About the show
Unexpected Saints is a short story podcast about ordinary people, across twenty centuries and every walk of life, who changed the lives of those around them. Sometimes they changed the world. A kitchen hand in Paris. A young mother with a diary in a Roman cell. A man who wrote one word on the footpaths of Sydney half a million times. A washerwoman who preached on four continents.
These are not flawless figures on a pedestal. Some of them would have been turned away at the door of most respectable gatherings, then and now. The idea behind the show is simple: take a look around. The people who make this world better are rarely the ones with the titles and they often show up in places most other people don’t go.
Each episode runs under ten minutes. It drops you straight into one person’s world and carries the real history: what was happening in that country and that century, who held power, how ordinary people lived. No lectures, just a story. What you take away is yours.
The show is written and recorded in Sydney. Australian stories sit alongside the famous names from the first episodes onward because this country has its own unexpected saints; many of them are with us today.
What counts as a saint?
No miracles required. A saint, for our purposes, is someone whose faith and actions made a real difference to the people around them, often without others really noticing at the time. Some of the people in these stories have the official title. Most don’t. Several would be surprised to find themselves here.
The show is made from a Christian perspective and the people it spotlights are those who lived out their faith in God in that broad tradition, across twenty centuries and every kind of church. People of other faiths do extraordinary good in the world and we celebrate that. This podcast simply tells the stories of the faith tradition we know best.
Who’s behind it
James has spent thirty years telling people’s stories, in radio and in human rights work around the world, and more recently leading one of Australia’s largest retirement villages. Veronika’s passion is purpose: connecting people across sectors to create momentum for good in our communities. Between us we’ve spent our working lives close to people and we’ve seen over and over that the real change in the world comes from those who look out for one another.
What matters to both of us is connection: making space for people to build community, whether that’s in a family, among friends, at work, in our neighbourhood or in a local church. Unexpected Saints is our way of putting a spotlight on it. We’d like listeners to take a look around and take notice of all that is happening and the good taking place around them. Let’s recognise and celebrate the unexpected saints we might encounter in our communities today. So if you know an unexpected saint, reply to any Friday letter and share your story with us. If enough of us do that, something hopeful gets built. Thanks for being part of this community.
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