June 29, 2026

S12, Chapter 1: The App on the Phone

S12, Chapter 1: The App on the Phone
Tapes from the Darkside | Crime & Psychology
S12, Chapter 1: The App on the Phone

Everyone remembers their first win. I remember mine. The chief of police of New Haven, Connecticut surely remembered his. And in the twelve months that followed, he wagered $4.4 million on sports betting apps from the phone in his pocket. This is...

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Everyone remembers their first win. I remember mine.

The chief of police of New Haven, Connecticut surely remembered his. And in the twelve months that followed, he wagered $4.4 million on sports betting apps from the phone in his pocket.

This is the story of Karl Jacobson's fall, told alongside my own 10-day descent into the same apps. Come and see what Karl felt from the inside, and the devastating lesson I learned with him: the most dangerous part of gambling isn't losing. It's winning.

The App on the Phone is the new season from Tapes from the Darkside.

For the first time, you can download/stream this episode as a lossless WAV file, the exact uncompressed quality I master it in.

https://www.patreon.com/tapesfromthedarkside

If you or someone you know is struggling with gambling, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is available 24/7 — call or text 1-800-522-4700. Free and confidential.

Credits and Sources

Editing help by:

Troy Piano on Airgigs.com

Archival audio & media
* Karl Jacobson interview — Dateline New Haven, WNHH-LP FM (New Haven Independent community radio), 2022–2023
* Karl Jacobson swearing-in remarks — [broadcaster/source to confirm]
* New Haven Police Department press conference on the Jacobson charges — [broadcaster/source to confirm]
* Duke vs. UConn, NCAA Tournament Elite Eight game call — [network to confirm: CBS/TBS/TNT]
* Sports betting advertisement (FanDuel/DraftKings promotional spot) — [advertiser to confirm]

Reporting & court records
* Arrest warrant affidavit, State of Connecticut v. Karl Jacobson, Connecticut State Police, February 2026
* New Haven Independent (Thomas Breen reporting), 2026
* University of New Haven, "Father and Daughter Share a Passion for Criminal Justice," December 2021

Scientific & academic sources
* Clark, L., et al. "Gambling Near-Misses Enhance Motivation to Gamble and Recruit Win-Related Brain Circuitry." Neuron, 2009.
* Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. (DSM-5), American Psychiatric Association, 2013 — reclassification of gambling disorder.
* Nathan Novemsky, Yale School of Management — commentary on Connecticut sports-betting legalization.
* Research on DRD2 Taq1A allele and addiction heritability; twin-study heritability estimates for gambling disorder.
* U.S. sports betting market figures (American Gaming Association data, 2017–2024).

Music
* Matooma — "Infinite Emptiness"; CTRL S — "SpaceTimeThought"; Shahead Mostafafar — "Into the Next Dimension"; Jamie Bathgate — "Atmo"
* AUGUSTA TREVERORUM — from the album 1991. agsttrvrrm.bandcamp.com
* 20SIX Hundred — "Cimmerian Shade / Last Moments," from the album The Cold Rise From Sleep (2015). Used with permission / licensed. 20sixhundred.bandcamp.com

Special thank you to:
Uncle Chris for his post credit contribution.

WEBVTT

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It's getting dark outside.

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Tapes from the Dark Side.

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Contains descriptions of violence and sexuality. Listener discretion is advised.

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I don't even remember who is playing. I just remember

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the green and blue of the fan dual interface, the

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three hundred dollars number on the screen, and my thumb

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hovering over the button. But I honestly don't remember losing.

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That's the part nobody tells you about gambling addiction. Nobody

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remembers their first loss. It slides off you like water

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off a dead man's back. It's nothing, it's a shrug.

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Your brain doesn't even bother filing it away. But your

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first win you remember that. The best way I can

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put it is it's kind of like the first time

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someone you trust puts their hand on your throat. You

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remember it not because it hurt, but because part of

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you liked it. Everyone remembers their first win. On January fifth,

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twenty twenty six, a man sat in a conference room

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in New Haven, Connecticut. Three of his closest colleagues were

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across the table. He had been their boss for two

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and a half years. One of them had a cell

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phone in his pocket, recording because he was afraid of

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what this man might do. When confronted, the man looked

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at them and said, and I'm quoting directly from a

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secretly recorded audio tape that is now part of a

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criminal case file quote.

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I have a problem. I fixed my alcohol problem. I

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turned to gambling. I don't know why. It just got

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worse recently.

