April 4, 2019 • 46 mins
If you watch any documentaries about Holmes, or read much of the more sensational coverage about her life, you are left with a question: how did she trick so many prominent, intelligent people into believing her smoke and mirrors were real, functioning technology? In Part Two, Robert is joined again by Jamie Loftus and they examine this question and continue to discuss Elizabeth Holmes.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I remembert Evans is Behind the Bastards TV podcast Bad
People talks about what are you talking about? It's part
two of our Elizabeth Holmes podcast. It's actually a TV podcast.
It's a TV podcast. The video of this would include
even more salad eating than the audio does. Oh yeah,
and that's actually a bonus feature. That is a bonus feature.
(00:23):
It's actually something you can just turn on, like audio commentary.
You can just watch me eating a salad. It's you
watching a salad, eating a salad, and me commenting on
the nature of salads over the years. Behind the Salads
sounds really big, and I'm not going to finish it.
It's too large, it's substantial, it's it's an enormous salad.
Closing it part two now in our in our last episode,
(00:44):
we've talked about Elizabeth Holmes's rise to prominence and the
kind of wealth that people make when they haven't actually
made anything, but like because of tech industry voodoo. Everyone
says the comedies with billions of dollars, she got that
kind of rich. I also, during the break, came up
with a nickname for Sonny Balwani, like Welajo for Elizabeth Holmes. Sunball.
(01:04):
I I list when I was listening to the ABC
News UM podcast about Elizabeth Holmes a few months ago.
My dog's name is Sonny Um, and every time they
would mention Sonny bow Wannie, my dog would be like
Sonny was a known scammer, and then you could just
stare at my dog and know that he's also a right.
One thing I'm excited for is when we have a
(01:25):
mass shooter named Alexa, because the news that it's gonna
be quite a trip. That's going to be the time
that it's like, you know what, we are never again
reporting on a mass shooter's name. Too messy. That'll finally
do it. Yeah, yeah, Now, if you watched any documentaries
about Holmes, you read much of the more sensational coverage
about her life, you were left with a question, how
(01:46):
did she trick so many prominent intelligent men into believing
her smoke and mirrors were real functioning technology. Jim Mattis
is probably the USA's most respected living soldier. He's a
general so widely admired that the Democrats in Congress didn't
bother fighting when Trump appointed him Secretary of Defense. His
nickname is the Warrior Monk. Here's what he told Fortune
about why he trusted Elizabeth Holmes. She really does want
(02:08):
to make a dent in the universe, one that is positive.
The strength of the leader's vision in the military is
seen as the critical element in that unit's performance. I
wanted to be around something again that had that sort
of leadership. I just there's a lot of I just
have strong opinions about how not not about jam specifically,
but about like the like how like all the people
(02:30):
specifically men who fell for all of this have never
been really asked to like, you know, back it up
with I want to get I want to get through
all of the different things, and then we'll then we'll
discuss okay uh. In two thousand fourteen, Fortune talk to
board member Henry Kissinger as well. The year old former
Secretary of State and forever war criminal. First said she
(02:51):
looks like nineteen and then quote asked to assess her
as a leader because he's seen a few, He responds,
I can't compare her to anyone else because I haven't
seen any one with her very special attributes. She has
iron will, strong determination, but nothing dramatic. There's no performance
associated with her. I have seen no sign that financial
gain is of any interest to her. She's like a monk.
She isn't flashy. She wouldn't walk into a room and
(03:12):
take it over, but she would once the subject gets
to her field. Now, if you read up on Elizabeth
Holme will hear a number of theories as to why
this is all the case. I've run across a lot
of speculation on Twitter, mostly by women, that it's just
because she's hot and these old distinguished men were just
torny for her and let her themselves get fooled. Definitely
part of the definitely part of the reason. That's certainly
in lined with some of the claims Dr Fuse has made.
(03:34):
Remember back in two thousand and five when she convinced
that VC Donald Lucas to invest a bunch of money
in Tharanos Well. Dr Fuse claims quote Elizabeth called Lucas
from China and he would hear her speaking Mandarin in
the background. When he saw how attractive she was, he
got Oracle chairman Larry Ellison involved and he invested. Now, again,
Fuse is biased and a doctor. He's he's a biased physician, psychiatrist.
(03:56):
But we do have Lucas's own recollections about why he
got involved with Theoranos two That's nine interview with a
Berkeley PhD student. He said, this my assistant and I
had a call from Beijing. Of course I'll take the call.
He said, You've got to meet this young lady, Elizabeth Holmes.
I said, John, what, You've got to meet her? She's fabulous. Okay,
I'm figuring twenty minutes, right, This young lady comes in.
I think she probably was one years old at the time,
(04:17):
and it left Stanford, didn't graduate, and she had a
company called Saranos, and I thought this was going to
be a short conversation. Well now I'm chairman of the
board and I spent a lot of time with her
in the company, and she's doing super He didn't went
on to tell this grad student that she was also
good looking, and then laughed of I mean, of course
there's like with with it's which is crazy because it's
(04:37):
like everyone now is like in retrospect, being like, oh,
Elizabeth Holmes is like a mad genius for pitching her
voice lower and dressing like more masculine, And we're not
going to talk about her voice that much in this
I don't think it's I don't think it's relevant super Yeah,
but but it's just like, no, it's like there's it
is so transparent when you look at it for two seconds,
it's like there, it's there's some bias involved. Yeah, one
(05:00):
of the reasons I don't want to get her on
the voice. She's definitely she objectively altered her voice for
it to sound deeper. That's been very well documented. For sure.
I've known a number of women who like had to
manage men, particularly in male dominated fields like agriculture, and
they do the same thing because, like it's just what
you do. If you're trying to get a bunch of
mentalism to you, you have to, Yeah, you have to
like affect a more masculine tone because men have worms
(05:24):
in their brains. Because men have worms in their brains. Yeah.
And I'm not sure why or how much importance I
give to the fact that she was hot, But I
will admit that watching early videos of her before she
was as media savvy as she got makes it seem
like hotness must have been a bigger factor than her
rock charisma and brilliance. Here is an exerpt from her
very first TED talk in two thousand fourteen. So it's
just like one of the very first This is a
classic Yeah, and it's the individual is the answer to
(05:52):
the challenges of healthcare. But we can't engage the individual
in changing outcomes unless individuals have access to the information
they need to do. So, Okay, that's that's probably about enough.
(06:13):
That's not a great speech. That was a lot of
words delivered in random ortar that was It's bad. It's
not charismatic, it's not like there's nothing to do with
the deepness of her voice. It's just like not good presentation.
And and it's totally unclear what the company is based
on that conversation exactly. Um. Now, with her body language
and her outfit, which of course the people listening won't
(06:34):
have seen, she's very clearly imitating Steve Jobs. I mean,
it's it's egregious. Yeah, it's egregious. And everybody, everybody, even
in the praiseful Fortune article, they noticed that like she
dressed identical every day, uh, and specifically in order to
like look like Steve Jobs, that he was a hero
for her or she she hung a portrait of his
Apple Internet bio like that she printed out on the
(06:57):
day he stepped down a CEO because of cancer hung
it up in her office. Yeah, it didn't seem to
be much of a secret. No. No, she kept all
the thermostats a Thereanos offices extra low so she could
always wear her trademark turtleneck. Um, that's also just another
another vase of frank thing. Yeah, it's always fifty five
degrees in those offices. Well, that I agree with, because
I prefer it to be cold. You're wrong, No, I'd
(07:20):
like to be cold. I am not soon, but yeah,
I forgot. I was sad about it. Yeah, but I
just don't like it warm. Um. Now, Elizabeth Holmes did
not just affect jobs, is choice and outfit. She went
well out of her way to present the perfect image
of the aloof eccentric genius founder. Here's fortune again. Homes
grips a plastic cup of an appetizing green juice, her
(07:42):
first of the day. It is made from spinach, partly parsley, wheat, grass,
and celery. Later she'll switch to cucumber vegan. She long
ago dropped coffee in favor of these juices, which she
finds are better able to propel her through her sixteen
hour days in seven day weeks. She admits laughing nervously
at the eccentricity of it, but after a meal, she
sometimes examines a drop of her own or others is
blood on a slide and says she can observe the
(08:02):
difference between when someone has eaten something healthy like broccoli
and when he splurged on a cheeseburger. When we dine
one night in an Italian plate placed downtown with fourteen
dollar pastas, the manager knows what she'll have, a spartan dressing,
less mixed salad in an oil free spaghetti with tomatoes
prepared from a whole wheat noodle she has provided the
restaurant in advance since it doesn't stock them. No wine. Yeah,
(08:23):
what a what a weird self mythologizing pack of lies.
But so many Silicon Valley people do ship like that. Yeah,
And so here's here's the question. I wanted a literal vampire.
Peter Hill is a literal vampire. This is the question
I want to ask. So we've got the one speculation
that like all these old guys bought into her because
she was hot, And we've got the other speculation, which
I think is at least as big a part of it,
(08:45):
and maybe a bigger part of it is that she
made herself look like a crazy Silicon Valley genius, and
these guys were just they were looking for that. And
then gender was a component in that. Gender was a
component in that, but the thing, but not the entire
like the fact that these guys thought she was a
track was part of their magnetism to her, But I
think it was more the part that, like they were,
they all wanted to get a shipload of money by
(09:06):
being involved with the next Steve Jobs. And what do
you look for in the next Steve Jobs? A crazy
asshole who does weird things right because which she was
imitating to a t Yeah, um, yeah, no, I mean
I agree. I think it's like reductive to say that
it's like completely because of her looks. But I also
think that like, especially like old dudes are always like
I'm sure that they thought they were supporting most like
(09:27):
people like early supporters of like Cheryl Sandberg when she
was starting to do funked up stuff, They're like, they're like, well,
I'm supporting a woman, so I'm not a bad person.
Where they just started like searching for the easiest, least
challenging version of what they're what they think is feminism
and then being like, oh, so, I'm it's like the
(09:47):
equivalent of like saying, you have a black friend and
I gave money to a woman. I don't this is
this gets on like a totally different issue I have.
But it's like umbor when Josh Weeden it came out
that he like cheated on his wife a bunch and
everybody was saying he was a ake feminist or like, no,
he can be a feminist and cheat on his wife
doesn't mean you're a good husband. You can be a
shitty person and a feminist. It's not a high bar.
(10:08):
It's the bottom. It's like you're not a good person
for saying black people and white people should have equal rights.
That's the bottom. They're serial killers who aren't racist there yeah,
like there, I don't know. I mean, and I think
that a lot of these like investors, that's just like
it's at least in part them failing to meet that
(10:28):
bottom because they're just like, well, I threw money at
a woman's company and a woman's company. But she she
is imitating one of the I mean, I don't know.
A lot of it is a testament to her commitment.
She really knows how to commit she is. I mean
I wish I could. I would be a lot more
successful if I could commit to the bit like that.
(10:48):
Sometimes I think if I had only used my my
power as a as a tall, confident white man to
start a Silicon Valley company making I don't know an
app that does your laundry. I could have a billion
dollars right now laundry at time. But that exists. Oh no,
they've tried it a couple of times. Probably like half
(11:11):
of Silicon Valley right now is just doing things that
nineteen year old millionaire's moms used to do for them.
