Prodigal The Podcast

🎙️ 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 tur

Prodigal The Podcast is a news podcast hosted by Hosted by Don Jackson, with 29 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Hosted by Don Jackson hosts Prodigal The Podcast, a news show with 29 episodes published.

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  Prodigal The Podcast

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

  Oct 2, 202611 min

  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/

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  Prodigal The Podcast

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

  Oct 2, 202612 min

  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/

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  Prodigal The Podcast

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

  Oct 1, 202610 min

  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/

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  Prodigal the Podcast Episode 31: The Weight of Two Centuries

  Sep 30, 202611 min

  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/

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  Prodigal The Podcast

  Mindful Source: Return to Stillness (Bonus Guided Meditation)

  Sep 30, 20267 min

  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/

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