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That man was the chief of police of New Haven, Connecticut.

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His name was Carl Jacobson, and in the twelve months

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before that conversation, he had wagered four point four million

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dollars on sports betting apps on his phone. Four million,

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four hundred and sixty four thousand, eight hundred and eighty

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four dollars. That number will follow Carl Jacobson for the

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rest of his life.

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I think everyone has a bit of a fascination of

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the dark side.

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I myself laws he loved the dark side as well.

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I think it's something that ever want to secretly longs

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for an months.

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To say that this news is a shock. As an understatement,

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it's a shock to me. It's a shock to the

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command staff. It's a shock to the men and women

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of the police department. It's a shock to the New

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Uban community.

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It was late March twenty twenty six, and March Madness

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was in full swing. If you watch sports, if you

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even casually follow sports, you know what March looks like.

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Now.

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Every time out is a DraftKings ad. Every halftime is

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a FanDuel promo. To my international listeners who might be unfamiliar,

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March Madness is a national college basketball tournament, single elimination.

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The whole country watches, and my personal favorite thing about

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March Madness are the Cinderella stories, the under dogs, and

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I love a good underdog. I don't remember where I

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saw the first ad. It might have been scrolling on Instagram.

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It might have actually been one of the timeouts on TV,

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but the offer caught my eye, not because it was

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necessarily flashy and featuring John Ham, but because, if you

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understand math at all, this looks like free money. That

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phrase free money might just be the most dangerous pair

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of words in the English language. It's the worm on

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the hook, the proverbial candy in the van.

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Ooh betting in space.

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New customers get up to three hundred dollars back in

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bonus bets every day for ten days.

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If your bets don't win.

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Here's how it works. You place a bet let's say

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three hundred dollars on a money line. If it wins, great,

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you keep your three hundred dollars steak and you keep

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the winnings. That's the best outcome. But if it loses,

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you don't automatically forfeit that three hundred dollar initial bet,

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because the next day FanDuel gives you what they call

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a bonus bet, three hundred dollars to bet on anything

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you want. If that bonus bet hits, then you keep

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the profit, not the three hundred dollars steak. So the

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backup plan is a worse deal, but it increases your

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odds of winning drastically. This promo ran for ten days,

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one three hundred dollars bet reset token per day. Now,

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I honestly had no intention of using it more than once.

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I just wanted to make one March Madness game a

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little more interesting. If you bet and win, great, But

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if you bet and lose, you get a second chance.

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The absolute worst case scenario is I'm out three hundred dollars,

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not a small sum for a guy like me, But

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unlike the vast majority of gambling, the odds are actually

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in your favor, and at three forty in the morning

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on March twenty ninth, I placed that first bet, three

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hundred dollars on Tennessee over Michigan in the Elite eight

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plus two sixty. That's which call a long shot. It

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wouldn't be until about ten days later that I realized

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what actually happened In that moment. Something deep in my

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psyche was stirring. Later that day, Tennessee lost, but my

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three hundred dollars wasn't gone. Instead, I got the consolation prize.

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The next day, a bet reset token kicked in, and

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now I had three hundred dollars in bonus money sitting

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in my fan duel account. I needed to pick another game.

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This time I picked another underdog, Yukon over Duke money

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line plus one eighty four. And what happened in that

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game matters not for the basketball, but for what it

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did to my brain.

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There is one spot remaining and one game left of

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the determined who goes to the final four.

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Duke was up big at halftime, forty four to twenty nine.

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Number one Seeds had been one hundred and thirty four

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and zero in tournament games where they led by fifteen

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points or more at half.

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So a forty four to twenty nine, advantage for Duke

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and Yukon trying to climb out of this deep hold.

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Yukon's win probability at this point in the game was

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one point three percent, and then Yukon came back.

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Yukon down by as many as nineteen, they have a

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chance to cut it to two. The pressure is building now.

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Yukon erased a nineteen point deficit, the largest comeback ever

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against a number one seed in that situation, and with

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four tenths of a second left, a freshman named Brayln Mullins,

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who was nineteen years old, a literal teenager, launched a

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three pointer from thirty five feet away, still avous caravan.

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Two seconds LUNs tosses it up.

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Why by y y Youn's not funningly.

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Utterly impossible over ukh still has the yard.

