Grubstakers - Episode 59: Elizabeth Holmes feat. Alex Ptak

Episode Date: March 25, 2019

The deep throated voice of Silicon Valley is on blast this week. You know her you love her Elizabeth Holmes. Listen as we discuss the finer points of Elizabeth’s upbringing, how she defrauded some of the horniest for blood rich people, and the movie starring Jennifer Lawrence and Aziz Ansari coming out soon. I write these introduction’s every week, and no one notices. I’m a cousin of one of the hosts living in Dhaka India. Our water has been polluted by corporate interest with no end in sight. I only take this job, because I am pain in Microsoft Bing points to support my family. Oh, and Alex Ptak @ptakjokes joins us this week in Sean’s absence. Check out his podcast which I personally like more @PodDamnAMerica don’t tell Yogi oh no I’ve typed to much.

Today on Grubstakers, we're talking about Elizabeth Holmes and how she artificially lowered her voice to trick a bunch of horny billionaires into giving her billions of dollars. So, settle yourself in, because it's time for Grubstakers. Is it true, sir, that you have what's been described as an egg-shaped penis. I have always had a thing for black people. I like black people. Berlusconi flatly denies that any mafia money helped him to get a start in real estate. Be paranoid. First they think you're crazy, then they fight you,

and then all of a sudden you change the world let's do this all right hell yeah that's how we do this five sunday morning four three two hello and welcome to guys we fucked the podcast about billionaire sorry i should do that again okay hello and welcome to Grubstakers, the podcast about guys we fucked. I'm Andy Palmer, and with me as always are Yogi Pallywell. That's me. And Stephen Jeffries. Yep.

And Sean McCarthy isn't here. He is in Mexico right now. I think we sent him over there to get more guests from Chapo Trap House. So he is in Mexico asking around for where he can find Chapo's trap house. And we look forward to him coming back in one to five pieces. And joining us is Alex Patak.

Greetings. That is how his voice has always sounded and any reference to a voice higher pitched than that will be nullified from the internet. Yeah, yeah. We'll sue you. It's great to be here with my co-hosts. First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world.

So today, as you might have guessed, we're doing, from the name of the episode, we're doing Elizabeth Holmes. That's right. The Holmes. The, at the time, youngest. I'm crashing. Self-made. Oh, yeah, yoga. I told you to get the Pete Holmes'm crashing Self made

Oh yeah Yogi I told you to get the Pete Holmes saying crashing drop Fuck I forgot to get all the Pete Holmes drops www.whatthefuck.com Bazinga That's Pete Holmes laughing but his voice is lower Do or do not there is no try That's Pete Holmes laughing, but his voice is lower. Do or do not, there is no try.

You can pitch shift it. Oh, can I? Yeah, there's that little joystick. Use your foot pedals. Do or do not, there is no try. Left and right is pitch shift. Do or do not, there is no try. Oh! First they think you're crazy, then they fight you,

and then all of a sudden you change the world. Someone on Twitter said that our drops made him want to blow his brains out, and to that we say... Kiss my ass! Fuck you and your drop criticisms. This is a free

fucking show. We're doing the best we can. We do not hear from the weak here on Grumps Takers. So, yeah, you might have heard of Elizabeth Holmes right now. HBO is doing a thing where they are releasing a series of documentaries about 35-year-olds. There's Adnan Saeed. There's the kids that Michael Jackson raped. Oh, they're 35 too?

Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. Check out that documentary. It's Guys We Fucked. too yeah i don't know that yeah check out that documentary it's guys we fucked yeah we got i'm glad we kept that big bane drop because it uh sweetens up um yeah and then there's the elizabeth holmes documentary the inventor and so we thought we would uh jump in on this this young shining star of a billionaire and profile her. So without further ado, I'm going to do the biography. Sean usually does this.

Can I do a fun anecdote? Yeah, give us a fun anecdote. So you told me we were doing an Elizabeth Holmes episode. Oh, fuck. I dropped voice. You told me we were doing a fun Elizabeth Holmes episode. We'll fix it in post. Yeah, I'll pitch drop you in post. We'll run it through that little joystick. I never heard of it. I never heard of it. And so I go to do a show on Thursday, and there's like 10 people there, and the host is very excited to do her Theranos trivia.

Oh, great. Because she's seen the movie. And she knows we're all excited for Theranos trivia. And she goes, who all here has seen Theranos movie? And no one had. And she went, but I wrote nine questions. And then she insisted on doing them anyway. Oh, no.

Between every comedian. Oh, what the fuck? And if you got the question right, you get a Cadbury egg. And so it's probably like a put all together, probably around 25 full minutes of Theranos questions that no one is having at all. And then halfway through, she throws somebody a Cadbury egg for like happening to get a question right. And the person catches it and goes, I don't like Cadbury eggs. Do not.

There is no try. I would have. That pisses me off because I would have fucking crushed. Yeah. At Theranos Trivia now that I've researched this app. I've got notes. I just love that she asked, hey, does anyone know anything about this documentary? And the room went, no.

And she went, well, my research questions aren't going to be in vain. She was too excited about the trivia. Yeah, she's really nice. She's a good host and comic, but it's just like watching her fail the trivia was funnier than any comedy yeah oh yeah i mean to be honest alex like when we used to host a show that sounds like exactly something i would do i was thinking of that the whole time it's like i don't give a shit if no one gets this reference i'm going to commit beginning to end 15 questions i've written 15 questions about the duchess of canterbury and we'll be doing those throughout the show. And we'll be giving out Theranos eggs if you get them right.

