DALLAS — When Tara-Leigh Cobble launched her podcast in 2019, she never imagined she'd be battling Taylor Swift's boyfriend for the top spot on the Apple Podcast charts.
Yet, five years later, that's exactly where Cobble found herself as her daily The Bible Recap podcast -- and its currently more than 300 million to-date downloads -- ascended to become the most-downloaded podcast in America last month.
So how did she get here? To hear Cobble tell it, it was a matter of answering a question she initially had for herself.
A Christian since childhood, Cobble says she struggled with reading and understanding scripture until a pastor helped change her focus.
"I was reading scripture like it was a pharmacy -- like, 'Let me go to it to get what I need," Cobble said "And I would get frustrated when God did something different than I think I would have done, or that I think is right. And so [my friend] really challenged me: [He said], 'This is not a book about you. It's for you, but it's not about you. It's about God.'"
Watch our full interview with Tara-Leigh Cobble here:
Cobble said that one small shift changed her whole perspective.
"It awakened this real love, this person that I knew and believed in, but mostly knew secondhand," she said. "I started to have this firsthand relationship with him. And it changed everything, and I want that for so many people -- because so many people exist in sort of this dry, frustrating, boring, distant secondhand relationship with God."
After helping lead a friend through a year-long study of the Bible, inspiration stuck. Why not try doing the same thing on a platform accessible to a wider audience?
With that leap of faith, The Bible Recap was born. Listeners to the podcast spend about 12 minutes a day reading or listening to scripture with Cobble, who shares her own insights about each passage along the way. By the end of each year, Cobble and her audience have made it through the whole book.
The Bible Recap brand has become an empire unto itself at this point.
In addition to the podcast itself, Cobble has released books by the same name. She also hosts a local radio show called The God Shot that airs daily on weekdays on 90.9-FM KCBI. That name is a reference to the final segment of each Bible Recap episode, in which Cobble tries to sum up the day's reading with a snapshot of God and his character.
The podcast charts make it clear: There's an audience for what Cobble's offering.
"I went into the podcast looking for head knowledge," said Bible Recap fan Caleb Semmes. "But what I got on the other side of it was just a super rich relationship with Christ."
For the podcaster at the center of this movement, that kind of response is as good as it gets. It's her whole aim, she said.
Said Cobble: "I promise you, if you read the Bible with me, your heart will be transformed."
NOTE: The following video was uploaded in April 2023.