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Tragic Yukon seventy three, Duke seventy two. I won two

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hundred and fifty two dollars on a bonus bed on

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a game with a one point three percent win probability

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at halftime, And what ended up being important in that

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moment was not what happened on screen, but what happened

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inside me, Because something lit up that I hadn't felt

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in a long time, A warmth, a vibration in my

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rib cage that said, do that again, the way a

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dog here's a frequency you can't, the way a corpse

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flower knows when to bloom after ten years nothing. What

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happened to me in that moment has a clinical name.

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It's called a dopamine response. More specifically along the Mesolympic pathway.

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It was more important than the money, more important than

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the apps, because that feeling that I got from watching

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Brayln Mullen's shot go in is the same feeling that

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grabbed the subject of our story. It's the first hit,

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and for some people, for people with brains like mine,

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it's the only hit the machine ever needs to give you.

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That exact feeling grabbed a man named Carl Jacobson. The

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difference is what we brought to the table when it

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hit us and what was waiting on the other side.

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Carl Jacobsen was, by every external measure, exactly the kind

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of person you want running your police department. He was

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fifty five years old, a New England native. He had

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twenty seven years in law enforcement, nine years with the

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East Providence Police Department, starting in nineteen ninety eight, then

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the New Haven Police Department from two thousand and seven onward.

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Reclimbed from patrol officer to sergeant, to lieutenant to assistant chief.

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Along the way, he earned a US Attorney's Director Award

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in a National Association of Police Organization's Top Cop Award.

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These are not participation in trophies. These are recognitions given

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to officers who have done exceptional work. In May of

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twenty twenty two, after a nationwide search for a new

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police chief, New Haven Mayor Justin Ellicker chose Carl. He

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didn't pick someone from LA or Chicago or New York.

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He picked the local guy, the one who'd been in

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the department for fifteen years. Carl was sworn in as

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chief on July sixth, twenty twenty two.

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So help me God, congratulations.

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When I started this journey of public safety, I had

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one goal in mind, and that was to make others

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feel safe. As chief as my responsibility to ensure that

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this department remains transparent and accountable and works for the community.

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He lived in Branford, Connecticut, with his wife, Dawn. They

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had two children, an older son named Carl and a

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daughter named Kelly.

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Hello, and welcome to Daylon New Haven and WNAHHTFM, new

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Haven's home for community radio. Today we have a man

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who is New Haven's new police chief, Carl Jacobson. Thanks

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so much for coming on the end of on WNHH.

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Thanks for having me, Paul, It's good to be here.

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Like a chief, you had a pretty early on recommend

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firing some people who you personally liked. What was that, Like,

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how do you do that?

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Yeah?

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I mean since I've been chief, three people have been fired.

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There's a couple more that's been recommended to be fired

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on It's hard because you make connections with people and

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they work for you. But then when you have I

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have like people tell you the story and the stories

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like really over the top. And then and it was

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in this situation, it was just a matter of just

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telling the truth and and you're like what are you doing?

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You know, and you know, we're all human and we

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make mistakes. So I'm not looking to fire people, but

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I'm telling you the since the Randy Cox thing in

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the incident that you're talking about, you have to treat

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the community with respect and dignity. That's what it comes

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down to. If the officers did that in these different

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cases there would be a bit a different outcome. It

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almost sounds simple, Paul, give people a voice, treat them

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with dignity, neutrality and decision making. So you go to

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a call and even.

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At the time of that interview, Carl Jacobson was already gambling.

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The warrant would later reveal that in the year following

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this conversation alone, he wagered more than four million dollars,

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and investigators believe it started long before that. But you

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can't hear it in his voe. There's no tremor, no desperation,

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no tells. That's the thing about this disease. It doesn't

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alter your behavior like drugs or alcohol. In fact, it

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makes you sound fine. It makes you sound exactly like yourself,

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right up until the moment the floor gives out. In

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December twenty twenty one, the University of New Haven published

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a Future Story about a father and daughter who shared

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a passion for criminal justice. Carl Jacobson and his daughter, Kelly,

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were attending the University of new Haven at the same time.

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Carl was completing his Master of Science and criminal justice

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and Kelly was starting her undergrad degree, also in criminal justice.

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At the University's Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice

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and Forensic Sciences. They were in the same program the

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same time at the same school. Kelly told the university,

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and I'm quoting her directly.

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It's been great earning a degree while my dad is too.

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We're definitely able to bond over it, and sometimes we

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even get competitive about who has the better grades. Carl said,

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I am extremely proud of my daughter, who is a

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hard worker and a dedicated person.

