Prodigal The Podcast

Hosted by Don Jackson
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Politics

🎙️ Prodigal: The Podcast — Notice the Pattern Prodigal: The Podcast explores the patterns hiding underneath religion, politics, power, and culture — and asks what it actually costs us to keep looking away from them. Hosted by Don Jackson and Daysha Voss, the show pairs honest, sometimes uncomfortable conversation with real reporting — tracing the same institutional playbooks across faith, government, money, and technology, from ancient history to this week's headlines. Inspired in part by Don Jackson's upcoming book, Prodigal: Leaving Church and Finding God, the podcast grew out of questions about religious institutions and belief — and has widened into something bigger: a regular look at how power holds onto itself, whoever's holding it and whatever century it is. Prodigal: The Podcast is part of a larger ecosystem built around the same idea. Prodigal Breaking News covers the pattern as it happens, day to day. Prodigal AI companion guides turn each story into something to actually sit with. And the podcast is where it all gets talked through out loud, unscripted, between two people who don't always agree. What You'll Hear on ProdigalReligion, Deconstruction & Institutional PowerWhat happens when people question inherited belief systems, and how religious structures shape politics and public life.Power, Money & the Machinery of ControlFrom colonial history to national debt, surveillance, and who actually benefits when a system says it's protecting you.Healing From Religious and Institutional TraumaConversations about recovering from toxic theology, broken systems, and reclaiming personal agency.Philosophy, Psychology & ConsciousnessDeeper questions about meaning, identity, and why people believe what they believe.Real Stories of TransformationPersonal journeys through faith crisis, institutional betrayal, and coming out the other side clearer. Who This Podcast Is ForProdigal is for listeners who are: Questioning their faith or the institutions they were handedTrying to understand how religion, politics, and power actually connectExploring spirituality outside traditional structuresPaying attention to where AI, surveillance, and economic policy are headingSearching for a plainer, less performative way to talk about all of itWhether you're navigating a faith transition, trying to make sense of the news, or just tired of conversations that flatten everything into a side, Prodigal offers a place to actually think it through. About the HostsDon Jackson is the founder of the Prodigal Movement, a platform examining spirituality, psychology, power, and cultural transformation. His work traces how belief systems — religious, political, and economic — shape identity, institutions, and collective consciousness. His upcoming book, Prodigal: Leaving Church and Finding God, explores his own journey out of institutional religion. Daysha Voss is the show's co-host — the second voice in the room, there to push back before an idea hardens into certainty. She doesn't always read a pattern the same way Don does, and that's on purpose: the show works because two people are actually working something out, not performing agreement for an audience. Join the ConversationSubscribe to Prodigal: The Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your favorite podcast platform. For daily coverage and deeper essays on religion, politics, and power, visit prodigalthepodcast.substack.com — home to Prodigal Breaking News and the full written archive behind everything discussed on the show.

  1. 1d ago

    Prodigal : The Podcast Episode 34 "Lower Cognitive Ability Linked to Stronger Christian Nationalism"

    Send us Fan Mail Episode 34: Lower Cognitive Ability Linked to Stronger Christian Nationalism A new peer-reviewed study is about to go viral with a headline that writes itself people who score lower on a cognitive ability test are significantly more likely to hold Christian nationalist beliefs. It's real research — from one of the most-cited sociologists studying Christian nationalism in the country — and it holds up even after controlling for education, income, race, age, region, and political ideology. Don Jackson and Daysha Voss take the finding seriously, then take it apart — surfacing the detail the viral version leaves out: the pattern disappears completely for people who never finished high school, and the study's own author says cognitive sophistication doesn't protect anyone from ideology, it just makes people better at defending whatever their side already believes. Across ideologies. Including ours. Plus: Newsbeat Breaking News updates on the seven-state lawsuit over $810 million in canceled federal funds, and the ongoing deportation case against Islamic Society of Milwaukee president Salah Sarsour. 🎧 Full written deep dive: prodigalbreakingnews.com 💬 Talk to the AI companion guide: prodigalai.app 🩷 This episode is brought to you by FemChoice — Don Jackson's own company, full disclosure. A private, standalone cycle tracker: no app, no phone, no account. Your Cycle. Your Device. Your Privacy. Shop FemChoice on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HGVTJH2B?maas=maas_adg_5E4C6F31CE7261E3C5F94C7201247B50_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas #NoticeThePattern #ProdigalThePodcast #WeAreSource #ChristianNationalism #CognitiveScience Support the show https://prodigalbreakingnews.com/

