The Jackpod: The child is father of the man
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I'm Meghna Chakrabarty, and this is The Jackpod, where On Point news analyst Jack Beattie helps us connect history, literature, and politics in a way that brings his unique clarity to the world we live in now. Hello there, Jack. Hello, Meghna. Okay, we're at episode 67 of The Jackpod. What's your headline? The child is father of the man. Oh, interesting. Where did that come from?

It comes from a Wordsworth poem, My Heart Leaps Up. The poet writes, My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky. So it was when my life began. So it is now. I am a man. The child is father of the man. So the poet is delighted that this continuity exists.

of joy and wonder from childhood is still available to him as a man. That's one view of childhood and the continuities in adult life. We're going to talk about another kind of continuity between the child and the man in the case of Elon Musk. The first sentence of Walter Isaacson's biography, Elon Musk Begins, says,

As a kid growing up in South Africa, Elon Musk knew pain and learned how to survive it. At 12, he was sent to something called a weltschule, a kind of, he called it a sort of paramilitary Lord of the Flies camp, where kids fought over food and water. Bullying was encouraged here.

He got beaten up twice. At 16, he returned, and this time he was big enough to do the bullying. Welch School wasn't so bad after all. In regular school, he was slow on the social draw.

Asperger's, he says. And so he got unmercifully bullied. After one ferocious assault, his brother Kimball remembers, quote, I couldn't even recognize his face. It was such a swollen ball of flesh, you could barely see his eyes. He was kicked repeatedly in the head. Turns out one of his kickers,

had just lost his father to suicide and Elon, as is still his want, called the boy, quote, "stupid." So Elon's father, Errol, and here we quote Isaacson, "an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist who to this day bedevils Elon,

Elon's father berated his son, his bleeding son, for his insensitivity. And Elon remembers, "I had to stand there for an hour as he yelled at me and called me worthless and a stupid idiot. He called it one of the worst memories of his life."

He says of his father, he had zero compassion. He knew how to make anything terrible. And Errol, the father, talking to Isaacson, the biographer, defended his parenting. He said, yes, yes, it was a kind of, he did exercise what he called a stern, streetwise autocracy over his three sons. However, he said,

Elon would later apply that same stern autocracy to himself and others. So a legacy of cruelty was part of his patrimony. And it says everything, I think, that the index to Isaac's biography shows 10 entries under, quote, empathy deficit index.

Wow. Well, just to give a little bit of background here. So this is Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Musk, correct? Indeed. And it's from 2023. So not even that long ago.

And Walter Isaacson is quite famous for doing biographies of other sort of fantastically wealthy or influential people. I think Steve Jobs is his other really big one that he wrote. OK. So you're saying here, Jack, that at least through the eyes of the authorized biography written by Isaacson, we get a glimpse into –

A stern, autocratic, cruelty-ridden childhood experienced by Elon Musk. Yes, yes. And, you know, he compensated by reading and by constant playing of Dungeons & Dragons and mastery of that. And essentially, you know, kind of a nerd-like adaptation to this cruel environment. But the point his father made about...

He would later apply that autocracy to others. Boy, that is so clear in what you read about Elon's workplaces. He is hell on the help. It isn't just that when he went into Twitter, he fired 75% of the workforce within a week.

Month or so. And by the way, once said to his first wife, if you were my employee, I'd fire you. No, it isn't. It isn't just that he's ready to fire. No, it's it's the nature of the workplaces themselves, which are driven by his quest for.

his obsession to colonize Mars. You've got to work extra hard because you're saving the human race. He has this view that artificial intelligence may well take over the world and drive us off the planet, and we need to get to Mars, and he's going to do it to save us.

from what's happening to Earth. Climate change, he thinks, might do the same thing. So there's this emphasis, almost a drive that infuses the thousands of people who work for him. And Reuters in 2023 documented 600 previously unreported injuries at SpaceX,

In California, crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions, head and eye wounds, and one death. Musk himself encouraged this atmosphere. For one thing, he would sometimes appear on the floor of his plant with a flamethrower.

