How it started
A phone on the table
The first episode was never meant to be an episode. It was a Tuesday class, recorded for one man who couldn't come any more.
Solveig Halvorsen · Co-host
In the spring of 2016 I was teaching Genesis to eleven people in a church basement on East Lake Street. One of them, Harold, had come every Tuesday for six years. That March he went into hospice, and his daughter asked whether we could record the class so he could still hear it.
So someone put a phone on the table between the coffee cups. You can hear the cups on the first thirty episodes. You can also hear Harold's friend Arvid, who coughed through all of Genesis 12.
Nine hundred strangers
Harold's daughter sent the recordings to a few cousins. The cousins sent them on. By the time we reached the death of Joseph there were nine hundred people listening, and almost none of them had ever been to the basement.
We never decided to start a podcast. We just never stopped recording.
Chiamaka wrote in three years later with a question about Leviticus that I couldn't answer. I asked her to come and answer it on the recording. She has not left.
We still read one passage a week. We still say when we don't know. And Harold's recording still plays at the start of every live taping.