    Prodigal : The Podcast Episode 34 "Lower Cognitive Ability Linked to Stronger Christian Nationalism"

  2. 2d ago

    Prodigal The Podcast Episode 33: The Last Card = Martial Law Threat

    Send us Fan Mail Content note: this episode discusses a sitting president's public threats to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military against American citizens. It's handled factually, not sensationally, but it's heavy — listener discretion advised. Three things are true right now, all at once: the U.S. is six months into a war with Iran with no end in sight. The president's approval rating just hit the lowest point of his combined two terms. And for the second time this year, he's publicly threatened to turn the military loose on American citizens, on American soil, by invoking the Insurrection Act. Don Jackson and Daysha Voss lay out the documented record — the January Minneapolis threat, the Lincoln Project and sitting governors sounding the alarm, NPR and The Hill now reporting the same fear newsrooms are tracking — and surface the detail almost nobody's saying out loud: in over 200 years, the Insurrection Act has never once been invoked around a federal election. Then they connect it to the written blueprint — Project 2025 — for what happens to the guardrails once that line gets crossed. Plus: Newsbeat Breaking News updates on Vermont's Catholic diocese abuse lawsuits, Mississippi's redistricting fight, Tidal's new AI-royalty policy, and T-Pain's second suit against Konvict Entertainment. 🎧 Full written deep dive: prodigalbreakingnews.com 💬 Talk to the AI companion guide: prodigalai.app 🩷 This episode is brought to you by FemChoice — Don Jackson's own company, full disclosure. A private, standalone cycle tracker: no app, no phone, no account. Your Cycle. Your Device. Your Privacy. Shop FemChoice on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HGVTJH2B?maas=maas_adg_5E4C6F31CE7261E3C5F94C7201247B50_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas #NoticeThePattern #ProdigalThePodcast #WeAreSource #InsurrectionAct #Midterms2026 #Project2025 Support the show https://prodigalbreakingnews.com/

    Prodigal The Podcast Episode 33: The Last Card = Martial Law Threat

  3. 2d ago

    Episode 32: The Same Playbook: The Diocese and the Dining Room

    Send us Fan Mail Content note: this episode discusses documented child sexual abuse and institutional cover-up. It's handled factually, not graphically, but it's heavy — listener discretion advised. Nine days. That's all that separates two stories that look unrelated and aren't. On September 30th, the Massachusetts Attorney General released the state's first-ever clergy sex abuse investigation: more than 270 Catholic clergy abused nearly 1,000 children across the Worcester, Fall River, and Springfield dioceses, covered up for decades. Nine days earlier, the White House hosted a state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping with $2.4 trillion in combined net worth sitting at the table — Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Huang, Pichai, Brockman — in the same stretch of weeks ACA subsidies expired, Medicare drug costs rose for up to 25 million seniors, and child care kept outpacing rent and college tuition. Don Jackson and Daysha Voss lay both rooms side by side and name the one mechanism running both of them: a hierarchy that protects itself first and lets everyone outside the room absorb the cost. Then they trace it back further than either headline, to the Manifest Destiny doctrine that decided, on purpose, whose future would count. 🎧 Full written deep dive: prodigalbreakingnews.com 💬 Talk to the AI companion guide: prodigalai.app #NoticeThePattern #ProdigalThePodcast #WeAreSource #Ashe #Ashay #ClergyAbuse #WealthInequality #Midterms2026 Support the show https://prodigalbreakingnews.com/