Sort of shooting the flame floor around. People thinking, my God, what if that catches on my clothing? And he really discouraged his workers from wearing safety vests because, quote, he dislikes bright colors. Wow. So now, I mean, Jack, is the line that you're drawing that now we see that same thing?

cruelty-informed drive at play in Musk's increasingly powerful political operations? Yes. The man who, you know, went around the plant telling people, don't wear a safety vest because I don't like bright colors, that's the same person who tweeted,

whatever you call it, over a recent weekend. I spent the weekend feeding USAID to the wood chipper. Wow. Now, that, you know, when you start to read about the people USAID saves from hunger, from disease, from all over the world, the good deeds, and now the peril of people...

because this program has been cut, and then the thousands of employees, and he was delighted to feed it to the wood chipper. So case closed on how he's, the way he runs his plants, the way he has taken over businesses is the model for what he's doing now. He said just yesterday, I think, I think it may be necessary to, quote, delete all

Whole departments of government delete. Everything is reduced to digital space. Yeah. I mean, he's used that phrase a lot even before Trump got elected again to the White House, deleting big parts of government. But, you know, I think, Jack, what I'm trying to understand is like the bridge, right, between Elon Musk, the tech guy,

The formerly bullied current tech billionaire and Elon Musk, you know, the king of doge who's going around bulldozing U.S. federal government agencies. Is there sort of a keystone in between all that?

Yes, there is. That's his conversion to MAGA, to Trumpism. Interestingly, Isaacson points out he contributed to Clinton, to Obama. And as late as 2023, he was telling Isaacson, "I'm not Trump's fan. He's disruptive. He's the world's champion of BS." Well, it takes one to know one, I suppose.

And then he also said about letting – when he was debating whether to let Trump back on Twitter or not, he said if he's engaged in criminal activity –

and it seems increasingly clear that he has, that's not right. It's not free speech to subvert democracy. Well, there he sounds like James Madison in condemning Trump. What changed? What changed? Why did he go MAGA? Well, in an interview with a Canadian interviewer, Jordan Peterson,

He explained that it had to do with what had happened to his son. His son had undergone a transition to becoming a girl. And Elon had signed the papers allowing this, you know, the medical part of this to proceed. And he said, I didn't know what I was signing. And so here's what he told Peterson. I lost my son, essentially. So, you know, they...

They call it dead naming for a reason. - Yeah. - All right, so the reason it's called dead naming is because your son is dead. So my son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus. - I'm sorry to hear that. - Yeah. - I can't imagine what that would be like. - Yeah, so-- - Yeah, and there's lots of people in that situation now. - Right. - It's not pretty, and lots of demolished kids. - Yes. - Yeah, well, that's a good reason to be the final straw.

So I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that. And we're making some progress. Jack, what do you think? You know, there's more to the conversion to MAGA. I mean, he said that. A business about, you know, woke mind virus. That's just political correctness in MAGA world. He's doing that. I'm sure it's true.

That's one of the reasons. But there's more to it than that. For one thing, for one thing, Musk, the employer, he's been at war with diversity and inclusion for years.

DEI must die, he has just recently tweeted. Tesla was something like 5,000 or 6,000 African-American former employees of Tesla suited for racial discrimination, pervasive racial discrimination and harassment at his plants.

And the California Civil Rights Department charges that one plant was, quote, a racially segregated workplace. Hundreds of workers reported being subject to racist graffiti,

slurs, including from supervisors. And there was a couple of million dollar judgment for one such employee. And you read about nooses being left on desks, caricatures of black children being put on the walls. And the managers, supervisors, who were often very young people,

working under the imperatives of Musk's schedule. He's a descendant of Henry Ford in his view of mass production. And really, workers, you've got to think of Charlie Chaplin in modern times, trying to keep up with the

Assembly line. That's what workers at his plants have to do to keep up with his demands. Jack, can I just come in here? Because you said that regarding the pieces that you're putting together, it's more than...

what Musk said about his child. The dates are important here because I was just looking up the lawsuit that you were mentioning by the former black employees of Tesla. That started way back in 2017. So it has been quite some time. And I just thought that's a sort of an important detail to add. There's also, you've got some evidence or some stories about equally troubling things happening at SpaceX with female employees there, right? Yeah.

