currently.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Great. So can one of you explain to me what localization is exactly and why we prefer that term at bibleproject over a word like translation?

[Angela Kiter]

So translation is simply when you're taking content from one language into another. Why we use localization is because it goes beyond translation. We're not just looking for word for word, direct translation. We want to consider the cultures, the regions, and all the contexts, and so they could be changing colors or visuals because we truly want it to feel native to each language.

[Lindsey Ponder]

So we were already doing this with our videos. Can you give me kind of the backstory on how the global team decided? Okay, we're Going to try this with the podcast now.

[Anna Weich]

I think something we had discussed as a team was the abundance of resources that we have in English. That is not the case for lots of other languages. There is a great need for high quality biblical resources. And I think we were curious to see if the podcast could fit that need, but we weren't even sure if we could localize it. So we decided, hey, let's just do a pilot podcast episode, and let's see how it goes. We chose to do it in Spanish because Spanish is our second biggest audience behind our English audience.

[Lindsey Ponder]

So how did that go?

[Anna Weich]

So there was a podcast studio down in California. They had worked on localization projects before. We also had another lead. This guy in Argentina, one of our co workers, knew we would potentially be his first client. We're thinking, okay, the professional studio is probably going to work out, but it's nice that we also have another lead somewhere else. So we worked with the professional studio, and we tried to get some samples from them, and it just wasn't happening. So we were kind of like, is this even possible? But that little studio in Argentina, who had zero clients, sent us in a sample, and we were like, whoa, they kind of nailed it. And we felt like, this is possible.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Anna, you actually told me a really cool story a while ago about Brian, who was the owner of that studio in Argentina and then became one of the hosts of the Spanish podcast.

[Anna Weich]

Yeah. I found out later that Brian, a few months before we had reached out to him, had decided to quit all the work that he was doing. And he really felt like the Lord was calling him to create the studio. And there were a few months where he didn't have any work, and he was kind of frustrated. He was like, God, what am I doing? I feel like you've called me to do this. But he was praying faithfully every single day that the Lord would just bring work to the studio that would expand the kingdom. And now it's been four years, and that studio has been the site of over 80 Spanish podcast episodes.

[Lindsey Ponder]

That's so awesome. Why did you decide to get voice actors to kind of reenact him and John's conversations instead of, I don't know, just sharing the information in some other way?

[Anna Weich]

I think why a lot of people enjoy listening to the podcast is kind of like the dynamic between Tim and John. And I think we were trying to capture that as much as possible. So I think we liked the idea that there was a little bit of personality that people could latch onto.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Well, it sounds like it's been really impactful to do it that way. Angela, at what point did we decide it's time to localize the podcast beyond just Spanish?

[Angela Kiter]

Okay. So last year, Global decided this is working really well with Spanish, and we have some really incredible and motivated teams, one of those being our Japanese team. And they came to us in 2023 and said, hey, we see what Spanish is doing with the podcast, and we don't really have Christian podcasts in Japan. There's a huge need. We see people asking for it. Can we please go ahead and do this? And we said, yeah, we trust you. And so we shared scripts with them, gave them a little bit of an overview of what Spanish was doing, and said, run with it. Really entrusting it to our lead coordinator there, Heesho.

[Tim Mackie]

And.

[Angela Kiter]

And they have created eight to 12 episodes over the last year and a half, with plans to produce another eight over the next year. And they're going to continue to keep going. Bible Project podcast was number one on Japanese Spotify upon release. And there's just a hunger for the word of God in Japan.

[Lindsey Ponder]

So the Spanish and Japanese podcasts are currently airing. Brazilian Portuguese is underway. But it sounds like it's a really challenging process.

[Anna Weich]

Yeah, I think one of the biggest challenges with the podcast in terms of localization is so many of the stories that Tim and John tell are unique to Portland, Oregon, Pacific Northwest, which doesn't always translate well to other cultures. And so a lot of times we have to get creative with how should we localize that so that it resonates for a Latin American audience or a Japanese audience.

[Angela Kiter]

Yeah, it even goes beyond the stories they tell to different American idioms or taglines. For example, in Heaven and Earth episode, there was, like, a United Airlines tagline.