Cool cool, cool, totally sustainable, great part of the world,
terrifying place. Yeah, now, uh it didn't hurt um Elizabeth
Holmes's ability to con all these uh statesmen who people
(11:32):
think are brilliant. I don't think being a Secretary of
State makes you brilliant. I don't think Hilly christ. I
don't think Kissinger is all that smart. Whatever I think
he's I think he's smart in certain ways. That's a
whole other, that's a whole were Let's not talk about Kissinger.
When we talk about Kissinger, it's got to be like
a four hour talk about I don't even know where
to step, but I think it helped a lot that
Like everyone always talked about when before Tharonos, like the
(11:54):
con was revealed that she had the most distinguished board
of any company in the history of the world. They
were like three secretaries of State on it, like it
was and it was like you look at just like
the like that's part of what trick that Fortune article
is He's talking to all these people who are like, well,
all of you are some of the most famous people
in the history of American politics, and you're all for
the same company. And the coasties around both sides of
(12:16):
the aisle too, Like there was like Bill Clinton and
Joe Biden put in like a hundred fifty million dollars
Joe Biden and Clinton Clinton approved it. Yeah, so it's yeah,
she's got bipartisan that's yeah. And it and here's what
the most important is that, like all of those people
were very distinguished. None of them had any background in
mediciner sites, Like, none of them were quite like anyone
(12:38):
is equipped to look at a phone and be like, oh, yeah,
I bet people who want to put this in their pocket.
Anyone's qualified to use a phone like almost no one's
qualified test blood. Yeah, like the bizarre footage of Joe
Biden going to like cool blood curious guys, and it's
one of those things like I can't even attack, Like
I don't like Biden, but I can't attack him for that.
(12:58):
He's like what was he supposed to do? Like like
walks into a lab and it's like, yeah, it looks
it looks like like like I'm Joe Biden, I'm not
a doctor, but yeah, there's Joe Biden Hills to die on. Yeah,
I mean speaking of like who you, as the administration
send to look at theos maybe the what do you
(13:18):
call the boss doctor? What the boss doctor of the country,
the doctor in charge? Yeah, the president doctor, big doctor,
surgeon general. You send the surgeon general, Like that would
have been a better person to see doctor, but that's
not as famous. The big doctor, the big doctor, doctor
b he's just the biggest doctor. They have to fight
each other. They have to fight each other. So Elizabeth
(13:42):
Holmes and Paranis were actually incapable of selling themselves to
people who knew the first thing about medical science, which
is why they focused on grifting secretaries of state and
retired generals. According to Dr fuse, Holmes was expert at
talking her way through little matters like her technology not
actually working, mainly by bringing up her famous dead relatives quote.
That family background was part of the con she would
be introduced, and when questions were asked about her scientific
(14:04):
knowledge or business acumen, these family members would be brought up. Now,
Fusapsy again has an ax to grind and as a doctor.
But the two thousand nine interview with that venture capitalist
Donald Lucas, back when Tharanos was still king shit backs
all this up. Quote. Here's what Lucas said when he
was explaining why he invested. She had no background at business,
So it's quite presumptuous for somebody to say I'm going
to be president of the company. But there's an important distinction.
(14:26):
That's what I felt when I first met her. After
spending a lot more time with her, I learned her
great grandfather was an entrepreneur and started Fleishman's Packaged East.
It was very successful, So that was one side, that's
the entrepreneurs side, but she was in the medical side. Ah.
It turns out later the hospital very near where they
lived is named after her great uncle, who was involved
with medicine, So she came by both of those talents
necessary here, one medicine and the other entrepreneurship quite naturally complete.
(14:49):
That's insane, and he's literally saying I thought it was
crazy that a nineteen year old run a company, but
then I learned out one of her relatives was a
doctor and another two hundred years ago started a business
that is completely unhitched. The I mean the fact that
she constantly is like deploying this excuse of like but yeast,
and then they're like, oh yeah, totally the yeast. And
(15:12):
when I first read that fuse quote, I was like, Okay,
this seems like he's exaggerating, But then you read this
thing from Lucas and it's like, oh no, that's exactly
what she did and it worked. My grandfather was a
prisoner of war in Korea. That doesn't make me a
prisoner of war in Korea. It just doesn't make it.
That doesn't Jamie. Thank you for your service. Thank you.
So I listen, I use the cloud. I got to
(15:33):
break traffic laws constantly. That's mainly what she shouted at
the traffic cops as you drive past. Yeah, just flip
them off and say, by purple hearts that keep like
a pile of purple hearts in the center console. Yeah,
it stays trapped with my purple hearts out. That's fucking absurd,
(15:57):
It's ludicrous. Imagine that and meaning it. Imagine imagine saying
that as Donald Lucas distinguished venture capitalist and not realizing
that all of venture capitalism is a fraud. Right, You're
literally saying because two dead people that she never met
were good at two parts of her business, that she's
(16:18):
equipped to run a bus genetically qualified? Are you? Are
you fucking serious business? That is? I've never heard that
quote before that. It's fucking insane. Wow. Man, it's like
the stupidity you know, infects at every level. That's wild.
It sure does. That should be that should replace eplurbous
(16:41):
as our as our national motto. Stupidity effects everyone. Now,
one thing Elizabeth Holmes could not fool were the laws
of physics. Fairness's equipment did not work in two thousand
and fourteen, but they were performing tins and then hundreds
of thousands of blood tests and multiple states while Tharoness
marketing focused around the nanottainer, the friendly little capsule that
(17:03):
only required a teeny bit of your blood that was
only capable of handling a couple of different tests. Thoroness
used traditional vena puncture, a k a. The thing everyone
in the industry did for the others, and just continued
to lie on their marketing that they could handle more
than two hundred tests. Roger Parloff, the author of that
Fortune article, I keep going back to pinned a mia
colpa in two thousand fifteen, after thearoness exploded talking I'm sorry,
(17:25):
he well, I'm sorry, talking about how Holmes had misled him.
He thought it was weird when he learned they still
did vena puncture for many of their tests, and he
asked her about it. Quote. The biggest reason Holmes told
me in May two thousand and fourteen is we're scaling.
As we're building out this infrastructure, we're also building out
our inventory and our capacity in terms of the number
of samples that we can handle at any given point
in time. We'll use vnapuncture in addition to the micro samples,
(17:47):
just to handle the volume of sample that we're processing. Now.
Parlav noted correctly that this made no goddamn sense, drawing
way the funk more blood would not help in handling volume.
He kept asking her about it until she told him
answering this question would be revealing the trade secret, right,
and the fact that, I mean, that's what I hope
is one of the outcomes of this whole mess is
that like, you can't say you can't like withhold information
(18:11):
when it's a medical company like that can't There can't
be all these n d A s surrounding medical equipment
that is happening. Goddamn iPhone, right, like, yeah, keep your
iPhone secret? Who gives a ship? You know? I find
the facial unlocking to be triggering. I don't. I don't
do that. It doesn't recognize me when I look nice. Oh, Jamie,
(18:33):
I know it hurts. Here's my feeling, that's hurtful. Was
it hurt my feeling? Let's go on, Steve jobs is grave. Honestly,
it was gonna was gonna dump my Diva cup and Steve,
that sounds like a fun road trip, ye now. And
obviously two, the FDA did it's goddamn job and surprised
(18:55):
there in US with an inspection, according to Vanity Fair Quote.
According to someone close to the company, Holmes was sent
into a panic, calling advisers to try and resolve the issue,
and around the same time, regulators from the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services, which regulates laboratories, visited the labs
and found major inaccuracies in the testing being done on patients.
CMS also soon discovered that some of the tests theiriness
was performing were so inaccurate that they could leave patients
(19:16):
at risk of internal bleeding or of stroke among those
prone to blood clots. The agency found that Tharinis appeared
to ignore the erratic results from its own quality control
checks during a six month period last year, and supplied
eighty one patients with questionable test results. Cool. Cool. Some
of the most unfortunate things about like this story is
that one of the major people who like exposed Elizabeth
(19:37):
Holmes his name is Tyler. Yeah. That's a frustrating thing.
I don't like when Tyler's win this case. He was right,
and he seems like a nice guy. He seems like
someone who really hasn't like a conscience. I just don't
want to chalk one up for a Tyler. No, it's
like when you meet a nice guy named Chad, which
I have a couple of times, and it's always like
you like, I don't like this, just I would prefer okay,
(20:00):
I just wish he wasn't, but like, good for him,
but good for him, Good for you for breaking the mold.
You know, speaking of breaking the mold, you know it
really breaks the mold. Jamie loftus these products and these
services and products products. We're back now. The next month,
(20:23):
after that surprise f D a you know, inspection thing
that found out nothing worked, the FDA declared the nanottainer
to be an uncleared device, removing it from availability for
all but one test. Arenas was now using traditional old
fashioned vena puncture for nearly all of their tests, and
since neither the Edison nor its successor, the Mini Lab
worked for ship, they were doing most of the analysis
on equipment they bought from other companies, including the companies
(20:45):
they were claiming to want to disrupt. It's sort of
like if Apple had just been ripping apart HP laptops
and putting a fancy looking case on the outside. They're
just like, here's an iPhone, but it's a Sony Via. No.
At this point, you're probably wondering what the hell was
going on with the rest of Farinos. At this point
was anyone inside like standing up and saying, what the fuck?
(21:06):
Nothing works? Yeah, Well, like any good cult leader, Elizabeth
Holmes organized the entire company in such a way that
everyone's job was incredibly compartmentalized. People knew about their specific
project and nothing else that was going on at the company.
Employees were often banned from communicating with one another about
their work. This didn't seem super insane because many Silicon
Valley companies like Apple had similar policies and but stopping
(21:26):
devices from leaking out, but was weird because this is
literally the opposite of the way good medical science is done.
Kind of when everyone talking, you want there to be transparency.
That's the point. That's the point, not it's crazy. Like
Elizabeth Holmes at no point was like wait a second,
lives aren't phones. But that's not her vibe. Lives aren't phones. Yeah,
(21:49):
I'll say that. For Steve Jobs, he never was like
like after Apple. He was like, I guess I'll make
fun movies and different computers. He wasn't like he was
like a repulsive person, had a stink and harassed everyone,
but he wasn't trying to kill anyone. He knew was Yeah,
he's like, I can you know, this is what I
can get away with, and I'm going for it. He
(22:11):
wasn't like, I'm gonna make a machine gun next. I
bet I can make a really good machine gun. But
that's that's classics. She's really disrupting people's health. Yeah, yeah,
disrupting people's health. That's that's a good tagline for this. Yeah,
oh boy, you want to? You want to the tagline
that I initially had for this episode. Elizabeth Holmes, the
(22:31):
white woman who became a white man. What brave, brave
of her had? I mean, I just want girls to
also have access to the spoils of lake capitalism is
don't we all? Oh my god? Now? Uh? The secrecy
and stress of managing a nine billion dollar company did
(22:51):
not actually do anything. That didn't actually do anything required
an insane schedule from homes. She reportedly slept four hours
a night and ate chocolate covered coffee beans all day
in order to stay a white corporate grifter. Recognition tip,
be wary of anyone who brags about how little they sleep.