Yeah, so that gets you hyped. Theranos, the biggest profile corporate failure probably since Enron, I'd say. And it's all led by this lady, Elizabeth Holmes, who patterned her entire life around Steve Jobs and managed to make $4 billion from doing that. And so... Who would have thought dressing like a white person would get you so much money?

Me. Yeah, she's actually black. That's... I'm sure this is going to come up in your notes too, but she, she's a present force in the whole movie because the movie's like about her. And that means you spend probably 80 minutes just looking at this person who has this uncanny doll full of water type look to her where her head is bobbing

and her eyes don't blink. Yeah. When I first started the documentary, like I, it froze cause my internet's kind of wonky sometimes and it just froze on her big eyes. And I was like, oh, that's a weird place for it to pause. And then as it got going, I was like, oh, no,

half the documentary is just stills of her giant eyes. That's how committed she was to the project. Every time you blink, you're basically asleep. Yeah. So she said she would sleep for four hours. Every time you blink. Yeah. I mean, exactly. You could be focused on defrauding more investors yeah thomas addison never closed his eyes yeah um yeah so uh i mean without even getting into the story of it in the first two minutes of the

documentary you could tell something is off with this person just from the way she uh chooses to dress and act and also that she's clearly putting on a fake voice her entire life yeah yeah because not only is it just low but it sounds like a like person with a lighter voice doing a lower voice yeah in fairness though i mean i have heard women say that they basically have to they feel like they need to do that sometimes right right i was talking oh yeah but she probably put it on to such a degree well it's like part of your whole persona as someone to be in you know the investor might want to put a couple million dollars towards yeah it's another thing there's studies that say like you know women with deeper

voices are taken more seriously so she like read that and she was like all in all in all yeah in our in our fucked up society it kind of is true, actually. I mean, she got $9 billion of money for fake stuff. Yeah, as much as I want to blame her for being so clearly fake, I do think that the fact that she conned some of the richest people on the planet $9 billion kind of only proves the point

that her doing that voice got her... He never gets fully hard. I don't know where the drops are, guys. The premise of the business isn't even actually the blood box. It's more that she thought if she lowers her voice to Thanos quality, she can scam Henry Kissinger out of millions of dollars. The original company name. Thanos.

When that movie first came out, I was like was like oh it's like theranos but um no i think like compared to we did kylie jenner a couple weeks ago but i think elizabeth holmes is really the most self-made billionaire uh just because she she created money for nothing uh by dressing up as steve jobs and basically charming a series of old men. Like that was her... One of the most successful cosplayers in US history. Yes, yes. How hard is it for a good looking white woman

to fucking make Kissinger's dick get hard though? Come on, Andy. Yeah, but can you monetize that? With a deep enough voice, I could. I mean, there are plenty of attractive white ladies, but to be able to monetize it from Henry Kissinger... You need a psycho mindset to just keep that up. I'm not saying it's not impressive what she did.

I'm just saying that if the other cat that was involved in the business, if it was just a sunny venture, and he's making the dicks of Bill Clinton and the Waltons... Okay, now we're getting ahead of ourselves. We've got to introduce the cast of characters. Okay, so Elizabeth Holmes, born February 3rd, 1984 in Washington, D.C. Her mother was a congressional committee staffer. Her great-grandfather, Christian Holmes, was a physician who married the daughter of the Fleischmann yeast fortune.

Yeah, if you ever buy yeast, you gave some money to the Holmes family. You're trickling some money into Theranos. Another plot run by big yeast. Yeah. Basically, she was raised a wasp. And so actually, I kind of relate to a lot of the weird things that happened in her life or a lot of the weird situations

because like her family, in the book I read, Bad Blood, there's a lot about- Oh, because uh like her family it in the book i read uh bad blood uh there's a lot about taylor swift book based off the song yeah yeah there's a lot of stuff about her family having this feud with another family that's more successful and so like but it's like her mother and the uh the uh uh wife and the other family are like friends, but the dads hate each other because one dad is more successful than the other dad. And it's just, it's a situation that's like, oh, this is like all the Christmas cards from my family friends.

Sure. Really? Yeah. Christmas cards in WASP society, it's just a way of like one-upping. Can we define WASP? I'll be honest. White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. Oh, I didn't know what that meant.

It means you refuse the power of the Pope. Yeah, yeah. That's what a wasp is? God's emissary on this earth. I think I'm right. Are you a wasp, Stephen? I guess technically. Okay.

You're all insects to me. As a Catholic, I knew something was wrong with this woman right away. They're like the former ruling class of America. What was it uh ross douthat or something wrote like a requiem for the wasp when george hw bush died oh really or some shit yeah do or do not there is no trying so her voice is so upsetting she had this weird fan and the family, we'll come back in a second. And her father was briefly a VP at Enron, interestingly enough.

Yeah, if you look up online, it also says other executives. So he was a VP at Enron, but then also held other positions that are just unknown, which I found very disappointing that in the documentary they don't mention her dad at all in any sense of his former Enron VP-ness or any other position. Well, it sounds like when Enron went down, the family was kind of cleaned out. So like, I don't know if they went to the basically they moved to Houston and then got he got a job at the only company in town at the time, which was Enron. I mean, I guess they're a bunch of oil companies, but like that was the big employer in Houston was Enron. Right. And so it sounded like he wasn't there very long. And so he probably wasn't involved in all the stuff because he moved there, joined Enron.