Yes, eight former employees have sued Musk for firing them after they accused SpaceX of essentially tolerating sexual harassment. Their suit alleges, quote, that Musk, quote, runs his company in the dark ages, treating women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size, bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter,

and threatening with firing those, anyone, who protests this animal house environment. These eight women, brave women, stood forth to say, enough is enough.

And Musk himself has personally faced some of this sexual harassment charge. The Wall Street Journal reported that he allegedly had sexual relations with employees of SpaceX. And of course, that is itself sexual harassment because he's the employer, they're the employees, along with everything, along with it being deplorable.

And including an intern 20 years his junior. He had sex with a direct report, the Wall Street Journal wrote, alleged. And another – and he asked another employee, would you have children with me? So inclusion is not what he's been about even before his conversion to MAGA. So this background that you're providing –

The legal troubles in terms of how he's treated his employees in the past puts him like, you know, shoulder to shoulder with the president who has a very similar background, Jack. Yes. Yes. And a very similar no empathy character structure from a very simple, you know, from an autocratic father that he had too. Yes. These damaged personalities can cause a lot of damage to other damage to themselves and

And by the way, Musk periodically has moments of just catatonic withdrawal and depression.

He's just overwhelmed with the pain of his background and it disables him until he recovers. So he's had a lot of suffering. It makes Musk and Trump seem very simpatico politically, right? I mean, is that the motivation that you're seeing as Elon Musk going full MAGA? No, I think it's something much more material.

And that came out in a bizarre White House presser the other day, you know, where Musk is there with his small child and he's giving the president, standing up over the president symbolically, looming bigger than the president. And so he was asked there, what about conflicts of interest given the sort of companies, you know, your companies have many government contracts, so reporters, what about conflicts

conflicts of interest. And he gave an answer that sort of puts in the shade one of the claims about him. One of the claims is he's got the ability to convince other people that he's a genius. In fact, Trump has called him a genius. This was not an answer of a genius. Remember now, the question is, what about conflicts of interest? You're dealing with bureaus that are

also hire your company to pay your companies to do work. And he says, first of all, I'm not the one filing the contract. It's the people of SpaceX or something. He's the founder and owner and main owner. I mean, this is not a genius speaking. Or he's smart enough to, or he's hoping that everyone else is definitely not a genius and doesn't like see the truth of what he's saying. Doesn't.

Of course, and he just sort of goes through the motions of that. But what we, I think the real motive is, and this comes out in an Eric Lipton piece in The Times on Terry Gross, fresh air on Wednesday, Eric Lipton of The Times talked about the more than a hundred suits and investigations the federal government has

as ongoing, at least until Musk took over, against Musk's businesses. Over a hundred investigations. And he shows, Lipton does in this months-long investigative piece for The Times, how Musk's rampage against oversight

which has been through all his career, he doesn't like anybody telling him what to do, it sort of reached a boiling point over SpaceX just in the last year or so when the Federal Aviation Administration was asking him about safety matters and so on, and he had had it. And Trump, he thought, well, I'll give this guy $250 million, he'll make these investigations go away.

and I'll be able to get to Mars all the quicker. And Trump has been obliging him. Now, we don't know if Musk himself has been involved in these firings, but it's strange credulity to think that he's not pleased by them. For example, the Office of Government Ethics was in fact investigating Musk's Doge team. Trump fired the head of it the other day.

Trump neutered, fired, I think, 17 inspector generals. Many of them were conducting investigations of Musk's business with the Pentagon and other government agencies. Trump got rid of them. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Oh, gosh, this one. I mean, it has hundreds. Tesla has apparently hundreds of companies.

product complaints people have made or complaints about the financing of Teslas. The Consumer Protection Bureau was looking into these cases. Even more importantly, Musk has a vision, which seems to rank almost with his Mars obsession, with making X, the late Twitter, with making it a bank and having it engage in financial services, a kind of PayPal or

And that would come right under the jurisdiction of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. So naturally, that had to go. And boy, that has gone into the shredder. So when we look at these material interests, we see that what drew Musk to Trump was the bottom line. So in that case, Jack, what's the point of bringing up Elon Musk's childhood?