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Kelly wasn't just getting by. She was a field hockey

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player with a three point nine GPA. She was named

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a National Field Hockey Coaches Association Scholar of Distinction. She

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told the university that her father's dinner table stories about

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policing were what inspired her to major in criminal justice

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in the first place. By twenty twenty three, Kelly Jacobson

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wanted to become a New Haven police officer. She wanted

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to follow in her father's footsteps. Within three years of

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that university feature, Carl Jacobson will be arrested for stealing

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eighty five thousand dollars from the City of New Haven,

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including four thousand dollars from a fund that paid for

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children's basketball clinics and summer camps, written as checks to

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himself at Christmas time. But we're not there yet, not

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even close. Right now, in this moment, Carl Jacobson is

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a decorated police chief with a master's degree, a proud father,

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and a promising career. He is truly living the American dream.

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A nice house Connecticut, his wife and kids. He goes

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to work every day and tries to make Newhaven safer,

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and somewhere, underneath all of it, something was already wrong.

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Something had been wrong for a long time, the kind

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of wrong that doesn't make noise. It just sits in

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the walls, like black mold, growing until one morning you

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peel back the wallpaper. We'll be back after a quick break.

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If you want to skip the ads and support the

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SHO show, you can do so at patreon dot com

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slash Tapes from the dark Side. We need to discuss

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something about Carl that might not seem relevant yet. Carl

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Jacobson had an alcohol problem. We know this because of

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what he said during that secretly recorded confrontation on January fifth,

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twenty twenty six, when his three assistant chiefs sat him

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down and asked him why the informant money was missing.

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He told them, quote.

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I fixed my alcohol problem, he.

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Said, fixed past tense like a leaky pipe. You tighten

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like a house chore, you cross off a list. Now,

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before we dive into this, we should be careful. We

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don't know Carl Jacobson's full story. We don't know when

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he stopped drinking, if he saw a therapist, if he

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went to rehab, or if he just stopped. None of

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that info is in the arrest warrant, None of it

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is in any court filing. All we have is that

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one word fixed, and from personal experience, that word tells

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you a lot. Maybe not everything, but a lot. You

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see in recovery lingo, there's something that's beyond merely being sober.

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It's called emotional sobriety. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

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For now, I just want you to file that word away.

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Connecticut legalized online sports betting in twenty twenty one, DraftKings

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fan Duel fanatics available on every smartphone in the state.

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For someone with Carl's history, this would turn out to

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be a very bad arrangement. Nathan Novemski, a Yale professor

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known for his behavioral economics and Consumer psychology research put.

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It like this, It's just like an alcoholic living in

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a liquor store or a bar.

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Carl didn't have to drive to a casino, he didn't

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have to fly to Vegas. He didn't have to find

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a bookie or walk into an off track betting parlor.

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He just had to open his phone. When one of

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the assistant chiefs told Carl during their confrontation that he'd

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never actually seen Carl gamble, Carl picked up his cell phone,

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set her on the conference table, and said, quote, it's

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on the app four words. The whole catastrophe, the whole

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four point four million dollars, the stolen money, the children's fund,

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the career, the pension, the family. All of it lived

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inside of a rectangle glass and aluminum that fit in

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his pocket, that he carried everywhere, that slept on his nightstand,

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that no one ever thought to look at, because why

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would you It's just a phone. Let me tell you

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what happened inside my skull when Yukon hit the buzzer

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beater and I saw dollar signs appear on my screen.

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There's a circuit in the brain called the mesolimbic dopamine pathway.

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It runs from a region called the ventral tegmental area

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deep in the brain stem, up to the nucleus accumbans,

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and then forward to the prefrontal cortex. This is the

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reward circuit. This is the system that evolved to make

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you feel good when you eat, you have sex, basic

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survival stuff. It's the system that says, whatever you just did,

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do it again. When you win a bet. This circuit fires.

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Dopamine floods the nucleus ocumban's euphoria, excitement, a sense of mastery.

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Your brain tags the experience as important, It files it away.

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It builds an association. This app this action, this feeling,

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do it again. But here's the part that makes gambling

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addiction different from almost any other kind of reward. The

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dopamine response is strongest not when the reward is guaranteed,

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not when you know you're going to win. The dopamine

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fires most intensely during maximum uncertainty, when the odds are

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roughly fifty to fifty, when you genuinely don't know what's

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going to happen. Think of that Yukon game. A one

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point three percent win probability at halftime. Every possession in

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the second half is ratcheting up that uncertainty. As Yukon

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slowly comes back. By the final minute the game is

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nearly tied. Anything can happen. My brain was flooded with dopamine,

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not necessarily because of the money, but because of the

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not knowing.