[Tim Mackie]

They used through the skies. Where do I feel like the skies appears in plural?

[John Collins]

Is that in the. Is that the friendly skies?

[Tim Mackie]

The friendly skies. That's what I'm thinking of. Who's that? Who's the friendly skies? I don't know.

[Angela Kiter]

And our Brazilian Portuguese translators were like, united isn't a big airline here. That's not what we're using. And they had to adapt it to a different airline so that it was relevant.

[Anna Weich]

There also was an interesting one where they spend a really long time talking about the commandment do not murder and how the actual translation should be do not kill. And in Spanish, they primarily have do not kill in their translations. And so it's like, what do we do with that?

[Angela Kiter]

Keeps you on your toes. You never know what things are going to Come up.

[Anna Weich]

Totally.

[Lindsey Ponder]

How much do you guys get to witness the impact of this amount of effort on people?

[Angela Kiter]

Yeah, it has given us a lot, and I feel like learning more about the Bible through translation of these scripts has been so impactful on my walk with the Lord. And I think that there's a really cool impact it's having on the people who are creating the work.

[Anna Weich]

Yeah, it's kind of fun to say. Part of my job is to listen to Bible Project podcast episodes.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Yeah, which is cool. Hearing Anna and Angela talk about the podcast being localized into other languages is a powerful reminder that this community of people reading the Bible together stretches far beyond this room where we record. We've talked a lot about what goes into making the podcast, but honestly, the best part has always been hearing what it means to you.

[Tim Mackie]

When I listen to the podcast, I'm usually walking the dog or in the car on long journeys, I listen to.

[Angela Kiter]

It when I'm walking. Sometimes when cooking, I listen to the.

[Tim Mackie]

Podcast mowing my lawn, and I go to sleep by it.

[Lindsey Ponder]

I drop my daughter off at high school, and the minute she gets out of the car and we turn off her music, I turn on the podcast and I drive home. And then once I get home, I hop on the treadmill and I walk and listen to the podcast. From kitchen tables to morning commutes to background banter while you go about your routine. You've allowed us to be a small part of your days, and we couldn't be more honored. Your stories remind us of the very thing we've been talking about all along, how the Bible keeps shaping real lives.

[Tim Mackie]

My wife and I, we have eight kids and 16 grandkids. Getting to the Bible, it was always.

[John Collins]

Be a better person, that kind of thing. What really happened to the Bible Project is that it was more defined of what being in the image of God.

[Tim Mackie]

Would be and how we can get deeper into the Bible and find out that wisdom underneath.

[Lindsey Ponder]

I've been a Christian my whole life and went to Bible school, and I love it. But I realized that I don't know how to go tell someone on the street why they should follow Jesus. And so it just led me into this really cool two years of being like, what is the gospel? And that led me to understanding Genesis 1:11.

[Angela Kiter]

I didn't grow up Christian, so a lot of it was new to me. And I can now listen to the sermons that are dense. It's like a door that opens another door into more abundance of resources.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Stories like these are humbling. They remind us we're not just dealing with ideas here as a community, we get to participate in how the story of the Bible keeps transforming people right in the middle of their own stories. So 10 years and 500 episodes later, here we are. The closet under the stairs has been replaced by a fully outfitted studio. John's one man show has grown into a full production team. And every Wednesday morning, just like in the early days, the mics turn on and the conversation continues. Some things never change. So, John and Tim, what is it like for you to think about how the podcast has grown in the last 10 years and how many people are listening now?

[Tim Mackie]

I think that as a matter of principle, it's not something I focus on. I think one, because I would get nervous and start to feel overwhelmed and pressure or something. It's just better not to. And then I can shift into a posture of just pure delight and surprise where it's just like, what a gift of God that this thing that we would do, even if a microphone wasn't on, we would want to be doing this to make the stuff we want to make in the world. And it ends up being really helpful for other people, which is astounding to me. But how cool is that? That's how I feel.

[John Collins]

Yeah. In some sense. The thing that I noticed change is just how our equipment's gotten better and we have more help. Like that's the thing I've noticed.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Collins]

But from the beginning till now, it's just sitting down and talking to each other and that hasn't changed. And we don't see how many people are gonna listen. So the only time that we feel that is if we ever have gone somewhere and decided, let's do a live podcast. What have we done that like three times?