It's what drives all this. It's, you know, if we're talking about it, we've got to look at what are the mainsprings of his character. And, you know, you look in the index to Walter Isaacson's biography. Under childhood abuse and trauma during, there are 20 things.

references. And here's an explanatory paragraph of what that means. This is from a paper called Trauma Response and Narcissistic Adaptation. You know, he clearly is a narcissist. We tend to think of narcissism as positive, you know, I love myself. Well, yeah. Anyway, here's what the psychologist writes. Narcissism can develop as a coping strategy in the aftermath of trauma.

Survivors of traumatic experiences may develop a sense of detachment from their emotions as a way to cope with guilt, fear, weakness, anger, pain. Defense mechanisms often include an increased focus on oneself, a difficulty emphasizing with others others.

Furthermore, trauma survivors might develop a strong desire for control as a way to shield themselves from further emotional pain. And if there is anything that comes out in trauma,

600 pages of Walter Isaacson's biography, it is this man's mania for control. He goes on the plant floor and he says, why do we have two screws there when we can do it with one? Nothing is beneath his notice in his desire to keep control. And if he fits this picture of narcissistic

injury, a trauma, and narcissism as the adaptation, the desire to control. I think we see, you ask, how does this connect? I think we see he's now applying that to government. He's trying to control

government, delete bureaus that he doesn't care for. There's another way to look at this, and that is, this is his raid on government now, his rampage, is a continuation of his entrepreneurial drive. And no less than Joseph Schumpeter, the great Austrian economist, he wrote that one reason people become entrepreneurs is, quote, to possess a private kingdom.

He writes,

medieval lordship. We keep hearing the word medieval and feudal. Well, Schumpeter says that desire to have the private kingdom, now maybe Musk wants a public kingdom too. Yeah. You know, so Jack, here's the thing. I don't know, when it comes to entrepreneurship...

some people just don't like being told what to do and they're very creative and they can do great things outside a typical sort of hierarchical workplace structure. And we need those entrepreneurs. I don't always see it as this sort of desire to realize a medieval fiefdom or kingdom within the confines of one's own business. But I want to get back to where you started earlier.

with those really terrible stories of Elon Musk's growing up. And, you know, we don't ever want to see anybody. My thought on this is as follows, Jack. We don't ever want to see anybody having experienced a childhood like that. But I refuse to fall into the trap of pathological empathy because every time we say, you know, for people who choose to do terrible things to others and we say it's daddy's fault or it's mommy's fault or

I think about instead what about all the millions of people who had similarly traumatizing childhoods but did not grow up to be the kind of person to exact revenge for that childhood on others, right? They grew up to be good people who instead tried to build up others. So while I – that's a choice is what I'm saying. I firmly believe – and oh my gosh, people can –

If you disagree with me, Jack Potters, absolutely let me know. But I do believe that there's enough people out there who have been traumatized in childhood but choose a different path that I don't really – I hope you're not offering it as an excuse for Musk's behavior or what he's doing right now. But I definitely don't think it should be. Oh, no, no. Not an excuse at all. I'm just trying to light up the roots of the behavior we're seeing. Yeah. And, you know, we wonder, what about an alternative? Well –

What's in a name? His parents were going to name him after the French resort where he was conceived. Walter Isaacson writes,

History may have been different or at least amused if the boy had to go through life with the name Nice Musk. I think it's a little strange when parents do that, by the way. But you know what I think the bigger cause is? Is his money. I mean, he's not just a billionaire. He is the richest single individual in the world. And possessing that magnitude of wealth definitely –

I think it's hard to not have the mind become perverted about one's own importance and power. But maybe that's for another jackpot. You know, Oliver Goldsmith commented on that. He said, ill fares the land to hastening ills of prey where wealth accumulates and men decay. I still don't know how you do that, Jack.

It rhymes. That's how you say you don't have a photographic memory, but I don't believe it. Jack Potter. So here's the question for you. What do you think of Jack's analysis about some of the backdrop or the root causes for the kind of approach behavior worldview that Elon Musk has now as he is enacting that worldview worldview?

And also, maybe this is our chance to ask you, you know, what do you think of DOGE's, the Department of Government Efficiencies, activities? There's actually, I mean, polling is showing that there's quite a bit of support for what people understand DOGE is doing. And if you're one of those people, let us know.