I know plenty of people in prison that probably weren't a part of the crimes I convicted for, Andy. Keep your head up. So while studying Mandarin at 17, on a summer uh with a stanford uh mandarin language program she was uh going to china she met a fellow named ramesh sunny balwani my man sunny uh who was 37 when she was 17 and so he was 20 years her senior uh no word on if they fucked then but they didn't fuck later but here's the thing about ramesh sunny balwani uh he helped form commercebid.com in 1998 which was a business to business auction site sort of like alibaba

that got acquired by commerce one which he joined the board of and then in 2000 he cashed out making 40 million right before the dot-com bust and that company went down the tubes so he uh kind of he weathered the dot-com thing oh and then he did a little thing with his uh accounting firm where he said that uh he actually lost 40 million uh and so he didn't have to pay any taxes and then the government was like no you can't do that and then he had to pay back all the back taxes and he sued his accounting firm. Bazinga. Soundboard. As a freshman at Stanford, Holmes got the idea of using microfluidics to make something

that could test for all kinds of diseases with only a pinprick of blood because she had a lifelong fear of needles that she inherited from her mother. Did you guys listen

to the podcast or did you just watch the movie? I listened to the podcast too. I you guys listen to the podcast or did you just watch the movie? I listened to the podcast too. I didn't listen to the podcast. Did you, Alex? Yeah, the dropout. I just saw the movie and I feel like I got to be missing some information. Her whole pitch for the company is that people don't like having big needles in their arms.

The problem with medicine is that they take too much blood from you and that's why people don't seek medical care. Because it's too expensive, but people still want to pay some amount, like a fair market for your health care. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Her pitch, well, yeah, it gets more fucked up. She went to Arizona. They got them to deregulate Arizona law. Like, she lobbied the Arizona state government to make it so you don't something wrong need a um a uh doctor's uh recommendation to get a blood draw and uh and the reason they

targeted arizona was because there are a lot of uninsured people so they thought they would be receptive to cheaper medical care and they were and they were and then they fight you and then all of a sudden you change the world. The only reason I bring this up is there's one line in the documentary where she's like, you're just people taking gallons and gallons of your blood. Yeah. Taking your blood as you want. Isn't that torture?

And I was just watching like, no, that's not like torture, actually. She was afraid of needles once, so therefore you have to subject everyone to fraudulent That's the problem with American healthcare at large, is she is afraid of needles, is the premise of her company. When I say universal healthcare, what I mean is less blood. Put the blood in my box. The box will be available at every Walgreens. Put your blood in my blood box.

Her business is predicated on her fear of needles On one hand And then the US health insurance sector Being totally fucked up Right If you're in Norway no one would ever try this Yeah I just hate to have the documentary never mention how she's a vampire

Obviously anyone this obsessed with blood Needs it to survive. How about posing with the little needle? What is that thing called that she was posing with? Nanotainer. Okay. Nanotainer. She got the idea for the...

Nanotainer. When she was a freshman at Stanford. So she goes to... It was from the idea of microfluidics. And so she goes to uh and it was from the idea of microfluidics and so she goes to uh groundbreaking um medical engineer phyllis gardner and says i've got one hell of an idea getting all this information from micro microfluidics and phyllis gardner said um no that's not gonna work at all so then she goes uh from phyllis guard buton. Wait, is this the patch that she's talking about or is this later on?

It might have been the patch. I don't know what the patch is. So the patch was like essentially like it was supposed to be kind of what an Apple Watch is to a certain degree where you wear a patch. Oh, useless? Yes.

The annotator. What it's supposed to be was that like you wear a patch and then like the moment it notices your blood's all fucked up, it would give you the nutrients you need to fix said disease or whatever first they think you're crazy then they fight you and then all of a sudden you change the world i don't think the apple watch does that so it's just like automatic pathological testing right precisely you want it and the professor she pitched it to was like that's

not physically possible and i think the professor added also if you try to make a multi-billion dollar company out of this i will appear in every documentary about you talking about how full of shit you are right now. And she followed up on that. Yeah. So then Holmes. It was just great that Holmes' reaction to the negative feedback was like, great, no more asking medical professionals. Right, right, right. Like multiple people at Stanford just said said like, this doesn't real.

Yeah. So then she goes to the chairman of, or the dean of the school of engineering, this guy Channing Robertson. And this is the first, I think she also realized like, I'm not going to be able to charm my way to older women, but older men are very easy. Older smart women. I will see through my dumb shit quickly, but fucking all these dumb dudes with dicks.

She did charm Hillary Clinton. They're not thrown off by my voice, my hair as a dude at work. I love having the support of real billionaires. Hillary Clinton just knew the science behind it wasn't solid. She tries the lower voice thing, and they're just like, you have no power here.

She has to go to gull global, rich, old white men. Yeah. So Channing Robertson, he's in, and that lends her basically a... You think they fucked? Degree of credibility? I don't know. I don't think so. They might have fucked, dog.

I don't know. Sonny Balwani's soulmate. How dare you? Yeah. She gave her soul. She gave her heart to sunny balwani not dog she fucked every white dude i'm telling you i promise to give you my blood also apparently as a kid uh people would be family members would be like what do you want to be when you grow up and she would say a billionaire and they would be like uh don't you want to be president she would say no i want to be a billionaire and then the president will marry me because I'm a billionaire.

Why don't you blink? She also has very dry eyes. Also, okay, so she gets the ball rolling. She creates a company and she calls it Real Time Cures. And then that doesn't sell anything. So she changes that to Theranos, which is short for therapy diagnosis, which she incorporated in 2004. And Robertson, her first board member, introduces her to venture capitalists who start shitting money all in her thing. By December of 2004, she's got $6 million.