[Tim Mackie]

Two live podcasts that I remember one down in our office. Oh, for the hundredth episode.

[John Collins]

Oh, yeah.

[Tim Mackie]

We did a gathering and a live conversation.

[John Collins]

Okay.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah.

[John Collins]

And then after that, we did it in Dallas.

[Tim Mackie]

And that was fun.

[John Collins]

That was super fun. Yeah, that's it, huh? But at that moment, you see people out there and they're responding to you in real time. You're like, oh, this is a thing people are listening.

[Lindsey Ponder]

To be clear, you're not saying that you don't care that people are listening. You're saying you'd be having these conversations the same way whether anyone was listening or not.

[Tim Mackie]

Yes. If the mic wasn't on, we would have to have these conversations anyway.

[John Collins]

And we do have more conversations without the mic on.

[Tim Mackie]

We often go out to lunch after a morning of Podcasting and we just keep talking. Yeah. When I try and process the amount of people, I'm astounded. I still am astounded by it.

[John Collins]

Do you know the numbers right now?

[Tim Mackie]

Nope.

[John Collins]

What would you guess?

[Tim Mackie]

I have no idea.

[John Collins]

I always forget when people ask me, I'm. Oh, gosh, I forget. And then I feel weird because I'll take a stab and I'll be like, okay, that could be off by 10x. I don't know. I can't remember.

[Dan Gummel]

But.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah, that's my experience too.

[John Collins]

Yeah.

[Tim Mackie]

So on one level, the experience of making the podcast from what we contribute is the same.

[John Collins]

Yeah.

[Tim Mackie]

Except a cool room and great mics.

[Lindsey Ponder]

You know, I really love that it's never been about the numbers for you guys. It makes me think of something that our CEO Steve says a lot, which is every number is a person and every person has a story. And it's those stories that keep us coming back to these conversations over and over again.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah.

[John Collins]

Well, one thing we've talked more and more about is the goal of all of this media is to help people feel comfortable enough to just read the Bible in community with others. And so I get excited about staying in a passage and working maybe even through a scroll, passage by passage, and give an example what it looks like to read the Bible in community. But then that can be then a launching point for people to go, cool, I'm going to take these ideas, this dialogue, and I'm going to continue it with whoever, my family, my group of friends, and for it to become more normal for people to open up a passage, have a dialogue, meditate on it, find hyperlinks, experience God's wisdom in it, and to feel afterwards, like, charged, like, whoa, we just encountered something really cool.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah. I still remember vividly the first time after skateboarding with a group of friends. One night we went to this late night coffee shop. We were all in Bible college together. And so somebody had an assignment or something about Galatians, so we were just like, oh, sweet, let's get out, and just all read it together. And so we did, and then we had this fantastic conversation. And that was my first experience of, like, a communal reading that had all this cool conversation afterwards. And I was like, that would not have happened if I just sat down to read it by myself. So I definitely feel like that's what we are. We're a small Bible reading community, and if we can model that and then invite people along, that's for the win. I also feel like if that is something that can help people learn how to read the Bible on its own terms. It produces humans who are encountering God's wisdom through scripture in community, and that it actually makes people into more faithful images of God. And I hope it produces good in the world through people loving their neighbor. But the way that I get there is talking about the Bible with John Collins for 500 hours. How cool is that? That that gets to be the way that we make that kind of contribution.

[Lindsey Ponder]

So what's next for the podcast?

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah, mostly what we've done is explored big ideas through the storyline in the Bible themes. We did the how to Read the Bible series, but we broke up into, like, miniseries scattered throughout the years. Yeah, we did almost a year's worth of walking through the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. We also did a year of Sermon on the Mount. Other than that, we've just traced themes throughout the Bible. So I love tracing themes through the Bible, but the way that I actually do my work in studying the Bible is to just pick a certain scroll or a book and just read and reread and reread and get it all uploaded in my mind and see how all the parts fixed together. And we haven't really walked through a book of the Bible like that in long form detail. I'd like to experiment with that in the future of the podcast with you. Yeah, so I shared that with you and you were excited about that. I think it'd be really fun. We won't finish the whole Bible before we die or retire, but we could get through a lot of it. Yeah. So why not try?

