Thee Quaker, produced by Georgia Sparling and Jon Watts

Produced by Georgia Sparling and Jon Watts. Review by Kate Macdonald

I have been enjoying the new(ish) North American Quaker podcast, Thee Quaker, for some months. I found it because I was looking for another podcast about Quakers when the Friend’s own podcast went on (temporary) hiatus, and now I also support it on Patreon (an online membership platform that allows content creators to earn a regular income).

The episodes are weekly, about half an hour long, and are extremely well planned and produced. For me Thee Quaker is a window into a world of predominantly North American Quakerism that I have never encountered before. I should get out more, I know, but it is astonishingly refreshing to hear the stories and histories from US Quakers that both resonate with what I know about here in the UK, and give me new ideas and experiences to mull over.

There are serious and light-hearted episodes. Stories about how Meetings coped during lockdown and new research on how one Quaker helped run the Underground Railroad to get enslaved African-Americans out of the South were enthralling, helped by the restraint of the lead host Georgia Sparling, who has the gift of knowing when not to say anything.

I’ve just finished listening to the episode about the Quaker murder mystery writer Edith Maxwell, who writes cosy crime series set in the past and in the present day, many of her books using Quaker settings and characters. I was intrigued by the idea of a nineteenth-century Quaker midwife as a detective, and had no idea there was such a thing as cosy crime (no blood, no swearing, small-town US women protagonists). I enjoyed very much the idea of a Quaker character completely nonplussing a detective who sits her down grimly to wait in silence until she decides to spill the beans. Not going to happen, Friend …

Thee Quaker is part of the Thee Quaker media project, to bring Quaker thinking and concerns to new audiences using new technology. Making a podcast is a smart idea, as they are accessible and free (though you can support them with a monthly donation if you want). Voices telling stories have extra resonance because there is only a voice; some of the most effective episodes are those that have Friends talking about an aspect of their spiritual lives or their work. Voices reveal a lot about people, unhampered by the pressure of time or interruptions.

A recent episode of this resolutely-American podcast followed the co-host as he visited Australia Yearly Meeting. He admitted that he hadn’t realised that there were Quakers in Australia, so naturally I wondered whether some other US Quakers realise that Quakers do exist outside the USA, or that Quakers didn’t originate there. An episode about how the pastor of a semi-programmed Meeting prepared his ministry was extremely weird to me, but yet I know this goes on. I just hadn’t heard it before, so I’ve learned something. I usually do, listening to Thee Quaker.

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