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Seventy to seventy ten seconds to go.

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The uncertainty itself is the drug. The money is just

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how it gets delivered. You just still have the more

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tragic and there's more. Researchers at Cambridge this was Luke

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Clark's team published in the journal Neuron in two thousand

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and nine, found that near miss outcomes activate the same

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reward circuitry as actual wins. If you bet on a

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team and they lose by one point on a last

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second play, your brain processes that almost the same way

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as it processes a win. Your brain lies to you,

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says you were close, you were right, the universe just

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got in the way. Instead of saying you lost. Stop,

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it says you almost won. Do that again. In pathological gamblers,

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this effect is even more extreme, and brain imaging studies

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show that problem gamblers actually have a stronger dopamine response

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to losses than healthy people do. They get more more

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pleasure from losing than a normal person gets from winning.

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The disease of addiction has rewritten the source code. Loss

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is pleasure, pain is fuel. The worse it gets, the

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better it feels. I want to tell you something about

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myself that most of you don't know. On the show.

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I go by TZ, which stands for Tyler Zachary. That's

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my name. I go by Tyler in my personal life,

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but back in twenty twenty four, I started going by Tye.

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The reason being that was the year I came back

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back to my recovery, back to meetings, sponsor therapy, the

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whole thing, and I came back not from a relapse,

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but from something that might be arguably worse. For about

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four years, from twenty twenty to twenty twenty four, I

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was technically sober. I was making this podcast, which has

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been an incredible journey, and on the surface life was

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going okay. But underneath the surface it wasn't. I wasn't drinking,

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I wasn't using, but I wasn't in recovery. The pandemic

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had given me the perfect excuse to stop doing the

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internal emotional work that real recovery demands. The emotional sobriety.

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It's the difference between just not using and actually being well.

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I didn't have it at the time. I was sober

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on paper, but falling apart underneath. The clinical research behind

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emotional sobriety might be the most overlooked aspect of this case,

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and I believe it might explain everything about what happened

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to Karl Jacobson. But for now, here's what you need

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to know about me. When I opened FanDuel and placed

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that first bed in March of twenty twenty six, my

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brain was not a normal brain responding to a normal stimulus.

356
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My brain had been shaped by u years of addictive behavior.

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My brain has altered dopamine receptors and a prefrontal cortex

358
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that had been weakened by years of addiction and then

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four years without any emotional sobriety, a brain that was

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on a neurological level hungry. The science on this is

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not ambiguous. The DSM five, the so called bible of

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psychiatric diagnoses, though it's better at looking backward than forward,

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reclassified gambling disorder. In twenty thirteen they moved it out

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of the so called impulse control disorders and into substance

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related and addictive disorders, the same category as alcohol use disorder,

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the same category as opioid addiction. They did this because

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the research showed that gambling activates the same neural circuitry,

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shares the same genetic vulnerabilities, and produces the same patterns

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of tolerance with drawl and compulsive behavior as substance addiction.

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The crossover data is staggering. Approximately thirty percent of people

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with a gambling disorder also have a substance use disorder.

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People with a substance use history develop gambling problems at

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four to five times the rate of the general population.

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The shared genetic vulnerability a variant called the DRD two

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TACK one A one allele, and it appears in both

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populations at elevated rates. Twin studies estimate that the heritability

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of gambling disorder is between fifty and sixty percent, which

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is comparable to alcohol addiction. What this means in plain language,

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if you've been addicted to one thing, your brain is

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pre wired to get addicted to another. Not because you're weak,

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not because you lack will power, but because the circuitry

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that was altered by the first addiction doesn't care what

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00:25:56.440 --> 00:26:00.920
substance or behavior fills the void, it just wants the dopamine.

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In gambling, especially mobile, sports betting, with its constant availability

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00:26:07.200 --> 00:26:12.799
and its engineered uncertainty, delivers dopamine as efficiently as anything

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on earth. When I opened FanDuel for the first time

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and placed that bet, my brain wasn't starting from zero.