And then by December 2010, she's got $92 million. That's when they're shitting money in her thing. Yeah. They're shitting money all over her thing. And, um. How do you get in these meetings? Because I would love for people to shit money in my thing. I would love that too.

It's never happened. You need a dean of engineering. Fuck. Yeah. Yeah. That's. Do you know any deans of engineering? Like, they always have to.

I don't know any deans of engineering. Especially at Stanford, which is, I guess, because it's near silicon valley and it's where the yahoo and google people came out of well it's mostly you have to be like a friend of mark right you gotta be in circles i know a lot of people you can be an acquaintance doing improv does that help me out when it comes to shitting money on me you've made a great choice to work for walmart and we're glad you're only if they know someone who knows Lorne Michaels. I think that actually lowers your chances. Hey, I know this is very stupid, but I took a UCB sketch writing class once. And they would take your copies.

Yes. But they would keep it. And I remember at that moment being like, I don't, like, that was the straw that broke my back. I was like, wait a second. They keep the sketches I wrote? Fuck this noise. They're just data harvesting sketches from amateur people. You're stealing my gold.

Here's $900, but give me my sketches back. No, we need this for Herald Night. We can't make the $5 admission shows on our own. I'll give you $900, but you will never have Roger Rabbit but retarded. Hilarious. By the way, now that you've said that, Alex, Grubstickers has... It's Yogi's sketch. I'm reading it. I'm reading his sketch. I have the copies.

Come on, man. This goes out tonight, dog. Oh, shit. It's Roger Rabbit. But he's retarded. Fuck. SNL stole my idea again. It's just Idris Elba playing Roger Rabbit. From Saturday night.

People in the audience are like, he's so retarded. I'm just at home crying, just like these motherfuckers. They did it again. Front page of the New York Times, Sunday edition. Best SNL we've ever seen. Should have kept it private. It should have started a private company in Silicon Valley developing these jokes. It forces Trump to resign because Roger Rabbit, but retarded, is so successful. That's why at UCB 101, when you apply, you should put a do not compete agreement on all the sketches.

And then you can hound them. These are trade secrets. I mean, if Roger Rabbit, but retarded, could take down President Trump, but you get no rights to it or credit, would you make that trade? No. God, no. Not in this capitalistic society. Fuck that.

Yeah. I mean, I never read something like that because I'm an ally. You're an ally to the mentally disabled. That's right. There's a you know what? I'm not going to make any of the jokes. I just took Alex saying and I'm like, there it goes. Now I'm not going to make any of the jokes. I just took Alex saying it. I'm like, there it goes.

Now I'm allowed to say it. Open the gates. The small toy gates. I've just been sitting at the edge of my seat for all these episodes waiting to say it. So in 2011, Elizabeth Holmes is introduced to a fellow by the name of George Shultz. Oh, shit. Who was Reagan's Secretary of State. He was something on labor for Nixon, or rather.

And he's a member of the Hoover Institution. And through there, Elizabeth Holmes is introduced to other Hoover Institution upstanding citizens. Damn. Such as General James Mattis. The bad dog. Henry Kissinger and Bill Frist. I know that guy.

Yeah. He fristed you. Yes, he frist me real hard. So. Henry Kissinger's a real ball of charisma. Oh, yeah. He's only in this thing for five seconds, and I'm like, I want to give you my blood. Yeah.

I was watching this with someone. What are you, Cambodian? You're like an evil orb, and I love you. I was watching this with a few people, and then one person was like, oh, who's Henry Kissinger again? And I was like, oh, they're a warmonger. And the other person was like, no, they're not. And then within like 20 seconds, I just sent them 12 articles. Oh, really? They're not?

He's that fun war criminal who dances with Stephen Colbert. I love having the support of real billionaires. So the first product they put out is called the Edison. And the Edison is supposed to be a thing that uses the... Nanotainer. Uses the nanotainer. Got it. You take a pinprick of blood and you put it in the little nanotainer and it's supposed

to be able to run a battery of tests. And then you shake it all around. Put your blood in my box. It puts blood in your box. You do the hokey. I'm sorry. and then it sends all the results i should probably lower my voice because people have told us we have whiny i'm gonna i'm gonna holmes i just i don't understand why she was so obsessed with the box being small

they interview the engineers or the developers or whatever they're like i said we could do it if it was bigger and she said she would had to be a small box yeah she knows she never actually says the reason why it should be small. No. I know she's obsessed with Apple, and she wants it to be the iPod of blood. Right, right. It could be like one room. It would still be impressive if it was like 10 feet tall.

I don't know. You want to know actually an anecdote. You have like one guy in one room doing it, and that would be pretty impressive. You're supposed to be able to like... Well, she kept on lying to her employees saying they were using it in afghanistan on the battlefield and so apparently it had to be small so that that lie would hold up or i mean the idea was it would eventually actually do that um no apparently with the steve jobs thing she uh right around the time he died a biography of steve jobs came out and the employees were reading the biography and they could tell where Elizabeth Holmes

was in the biography from which aspects of Steve Jobs she was trying to mimic. Do or do not, there is no try. He's in the Star Wars chapter for a long time. No, that's from this great line from the, I put the short thing in the drop keyboard, but it's my favorite part of the

documentary right they're asking her in like i don't know if it's one of the commercials or if it's a promotion for there's a promotional thing this is actually it's also she wanted to uh get the people who did apple's uh promotions uh apple's commercials she got that guy yeah yeah she got that company and so one of the things they did is they had these weird um interstitial dual lights that made her eyes glow in a weird way and they uh that's just her own aura yes but it really enhanced it so this is um it's the the this is this what's your favorite sound from the movie star wars yoda what does Yoda sound like? Yoda sounds like do or do not, there is no try.