It is not a good thing. No one makes better
decisions when they don't sleep. Absolutely agree, in order to
keep ship further under wraps. She hired her brother Christian
(23:12):
to be the associate director of project management in two
thousand and eleven. Super cool. He had been out of college. Yeah,
he'd been out of college for two years and had
no relevant educational experience that would help him manage products
in a blood diagnostics company. Amazing. Yeah, well, he'll foot
right in sending the president of the company. He's going
to shout his way into a medical breakthrough, and he's like,
(23:32):
we're just screaming in a cold building and ruining people's lives.
That's kind of Numerous employees did, of course, recognize that
something was up. Aarons had at rageous rates of turnover.
At one point, Holmes hired a bunch of employees from
her favorite company, Apple that were all gone inside of
two years. But Aaron has kept any former employees from
talking by threatening to sue anyone who so much has
(23:52):
wrote about their job in detail on LinkedIn. I think
it's also a dead giveaway when your company hires a
disproportionate amount of people fresh out of call who don't
have other options. Yeah, that's it. She did a lot
of She did a lot of that. Now Farness's law
team was incredibly expensive and headed by David Boys, another
incredibly respected old white dude. He was Al Gore's lawyer
during the recount, among other things, there's a big lawyers
(24:13):
behind marriage equality. He's like, he's like, he's like the
Steve Jobs of lawyers. I guess you'd say, but that
doesn't really translate because he's actually he's bad. He's bad.
I was like, he's I was like, he's bad. Right,
He's a bad person who was a lawyer on good cases.
But that happens. Lawyers or often bad, whether or not
they do good or bad things, are lawless people there, Yeah,
exactly all lawyers are anarchists. Justin Maxwell was one of
(24:38):
the designers behind the Edison. He later spoke to Carrie
Row for the book Bad Blood. His story provides a
good look at just how Holmes treated her employees on
a one on one basis. Quote, during an email exchange
one evening, he asked her for a piece of information
he needed to write a section of software. She responded
that she'd looked for it when she was back at
work the next morning. The clear implication was that she
had gone home, but minutes later he stumbled on her
in Tony Nugent's office down the hall, just got angry
(25:00):
and stormed off. Elizabeth came by his office a little
later to say she understood what he was upset, but
warned him don't ever walk off on me again. Just
and try to remind himself that Elizabeth was very young
and still had a lot to learn about running a company,
and one of their last email exchanges, he recommended to
management self help books to her, The No Asshole Rule,
building a civilized workplace and surviving one that isn't and
beyond bullshit Straight talk at Work included their links on Amazon.
(25:23):
He quit two days later. His resignation email read, in part,
good luck and please do read those books, watch the office,
and believe in the people who disagree with you. Lying
as a disgusting habit, and it flows through conversations here
like it's our own currency. The cultural disease here is
what we should be cering before we try to tackle obesity.
I mean, I mean, no ill will towards you. Since
you believe in what I was doing and I hoped
(25:43):
I would succeed at theories, I feel like I owe
you this bad attempted an exit interview. Since we have
no hr To officially recorded that's that's a great resignation,
savage moment for Savov Another sav mom, that's great. I
don't understand why recommend as she watched the office. That
just seemed like a fun thing to I think it
(26:04):
might just be because she was that bad of a
He was like, maybe you'll understand what you're doing if
you watched. I think he's say, you're like Michael Scott.
That seems generous. Honestly, yeah, because at least he had
a Michael Scott. Well, no, Michael Scott would totally have
tried to create a medical device company. She carries herself
more like a Jan Levinson Goold, but Joan Levenson gool
(26:24):
was good at her job. That's the difference at the start.
At least now Elizabeth did not respond. I found no
evidence that she ever watched the office either. God damn it,
God damn it. The areas where she most shown seemed
to be one talking people into investing in therapnos and
to motivating employees at company white events and parties. She
was legitimately talented at inspiring people. During one company Christmas party,
(26:44):
she gave this speech, The mini lab is the most
important thing humanity has ever built. If you don't believe
this is the case, you should leave now. Everyone needs
to work as hard as humanly possible to deliver it.
Cool Cult. Cool Cult. During the company party to celebrate
the deal with safe Ways, told everyone, if anyone here
believes you are not working on the best thing humans
have ever built, or if your cynical, then you should leave.
(27:06):
Ever for all these speeches, I like to imagine she's
sipping from a mug of human blood and just getting
a little milk mustache. She's like, anyways, slurb Yeah, I
do give Sophie almost that the same speech before every
single episode. Behind the Bastards, behind the Bard is the
most you don't believe this is the most important thing
anyone's ever done. And then you and then you chug
(27:28):
a forty of blood. That's generous. I've seen it. It's
malt liquor. I okay, it's a very dark and biscus. Well,
I mean you put my protein powder and pump on.
I pour a protein shot into my malt liquor, stir
that up. Get it really thick. I feel sick. My
(27:52):
My big problem with cold is that it's not quite
thick enough. I wish that beer was thicker. I wish
that malt liquor. We're not talking about beer when we
talk about and steel reserve. I wish that Mike's hard
lemonade came in a solid Mikes are jello. Oh my god, Jamie,
that's our billion dollar idea. We make ice cubes to
(28:15):
get them on the fucking Someone called Mike. Some call Mike.
We need this ship cubed cube your ship, Mike, Are
you fucking fool? One of the few distinguished older men
Elizabeth Holmes was unable to brainwash was John carry Row,
a multiple Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalists with The Wall
Street Journal. He received a tip from a former Thearonos
(28:37):
Lab director that led to a much deeper investigation. In
October of two fifteen, he published the first of two
dozen articles. His first piece revealed Aaronus problems with the
nanotainers and the fact that very very little of the
promised revolutionary technology actually worked, in that they were using
other companies technology to do their blood tests. This was
not great for the Ainos. The company went into lockdown
for two days and nights. She hold up in what
(28:57):
was probably a very smelly conference room with Sunny Bowa,
all the company's lawyers, plus a team of crisis management professionals.
Forming a good plan proved impossible because their noosis technology
was fucking vapor and had been for ten years. And
been for ten years, according to Vanity Fair. Absent to plan,
Holmes embarked in a familiar course. She doubled down on
her narrative. She left the war room for her car.
She's often surrounded by her security detail, which sometimes numbers
(29:18):
as many as four men, who, for safety reasons, refer
to the young CEO as egal One, and headed for
the airport. She's been known to fly alone on a
six point five million dollar gulf Stream G one fifty.
Holmes subsequently took off for Boston to attend to Luncheon
for a previously scheduled appearance at the Harvard Medical School
Board of Fellows, where she would be honored as an inductee.
During the trip, Holmes fielded calls from her advisors in
the war room, She and her team decided on an
(29:40):
interview with Jim Kramer, the host of CNBC's Mad Money,
with whom she had a friendship that dated from a
previous interview was quickly arranged friends with Jim Kramer. That's
not that's I mean, that's such a bad look where
you're like, well, here's the here's the trusted, very rational
source I've chosen. It's like, oh, okay, a guy who's
won two Pulitzers is attacking us. We gotta fight back
(30:02):
with Jim Kramer with the bastion of truth. Jim Kramer.
There god her interview, and that is Oh yeah, I'm
gonna play every selection from that interview right now. It's amazing.
Just a fucking liar. She does get she is, if
you know, compared to the first fit clip we played,
she's gotten a lot betters. Her pr trainer nailed it.
That person. Yeah, they should get a pulitzer for lying.
(30:27):
This is what happens when you work to change things
and first they think you're crazy, then they fight you,
and then all of a sudden you change the world.
And I have to say, I personally was shocked to
see that the Journal would publish something like this when
we had sent them over a thousand pages of documentation
(30:48):
demonstrating that the statements in their piece were false. But um,
what we're doing things differently and we're working to make
a difference, and that means people raise questions and and
that's okay. Yeah, but in this case, it was pretty
disappointing to see that after every single one of the
sources that we spoke with who the Journal had contacted,
(31:09):
told us that the statements that were being attributed to
them were false or misleading, and the only sources who
were left were ones who wouldn't speak with us, who
on their own website say that they now do business
with lab Corps in their office, or in the other case,
demanded in writing that we pay them in cash upfront
(31:31):
for an hour to talk to them about their statements
to the journal. Those things were interested. Did the journal
know everything that you just said before they wrote the article?
Of course absolutely, that was all lies. Of course, just
I mean commit to the There is something to be
I like, she's horror I like, no doubt she's bad person.
(31:55):
But there is something kind of majestic about watching someone
go down with the ship just complete ignorance. Yeah, it's
it's there's a little bit of the l Ron Hubbard
in her, where it's like, well, okay, you didn't you
didn't just run away and blame someone else, you just
denied there was ever a problem. She is not gonna
admit she's done anything wrong. So what she has said,
like six hundred sixty six, I don't recalls, like, yeah,
(32:18):
it's amazing, it's Ronald Reagan level. I don't recalls. Yeah,
not genius, but consistent. Now, it was obviously not super
compelling rebuttal to again one of the best reporters on
the planet, tearing you a partner article for the Wall
Street Journal. But it was the best she could do,
getting the fact that you know, everything that carry sent
was accurately. Yeah, she's got she's she's got that mad money,
(32:43):
mad money. Why is he on the air? Why why
is he in the documentary? How is his heart not
exploded from what I assume is a daily cocktail of
cocaine and red bull. I will say it was when
when he appears in the documentary, it was very jarring
to see him outside of that set. It seems like
he has not left in many years. Cheff. Seems like
(33:04):
they must lock him in there. I think he lives
in a tent on just off screen. There's guys with
like rifles hanging out outside the set. We've got to
make sure Kramer doesn't get out. I've never seen him
outside of that set. It was very it's weird. Yeah,
I guess he just had to now. Uh. When she
got back to Palo Alto, Holmes had to finally address
(33:24):
her employees. She insisted again that the journal had gotten
the story wrong and that the reporter, John Carrierew, was
just picking a fight with her company to make a
name for himself. You know, a better name than having rises. Okay, yeah, Now,
as Holmes and Bowan, he pumped up the crowd, a
chance started up. Fuck you Carrie ru Fuck you Carrierew,
(33:45):
Fuck you Carrie Rew. First of all, original, very original,
super love it kind of start shooting out Baroness T
shirts out of T shirt guns. You know it. You
know she was just tossing blood vials and purple hearts.
Should have got nano tanners. Jock Sham started to play
d I. You know, go down, go down in style,
and if you want to go down in style, you
(34:07):
need the stylish products and services advertised by our advertisers.
Thank you, We're back. For a while, employees and management
at THEOIS hunkered down and tried to wait out the storm.
They attempted to ignore the mounting problems by focusing their
(34:27):
rage against carrierew and one company party sans staff, programmed
a video game based on Space Invaders. The gun was
the Mini Lab, the bullets were nanotainers, and the aliens
were John Carreyrew's face. Kind of a niche game. Kind
of a niche game, feel like, not a lot of
traveling power. Tragically, for the AOOS, that was not enough
to stop carry Row's reporting. In the inevitable unraveling of
(34:47):
theories that it triggered, Walgreen's cut all ties with the
company and closed their wellness centers. The FDA banned the
company from using the edison to the centers for Medicare
and Medicaid services, ban homes from owning or running a
medical lab for two years. The SEC and the U. S.
