Why No One Can Look Away From Elizabeth Holmes

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

AI spend is growing fast, but most businesses still can't see exactly where that money is going. Ramp gives businesses visibility and control across AI providers with real-time guardrails by team and model, helping ensure spend goes to the highest ROI areas. Stop guessing where your AI spend is going. Get started with Ramp. And if you're new to Ramp, you can get $250 off at ramp.com/hardfork. Go to ramp.com/hardfork. ramp.com/hardfork.

Max Read (0:32)

I want to talk about Elizabeth Holmes. She's the subject of a new documentary directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim called You Can See Everything. And when the trailer for the movie dropped in late September, it felt like it was the only thing anyone could talk about. At least anyone who spends too much time online and loves drama. It turned out that Fielder had secretly spent a month with Holmes, her partner Billy Evans, and their two kids just before she began her 11-year sentence at a federal prison in Texas.

But I think what made the trailer so fascinating to people wasn't just the secrecy of the project or the weirdness of letting Nathan Fielder, of all people, live with you and film everything. As a culture, as a media apparatus, we've been obsessed with her. But we've never really met her. And I think when the trailer dropped, it made this promise. You're finally going to meet Elizabeth Holmes. You'll finally learn who she actually is.

Or are you? After all, we're also talking about one of the most notorious fraudsters of the 21st century. In any event, I knew I had to see the movie, and I knew I would have questions. The plan? Take John Carreyrou, the reporter who literally wrote the book on Holmes, to the movies with me. So today, I've convened John and two other Times journalists who have their own experiences with Holmes to answer some questions. What happened to Elizabeth Holmes? Why does she persist in the public imagination?

And is she actually like that?

I'm Max Read. This is Hard Fork.

So I'm joined today by three journalists who covered Elizabeth Holmes at three different stages in her life. Investigative reporter John Carreyrou, executive producer Caitlin Roper, and tech writer Erin Griffith. I have a couple of quick notes before we start. The New York Times makes an appearance in this movie. We're not going to get into that, but I want to be clear that no one on this podcast was involved in the article that preoccupies Elizabeth Holmes throughout the movie. I also want to reassure our audience, this is a very twisty and turny documentary. We're going to talk a little bit about some specific scenes. If you're extremely concerned about spoilers, I would hit pause, come back later. But we're not going to reveal any of the big second half turns or revelations. So with that being said, welcome to the podcast, guys.

Erin Griffith (2:45)

Hey.

Max Read (2:46)

I thought we could start by asking each of you to explain briefly what your relationship is to Elizabeth Holmes. Caitlin, I want to start with you. You were, I think, the first person to interview Elizabeth Holmes for a magazine. What was that like?

Caitlin Roper (3:01)

It was the end of 2013 and I was an editor at Wired magazine. I was looking for founders for us to cover and include in something. And always as one of few women editors, I was looking for women founders. And I found this mention in the Wall Street Journal of Elizabeth Holmes. And so I did some research and there weren't any magazine stories or profiles or interviews. And I reached out to Theranos and got a yes to come down and interview her. So I walked into, at the Theranos offices, I wasn't allowed to go anywhere else other than the room that we were in, which had a phlebotomist to take my blood and then also a place for me to sit with Elizabeth.

And that's when I met her.

Most notable immediately was what seemed like an affectation of her voice. It seemed kind of odd. She was wearing her Steve Jobs outfit and she had on red lipstick. So and she had this sort of this thing that now we've become quite aware of, this kind of big blue-eyed stare, kind of still and looking directly at you.

And I asked her a bunch of questions. Now, of course, I was wired in general at that time, especially, was their orientation really was on innovation and celebration of that innovation. And I was actually genuinely excited to meet a founder who was working in biotech, instead of trying to make food delivery faster or cars come quicker. You know, and it felt like significantly more interesting to me. The part about her pitch that was about reducing health care costs, making transparent blood test results to patients and potentially disrupting Medicare. You know, I thought that was that was pretty cool. And I was excited to be there. So I interviewed her for about an hour. And then I had my blood drawn by a phlebotomist. So that was like the teeny-tiny vial that you've seen in pictures, like a teeny-tiny vial. And because I was dealing with some medical stuff at the time, I asked for the same panel that I had just had, so that I could compare the results of my panel and the Theranos panel.