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It was a brain that had been primed by years

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00:26:22.759 --> 00:26:26.039
of addiction, by a reward circuit that had been sitting

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in a dark room for a long time. And when

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Yukon hit that buzzer beater and two hundred and fifty

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00:26:32.960 --> 00:26:36.680
two dollars appeared on my phone, the door didn't just open,

393
00:26:37.319 --> 00:26:43.160
it came off the hinges. The sports betting industry in

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00:26:43.200 --> 00:26:47.640
the United States processed one hundred and forty nine billion

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00:26:47.720 --> 00:26:52.160
dollars in wagers in twenty twenty four. In twenty seventeen,

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before the Supreme Court struck down the federal sports betting pan,

397
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the legal market was roughly four point nine billion, So

398
00:27:00.559 --> 00:27:04.880
in seven years, the industry grew by a factor of thirty.

399
00:27:05.759 --> 00:27:10.759
DraftKings and FanDuel control approximately seventy percent of the American market.

400
00:27:11.240 --> 00:27:14.759
That promotion, I took the bet reset token that felt

401
00:27:14.799 --> 00:27:18.559
like free money DraftKings has reported that the average customer

402
00:27:18.599 --> 00:27:22.480
they acquire through those promotions has a lifetime value of

403
00:27:22.519 --> 00:27:26.880
approximately twenty five hundred dollars against an acquisition cost of

404
00:27:26.920 --> 00:27:30.799
three hundred and seventy one and they know that ninety

405
00:27:30.799 --> 00:27:34.920
five to ninety seven percent of customers lose in the

406
00:27:34.960 --> 00:27:40.279
long run. The promotions are not gifts, their bait, and

407
00:27:40.359 --> 00:27:43.799
once you become a so called heavy user, they don't

408
00:27:43.839 --> 00:27:46.559
just leave you alone. They assign you what's called a

409
00:27:46.720 --> 00:27:51.279
VIP host, a real person inside the company whose entire

410
00:27:51.400 --> 00:27:54.640
job is to keep you playing, to message you, to

411
00:27:54.759 --> 00:27:59.799
offer you personalized promotions, to learn your name, your habits,

412
00:28:00.079 --> 00:28:03.640
your patterns. Think of it as a friend who only

413
00:28:03.680 --> 00:28:06.799
calls when you're bleeding, who gets paid by the pint.

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According to the arrest warrant, Carl Jacobsen had a customer

415
00:28:11.640 --> 00:28:15.400
relations person assigned to him by the sportsbooks. We don't

416
00:28:15.440 --> 00:28:17.599
know what they said to him. We don't know what

417
00:28:17.640 --> 00:28:21.039
promotions they offered, but we know the function they served.

418
00:28:21.920 --> 00:28:28.240
They were there to make sure Carl kept bleeding. We

419
00:28:28.400 --> 00:28:31.960
don't know if Carl won his very first bet. The

420
00:28:32.039 --> 00:28:35.279
warrant doesn't go into that kind of detail, but the

421
00:28:35.400 --> 00:28:39.359
data on his account tells us something. Across that first

422
00:28:39.440 --> 00:28:43.319
tracked year, he wagered four point four million and one

423
00:28:43.400 --> 00:28:47.720
back four point two. He was cycling money constantly, and

424
00:28:47.759 --> 00:28:51.680
the research on how gambling addiction develops is nearly universal

425
00:28:51.759 --> 00:28:56.599
on this point. Somewhere early on, there's a stretch of winning,

426
00:28:57.200 --> 00:29:00.640
a hot streak, a run where the mass seems to

427
00:29:00.680 --> 00:29:05.359
bend in your favor. Researchers call it the early winning phase.

428
00:29:06.440 --> 00:29:10.000
Carl had a winning phase. I'm certain of it, because

429
00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:13.400
without it you don't make one thousand, three hundred and

430
00:29:13.440 --> 00:29:20.079
sixty six deposits. It's late March twenty twenty six. I'm

431
00:29:20.119 --> 00:29:23.920
sitting in my home phone in my hand, fandual app

432
00:29:23.960 --> 00:29:29.000
open a few hundred dollars richer, already entertaining the next bet,

433
00:29:29.720 --> 00:29:33.960
already noticing that another app, DraftKings is offering a sign

434
00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:38.160
up bonus. Bet three sixty five is offering three hundred

435
00:29:38.200 --> 00:29:42.039
and sixty five dollars on a ten dollars deposit, and

436
00:29:42.279 --> 00:29:46.880
bet mgm also has a promotion. I'm calculating how many