Because no one ever said that the federal government is not absolutely not in need of some efficiency, but is this the way to do it? So kind of asking you a bunch of things this week, but Jack has given us a large buffet of Elon Musk activities to choose from. So you know the routine. Go to your phone. Look at the OnPoint VoxPop app. If you don't already have it, go to wherever you get your apps and look for OnPoint VoxPop app.

You can send us a very high-quality message that way. And we've been on a streak, Jack, of new contributors who may have been longtime listeners but new contributors to the Jackpod. So once again, I'm calling out to you. If you haven't contributed to the Jackpod before, do it this week.

Do something new for 2025 and make it being a participant in the community that is the jackpot. So with that, Jack, we've got to take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll hear what our listeners had to say from last week. Hey, it's Ben Brock Johnson, co-host of Endless Thread and director of digital audio at WBUR. WBUR, including yours truly, is headed back to On Air Fest, three days of podcasting that takes over Williamsburg, Brooklyn from February 19th through the 21st.

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Well, we're back, Jack. And last week you had a phenomenal analysis of Russell Vogt, not only one of the chief writers of Project 2025, but perhaps even more importantly, he is President Donald Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget. This time around, as he was in the first Trump administration, and what you drew our attention to was Russell Vogt's self-proclaimed rigging.

radical constitutionalism and how that radical constitutionalism may be deliberately provoking a confrontation with the U.S. court system. And if so, what should be done about it? We got a lot of responses. So let's start with Rhonda Gilbert, who's from Midlothian, Texas. I believe that we are actually already in a constitutional crisis.

It saddens me greatly that we are in this moment. If we don't have the rule of law upon which we collectively agree, then I don't think we really have a basis for our society. And on what basis will we be able to continue as a nation? Here's Patsy Davis from North Augusta, Georgia. I do think that the Trump administration is intentionally pushing a post-constitutional moment here.

From the backers of the vice president and President Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and their tech bro visions of turning the U.S.'s government into a corporate model, with Trump as the CEO and all of the tech bros as the board of directors, to the latitude that has been given to Musk and his generals to deny access to federal agencies.

It seems glaring and obvious that the old way of doing things, the system our forefathers fought so hard for, is definitely on the way out. And it's terrifying. Jack, Patsy put it in the way that I could not gel in my own mind. We have the confluence now of technology, corporate wealth, and political power. I

I mean, what do you think about what both Patsy and Rhonda said? The L.A. Times this week called it broligarchy. Rhonda and Patsy are on to, I think, what's really happening. The nature of our government is changing, and there's no outside, right? Hmm.

The police can't stop him from doing this. The Justice Department isn't going to stop him. The FBI isn't going to stop him. There's no outside. There's no possible place where other than the courts, which gets us to the constitutional crisis.

And, you know, the administration just over the past weekend, J.D. Vance was showing his usual insouciance about, oh, yeah, the court says do it. We won't do it. You know, that kind of thing. And then Trump in the Oval Office did say, oh, no, I'm going to obey the court rulings. Well, we'll have to see. There isn't a strategy with Trump, but with his people, I'm sure there is. And I'm afraid it may lead to a case where the court will have to

John Roberts will have to decide. Will he rule against Trump, say, on the impoundment issue or birthright citizenship, whatever it might be, and risk having the court destroyed because Trump will not obey?

Or will he bow to his fear that that can happen and to avoid the destruction of the court fined in Trump's favor? We don't know. You know, the chief justice has repeatedly said that he's deeply concerned about the public's trust and belief in the institution of the United States Supreme Court. I guess one of the things we're going to see in what you're describing is whether that desire to defend Trump

the institution of the court will rise up to the desire to appease Donald Trump. We will see. All right, so here's Christopher Dowling. He's in Oklahoma City, and Christopher says he doesn't actually think President Trump has any kind of master plan for a post-constitutional moment, but rather that the president is motivated simply by his own self-interest. I do believe that he's willing to do anything in order to accomplish that mission, and I suppose...

post-constitutional moment. I think he's willing to find out what the answer to that question is, but he's also happy to have us distracted by it so that in the background he can systematically defund the Board of Education, the IRS, other federal employees like myself. But I don't think that it is contextualized in his mind as a thoughtful recipe. I think

that his intent is chaos and his mission is already accomplished. Jack, before I get to you, Christopher, may I ask you something? You said you're a federal employee. Send us another message and let us know what's going on in your life and your workplace. Tell us as much as you can, if you feel like you can, because obviously second by second things are changing for the federal workforce and any insight you could give would be deeply appreciated, Christopher. So, Jack, what do you think?