Attorney's Office opened investigations. Two class action lawsuits from people
who had their blood analyzed by Tharonos are still underway.
Ford's removed homes from its list of America's richest self
(35:09):
made women, lord its estimate of her net worth to nothing.
Something like a million people were told their blood test
results had been complete bullshit and they would need to
retake them now, Holmes tried to stage a comeback for
some reason. She started this by adopting a husky puppy
and naming it Balto, after the dog that led a
sled team filled with medicine to save an Alaska village.
In Balto became a constant companion, both at the Los
(35:30):
Altos mansion Aaronos rented for Elizabeth and at the Paronos offices.
Even though all her scientists warned her that dog Harey
did not mix well with blood testing laboratories, she had
not bother to potty train Boltop, so he pissed in
ship Oliver what was ostensibly again a medical lab. Holmes
also started to claim that her husky was a wolf
at this point, telling everyone who asked, and probably also
a lot of people who did not ask. By the
(35:50):
end of two dozen seventeen, things were bad enough that
Elizabeth Holmes had to stop traveling by private jet. The
company was forced out of the office that had been
expensively redesigned and spent more than a million dollars a
month in rent On. They moved into a lab facility
in Newark, which is not generally seen as nice as
Palo Alto. Balto continued to shoot on the floor in
this new facility. According to Vanity Quair fair Quote, it's
(36:12):
been a long according to Vanity fair Quote. Through all this,
former employees of the company have told me Holmes had
a bizarre way of acting like nothing was wrong. Even
more peculiarly, she seemed happy the company was falling apart,
their countless indictments piling up. Employees are leaving in droves,
and Elizabeth, that's just weirdly chipper, one former senior executive
told me. One former board member also noted that Holmes
would come to board meetings chirpy and acting as if
everything was great. She would walk up to people in
(36:34):
the office who have just testified in front of the
SEC or been questioned by lawyers at the FDA, and
she would give them a hug and ask how they
were doing. She was so confident that the company would
be fine. Executives who worked with her said that she
enrolled Balto in a search and rescue program homes spent
weekends training him to find people in an emergency. Unfortunately,
huskies are not bred for rescue their long distance runners,
and Balto failed out. Her dog failed out of school,
(36:57):
dog failed out of school. I bet her narrative was
like he actually dropped doubt, he dropped out, he actually
search and company. Oh god, I mean these are like
classic things of just like ignoring reality. Your best friend
is not a person, uh not. I mean, listen, I
love my dogs who is named after Sonny Bowani. But
(37:18):
my best friend is a cat that lives in Texas.
So it's it's not that but but you know, like
the completely ignoring reality and being like my dog's a cop.
Baroness officially died in September two, eighteen. All nine million
dollars Elizabeth Holmes had raised via grifting evaporated into a
pile of broken nanotainers and dogshit. Numerous lawsuits and investigations
(37:41):
into Holmes and Thearinos are still ongoing. She faces up
to twenty years in prison if convicted for all her crimes.
Her defense and the defense of her co defendant, Sonny Balwani,
seems to rest on the idea that they didn't actually
commit fraud. Aaroness was just a normal business failure. Also, technically,
neither of them made money off the company. This is
sort of true, but for more than a decade, Holmes
is Apple, bodyguards, mansion bills, et cetera. Were all paid
(38:02):
for by THEANOS. One former employee later recalled quote the
company paid for everything. She would submit her miles if
she drove the six miles to her house in a
loss altos, this's what you do if you're working for
like twenty bucks an hour. Now what you do you're
the CEO and they're renting you a mansion, Elizabeth. Former
THEONIS executives who were close to Elizabeth Holmes during the
(38:22):
end of THEANOS noted that she never really accepted any
responsibility for what had happened. When former colleague said, Elizabeth
sees herself as the victim. She blames John Carrirew, she
blames David Boys, and she blames hed their King. Boys
and King were both her lawyers. Holmes thinks that her
lawyers should have somehow been able to contain the bad
pr from again a Pulitzer Prize wedding reporter tearing their
company open with unimpeachable facts in a Wall Street Journal article.
(38:44):
At this moment, Elizabeth Holmes lives in San Francisco in
a very nice apartment that seems to be paid for
by their rich kids. She is dating. She now dresses
like a normal person. Last year she and her boyfriend
went to Burning Man. She looks weirdly normal in the pictures,
like an an actual adult person. She seems to be
trying to turn her dog into an instant m star.
Here's her some of her Instagram pictures. Oh my god,
(39:04):
this could have been your life. Girl. She looks like
a normal person that looks like a normal, basic white lady. Wow.
Look at that hat her vest. It is a great dog.
No shade on the dog. The dog did nothing. The
dog did nothing wrong. The dog was just trying to
could have learned how to. Yeah, it seems like it is.
(39:26):
He's got nicknames for him. I'm very interested as into
like what happens with her, because it's like I could
see it going one way of like you know, classics
cammer and getting the minimum punishment and then you know,
staging a comeback ten years from now. But I could
also see it as like I'm making an example for
Silicon Valley and actually putting her away. Maybe she'll get
to go to prison, even though like none of the
(39:48):
guys in the financial industry who did irreparably more harm. Ever,
exactly like one of those example makers. She's more criminal
than she is victim, but part of her seems to
be a victim. And we just I just don't know
enough about the relationship with Sonny, but it does seem
like something fucked up happened there. I mean, it's and
(40:09):
I'm sure that there's some relationships with each gap that
have turned out fine by and large, but I don't know.
I mean it not to not to continue to stand
for with Helms. It does seem like she has deluded
herself into thinking she did nothing wrong. I do believe
that she thinks that. Yeah, I don't think she's taken
a look in the mirror, and it's partly because she
(40:30):
was doing Again, when I say Steve Jobs was a grifter,
it's not that he didn't eventually produce great stuff. It's
that he knew how to lie an obvious skate and
con people until the product was ready. And that's what
I think, that's what she was trying to do. And
I think, but I think that it My impression of
Steve Jobs was always like he knew more what he
was doing and like just didn't care, versus like totally
(40:53):
scissor fucking your own brain. Into believing something that is
patently untrue. Yeah. I think he was a very comfortable
person with himself, and I doubt she ever was. Maybe
she's now maybe. I mean, she looks happy in the picture.
She's got a hot boyfriend. They're going to burning man.
That's everything that's annoying to me. So it's possible that
if she doesn't wind up doing twenty years behind bars,
(41:15):
Elizabeth Holmes may have gotten over the need to cause
play as Steve Jobs. I don't know. What I do
know is that the system that allowed her to funk
with so many people's lives and cost so much money
and count so much money is still alive and well.
That Vanity Fair article I keep referring to has a
great breakdown of this quote. It generally works like this.
The venture capitalists, who are mostly white men, don't really
know what they're doing with any certainty. It's impossible, after all,
(41:36):
to truly predict the next big thing, so they bet
a little money on every company that they can, with
the hope that one of them hits it big. The entrepreneurs,
also mostly white men, often work on a lot of
meaningless stuff, like using code to deliver frozen yogurt more expeditiously,
or apps that let you say yo and only yo
to your friends. People are so hard on yo. It
was a fun app. The entrepreneurs generally glorify their efforts
(41:57):
by saying that their innovation could change the world, which
tends to appease the venture capitalists because they can also
then pretend that they're not only there to make money. Also,
this helps to seduce the tech press, also largely composed
of white men, which is often ready to play a
game of access in exchange for a few more page
views of their story about the company that is trying
to change the world by getting frozen yogurt to companies
more expeditiously. The financial rewards speak for themselves. Silicon Valley,
(42:18):
which is fifty square miles, has created more wealth than
any place in human history. In the end, it isn't
in anyone's interest to call bullshit. Heart degree, Yeah kind
of kind of nailed it. Well, yeah, no, that's like
a terrific piece. That is everything that's happening in that
little chunky California, and it's and it's very unclear of
like whether anything will actually be done to uh nothing,
(42:42):
she might I mean she might, but it's but there's
always so many cases of like sacrificial lambs in just
so like Silicon Valley can move forward and being like, look, no,
we took care of that. Elizabeth Holmes is in jail,
the one grifter in Silicon Valley, like they're so, Mark
Zuckerberg is disrupting AIDS medicine. I mean, either way, I
(43:06):
feel confident that bullshit will prevail. That also could be
this country's new motto, bullshit will prevail, will prevail. I
hope that, you know, Elizabeth Holmes goes to prison, she
does do Facebook live streams from her gorgeous cell um.
(43:26):
I hope that she tries to write a novel Allah
Lauren Conrad, I bet it'll be great. I hope she
tries to start a lifestyle comming. I hope she does
every scand I hope she tries to write a novel
that is like a fictional way of addressing America's race problem,
because I think if anyone's qualified, it's qualified, it's li
ho oh god, I don't know. I guess we just
(43:48):
have to sit tight and hope that this Jennifer Laurence
movie doesn't come out because it sounds insufferable. Yeah, I
hope it proves to be like Theanos, a giant, overfunded,
unworkable mess. Still, I mean, blood curing a good idea,
a great idea, A great idea for a haunted house,
a great idea for like the sequel to what we
(44:10):
do in the Shadows, like a fantastic idea. Absolutely, a
great idea for that. Well, she should have just been
in in Hollywood. She was just in the wrong area
of California. Yeah, And I think it was just that
she came in too late to try to make a
tech product like she saw that. Like, well, no, like
that's that clearly we're near the end of where you
(44:31):
can just jump into that company with a new gadget.
So blood blood Yeah, hey, hashtag relatable. We've all got
blood except for Peter Teel, which is why he needs
your blood vampire narrative. That's what I want Adam McKay
movie about. I wanted to Peter Teel vampire, Peter Teel,
(44:52):
the vampire nerd who is helping the government track undocumented
immigrants in using like appropriating toking term to do it,
Like that's a better use of stealing the name of
the worst guy in those books's device to name his
company after. Like, stop it, stop it, Peter. I don't
think we need to run Elizabeth Homes over with another
(45:13):
intellectual property car. Like, I just don't think we go
so Jamie Loftus, Yeah, we're back in the PI zone.
It's very cool. It's for my turtlenext Uh. Yeah, you
can listen to the Bechtel Cast every Thursday with me
and Caitlin Durante. I can find me on Twitter at
(45:35):
Jamie Lefts Help. And I'm touring my show Boss whome
is Girl about a fictional girl boss called Shell Gasoline Sandwich. Uh,
touring that around the country in the springing summer. Well
that sounds great. Uh check out her show even if
you're not in Cleveland. What did I get you to say? Pronouncing?
(45:58):
I don't apologize for ouncing Steve Jobs ten different ways
throughout this episode. And you know why, because he was
a dicky he burn. I'm kidding. I don't feel her strong. Yeah,
I don't feel that strong about it either. I just
feel badly for Steve Wozniak, who I'm sure still mourns
him beautifully. Oh that's a heartbreaker. Bad dad, Bad dad Dad.
(46:22):
Check out our website Behind the Bastards dot com. Check
us out on the Twits and the Grahams that at
Bastards bod Listen to our T shirts by them. Listen
to our T shirts on t public. Behind the Bastards.