437
00:29:46.960 --> 00:29:49.960
apps I can sign up for, how much bonus money

438
00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.920
I could extract from the machine. But somewhere, something in

439
00:29:54.960 --> 00:30:00.559
the back of my mind is building a nest. Jacobson,

440
00:30:01.200 --> 00:30:05.559
sometime in twenty twenty four, is sitting somewhere in Branford, Connecticut,

441
00:30:06.079 --> 00:30:10.200
phone in his hand, DraftKings or fan Duel open, coming

442
00:30:10.240 --> 00:30:14.640
off his own first big win, his own dopamine flood,

443
00:30:15.559 --> 00:30:19.759
and inside him, something had already moved the furniture around

444
00:30:19.839 --> 00:30:24.519
and changed the locks. Two brains shaped by prior addiction

445
00:30:25.160 --> 00:30:31.559
suddenly fed. The only difference that mattered was invisible. It

446
00:30:31.680 --> 00:30:35.000
was internal. It had nothing to do with intelligence or

447
00:30:35.119 --> 00:30:39.119
character or moral fiber. It had to do with something

448
00:30:39.160 --> 00:30:42.400
that happened or didn't happen in the years before we

449
00:30:42.480 --> 00:30:47.079
ever opened those apps. Carl said he fixed his alcohol

450
00:30:47.200 --> 00:30:51.200
problem for me, after four years of failing to work

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on myself. I had actually started the recovery process again. Carl,

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00:30:56.920 --> 00:31:02.079
as far as we know, didn't have a sponsor therapist program.

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He didn't have someone he could call it too. In

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00:31:04.279 --> 00:31:07.359
the morning, and the thing in the cross space started whispering,

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00:31:08.519 --> 00:31:15.519
I did, and I almost didn't call him anyway. In

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00:31:15.599 --> 00:31:18.119
the next episode, I'm going to tell you about what

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00:31:18.240 --> 00:31:21.559
happened to me over the following ten days. How I

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00:31:21.640 --> 00:31:25.880
downloaded nine sports betting apps, how I placed hundreds of bets,

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00:31:26.240 --> 00:31:30.000
how I deposited thousands of dollars, and how I won,

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00:31:31.279 --> 00:31:34.960
and how winning was the thing that nearly destroyed me.

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00:31:36.039 --> 00:31:37.759
I'm also going to tell you about what happened to

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00:31:37.799 --> 00:31:41.680
Carl Jacobson over the following twelve months. How the arrest

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00:31:41.720 --> 00:31:45.079
warrant said he made one thousand, three hundred and sixty

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00:31:45.119 --> 00:31:49.400
six transfers from his checking account to gambling apps. How

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00:31:49.400 --> 00:31:52.279
he started writing checks to himself from a fund meant

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00:31:52.279 --> 00:31:56.039
to pay confidential informants while his daughter was home for

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00:31:56.119 --> 00:31:59.799
the holidays. His daughter, Kelly, wanted to be a cop

468
00:32:00.200 --> 00:32:03.480
like her dad. She told the university that his dinner

469
00:32:03.480 --> 00:32:07.519
table stories are what inspired her. I wonder what the

470
00:32:07.559 --> 00:32:12.079
dinner table conversations are like now. The family hasn't spoken,

471
00:32:12.319 --> 00:32:15.680
and frankly, they don't owe us anything, but I think

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00:32:15.720 --> 00:32:28.200
about her. I think about her a lot. I'm tz

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00:32:28.680 --> 00:32:32.480
I've been your host, and this is Tapes from the

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00:32:32.559 --> 00:32:36.680
Dark Side. If you or someone you know is struggling

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00:32:36.720 --> 00:32:41.000
with gambling, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is available twenty

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00:32:41.039 --> 00:32:45.119
four to seven. That's one eight hundred five two two

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00:32:45.200 --> 00:32:53.000
four seven zero zero free confidential. You could hear the

478
00:32:53.039 --> 00:32:56.720
next episode in this series early ad free and in

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00:32:57.039 --> 00:33:03.640
uncompressed pristine audio quality. Be that's on Patreon or Apple Podcasts.

