🎙️ 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 Prodigal
Religion, Deconstruction & Institutional Power
What happens when people question inherited belief systems, and how religious structures shape politics and public life.
Power, Money & the Machinery of Control
From colonial history to national debt, surveillance, and who actually benefits when a system says it’s protecting you.
Healing From Religious and Institutional Trauma
Conversations about recovering from toxic theology, broken systems, and reclaiming personal agency.
Philosophy, Psychology & Consciousness
Deeper questions about meaning, identity, and why people believe what they believe.
Real Stories of Transformation
Personal journeys through faith crisis, institutional betrayal, and coming out the other side clearer.

Who This Podcast Is For
Prodigal is for listeners who are:

• Questioning their faith or the institutions they were handed
• Trying to understand how religion, politics, and power actually connect
• Exploring spirituality outside traditional structures
• Paying attention to where AI, surveillance, and economic policy are heading
• Searching for a plainer, less performative way to talk about all of it

Whether 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 Hosts
Don 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 Conversation
Subscribe 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.