    Episode 32: The Same Playbook: The Diocese and the Dining Room

  4. 3d ago

    Prodigal the Podcast Episode 31: The Weight of Two Centuries

    Send us Fan Mail Today Tennessee executes a woman for the first time in roughly two hundred years. Her name is Christa Pike — eighteen when it happened, forty-eight now. She confessed. That's not in question. What Don Jackson and Daysha Voss spend this episode on is the question underneath it: what happened to her before that day, that made that day possible? Content note: this episode discusses a real capital case involving murder, documented child sexual assault, and multiple suicide attempts. It's handled factually, not graphically, but it's heavy — listener discretion advised. Don and Daysha walk through the 1995 Knoxville murder of Colleen Slemmer and the wildly different sentences her three co-defendants received, then go back further — into the documented pattern of abuse, neglect, and repeated failed intervention in Christa Pike's own childhood. Not an excuse. An accounting of every point an adult could have stepped in and didn't, long before anyone had to step in for Colleen. Thirty years on death row later, and a legal technicality that turned on a single day of Pike's age, they land on the same place the show always lands: notice the pattern, interrupt it — earlier than the courtroom, earlier than the news story. This episode also carries two Prodigal Breaking News updates. Daniel Ward covers the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq and the Flydubai flight diverted to Saudi Arabia after a co-pilot reportedly tried to crash it. Grant Keller covers former American Idol contestant Caleb Flynn's guilty verdict, Carnegie Mellon's historic $3 billion gift from Ken Griffin, and this morning's PCE inflation reading. Notice the pattern. Interrupt it. This episode, and this week's Newsbeat, are brought to you by FemChoice — a private, standalone cycle tracker. No app, no phone, no account. Get FemChoice on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HGVTJH2B?maas=maas_adg_5E4C6F31CE7261E3C5F94C7201247B50_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas 🎧 Full written deep dive: prodigalbreakingnews.com 💬 Talk to the AI companion guide: prodigalai.app #ProdigalThePodcast #ChristaPike #NoticeThePattern #TennesseeExecution #DeathPenalty #NoticeThePatternInterruptIt Support the show https://prodigalbreakingnews.com/

    Prodigal the Podcast Episode 31: The Weight of Two Centuries

  5. 3d ago

    Mindful Source: Return to Stillness (Bonus Guided Meditation)

    Send us Fan Mail  Mindful Source: Return to Stillness (Bonus Guided Meditation) This one's different. No Newsbeat, no breakdown of somebody else's headlines — just a short, guided meditation and a reminder of what was never actually lost. Put on headphones if you can. Sit still if you're able to. If you can't — if you're driving, if the day's already loud — that's fine too. Press play and let it work on you anyway. Close your eyes, or simply soften your gaze. Let your shoulders drop. Let your breath find its own rhythm. Come back to the stillness that never left — the one underneath the noise, the deadlines, the voices that were never yours to carry. You were Source before anybody told you to go looking for it somewhere else. 🎧 Read along or go deeper: prodigalbreakingnews.com 📝 Full post on Substack:  Notice the pattern. Interrupt it.  Mindful Source, Guided Meditation, Mindfulness, Stillness, Consciousness, Source, Prodigal The Podcast #MindfulSource #ProdigalThePodcast #NoticeThePatternInterruptIt #WeAreSource #GuidedMeditation #Mindfulness #Ashe #Ashay Support the show https://prodigalbreakingnews.com/

    Mindful Source: Return to Stillness (Bonus Guided Meditation)