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00:33:03.880 --> 00:33:07.240
Our newest Patreon members and you can join at patreon

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00:33:07.279 --> 00:33:10.400
dot com. Slash Tapes from the Dark Side. At three

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00:33:10.519 --> 00:33:17.000
dollars we have Jen Joy Bennett, Karris Becker, Jasmine and Gonzalez,

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00:33:17.640 --> 00:33:26.640
Jonathan Greenway, Josh Lammy, Jessica Okugick, Andreas Sivillis. I'm probably

484
00:33:26.640 --> 00:33:33.000
saying that one wrong, Whitney Whimsical Pirate, Ellie yar Ralli,

485
00:33:33.960 --> 00:33:40.480
Britney Taunton, George E. Kinsey, Martin and Kelsey. And we

486
00:33:40.559 --> 00:33:45.240
have a four dollar member, Andrew Tallon five dollars members

487
00:33:45.440 --> 00:33:53.079
Danny Garaway, Kayla Barber or sorry, Kayla baber Russ, Di

488
00:33:53.200 --> 00:34:01.640
Capo Doctor, darce Anna Treante Couture, and at seven dollars

489
00:34:01.720 --> 00:34:06.359
we have Forlorn Flesh, and at nine dollars we have

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00:34:06.559 --> 00:34:13.320
Elusive Sam Squach. Thank you to our associate producers Kayla

491
00:34:13.400 --> 00:34:20.840
Asthmus and Meg and also to our Seeker Tier members

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00:34:21.719 --> 00:34:27.360
Lindsey Choy and Alison Barkley. You guys truly help the

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00:34:27.400 --> 00:34:34.760
show keep going. Thank you for editing help from Chroi Turner.

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00:34:35.360 --> 00:34:38.280
Thank you to twenty six hundred, who allowed us to

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00:34:38.400 --> 00:34:42.280
adapt one of his songs for our main theme. And

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00:34:42.320 --> 00:34:47.199
thank you, of course to the incredible Augusta Trevororam who

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00:34:47.280 --> 00:34:52.599
created original music that we used in today's episode. Please

498
00:34:53.119 --> 00:34:57.519
rate the show five stars on Apple or Spotify and

499
00:34:57.920 --> 00:35:01.239
send the show to a friend or post about it

500
00:35:01.280 --> 00:35:05.400
online anyway we can get the word out. If you

501
00:35:05.440 --> 00:35:07.760
want to get in touch with the show, you can

502
00:35:07.800 --> 00:35:11.639
do so at tapes from the dark Sidepod at gmail

503
00:35:11.679 --> 00:35:15.880
dot com or follow the show on Instagram at the

504
00:35:16.000 --> 00:35:51.320
dark Side Pod. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight.

505
00:36:04.840 --> 00:36:09.760
In nineteen seventy six, the first casino open outside of Vegas,

506
00:36:09.800 --> 00:36:12.320
and it was right here, about a half a mile

507
00:36:12.400 --> 00:36:16.760
from my home, across the boardwalk. The lines would wrap

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00:36:16.800 --> 00:36:18.159
around the block.

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00:36:18.400 --> 00:36:22.480
And when it first opened, I was twelve, so I

510
00:36:22.639 --> 00:36:27.440
was too young to really see anything beyond going in

511
00:36:27.519 --> 00:36:29.639
the lobby and just feeling the excitement.

512
00:36:30.800 --> 00:36:35.039
When I'm sixteen, we would slip in the casino. We'd

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00:36:35.079 --> 00:36:40.320
play roulette. The lowest will be five dollars, so I

514
00:36:40.440 --> 00:36:42.960
put five on black and he put five on red,

515
00:36:43.039 --> 00:36:45.320
and one of us would win. But we'd drink for

516
00:36:45.360 --> 00:36:50.320
free until zero and double zero would come up, and

517
00:36:50.719 --> 00:36:54.400
so when you're sixteen fifteen bucks, there's a lot of money,

518
00:36:54.440 --> 00:36:58.039
twenty bucks whatever. I would lose every time I went.

519
00:36:58.119 --> 00:37:01.719
It would take a while, and I get free beers,

520
00:37:01.760 --> 00:37:04.000
but then we'd leave and I'd have no money for

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00:37:05.119 --> 00:37:06.800
the week until we could go back.

522
00:37:07.760 --> 00:37:09.159
I grew my own.

523
00:37:08.960 --> 00:37:12.159
Aversions to gambling. I saw it for what it was,

524
00:37:12.559 --> 00:37:16.480
a fool's bet, and I also had the good fortune

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00:37:16.519 --> 00:37:21.760
of learning over twenty dollars a week and not the

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00:37:21.800 --> 00:37:26.719
family mortgage.