Oh, I think he's, Christopher, shrewd. There is no master plan. The people attributing strategy to Trump simply, there's no hierarchy in his mind at all. It's all in one weave, as he puts it. Chaos is his medium. I mean, it's like there's some chaos inside him. Things are just

kind of incessant shower of thoughts and random impulses. And that's what he's doing here. I mean, chaos. And out of chaos, I guess, unfortunately, one of the answers to chaos is order, right?

And there are people around him who want order and they want order from the executive to take charge. And that way lies authoritarianism. Well, let's hear some more. This is Keith Grace in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, and he says the United States is already well past post-constitutionalism. I have to laugh at that question in sadness. The laugh helps blunt the despair and anger.

We've been drowning in the post-constitutional moment officially since January 20th. We the people, what a sad present-day agonism that is. We the people are paving the way for the road to be complete. Are we at a point where what needs to be done about it will bring just as much darkness and horror as allowing it to happen as it is right now? I do not know. I don't want to know.

Okay. This is Chad Whiting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and he says that he believes the president is pushing us into a post-constitutional world and that Trump embodies, more than anything according to Chad, fascism of old. Without the American empire functioning in some semblance of a healthy way, we cannot make any progress in mitigating and adapting to climate change.

And without that, our species doesn't have a prayer of forming a cohesive, prosperous global civilization. I'm happy with the diversity of cultures that I see around me. I'm happy with the ability to mix them with technologies and common language. I'm not happy with the excesses of empire, and I'm not happy that those excesses have led us into fascism.

And Chad also shares the same sense of despair that Keith described. I need, personally, I need to look forward to a better future, a much better future. The possibility that even a thousand years from now, our people could have something enlightened and decent and good, and we could be good stewards of the earth, and we could do all of these nice things that we all imagine in our perfect utopias, that it would at least be possible. But it's not possible anymore.

Okay, Jack. You know, I have fervently embraced the accusation of being an American optimist. And I do want to just share something really quickly.

It is definitely a struggle these days to think about the next five years, 10 years, even 20 years of what American democracy may look like. I agree with that 100 percent. This isn't about policies, tariffs or border wall or anything. This is about the fundamental functioning of what we believe to be a common rule of law in this country, policies we can debate.

So I understand the sense of despair. I really do. But, you know, when Chad says, I don't think we're ever going to have nice things again, you know, in not even a thousand years from now, that's where I draw the line. Right. Because, you know, it may not happen in our lifetimes. But at this moment right now, I'm still able to knock on wood, sit in front of this microphone and speak with you freely, Jack.

And I think to myself, the Enlightenment emerged out of the Dark Ages. Human history is never simply unidirectional. Pendulums do swing. So my question to myself and to everyone around me is what can we do to nudge the pendulum back towards a common belief in the rule of law faster than a thousand years from now?

That's where I stand at the moment. Well, here's a last one for us today. And Torley Bush, our poet from Webster Springs, West Virginia, bless you. Thank you, because you're going to take us into the end of this week with a glimmer of hope in response. This is Torley's response, essentially, to the despair we just heard.

I think that there is a hope in the fact that the court system is still working and that that push is being stalled. Hopefully it can be stalled until the midterms and we can turn it around with elections pushing a better politic and a politic that can get us out of whatever austerity and whatever moment we find ourselves in and push into a more hopeful future while also recognizing that Jack's

might ring true of what good will we have to pay, what good will we lose in bringing this to a close and being able to move forward. Ah, Torley was paraphrasing the quote that you had from last week, Jack, about how much good must be lost. I don't want to get it wrong. What was it? Well, it's a comment of Bradley's about Shakespeare's tragedies. Yes, good triumphs, but after such a waste of good. Well, with that...

This was a sobering set of feedback from our jackpotters. And I appreciate the candor and honesty that people are sharing how they feel about this moment in their country. So, Jack, thank you, by the way, as always, for getting us to think as deeply as you do. Thank you very much. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty, and this is The Jackpot from On Point.