  6. 5d ago

    Episode 30: The Pulpit Protected Him

    Send us Fan Mail Episode 30: The Pulpit Protected Him A registered sex offender was one signature away from becoming a state overseer of a national Black church network. In this episode, Don Jackson and Daysha Voss don't ease into it — they identify the problem, notice the pattern, and lay out exactly what has to change, plainly and without softening it. Content note: this episode discusses a real case involving a past sexual assault of a minor by a religious leader. It's handled factually, not graphically, but it's heavy — listener discretion advised. Don and Daysha walk through how Timothy Price III rose to pastor one of the most historically significant Black churches in the country, how close he came to an even bigger promotion this month, and why it took outside advocates — not the institution itself — to stop it. Then they name what actually has to change: real background-check policies at every promotion, survivor-centered reporting channels independent of church leadership, and redemption that doesn't erase consequence. It closes differently than usual: instead of Don, Daysha leads a guided meditation to help you sit with what you just heard and turn it into something you can actually act on this week. This episode, and this week's Newsbeat, are brought to you by FemChoice — a private, standalone cycle tracker. No app, no phone, no account. Get FemChoice on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HGVTJH2B?maas=maas_adg_5E4C6F31CE7261E3C5F94C7201247B50_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas 🎧 Full written companion piece: prodigalbreakingnews.com 💬 Talk to the AI companion guide: prodigalai.app #ProdigalThePodcast #NoticeThePattern #IdentifyTheProblem #ChangeIt #Accountability #FaithLeadership Support the show https://prodigalbreakingnews.com/

    Episode 30: The Pulpit Protected Him

  7. 5d ago

    Fertile Ground — A Guided Meditation

    Send us Fan Mail Fertile Ground — A Guided Meditation We are overcomers. We create reality — it doesn't just happen to us. In this guided meditation, Don Jackson walks you onto the fertile ground inside all of us: the place where mind, heart, and coherence get planted on purpose, before they ever show up in your actual day and week. This one's longer than usual and built to be sat with, not rushed. Daysha opens the door, then it's Don the whole way through — settling in, naming what's already growing in your life that you never planted on purpose, pulling it out by the root, and planting mind, heart, and coherence in its place. A real storm moves through before the harvest comes, because overcoming only means something if something was actually there to overcome. It closes on why showing up for a practice like this isn't a small, private act — it's how real change actually spreads. Plant it. Live it. Be prolific. This meditation is sponsored by FemChoice — a private, standalone cycle tracker. No app, no phone, no account. Get FemChoice on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HGVTJH2B?maas=maas_adg_5E4C6F31CE7261E3C5F94C7201247B50_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas 🎧 Full written companion piece: prodigalbreakingnews.com 💬 Talk to the AI companion guide: prodigalai.app #ProdigalThePodcast #FertileGround #GuidedMeditation #WeAreOvercomers #WeAreSource #Mindfulness Support the show https://prodigalbreakingnews.com/

    Fertile Ground — A Guided Meditation

  8. 6d ago

    PRODIGAL — THE PODCAST Episode 29: "The Leash Reaches the Ballot Box"

    Send us Fan Mail  The Leash Reaches the Ballot Box Two episodes ago, Don and Daysha told you the national debt was the leash — an infrastructure of control built by people nobody voted in and nobody can vote out. They closed with one ask: vote, every time, all the way down the ballot. Six days later, the Supreme Court answered. This episode follows that same leash straight to the ballot box. The Court let the Trump administration resume bulk-screening voter rolls against citizenship records using a system called SAVE — a system a ProPublica investigation already found wrongly flagging real, legitimate citizens as noncitizens in at least five states. Three justices dissented, with Justice Jackson writing that the harm of disenfranchising lawful voters "outweighs the nonexistent harm" the government claims to be preventing. And in a twist that proves this isn't a one-party story, that same Court blocked a different, Trump-backed restrictive mail-voting rule just months earlier. But this one doesn't end in "go brace yourselves" — it ends in "look who already showed up." The NAACP has committed $20 million to mobilize 6.5 million voters across 13 states. The "SO VOTE" campaign is putting $4.5 million into the South. Black Voters Matter, BlackPAC, Higher Heights, and more are already on the ground. Don and Daysha break down the ruling, the pattern, and the organizing already answering it — plus two Prodigal Breaking News updates: Grant Keller on the Justice Department's fight to kill Evanston's reparations program, and Elena Cross on Venezuela, six months after the U.S. removed Maduro from power. Notice the pattern. Interrupt it. This episode and the Prodigal Breaking News segment are sponsored by FemChoice — a private, standalone cycle tracker. No app, no phone, no account. Get FemChoice on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HGVTJH2B?maas=maas_adg_5E4C6F31CE7261E3C5F94C7201247B50_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas 🎧 Full written deep dive: prodigalbreakingnews.com 💬 Talk to the AI companion guide: prodigalai.app #ProdigalThePodcast #TheLeashReachesTheBallotBox #SAVESystem #VotingRights #Midterms2026 #BlackVote #NoticeThePatternInterruptIt Support the show https://prodigalbreakingnews.com/