So that's her... What? Yoda's her favorite sound from the movie Star Wars. Why did they even ask that question? What interview was it? It was like a promotional interview. And your favorite Harry Potter sound?

Probably whoosh. That was kind of a weird question, though. My guess is that they, like, because it was a promotional thing, and they were on this, like, Yoda do or do not, there is no tri-kick. They told the interviewer probably, like, oh, ask her about, like, Star Wars. And the interviewer was like, all right, what's your favorite sound from Star Wars? And then she's all queued up and she's like, Yoda. Yeah, I bet right after she says, she's like, what?

All right, I'll just go with this. Oh, she doesn't pause. There was no what in her. There was just the computer going, keep churning. Elizabeth, what's your favorite sound? Star Wars. Actually, Yoda from Star Wars. So their product, the Edison,

it worked by using a cell signal to send the results that it would process to different... Scratch that. It didn't work by not doing these things that they said it could do. Well, no. It would do these things. It would use the cell signal to send results to different places for analysis.

But the cell signal would cut out, and then they wouldn't be able to do analysis. Also, the slightest temperature fluctuation would make it not function. And it could also do, like, maybe, it could also really just test potassium levels. And she promised that it could, like, detect every disease on Earth.

So that's how she would do her funding thing. And then she decided that she was going to use it to test for swine flu. This is when, I don't know if you guys remember the aughts, but there will be a show on VH1 where people are like, hey, remember swine flu? We called it Lysamania. And so when swine flu was real big, swine flu and cold play. When swine flu was viral.

There we go. www.whatthe cold play. Swine flu was viral. There we go. www.whatthefuck.com It's 2009. Apparently you have to get a lot of approval to take a medical device into another country and use it. What? But she had a friend from Stanford whose dad happened to be

in the Mexican government for their universal health service. And so she just talked to her friend and got the approval to take the Edison's down to Mexico to test for swine flu. And it, you overshot there. That's Panama. Oh,

sorry. And so the swine flu is usually tested from nasal swabs, but they're like, are things blood so they they use the blood tests and uh it repeatedly said that people were negative for swine flu when they were positive and when someone asked holmes like hey uh why are we using blood when you're supposed to use a nasal swab she said said, don't worry about it. Tribute. The box demands tribute. And then Sonny then went and took the Edison to Thailand to test it because there was a swine flu outbreak there.

Oh, really? But they didn't have approval. So it was widely believed within the office that he was just bribing people in Thailand to get swine flu blood. That sounds like my sonny. Yeah. I don't know if they update the machine later, or if this is the version where the engineers are describing the machine and the blood samples constantly spill on each other.

So the inside of the box is just a splatter of swine blood. I think that was their next product, the mini lab. And here's a quote from Holmes when they were launching it. The mini lab is the most important thing humanity has ever built. If you don't believe this in this, or if you don't believe this is the case, you should leave now. Wow. So yeah, the mini lab, they would, uh, one thing they would test for with the mini lab was syphilis. I want to meet the person who walked out.

They had huge turnovers okay so this sunny guy um after i guess home started the thing uh sunny divorced his japanese artist wife and uh she seems nice yeah and uh started dating homes what's funny about sunny is so he um what isn't funny about him he had 40 million dollars from his his thing. And he would wear, he would drive a Lamborghini that would have D-A-S-K-P-T-L on the back for DOS Capital. What do you think? And he would wear a button-down shirt with the top buttons undone so his chest hair would stick out with a thin gold chain.

How do you calculate the use value of a good? It's a combination of the price, isn't it? The dialectic says, if you are cynical, we will fire you. Sonny, show me more chest hair tomorrow. Don't go to the cops. If it takes more than 12 spools

to make a sweater, leave the room now. So, so to make a sweater. Leave the room now. So Elizabeth Holmes brought on Sonny in her company and he was essentially their enforcer. He would just fire people left and right

who pissed him off. He was the real Matt Doug. Yeah. Like apparently one guy, Sonny brought in some employees he liked and one of them hit another employee's car.

And so the guy whose car was hit, he looked at the dent in his car, found another car with the same size marking on the front of it. And so he found that employee and was like, hey, you put a dent in my car. And the guy was like, no, I didn't. And he was like, I measured it. And then Sonny was like, hey, I heard you talk to my employee. You're fired. What?

That dog. This is absolutely fucking stupid. Speaking of DOS Capital. Yoda from Star Wars. My favorite character, my favorite sound is Darth Vader. But I think, like, my dad, when my dad had, like, a midlife crisis,

what he did is he got a Toyota Camry, but with the spoiler. Ooh. That's so funny. Spoiler alert, your car sucks. It was actually a good car, 1999 Camry. Reliable. Solid, yeah. It's the middle of your life. so funny spoiler alert your car sucks it was actually a good car 1999 camera reliable solid yeah man it's the middle of your life you get a reliable car and uh what the sunny guy did is he

got a lamborghini uh fucked a a child and um a different child no no elizabeth holmes and uh apparently committed massive wire fraud. That sounds like Sonny. Yeah. I like that his name is Ramesh Balwani, and he goes by Sonny. No explanation. No, like, hey, why are you called the thing in the sky people love? Guy universally hated by many now.