I have a new podcast called it Could Happen Here.
It's a sad podcast about how we're all going to
(46:42):
die in horrible, horrible conflict soon. Awesome. Can't wait. I
love you
I remembert Evans is Behind the Bastards TV podcast Bad
People talks about what are you talking about? It's part
two of our Elizabeth Holmes podcast. It's actually a TV podcast.
It's a TV podcast. The video of this would include
even more salad eating than the audio does. Oh yeah,
and that's actually a bonus feature. That is a bonus feature.
(00:23):
It's actually something you can just turn on, like audio commentary.
You can just watch me eating a salad. It's you
watching a salad, eating a salad, and me commenting on
the nature of salads over the years. Behind the Salads
sounds really big, and I'm not going to finish it.
It's too large, it's substantial, it's it's an enormous salad.
Closing it part two now in our in our last episode,
(00:44):
we've talked about Elizabeth Holmes's rise to prominence and the
kind of wealth that people make when they haven't actually
made anything, but like because of tech industry voodoo. Everyone
says the comedies with billions of dollars, she got that
kind of rich. I also, during the break, came up
with a nickname for Sonny Balwani, like Welajo for Elizabeth Holmes. Sunball.
(01:04):
I I list when I was listening to the ABC
News UM podcast about Elizabeth Holmes a few months ago.
My dog's name is Sonny Um, and every time they
would mention Sonny bow Wannie, my dog would be like
Sonny was a known scammer, and then you could just
stare at my dog and know that he's also a right.
One thing I'm excited for is when we have a
(01:25):
mass shooter named Alexa, because the news that it's gonna
be quite a trip. That's going to be the time
that it's like, you know what, we are never again
reporting on a mass shooter's name. Too messy. That'll finally
do it. Yeah, yeah, Now, if you watched any documentaries
about Holmes, you read much of the more sensational coverage
about her life, you were left with a question, how
(01:46):
did she trick so many prominent intelligent men into believing
her smoke and mirrors were real functioning technology. Jim Mattis
is probably the USA's most respected living soldier. He's a
general so widely admired that the Democrats in Congress didn't
bother fighting when Trump appointed him Secretary of Defense. His
nickname is the Warrior Monk. Here's what he told Fortune
about why he trusted Elizabeth Holmes. She really does want
(02:08):
to make a dent in the universe, one that is positive.
The strength of the leader's vision in the military is
seen as the critical element in that unit's performance. I
wanted to be around something again that had that sort
of leadership. I just there's a lot of I just
have strong opinions about how not not about jam specifically,
but about like the like how like all the people
(02:30):
specifically men who fell for all of this have never
been really asked to like, you know, back it up
with I want to get I want to get through
all of the different things, and then we'll then we'll
discuss okay uh. In two thousand fourteen, Fortune talk to
board member Henry Kissinger as well. The year old former
Secretary of State and forever war criminal. First said she
(02:51):
looks like nineteen and then quote asked to assess her
as a leader because he's seen a few, He responds,
I can't compare her to anyone else because I haven't
seen any one with her very special attributes. She has
iron will, strong determination, but nothing dramatic. There's no performance
associated with her. I have seen no sign that financial
gain is of any interest to her. She's like a monk.
She isn't flashy. She wouldn't walk into a room and
(03:12):
take it over, but she would once the subject gets
to her field. Now, if you read up on Elizabeth
Holme will hear a number of theories as to why
this is all the case. I've run across a lot
of speculation on Twitter, mostly by women, that it's just
because she's hot and these old distinguished men were just
torny for her and let her themselves get fooled. Definitely
part of the definitely part of the reason. That's certainly
in lined with some of the claims Dr Fuse has made.
(03:34):
Remember back in two thousand and five when she convinced
that VC Donald Lucas to invest a bunch of money
in Tharanos Well. Dr Fuse claims quote Elizabeth called Lucas
from China and he would hear her speaking Mandarin in
the background. When he saw how attractive she was, he
got Oracle chairman Larry Ellison involved and he invested. Now, again,
Fuse is biased and a doctor. He's he's a biased physician, psychiatrist.
(03:56):
But we do have Lucas's own recollections about why he
got involved with Theoranos two That's nine interview with a
Berkeley PhD student. He said, this my assistant and I
had a call from Beijing. Of course I'll take the call.
He said, You've got to meet this young lady, Elizabeth Holmes.
I said, John, what, You've got to meet her? She's fabulous. Okay,
I'm figuring twenty minutes, right, This young lady comes in.
I think she probably was one years old at the time,
(04:17):
and it left Stanford, didn't graduate, and she had a
company called Saranos, and I thought this was going to
be a short conversation. Well now I'm chairman of the
board and I spent a lot of time with her
in the company, and she's doing super He didn't went
on to tell this grad student that she was also
good looking, and then laughed of I mean, of course
there's like with with it's which is crazy because it's
(04:37):
like everyone now is like in retrospect, being like, oh,
Elizabeth Holmes is like a mad genius for pitching her
voice lower and dressing like more masculine, And we're not
going to talk about her voice that much in this
I don't think it's I don't think it's relevant super Yeah,
but but it's just like, no, it's like there's it
is so transparent when you look at it for two seconds,
it's like there, it's there's some bias involved. Yeah, one
(05:00):
of the reasons I don't want to get her on
the voice. She's definitely she objectively altered her voice for
it to sound deeper. That's been very well documented. For sure.
I've known a number of women who like had to
manage men, particularly in male dominated fields like agriculture, and
they do the same thing because, like it's just what
you do. If you're trying to get a bunch of
mentalism to you, you have to, Yeah, you have to
like affect a more masculine tone because men have worms
(05:24):
in their brains. Because men have worms in their brains. Yeah.
And I'm not sure why or how much importance I
give to the fact that she was hot, But I
will admit that watching early videos of her before she
was as media savvy as she got makes it seem
like hotness must have been a bigger factor than her
rock charisma and brilliance. Here is an exerpt from her
very first TED talk in two thousand fourteen. So it's
just like one of the very first This is a
classic Yeah, and it's the individual is the answer to
(05:52):
the challenges of healthcare. But we can't engage the individual
in changing outcomes unless individuals have access to the information
they need to do. So, Okay, that's that's probably about enough.
(06:13):
That's not a great speech. That was a lot of
words delivered in random ortar that was It's bad. It's
not charismatic, it's not like there's nothing to do with
the deepness of her voice. It's just like not good presentation.
And and it's totally unclear what the company is based
on that conversation exactly. Um. Now, with her body language
and her outfit, which of course the people listening won't
(06:34):
have seen, she's very clearly imitating Steve Jobs. I mean,
it's it's egregious. Yeah, it's egregious. And everybody, everybody, even
in the praiseful Fortune article, they noticed that like she
dressed identical every day, uh, and specifically in order to
like look like Steve Jobs, that he was a hero
for her or she she hung a portrait of his
Apple Internet bio like that she printed out on the
(06:57):
day he stepped down a CEO because of cancer hung
it up in her office. Yeah, it didn't seem to
be much of a secret. No. No, she kept all
the thermostats a Thereanos offices extra low so she could
always wear her trademark turtleneck. Um, that's also just another
another vase of frank thing. Yeah, it's always fifty five
degrees in those offices. Well, that I agree with, because
I prefer it to be cold. You're wrong, No, I'd
(07:20):
like to be cold. I am not soon, but yeah,
I forgot. I was sad about it. Yeah, but I
just don't like it warm. Um. Now, Elizabeth Holmes did
not just affect jobs, is choice and outfit. She went
well out of her way to present the perfect image
of the aloof eccentric genius founder. Here's fortune again. Homes
grips a plastic cup of an appetizing green juice, her
(07:42):
first of the day. It is made from spinach, partly parsley, wheat, grass,
and celery. Later she'll switch to cucumber vegan. She long
ago dropped coffee in favor of these juices, which she
finds are better able to propel her through her sixteen
hour days in seven day weeks. She admits laughing nervously
at the eccentricity of it, but after a meal, she
sometimes examines a drop of her own or others is
blood on a slide and says she can observe the
(08:02):
difference between when someone has eaten something healthy like broccoli
and when he splurged on a cheeseburger. When we dine
one night in an Italian plate placed downtown with fourteen
dollar pastas, the manager knows what she'll have, a spartan dressing,
less mixed salad in an oil free spaghetti with tomatoes
prepared from a whole wheat noodle she has provided the
restaurant in advance since it doesn't stock them. No wine. Yeah,
(08:23):
what a what a weird self mythologizing pack of lies.
But so many Silicon Valley people do ship like that. Yeah,
And so here's here's the question. I wanted a literal vampire.
Peter Hill is a literal vampire. This is the question
I want to ask. So we've got the one speculation
that like all these old guys bought into her because
she was hot, And we've got the other speculation, which
I think is at least as big a part of it,
(08:45):
and maybe a bigger part of it is that she
made herself look like a crazy Silicon Valley genius, and
these guys were just they were looking for that. And
then gender was a component in that. Gender was a
component in that, but the thing, but not the entire
like the fact that these guys thought she was a
track was part of their magnetism to her, But I
think it was more the part that, like they were,
they all wanted to get a shipload of money by
(09:06):
being involved with the next Steve Jobs. And what do
you look for in the next Steve Jobs? A crazy
asshole who does weird things right because which she was
imitating to a t Yeah, um, yeah, no, I mean
I agree. I think it's like reductive to say that
it's like completely because of her looks. But I also
think that like, especially like old dudes are always like
I'm sure that they thought they were supporting most like
(09:27):
people like early supporters of like Cheryl Sandberg when she
was starting to do funked up stuff, They're like, they're like, well,
I'm supporting a woman, so I'm not a bad person.
Where they just started like searching for the easiest, least
challenging version of what they're what they think is feminism
and then being like, oh, so, I'm it's like the
(09:47):
equivalent of like saying, you have a black friend and
I gave money to a woman. I don't this is
this gets on like a totally different issue I have.
But it's like umbor when Josh Weeden it came out
that he like cheated on his wife a bunch and
everybody was saying he was a ake feminist or like, no,
he can be a feminist and cheat on his wife
doesn't mean you're a good husband. You can be a
shitty person and a feminist. It's not a high bar.
(10:08):
It's the bottom. It's like you're not a good person
for saying black people and white people should have equal rights.
That's the bottom. They're serial killers who aren't racist there yeah,
like there, I don't know. I mean, and I think
that a lot of these like investors, that's just like
it's at least in part them failing to meet that
(10:28):
bottom because they're just like, well, I threw money at
a woman's company and a woman's company. But she she
is imitating one of the I mean, I don't know.
A lot of it is a testament to her commitment.
She really knows how to commit she is. I mean
I wish I could. I would be a lot more
successful if I could commit to the bit like that.
(10:48):
Sometimes I think if I had only used my my
power as a as a tall, confident white man to
start a Silicon Valley company making I don't know an
app that does your laundry. I could have a billion
dollars right now laundry at time. But that exists. Oh no,
they've tried it a couple of times. Probably like half
(11:11):
of Silicon Valley right now is just doing things that
nineteen year old millionaire's moms used to do for them.
