Patrick Ahern and James Stephen, both of the Peterborough area, are co-hosts of the Soaring Prophets podcast (soaringprophets.com), and form an unexpected partnership. They are from different generations, one more orthodox, one more liberal, and have different educational and vocational backgrounds. Ahern owns and operates businesses and Stephen has had a long career helping people with autism, predominantly students in the Catholic school system. Yet, they share a deep faith as well as membership in the Knights of Columbus.
Every Thursday evening at 9:00 pm, they livestream what they call “stories of champions,” covering a wide variety of topics ranging from business and entrepreneurship to dealing with trauma. In the last 18 months, they have had about 290,000 views of their content.
The people interviewed, according to Ahern, are “people that are doing amazing things in the world… CNN is not breaking down their door to tell their story. The Globe and Mail is not breaking down the door to tell their story, but their story is very valuable and worth being told.” They’ve interviewed people located in Canada, the United States, Brazil, Thailand, Scotland, and different African countries.
The podcast was born, as Ahern describes, from “COVID craziness where we had polarized camps in every political aspect.” So, the pair sought to provide a forum where people can have open and honest dialogue and communicate openly and respectfully. Ahern emphasized that “We’re made in the image of Christ. If we can’t have that and respect somebody on that human level, we are in a very dangerous place.”
The podcasters have both found their experience humbling and inspiring. As Stephen explained, “It’s quite often that these people have had some horrendous things happen, or they had that point of impact where they hit it, and they knew they had to change. And faith has become a big part of it.” One story shared was about a man walking by a church who knew that in the next day or two he’d probably die from what he was doing, and something pulled him into the church and saved his life.
Financial health is also an important topic the pair cover. Ahern states that “you can heal your mind, body and soul, but if you’re doing it from the slums and you’re homeless, you’re probably not going to be able to hit that self-actualization where you want to be.”
In addition to their podcasting, Ahern and Stephen take on special video production projects for businesses and non-profit groups under their co-owned media company.
One project that was particularly meaningful to them was to conduct interviews for a group of clergy sexual abuse survivors. Stephen explained that he and Ahern were chosen for this project because they are good interviewers, empathetic, and able to provide a safe space for interviewees. From such experiences, the pair learned that people just want to tell their story, and if you give them an opportunity, they will do an amazing job. “And the humanity shines through,” added Ahern. “I think that’s why it was so successful because all those people, each and every one of them, we got to the human core of their tragedy.”
In another project, the pair helped the Toronto Humane Society produce an hour-long video because the Society, according to Stephen, wanted people to know that they do much more than take dogs and cats off the street.
In the future, Ahern and Stephen would like to help other organizations with video production, social media, and website development, such as the Knights of Columbus, Catholic Women’s League, and the Sisters of the Precious Blood to educate the public about their organizations and why they are important. In addition, they would like to help the Church in general with her messaging. Ahern said: “You can’t sit back and let every newspaper in the country decide what your fate’s going to be. You have to get in front of these issues, these concerns, these topics. You have to look at ways to get that messaging out there.”