Yeah. Yeah, everyone at the place hated him. Apparently, he had no knowledge of... He claimed to have written a million lines of code. And apparently, the average Microsoft coder writes an average of three lines per day. So, a thousand per year. And so... This guy's good.

Yeah. The engineers at Theranos would just like... He would say words that were just the wrong words. And so, then they would just name parts. They would do presentations where they would just use the words he used to make fun of him, and he would never catch on. Yeah, of course. Nobody's ego that's using words they don't understand

ever catches other people using the same words. Yeah, right, because he just sees it and goes, I am an influencer. They're using my words now. I understand this. Great point yeah good takeaway this code is flumbar he's just making up words yeah he thinks one line of code is a million each character is like one line it's like on one hand i kind of understand I definitely write in my job More than three lines of code a day

But it's also repetitive And based on much more sophisticated code Okay Andy Let's not brag I'm saying I'm doing dumb code Oh I've written a million lines of code I've snorted a million lines of code Folks

Someone could write A million page book That wouldn't mean anyone would want to read the million page book I've snorted a million lines of code. Folks! It's like, someone could write a million page book. That wouldn't mean anyone would want to read the million page book. That's fair. That is also how book writing used to work a hundred years ago. That's why all the Russian novels are so long. They're just like,

look at how fucking many words that is. This is my job. Yeah, we're going to create an economy where we just pay per page of the book. No, it's stable. It's going to last forever. Our system in Russia in the 19th century. So they make the mini lab. Sorry.

And they try to sell it to... Soviet transition to a novel-based economy. The transition to a novel... Yeah. It was a very novel transition in the Soviet, okay. So going back to the Hoover Institution, Holmes, one of the first contracts she tried to get was with the military,

so that they could actually use the Edison. Although the team of people that used to be in our military wanted this company to work for the military? Well, also, the military doesn't always get FDA approval for their tests. What? Let's say you're a Tuskegee Airman and suddenly you've got syphilis

after you saved all of the American bombers in World War II. And you're like, I haven't had sex because I'm the best airman in the American military. And they're like, oh, yeah, surprise. We injected you with syphilis for all the bombers you saved. That's how we say thank you.

Anyways, the military has a bad track record with medical ethics. And so I didn't know that the military had bad medical ethics. They also have a great influx of money for seemingly no reason. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They have unlimited money. And that has no connection to our lack of universal

healthcare system. But you know what they don't have at this time? Blood box. They don't have a blood box. So General Mattis is, he sees this. He sees what Alex just saw. And he says to his inferiors, hey, let's get this blood box out there in Afghanistan. Our troops need a blood box! His inferiors, hey, let's get this blood box out there in Afghanistan.

Our troops need a blood box! His inferiors are like, no. Or did he? Or did he actually say that? Makes you wonder. Yes? No, I thought she just made that up, right? Oh, no.

So she lied about it being used in Afghanistan, but she did get Mattis to pressure people in the military. No, but Stephen's right, though. They made up a report where Mattis was like, this is going to be good for us, and they fabricated that. Oh, they did? The one, like, the thing on the website. I remember this specific thing Stephen was talking about in the doc. I don't know to what extent he knew

or cared about the blood box, but they made up his words, basically. Even a mad dog is right twice a day. Mad dog says, no way. Send the blood box back. Well, he did advocate for them in the military, and he was on the board of Theranos, and so that's probably why they got away with it for a while.

Okay, well, the HBO documentary, they seem to imply that... Oh, that they put word... I mean, they also did that a lot. That specific quote about him... Right, right, I remember this. ...deploying it was not true. Right, right.

They would do things where they would... This company that we all know has been convicted of fraud lied about multiple things. Let's move on, ladies and gentlemen. They would go to another... They would do a presentation for some company and then later say,

oh, yeah, they would take the company that they did a presentation for and they'd be like, yeah, they said that our product is great and amazing. And they published a paper about it. And then people would be like, can we see the paper? And they'd be like, no, no, you cannot. The narrative construction for the HBO documentary was very interesting because it really focused on corruption and scandal and your best intentions leading to fraud. So the moral of the story wasn't don't be a bloodless psychopath. It was don't care too much or you'll start lying about it. Yeah, I know your limits.

Know your limits. Definitely do almost the same stuff. But don't make the owner of Fortune magazine cry. Also, Thomas Edison created the movie Man Lifts Barbell. That was a big part of the documentary.

The first commercial movie ever was the scene of blacksmiths pounding some shoes. Yeah, and then they would just cut to three blacksmiths pounding Asa Akira. They didn't have enough three blacksmiths pounding some shoes. Yeah, and then they would just cut to... Three blacksmiths pounding Asa Akira. They didn't have enough... Three blacksmiths. One pig iron.

That's still in the... That's still the property of the Edison estate. It cannot be accessed by... It's on Pornhub, guys. First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world. That's what Edwin said after

he released that movie. He's like, you know, they're trying to take my movie down. I say, we're visionaries here. These social fascists do not want Blacksmith Pounding Eye released. Well well wasn't it like

edison he he patented the reason that movies are made in uh los angeles is because edison was on the east coast he patented films but he was the only one because he had the patent he was the only one who uh he would sue anyone else who tried to make a film oh yeah but he was also really shitty at it so people would just go to los Los Angeles where he couldn't get to them to make their movies. That's what you're calling the man who invented three blacksmiths, pounding iron, shitty at filmmaking.