Cool cool, cool, totally sustainable, great part of the world,
terrifying place. Yeah, now, uh it didn't hurt um Elizabeth
Holmes's ability to con all these uh statesmen who people
(11:32):
think are brilliant. I don't think being a Secretary of
State makes you brilliant. I don't think Hilly christ. I
don't think Kissinger is all that smart. Whatever I think
he's I think he's smart in certain ways. That's a
whole other, that's a whole were Let's not talk about Kissinger.
When we talk about Kissinger, it's got to be like
a four hour talk about I don't even know where
to step, but I think it helped a lot that
Like everyone always talked about when before Tharonos, like the
(11:54):
con was revealed that she had the most distinguished board
of any company in the history of the world. They
were like three secretaries of State on it, like it
was and it was like you look at just like
the like that's part of what trick that Fortune article
is He's talking to all these people who are like, well,
all of you are some of the most famous people
in the history of American politics, and you're all for
the same company. And the coasties around both sides of
(12:16):
the aisle too, Like there was like Bill Clinton and
Joe Biden put in like a hundred fifty million dollars
Joe Biden and Clinton Clinton approved it. Yeah, so it's yeah,
she's got bipartisan that's yeah. And it and here's what
the most important is that, like all of those people
were very distinguished. None of them had any background in
mediciner sites, Like, none of them were quite like anyone
(12:38):
is equipped to look at a phone and be like, oh, yeah,
I bet people who want to put this in their pocket.
Anyone's qualified to use a phone like almost no one's
qualified test blood. Yeah, like the bizarre footage of Joe
Biden going to like cool blood curious guys, and it's
one of those things like I can't even attack, Like
I don't like Biden, but I can't attack him for that.
(12:58):
He's like what was he supposed to do? Like like
walks into a lab and it's like, yeah, it looks
it looks like like like I'm Joe Biden, I'm not
a doctor, but yeah, there's Joe Biden Hills to die on. Yeah,
I mean speaking of like who you, as the administration
send to look at theos maybe the what do you
(13:18):
call the boss doctor? What the boss doctor of the country,
the doctor in charge? Yeah, the president doctor, big doctor,
surgeon general. You send the surgeon general, Like that would
have been a better person to see doctor, but that's
not as famous. The big doctor, the big doctor, doctor
b he's just the biggest doctor. They have to fight
each other. They have to fight each other. So Elizabeth
(13:42):
Holmes and Paranis were actually incapable of selling themselves to
people who knew the first thing about medical science, which
is why they focused on grifting secretaries of state and
retired generals. According to Dr fuse, Holmes was expert at
talking her way through little matters like her technology not
actually working, mainly by bringing up her famous dead relatives quote.
That family background was part of the con she would
be introduced, and when questions were asked about her scientific
(14:04):
knowledge or business acumen, these family members would be brought up. Now,
Fusapsy again has an ax to grind and as a doctor.
But the two thousand nine interview with that venture capitalist
Donald Lucas, back when Tharanos was still king shit backs
all this up. Quote. Here's what Lucas said when he
was explaining why he invested. She had no background at business,
So it's quite presumptuous for somebody to say I'm going
to be president of the company. But there's an important distinction.
(14:26):
That's what I felt when I first met her. After
spending a lot more time with her, I learned her
great grandfather was an entrepreneur and started Fleishman's Packaged East.
It was very successful, So that was one side, that's
the entrepreneurs side, but she was in the medical side. Ah.
It turns out later the hospital very near where they
lived is named after her great uncle, who was involved
with medicine, So she came by both of those talents
necessary here, one medicine and the other entrepreneurship quite naturally complete.
(14:49):
That's insane, and he's literally saying I thought it was
crazy that a nineteen year old run a company, but
then I learned out one of her relatives was a
doctor and another two hundred years ago started a business
that is completely unhitched. The I mean the fact that
she constantly is like deploying this excuse of like but yeast,
and then they're like, oh yeah, totally the yeast. And
(15:12):
when I first read that fuse quote, I was like, Okay,
this seems like he's exaggerating, But then you read this
thing from Lucas and it's like, oh no, that's exactly
what she did and it worked. My grandfather was a
prisoner of war in Korea. That doesn't make me a
prisoner of war in Korea. It just doesn't make it.
That doesn't Jamie. Thank you for your service. Thank you.
So I listen, I use the cloud. I got to
(15:33):
break traffic laws constantly. That's mainly what she shouted at
the traffic cops as you drive past. Yeah, just flip
them off and say, by purple hearts that keep like
a pile of purple hearts in the center console. Yeah,
it stays trapped with my purple hearts out. That's fucking absurd,
(15:57):
It's ludicrous. Imagine that and meaning it. Imagine imagine saying
that as Donald Lucas distinguished venture capitalist and not realizing
that all of venture capitalism is a fraud. Right, You're
literally saying because two dead people that she never met
were good at two parts of her business, that she's
(16:18):
equipped to run a bus genetically qualified? Are you? Are
you fucking serious business? That is? I've never heard that
quote before that. It's fucking insane. Wow. Man, it's like
the stupidity you know, infects at every level. That's wild.
It sure does. That should be that should replace eplurbous
(16:41):
as our as our national motto. Stupidity effects everyone. Now,
one thing Elizabeth Holmes could not fool were the laws
of physics. Fairness's equipment did not work in two thousand
and fourteen, but they were performing tins and then hundreds
of thousands of blood tests and multiple states while Tharoness
marketing focused around the nanottainer, the friendly little capsule that
(17:03):
only required a teeny bit of your blood that was
only capable of handling a couple of different tests. Thoroness
used traditional vena puncture, a k a. The thing everyone
in the industry did for the others, and just continued
to lie on their marketing that they could handle more
than two hundred tests. Roger Parloff, the author of that
Fortune article, I keep going back to pinned a mia
colpa in two thousand fifteen, after thearoness exploded talking I'm sorry,
(17:25):
he well, I'm sorry, talking about how Holmes had misled him.
He thought it was weird when he learned they still
did vena puncture for many of their tests, and he
asked her about it. Quote. The biggest reason Holmes told
me in May two thousand and fourteen is we're scaling.
As we're building out this infrastructure, we're also building out
our inventory and our capacity in terms of the number
of samples that we can handle at any given point
in time. We'll use vnapuncture in addition to the micro samples,
(17:47):
just to handle the volume of sample that we're processing. Now.
Parlav noted correctly that this made no goddamn sense, drawing
way the funk more blood would not help in handling volume.
He kept asking her about it until she told him
answering this question would be revealing the trade secret, right,
and the fact that, I mean, that's what I hope
is one of the outcomes of this whole mess is
that like, you can't say you can't like withhold information
(18:11):
when it's a medical company like that can't There can't
be all these n d A s surrounding medical equipment
that is happening. Goddamn iPhone, right, like, yeah, keep your
iPhone secret? Who gives a ship? You know? I find
the facial unlocking to be triggering. I don't. I don't
do that. It doesn't recognize me when I look nice. Oh, Jamie,
(18:33):
I know it hurts. Here's my feeling, that's hurtful. Was
it hurt my feeling? Let's go on, Steve jobs is grave. Honestly,
it was gonna was gonna dump my Diva cup and Steve,
that sounds like a fun road trip, ye now. And
obviously two, the FDA did it's goddamn job and surprised
(18:55):
there in US with an inspection, according to Vanity Fair Quote.
According to someone close to the company, Holmes was sent
into a panic, calling advisers to try and resolve the issue,
and around the same time, regulators from the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services, which regulates laboratories, visited the labs
and found major inaccuracies in the testing being done on patients.
CMS also soon discovered that some of the tests theiriness
was performing were so inaccurate that they could leave patients
(19:16):
at risk of internal bleeding or of stroke among those
prone to blood clots. The agency found that Tharinis appeared
to ignore the erratic results from its own quality control
checks during a six month period last year, and supplied
eighty one patients with questionable test results. Cool. Cool. Some
of the most unfortunate things about like this story is
that one of the major people who like exposed Elizabeth
(19:37):
Holmes his name is Tyler. Yeah. That's a frustrating thing.
I don't like when Tyler's win this case. He was right,
and he seems like a nice guy. He seems like
someone who really hasn't like a conscience. I just don't
want to chalk one up for a Tyler. No, it's
like when you meet a nice guy named Chad, which
I have a couple of times, and it's always like
you like, I don't like this, just I would prefer okay,
(20:00):
I just wish he wasn't, but like, good for him,
but good for him, Good for you for breaking the mold.
You know, speaking of breaking the mold, you know it
really breaks the mold. Jamie loftus these products and these
services and products products. We're back now. The next month,
(20:23):
after that surprise f D a you know, inspection thing
that found out nothing worked, the FDA declared the nanottainer
to be an uncleared device, removing it from availability for
all but one test. Arenas was now using traditional old
fashioned vena puncture for nearly all of their tests, and
since neither the Edison nor its successor, the Mini Lab
worked for ship, they were doing most of the analysis
on equipment they bought from other companies, including the companies
(20:45):
they were claiming to want to disrupt. It's sort of
like if Apple had just been ripping apart HP laptops
and putting a fancy looking case on the outside. They're
just like, here's an iPhone, but it's a Sony Via. No.
At this point, you're probably wondering what the hell was
going on with the rest of Farinos. At this point
was anyone inside like standing up and saying, what the fuck?
(21:06):
Nothing works? Yeah, Well, like any good cult leader, Elizabeth
Holmes organized the entire company in such a way that
everyone's job was incredibly compartmentalized. People knew about their specific
project and nothing else that was going on at the company.
Employees were often banned from communicating with one another about
their work. This didn't seem super insane because many Silicon
Valley companies like Apple had similar policies and but stopping
(21:26):
devices from leaking out, but was weird because this is
literally the opposite of the way good medical science is done.
Kind of when everyone talking, you want there to be transparency.
That's the point. That's the point, not it's crazy. Like
Elizabeth Holmes at no point was like wait a second,
lives aren't phones. But that's not her vibe. Lives aren't phones. Yeah,
(21:49):
I'll say that. For Steve Jobs, he never was like
like after Apple. He was like, I guess I'll make
fun movies and different computers. He wasn't like he was
like a repulsive person, had a stink and harassed everyone,
but he wasn't trying to kill anyone. He knew was Yeah,
he's like, I can you know, this is what I
can get away with, and I'm going for it. He
(22:11):
wasn't like, I'm gonna make a machine gun next. I
bet I can make a really good machine gun. But
that's that's classics. She's really disrupting people's health. Yeah, yeah,
disrupting people's health. That's that's a good tagline for this. Yeah,
oh boy, you want to? You want to the tagline
that I initially had for this episode. Elizabeth Holmes, the
(22:31):
white woman who became a white man. What brave, brave
of her had? I mean, I just want girls to
also have access to the spoils of lake capitalism is
don't we all? Oh my god? Now? Uh? The secrecy
and stress of managing a nine billion dollar company did
(22:51):
not actually do anything. That didn't actually do anything required
an insane schedule from homes. She reportedly slept four hours
a night and ate chocolate covered coffee beans all day
in order to stay a white corporate grifter. Recognition tip,
be wary of anyone who brags about how little they sleep.