    PRODIGAL — THE PODCAST Episode 29: "The Leash Reaches the Ballot Box"
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

🎙️ Prodigal: The Podcast — Notice the Pattern Prodigal: The Podcast explores the patterns hiding underneath religion, politics, power, and culture — and asks what it actually costs us to keep looking away from them. Hosted by Don Jackson and Daysha Voss, the show pairs honest, sometimes uncomfortable conversation with real reporting — tracing the same institutional playbooks across faith, government, money, and technology, from ancient history to this week's headlines. Inspired in part by Don Jackson's upcoming book, Prodigal: Leaving Church and Finding God, the podcast grew out of questions about religious institutions and belief — and has widened into something bigger: a regular look at how power holds onto itself, whoever's holding it and whatever century it is. Prodigal: The Podcast is part of a larger ecosystem built around the same idea. Prodigal Breaking News covers the pattern as it happens, day to day. Prodigal AI companion guides turn each story into something to actually sit with. And the podcast is where it all gets talked through out loud, unscripted, between two people who don't always agree. What You'll Hear on ProdigalReligion, Deconstruction & Institutional PowerWhat happens when people question inherited belief systems, and how religious structures shape politics and public life.Power, Money & the Machinery of ControlFrom colonial history to national debt, surveillance, and who actually benefits when a system says it's protecting you.Healing From Religious and Institutional TraumaConversations about recovering from toxic theology, broken systems, and reclaiming personal agency.Philosophy, Psychology & ConsciousnessDeeper questions about meaning, identity, and why people believe what they believe.Real Stories of TransformationPersonal journeys through faith crisis, institutional betrayal, and coming out the other side clearer. Who This Podcast Is ForProdigal is for listeners who are: Questioning their faith or the institutions they were handedTrying to understand how religion, politics, and power actually connectExploring spirituality outside traditional structuresPaying attention to where AI, surveillance, and economic policy are headingSearching for a plainer, less performative way to talk about all of itWhether you're navigating a faith transition, trying to make sense of the news, or just tired of conversations that flatten everything into a side, Prodigal offers a place to actually think it through. About the HostsDon Jackson is the founder of the Prodigal Movement, a platform examining spirituality, psychology, power, and cultural transformation. His work traces how belief systems — religious, political, and economic — shape identity, institutions, and collective consciousness. His upcoming book, Prodigal: Leaving Church and Finding God, explores his own journey out of institutional religion. Daysha Voss is the show's co-host — the second voice in the room, there to push back before an idea hardens into certainty. She doesn't always read a pattern the same way Don does, and that's on purpose: the show works because two people are actually working something out, not performing agreement for an audience. Join the ConversationSubscribe to Prodigal: The Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your favorite podcast platform. For daily coverage and deeper essays on religion, politics, and power, visit prodigalthepodcast.substack.com — home to Prodigal Breaking News and the full written archive behind everything discussed on the show.

Information

  • Creator
    Hosted by Don Jackson
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    38
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Prodigal The Podcast
  • Show Website
    Prodigal The Podcast