[Lindsey Ponder]

Guys, as we wrap up, I have just one more question for you, and it's this. What continues to inspire you about these conversations?

[John Collins]

There's one podcast in particular I remember finding about five years ago, and it was a guy who was evangelical Christian who became an atheist and then kind of found his way back to Jesus. And there was something about his podcast. When I started listening to it, I was like, you made this for me. And to some degree, that's why I'm doing this, is because I'm trying to create the thing I want. And when I think of someone out there that I don't know spinning this up for the first time and then having that feeling like, oh, they're having that conversation, I wanted made this for me, that just gives me so much joy to think that there's people having that experience that I've had.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah. I think for me, what I experience in making the podcast is somehow these conversations are unique for me. And I regularly am forced to reach a level of clarity of things that I think, but I rarely have a chance to say it out loud and wordsmith it. So a couple times I've gone back and listened to series from, like, four or five years ago that I've forgotten most of it. Like, I'm learning from our past selves as if it's not ourselves. It's really strange.

[John Collins]

I've had that too.

[Tim Mackie]

So I have that experience a lot now, and I'm just so grateful. And I don't have another venue in my life where I'm being forced to be in the moment, talking, working it out, real time, without a script. Somehow us doing that is beneficial to other people. And I can't believe that I'm still astounded, but I'm grateful for it. And cheers. Cheers to that. God's very generous to have given us the chance to do this.

[Lindsey Ponder]

The conversation John and Tim started in a closet under the stairs never ended. It just grew.

[John Collins]

Hey, we're starting a new theme study. What adventure awaits us.

[Tim Mackie]

Yeah. We've been learning rigorously about these texts for two decades now, and we are still able to have this robust conversation.

[John Collins]

Yeah.

[Lindsey Ponder]

10 years, 500 episodes, and an ever expanding community of voices and languages that have drawn us deeper into the story of spiritual. Hi, my name is Victoria and I'm from Israel.

[Tim Mackie]

Hi, my name is Sean and I'm from Austin, Texas.

[Dan Gummel]

Hi, my name is Roman and I am from Ukraine.

[Tim Mackie]

Hi, my name is Alva and I'm from Romania.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Thank you for listening, for learning, and for being part of this journey. This conversation has grown because of you. I first heard about the Bible Project when I just came to Christ.

[Tim Mackie]

I use Bible Project for podcasts, videos, and classroom.

[Lindsey Ponder]

My favorite thing about the Bible Project.

[Angela Kiter]

Is it clearly explains Bible stories to my grandchildren.

[Lindsey Ponder]

And as we look ahead, our hope is the same as it's always been. That together, we'd keep discovering the Bible as one unified story that leads to Jesus.

[Tim Mackie]

We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus.

[Angela Kiter]

That leads to Jesus.

[Lindsey Ponder]

That leads to Jesus.

[John Collins]

That leads to Jesus.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Here's to the next 10 years and the story still unfolding. Thank you for being a part of this with us.

[Tim Mackie]

You were just a boy trying to pretend pleasing. All your mentors are never quite convinced. Now you are a soldier, free to skip the test. Now it's time to rest. And.

[Lindsey Ponder]

Production of today's episode is by producer John Collins. Tyler Bailey is our supervising engineer, who edited today's episode and provided the sound design and mix. Our Managing Producer is Cooper Peltz. JB Witty does our show notes and I served as the Creative Producer and host. The bibleproject theme song is by Tense through. Special thanks to all those interviewed John Collins, Tim Mackey, Robert Perez, Dan Gummel, Tyler Bailey, Anna Weich, Angela Kiter, and our audience members, Matthew, David, Emily and Asha. Bibleproject is a crowdfunded project and we exist to help people experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. You can find all 500 plus Bible projects, project podcast episodes on all streaming platforms as well as on our website alongside tons of other resources that are all free for you to use because they've been paid for by generous people just like you. Thanks for joining us today. See you next time.