It is not a good thing. No one makes better
decisions when they don't sleep. Absolutely agree, in order to
keep ship further under wraps. She hired her brother Christian
(23:12):
to be the associate director of project management in two
thousand and eleven. Super cool. He had been out of college. Yeah,
he'd been out of college for two years and had
no relevant educational experience that would help him manage products
in a blood diagnostics company. Amazing. Yeah, well, he'll foot
right in sending the president of the company. He's going
to shout his way into a medical breakthrough, and he's like,
(23:32):
we're just screaming in a cold building and ruining people's lives.
That's kind of Numerous employees did, of course, recognize that
something was up. Aarons had at rageous rates of turnover.
At one point, Holmes hired a bunch of employees from
her favorite company, Apple that were all gone inside of
two years. But Aaron has kept any former employees from
talking by threatening to sue anyone who so much has
(23:52):
wrote about their job in detail on LinkedIn. I think
it's also a dead giveaway when your company hires a
disproportionate amount of people fresh out of call who don't
have other options. Yeah, that's it. She did a lot
of She did a lot of that. Now Farness's law
team was incredibly expensive and headed by David Boys, another
incredibly respected old white dude. He was Al Gore's lawyer
during the recount, among other things, there's a big lawyers
(24:13):
behind marriage equality. He's like, he's like, he's like the
Steve Jobs of lawyers. I guess you'd say, but that
doesn't really translate because he's actually he's bad. He's bad.
I was like, he's I was like, he's bad. Right,
He's a bad person who was a lawyer on good cases.
But that happens. Lawyers or often bad, whether or not
they do good or bad things, are lawless people there, Yeah,
exactly all lawyers are anarchists. Justin Maxwell was one of
(24:38):
the designers behind the Edison. He later spoke to Carrie
Row for the book Bad Blood. His story provides a
good look at just how Holmes treated her employees on
a one on one basis. Quote, during an email exchange
one evening, he asked her for a piece of information
he needed to write a section of software. She responded
that she'd looked for it when she was back at
work the next morning. The clear implication was that she
had gone home, but minutes later he stumbled on her
in Tony Nugent's office down the hall, just got angry
(25:00):
and stormed off. Elizabeth came by his office a little
later to say she understood what he was upset, but
warned him don't ever walk off on me again. Just
and try to remind himself that Elizabeth was very young
and still had a lot to learn about running a company,
and one of their last email exchanges, he recommended to
management self help books to her, The No Asshole Rule,
building a civilized workplace and surviving one that isn't and
beyond bullshit Straight talk at Work included their links on Amazon.
(25:23):
He quit two days later. His resignation email read, in part,
good luck and please do read those books, watch the office,
and believe in the people who disagree with you. Lying
as a disgusting habit, and it flows through conversations here
like it's our own currency. The cultural disease here is
what we should be cering before we try to tackle obesity.
I mean, I mean, no ill will towards you. Since
you believe in what I was doing and I hoped
(25:43):
I would succeed at theories, I feel like I owe
you this bad attempted an exit interview. Since we have
no hr To officially recorded that's that's a great resignation,
savage moment for Savov Another sav mom, that's great. I
don't understand why recommend as she watched the office. That
just seemed like a fun thing to I think it
(26:04):
might just be because she was that bad of a
He was like, maybe you'll understand what you're doing if
you watched. I think he's say, you're like Michael Scott.
That seems generous. Honestly, yeah, because at least he had
a Michael Scott. Well, no, Michael Scott would totally have
tried to create a medical device company. She carries herself
more like a Jan Levinson Goold, but Joan Levenson gool
(26:24):
was good at her job. That's the difference at the start.
At least now Elizabeth did not respond. I found no
evidence that she ever watched the office either. God damn it,
God damn it. The areas where she most shown seemed
to be one talking people into investing in therapnos and
to motivating employees at company white events and parties. She
was legitimately talented at inspiring people. During one company Christmas party,
(26:44):
she gave this speech, The mini lab is the most
important thing humanity has ever built. If you don't believe
this is the case, you should leave now. Everyone needs
to work as hard as humanly possible to deliver it.
Cool Cult. Cool Cult. During the company party to celebrate
the deal with safe Ways, told everyone, if anyone here
believes you are not working on the best thing humans
have ever built, or if your cynical, then you should leave.
(27:06):
Ever for all these speeches, I like to imagine she's
sipping from a mug of human blood and just getting
a little milk mustache. She's like, anyways, slurb Yeah, I
do give Sophie almost that the same speech before every
single episode. Behind the Bastards, behind the Bard is the
most you don't believe this is the most important thing
anyone's ever done. And then you and then you chug
(27:28):
a forty of blood. That's generous. I've seen it. It's
malt liquor. I okay, it's a very dark and biscus. Well,
I mean you put my protein powder and pump on.
I pour a protein shot into my malt liquor, stir
that up. Get it really thick. I feel sick. My
(27:52):
My big problem with cold is that it's not quite
thick enough. I wish that beer was thicker. I wish
that malt liquor. We're not talking about beer when we
talk about and steel reserve. I wish that Mike's hard
lemonade came in a solid Mikes are jello. Oh my god, Jamie,
that's our billion dollar idea. We make ice cubes to
(28:15):
get them on the fucking Someone called Mike. Some call Mike.
We need this ship cubed cube your ship, Mike, Are
you fucking fool? One of the few distinguished older men
Elizabeth Holmes was unable to brainwash was John carry Row,
a multiple Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalists with The Wall
Street Journal. He received a tip from a former Thearonos
(28:37):
Lab director that led to a much deeper investigation. In
October of two fifteen, he published the first of two
dozen articles. His first piece revealed Aaronus problems with the
nanotainers and the fact that very very little of the
promised revolutionary technology actually worked, in that they were using
other companies technology to do their blood tests. This was
not great for the Ainos. The company went into lockdown
for two days and nights. She hold up in what
(28:57):
was probably a very smelly conference room with Sunny Bowa,
all the company's lawyers, plus a team of crisis management professionals.
Forming a good plan proved impossible because their noosis technology
was fucking vapor and had been for ten years. And
been for ten years, according to Vanity Fair. Absent to plan,
Holmes embarked in a familiar course. She doubled down on
her narrative. She left the war room for her car.
She's often surrounded by her security detail, which sometimes numbers
(29:18):
as many as four men, who, for safety reasons, refer
to the young CEO as egal One, and headed for
the airport. She's been known to fly alone on a
six point five million dollar gulf Stream G one fifty.
Holmes subsequently took off for Boston to attend to Luncheon
for a previously scheduled appearance at the Harvard Medical School
Board of Fellows, where she would be honored as an inductee.
During the trip, Holmes fielded calls from her advisors in
the war room, She and her team decided on an
(29:40):
interview with Jim Kramer, the host of CNBC's Mad Money,
with whom she had a friendship that dated from a
previous interview was quickly arranged friends with Jim Kramer. That's
not that's I mean, that's such a bad look where
you're like, well, here's the here's the trusted, very rational
source I've chosen. It's like, oh, okay, a guy who's
won two Pulitzers is attacking us. We gotta fight back
(30:02):
with Jim Kramer with the bastion of truth. Jim Kramer.
There god her interview, and that is Oh yeah, I'm
gonna play every selection from that interview right now. It's amazing.
Just a fucking liar. She does get she is, if
you know, compared to the first fit clip we played,
she's gotten a lot betters. Her pr trainer nailed it.
That person. Yeah, they should get a pulitzer for lying.
(30:27):
This is what happens when you work to change things
and first they think you're crazy, then they fight you,
and then all of a sudden you change the world.
And I have to say, I personally was shocked to
see that the Journal would publish something like this when
we had sent them over a thousand pages of documentation
(30:48):
demonstrating that the statements in their piece were false. But um,
what we're doing things differently and we're working to make
a difference, and that means people raise questions and and
that's okay. Yeah, but in this case, it was pretty
disappointing to see that after every single one of the
sources that we spoke with who the Journal had contacted,
(31:09):
told us that the statements that were being attributed to
them were false or misleading, and the only sources who
were left were ones who wouldn't speak with us, who
on their own website say that they now do business
with lab Corps in their office, or in the other case,
demanded in writing that we pay them in cash upfront
(31:31):
for an hour to talk to them about their statements
to the journal. Those things were interested. Did the journal
know everything that you just said before they wrote the article?
Of course absolutely, that was all lies. Of course, just
I mean commit to the There is something to be
I like, she's horror I like, no doubt she's bad person.
(31:55):
But there is something kind of majestic about watching someone
go down with the ship just complete ignorance. Yeah, it's
it's there's a little bit of the l Ron Hubbard
in her, where it's like, well, okay, you didn't you
didn't just run away and blame someone else, you just
denied there was ever a problem. She is not gonna
admit she's done anything wrong. So what she has said,
like six hundred sixty six, I don't recalls, like, yeah,
(32:18):
it's amazing, it's Ronald Reagan level. I don't recalls. Yeah,
not genius, but consistent. Now, it was obviously not super
compelling rebuttal to again one of the best reporters on
the planet, tearing you a partner article for the Wall
Street Journal. But it was the best she could do,
getting the fact that you know, everything that carry sent
was accurately. Yeah, she's got she's she's got that mad money,
(32:43):
mad money. Why is he on the air? Why why
is he in the documentary? How is his heart not
exploded from what I assume is a daily cocktail of
cocaine and red bull. I will say it was when
when he appears in the documentary, it was very jarring
to see him outside of that set. It seems like
he has not left in many years. Cheff. Seems like
(33:04):
they must lock him in there. I think he lives
in a tent on just off screen. There's guys with
like rifles hanging out outside the set. We've got to
make sure Kramer doesn't get out. I've never seen him
outside of that set. It was very it's weird. Yeah,
I guess he just had to now. Uh. When she
got back to Palo Alto, Holmes had to finally address
(33:24):
her employees. She insisted again that the journal had gotten
the story wrong and that the reporter, John Carrierew, was
just picking a fight with her company to make a
name for himself. You know, a better name than having rises. Okay, yeah, Now,
as Holmes and Bowan, he pumped up the crowd, a
chance started up. Fuck you Carrie ru Fuck you Carrierew,
(33:45):
Fuck you Carrie Rew. First of all, original, very original,
super love it kind of start shooting out Baroness T
shirts out of T shirt guns. You know it. You
know she was just tossing blood vials and purple hearts.
Should have got nano tanners. Jock Sham started to play
d I. You know, go down, go down in style,
and if you want to go down in style, you
(34:07):
need the stylish products and services advertised by our advertisers.
Thank you, We're back. For a while, employees and management
at THEOIS hunkered down and tried to wait out the storm.
They attempted to ignore the mounting problems by focusing their
(34:27):
rage against carrierew and one company party sans staff, programmed
a video game based on Space Invaders. The gun was
the Mini Lab, the bullets were nanotainers, and the aliens
were John Carreyrew's face. Kind of a niche game. Kind
of a niche game, feel like, not a lot of
traveling power. Tragically, for the AOOS, that was not enough
to stop carry Row's reporting. In the inevitable unraveling of
(34:47):
theories that it triggered, Walgreen's cut all ties with the
company and closed their wellness centers. The FDA banned the
company from using the edison to the centers for Medicare
and Medicaid services, ban homes from owning or running a
medical lab for two years. The SEC and the U. S.
Attorney's Office opened investigations. Two class action lawsuits from people
who had their blood analyzed by Tharonos are still underway.