Andy's calling the inventor of the medium bad at making said medium. The director of mustachioed Chef Kissing Wife is missing narrative structure. I'll have you know I jerked off to Mustachioed Chef Kissing Wife. And if that isn't an endorsement, I don't know what is. I love having the support of real billionaires. So their next venture was Walgreens and Safeway. Oh. Yeah.

Alex, do you know what Safeway is? I don't. I'm very familiar with Walgreens. I get all my blood drawn at Walgreens. Safeway is a West Coast one-stop shopping grocery store. Safeway is Washington State. West Coast. Washington State and Oregon version of Walgreens.

Well, they're not really a drug store. They have drug stores, but they're more of just like key foods. We don't need to do a breakdown on Safeway on this episode. Everyone needs to learn about Safeway. It's one-stop shopping. It's a competitor with Kroger because Kroger bought Fred Meyer,

and they also own QFC and Albertsons. Actually, not QFC. Yeah, it's QFC, but not Albertsons. Safeway is a West Coast-brand grocery store. They also sell medicine, but they don't have pharmacies in all of the Safeways like Walgreens does, and they do not sell clothing, but they do sell tools tools and general use items. I used to work at a grocery store.

This is absolutely fucking stupid. Yeah, but you worked at Fred Meyer. That's a whole different ballgame. Yeah, it's better. In the 2010s, Safeway was in a bad way. They tried to do a stock buyback to pump up their value and then then everyone who uh was investing in them was like yeah we see through that bullshit we're not more like jim kramer so so uh them and walgreens walgreens uh they they decided they were going to make wellness

centers that used uh theranos products and the reason they made wellness centers is because uh if you want to make a clinic you need something with fda approval but if you want to make a wellness center uh just go bach wild yeah it's a common billionaire tactic let's make something that exists but has a lot of regulation and just name it something that isn't the name of it yeah this isn't a car it's a bicycle mobile and it's a fucking a car. It's a bicycle mobile. And it's a fucking car, but it's called a bicycle mobile so I don't have to register it with the DMV. This isn't a blood box. This is

Thomas Edison. And he happens to be thirsty for blood. Wait, wait, wait. I'm a venture capitalist. Pitch me the Edison device. Okay, so you know how when you draw blood, that's essentially torture? Lower the octaves.

One can consider torture the beginning of the ciphering of blood. Yes, yes. I'm very familiar with this. If I were to pitch to you just a drop, just a sample of blood, just a tribute. How would you do that? What would you do that what would you do with that you put it in my box what's your box it's it's edison you got thomas edison he's in

my box and he looks at your blood you got thomas edison is involved in this he's would you like five billion dollars yeah sure i love having the support of real billionaires. That was the perfect improv. Like, okay, this is going nowhere. Scene. And scene. I'm running in front of Andy, and we're starting again. Now I'm Tanner. So there was a guy in Walgreens whose job it is to look into Theranos and be like, is this bullshit?

So he goes over to Theranos with uh his superior and uh the guy starts asking questions like can i see your lab oh too deep and what happened what they say is um if we have time and then they turned up the charm on his boss and then they never got to see the lab and so i understand you want to see our laboratory but how i might recommend disneyland instead we cannot expose the yodas in our life so basically like walgreens got scammed out of like 300 million dollars uh trying to set these up and a lot of it was because holmes kept charming the superior of the guy who was supposed to check out the bullshit first they think you're crazy then they fight you and then all of a sudden you change the world.

Like, after they had a party celebrating the acquisition, the Walgreens partnership with Theranos, they had all of the Walgreens executives, like, take a little blood prick to run in for analysis,

and then they never sent anyone the Theranos analysis of the blood prick. Yeah, that sounds about right. It's called negging. Yeah. And it works. This was my favorite part of the documentary because they cut to that woman who was in charge of teaching Walgreens employees how to take blood.

Yeah. She's like, they didn't know how to do it. It was tough. What they were doing before was harder yeah yeah like regular blood drawing right yeah walgreens do that though did they do yeah well there are all these stories where they're like phlebotomy expert where they're trying to like fill up the nanotainers with the pinprick and like all the stories in the book end with and then there was blood everywhere i guess what i was picturing were cashiers at a walgreens taking blood from people right at the counter and i was like this has gotten out of hand

splattered on on the cash register but this is like a good chunk of what silicon valley does it's fucking an idea that has already existed and we're gonna put an app to it and charge more for it and call it good i mean fucking lyft and uber and juno and via are just fucking hey you know someone with a car give them 20 bucks to drive you to the airport except they didn't necessarily take something that they were trying to invent something new but was not possible and uh the way it worked in in in theranos was that everything was siloed so no group would talk to another group and if ever like someone complained about some problem, either

Holmes would say, oh no, we'll figure that out or they would just get fired. And so no one could talk to anyone. Holmes was completely detached from reality. Sonny was just firing people left and right because they were, quote, too cynical about the operation. They were monitoring the keystrokes.

Yeah, they were monitoring people's keystrokes. Big sister. Big sister. If they emailed anyone outside of the company, they would get fired and then threatened with a lawsuit for stealing intellectual property. One guy, when he was fired, he refused to sign a paper that said he would not take intellectual property and he just left. And Sonny called the police and he said that the guy stole Theranos property and the police

officer said, okay, what did he take? And Sonny said, oh no, it's in his brain. What the fuck is a brain scientist? There we go. See, Jeffrey Epstein would have been able to get that stuff out. And then are we at the part where that one dude killed himself? The guy that like... Oh, yeah.