Ford's removed homes from its list of America's richest self
(35:09):
made women, lord its estimate of her net worth to nothing.
Something like a million people were told their blood test
results had been complete bullshit and they would need to
retake them now, Holmes tried to stage a comeback for
some reason. She started this by adopting a husky puppy
and naming it Balto, after the dog that led a
sled team filled with medicine to save an Alaska village.
In Balto became a constant companion, both at the Los
(35:30):
Altos mansion Aaronos rented for Elizabeth and at the Paronos offices.
Even though all her scientists warned her that dog Harey
did not mix well with blood testing laboratories, she had
not bother to potty train Boltop, so he pissed in
ship Oliver what was ostensibly again a medical lab. Holmes
also started to claim that her husky was a wolf
at this point, telling everyone who asked, and probably also
a lot of people who did not ask. By the
(35:50):
end of two dozen seventeen, things were bad enough that
Elizabeth Holmes had to stop traveling by private jet. The
company was forced out of the office that had been
expensively redesigned and spent more than a million dollars a
month in rent On. They moved into a lab facility
in Newark, which is not generally seen as nice as
Palo Alto. Balto continued to shoot on the floor in
this new facility. According to Vanity Quair fair Quote, it's
(36:12):
been a long according to Vanity fair Quote. Through all this,
former employees of the company have told me Holmes had
a bizarre way of acting like nothing was wrong. Even
more peculiarly, she seemed happy the company was falling apart,
their countless indictments piling up. Employees are leaving in droves,
and Elizabeth, that's just weirdly chipper, one former senior executive
told me. One former board member also noted that Holmes
would come to board meetings chirpy and acting as if
everything was great. She would walk up to people in
(36:34):
the office who have just testified in front of the
SEC or been questioned by lawyers at the FDA, and
she would give them a hug and ask how they
were doing. She was so confident that the company would
be fine. Executives who worked with her said that she
enrolled Balto in a search and rescue program homes spent
weekends training him to find people in an emergency. Unfortunately,
huskies are not bred for rescue their long distance runners,
and Balto failed out. Her dog failed out of school,
(36:57):
dog failed out of school. I bet her narrative was
like he actually dropped doubt, he dropped out, he actually
search and company. Oh god, I mean these are like
classic things of just like ignoring reality. Your best friend
is not a person, uh not. I mean, listen, I
love my dogs who is named after Sonny Bowani. But
(37:18):
my best friend is a cat that lives in Texas.
So it's it's not that but but you know, like
the completely ignoring reality and being like my dog's a cop.
Baroness officially died in September two, eighteen. All nine million
dollars Elizabeth Holmes had raised via grifting evaporated into a
pile of broken nanotainers and dogshit. Numerous lawsuits and investigations
(37:41):
into Holmes and Thearinos are still ongoing. She faces up
to twenty years in prison if convicted for all her crimes.
Her defense and the defense of her co defendant, Sonny Balwani,
seems to rest on the idea that they didn't actually
commit fraud. Aaroness was just a normal business failure. Also, technically,
neither of them made money off the company. This is
sort of true, but for more than a decade, Holmes
is Apple, bodyguards, mansion bills, et cetera. Were all paid
(38:02):
for by THEANOS. One former employee later recalled quote the
company paid for everything. She would submit her miles if
she drove the six miles to her house in a
loss altos, this's what you do if you're working for
like twenty bucks an hour. Now what you do you're
the CEO and they're renting you a mansion, Elizabeth. Former
THEONIS executives who were close to Elizabeth Holmes during the
(38:22):
end of THEANOS noted that she never really accepted any
responsibility for what had happened. When former colleague said, Elizabeth
sees herself as the victim. She blames John Carrirew, she
blames David Boys, and she blames hed their King. Boys
and King were both her lawyers. Holmes thinks that her
lawyers should have somehow been able to contain the bad
pr from again a Pulitzer Prize wedding reporter tearing their
company open with unimpeachable facts in a Wall Street Journal article.
(38:44):
At this moment, Elizabeth Holmes lives in San Francisco in
a very nice apartment that seems to be paid for
by their rich kids. She is dating. She now dresses
like a normal person. Last year she and her boyfriend
went to Burning Man. She looks weirdly normal in the pictures,
like an an actual adult person. She seems to be
trying to turn her dog into an instant m star.
Here's her some of her Instagram pictures. Oh my god,
(39:04):
this could have been your life. Girl. She looks like
a normal person that looks like a normal, basic white lady. Wow.
Look at that hat her vest. It is a great dog.
No shade on the dog. The dog did nothing. The
dog did nothing wrong. The dog was just trying to
could have learned how to. Yeah, it seems like it is.
(39:26):
He's got nicknames for him. I'm very interested as into
like what happens with her, because it's like I could
see it going one way of like you know, classics
cammer and getting the minimum punishment and then you know,
staging a comeback ten years from now. But I could
also see it as like I'm making an example for
Silicon Valley and actually putting her away. Maybe she'll get
to go to prison, even though like none of the
(39:48):
guys in the financial industry who did irreparably more harm. Ever,
exactly like one of those example makers. She's more criminal
than she is victim, but part of her seems to
be a victim. And we just I just don't know
enough about the relationship with Sonny, but it does seem
like something fucked up happened there. I mean, it's and
(40:09):
I'm sure that there's some relationships with each gap that
have turned out fine by and large, but I don't know.
I mean it not to not to continue to stand
for with Helms. It does seem like she has deluded
herself into thinking she did nothing wrong. I do believe
that she thinks that. Yeah, I don't think she's taken
a look in the mirror, and it's partly because she
(40:30):
was doing Again, when I say Steve Jobs was a grifter,
it's not that he didn't eventually produce great stuff. It's
that he knew how to lie an obvious skate and
con people until the product was ready. And that's what
I think, that's what she was trying to do. And
I think, but I think that it My impression of
Steve Jobs was always like he knew more what he
was doing and like just didn't care, versus like totally
(40:53):
scissor fucking your own brain. Into believing something that is
patently untrue. Yeah. I think he was a very comfortable
person with himself, and I doubt she ever was. Maybe
she's now maybe. I mean, she looks happy in the picture.
She's got a hot boyfriend. They're going to burning man.
That's everything that's annoying to me. So it's possible that
if she doesn't wind up doing twenty years behind bars,
(41:15):
Elizabeth Holmes may have gotten over the need to cause
play as Steve Jobs. I don't know. What I do
know is that the system that allowed her to funk
with so many people's lives and cost so much money
and count so much money is still alive and well.
That Vanity Fair article I keep referring to has a
great breakdown of this quote. It generally works like this.
The venture capitalists, who are mostly white men, don't really
know what they're doing with any certainty. It's impossible, after all,
(41:36):
to truly predict the next big thing, so they bet
a little money on every company that they can, with
the hope that one of them hits it big. The entrepreneurs,
also mostly white men, often work on a lot of
meaningless stuff, like using code to deliver frozen yogurt more expeditiously,
or apps that let you say yo and only yo
to your friends. People are so hard on yo. It
was a fun app. The entrepreneurs generally glorify their efforts
(41:57):
by saying that their innovation could change the world, which
tends to appease the venture capitalists because they can also
then pretend that they're not only there to make money. Also,
this helps to seduce the tech press, also largely composed
of white men, which is often ready to play a
game of access in exchange for a few more page
views of their story about the company that is trying
to change the world by getting frozen yogurt to companies
more expeditiously. The financial rewards speak for themselves. Silicon Valley,
(42:18):
which is fifty square miles, has created more wealth than
any place in human history. In the end, it isn't
in anyone's interest to call bullshit. Heart degree, Yeah kind
of kind of nailed it. Well, yeah, no, that's like
a terrific piece. That is everything that's happening in that
little chunky California, and it's and it's very unclear of
like whether anything will actually be done to uh nothing,
(42:42):
she might I mean she might, but it's but there's
always so many cases of like sacrificial lambs in just
so like Silicon Valley can move forward and being like, look, no,
we took care of that. Elizabeth Holmes is in jail,
the one grifter in Silicon Valley, like they're so, Mark
Zuckerberg is disrupting AIDS medicine. I mean, either way, I
(43:06):
feel confident that bullshit will prevail. That also could be
this country's new motto, bullshit will prevail, will prevail. I
hope that, you know, Elizabeth Holmes goes to prison, she
does do Facebook live streams from her gorgeous cell um.
(43:26):
I hope that she tries to write a novel Allah
Lauren Conrad, I bet it'll be great. I hope she
tries to start a lifestyle comming. I hope she does
every scand I hope she tries to write a novel
that is like a fictional way of addressing America's race problem,
because I think if anyone's qualified, it's qualified, it's li
ho oh god, I don't know. I guess we just
(43:48):
have to sit tight and hope that this Jennifer Laurence
movie doesn't come out because it sounds insufferable. Yeah, I
hope it proves to be like Theanos, a giant, overfunded,
unworkable mess. Still, I mean, blood curing a good idea,
a great idea, A great idea for a haunted house,
a great idea for like the sequel to what we
(44:10):
do in the Shadows, like a fantastic idea. Absolutely, a
great idea for that. Well, she should have just been
in in Hollywood. She was just in the wrong area
of California. Yeah, And I think it was just that
she came in too late to try to make a
tech product like she saw that. Like, well, no, like
that's that clearly we're near the end of where you
(44:31):
can just jump into that company with a new gadget.
So blood blood Yeah, hey, hashtag relatable. We've all got
blood except for Peter Teel, which is why he needs
your blood vampire narrative. That's what I want Adam McKay
movie about. I wanted to Peter Teel vampire, Peter Teel,
(44:52):
the vampire nerd who is helping the government track undocumented
immigrants in using like appropriating toking term to do it,
Like that's a better use of stealing the name of
the worst guy in those books's device to name his
company after. Like, stop it, stop it, Peter. I don't
think we need to run Elizabeth Homes over with another
(45:13):
intellectual property car. Like, I just don't think we go
so Jamie Loftus, Yeah, we're back in the PI zone.
It's very cool. It's for my turtlenext Uh. Yeah, you
can listen to the Bechtel Cast every Thursday with me
and Caitlin Durante. I can find me on Twitter at
(45:35):
Jamie Lefts Help. And I'm touring my show Boss whome
is Girl about a fictional girl boss called Shell Gasoline Sandwich. Uh,
touring that around the country in the springing summer. Well
that sounds great. Uh check out her show even if
you're not in Cleveland. What did I get you to say? Pronouncing?
(45:58):
I don't apologize for ouncing Steve Jobs ten different ways
throughout this episode. And you know why, because he was
a dicky he burn. I'm kidding. I don't feel her strong. Yeah,
I don't feel that strong about it either. I just
feel badly for Steve Wozniak, who I'm sure still mourns
him beautifully. Oh that's a heartbreaker. Bad dad, Bad dad Dad.
(46:22):
Check out our website Behind the Bastards dot com. Check
us out on the Twits and the Grahams that at
Bastards bod Listen to our T shirts by them. Listen
to our T shirts on t public. Behind the Bastards.
I have a new podcast called it Could Happen Here.
It's a sad podcast about how we're all going to
(46:42):
die in horrible, horrible conflict soon. Awesome. Can't wait. I
love you
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.