Okay, so let's go to the family feud. So there was this... I told you there was another family that had a feud with the Holmes family. The waspiest thing ever. This buzz, buzz. Basically, this guy had, he worked in medical engineering and then Elizabeth Holmes,

she started to get successful building Theranos and her family told this other guy's family, Elizabeth Holmes, she started to get successful building Theranos. And her family told this other guy's family, oh, yeah, Elizabeth Holmes has this, like, medical engineering startup. And the family friend was like, and she didn't come to me to ask for advice. And he took it as, it as this deep insult. So then he patented something that he called the Theranos Killer that he tried to make to run Theranos out of business. What? It's just a hose that takes the blood out of the box? Yeah.

And so Theranos then sued him, and during that time there was a guy who worked for Theranos who was a scientist who would be able to tell, like, you know, this patent and that patent aren't compatible. Yeah, a guy that knew the sciences behind the shit that they were trying to do. Yes. And he worked for Theranos. He was, like, this 60-year-old guy. And the family friend realized, like, oh, this guy seems pretty honest, like he's an actual scientist.

Let's get him to testify and so when they were getting him to testify at this patent trial at the same time theranos was telling that guy to lie right uh and so the guy it was like oh man if i lie i'll or if i tell the truth i'll get fired from theranos i'm in my 60s it's the end of my career and uh but i don't want to lie and so he basically launched into a depression. And then the day he, or a couple days before he was supposed to testify, he drank and took a bunch of acetaminophen. And that basically destroys your liver. Apparently, it was enough acetaminophen to kill a horse.

And a horse can drink a lot of whiskey. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Not as much as you would think, though. No. Yeah. You guys seen BoJack Horseman? They can drink a lot.

They start saying the N-word pretty quick. They do. Nay! Not as much as you would think, though. Yeah. You guys seen Bojack Horseman? They can drink a lot. They start saying the N-word pretty quick. They do. Nay! Voting nay on this riff. That's jockey culture. So, yeah. As soon as the guy got fucked up, and I don't know if he was in the hospital or dead,

but I think it was when he was dead, Theranos had the lawyer call his wife and say, hey, there's a Theranos laptop at your house. Bring it to our office or we'll sue you. And that was the only contact she got from Theranos. Send us your husband's brain. There are secrets in his brain. Your husband's remains must be are secrets in his brain. Your husband's remains

must be donated to us immediately. I intend to be buried with his body. That he may serve me in the afterlife. Sonny was seen stalking the cemetery afterwards. I wish I knew more about Sonny. He's a real character in this.

Yeah, he... Yes. We didn't... I didn't know that he started dating her when she was 17. It's unclear if that's when they started dating or if it was like when they started the company. Yeah. Or he just started vetting her for later.

Yeah, well, they were going to trips to China and shit. And it's like, listen, be it as it may, if I ever... Well, they met on a trip to china for a mandarin learning i thought they also went on a trip together as well i know you're 17 and you go for mandarin learning yeah with older executives well that was like his after he after he made like 40 million dollars he just he didn't really do much he was just like all right well now i'm gonna go to like college and talk to college girls and take classes. A person that fell into money became

a creep immediately? Yeah, that's not unheard of. It's so frustrating. I wrote my million lines of code. Basically, I'm going to retire at the top. Now I'm looking for a million lines of pussy. I like that

this Indian man became a southern gentleman very quickly. He has a cave. this part of the story. He changed his accent, too. He's a country gentleman now. I say, I say, does anyone in this fine establishment have some pussy? I say, I need some blood. I got to write some lines.

Now, I may be a simple country product developer. Now, most people don't know my nicknames after my deposition, and it's Sonny, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, Sonny and Elizabeth. I was confused why they keep calling him Sonny and Elizabeth. Everyone thinks you're going to say Sonny and Cher. Sure, sure. People ask me, why are you named Sonny? And I tell them, I don't know, but can I have some pussy?

Because if one place the sun don't shine. And it's on my face. If you want your day broadened, I've got something sunny for you. This is an older Indian man.

You need to change. We're just doing Aziz Ansari in like 20 years. Face. Randy with eight A's. How much time we got left? Not a quick one.

Kiss my ass! Alright, so let's talk downfall. First, here's the effect of theranos is that all their tests were wrong so people would people would go to these wellness centers in arizona and they uh test would be like hey you've uh you've got deteriorating bone disease and they'd be like oh shit and they'd get a bunch of like even more expensive tests and then uh because they're not really well insured or have high deductibles, they would end up spending

thousands of dollars to find out, no, you don't have deteriorating bone disease or whatever it was. But you do got dumb brain disease. And this is when they're up at Walgreens too so they have the menu where you can get yourself checked for herpes for $10.58 or cancer for $13.95 or $10.99.

They actually celebrated at Theranos permission to get herpes testing. You're getting approved for herpes testing. I couldn't wrap my mind around how you pick that specific price. Yeah. In many states, you have to get prescribed the test.

Right. Not in Arizona. If the doctor is like, something might be wrong then okay you have a this is actually useful to you right more likely well there's not just a menu a placemat menu yeah or you can pick out like oh maybe i have herpes i'll just see if it is the case medical prognosis a la carte after after theranos went down apparently the arizona government started going after them because uh they completely humiliated the really free market conservative governor by getting him to remove the requirement that doctors prescribe a blood test.

Like they successfully. Yeah. The one time the invisible hand has stabbed him in the back. so um the uh downfall came when uh there was a a guy named john carriou who worked at the wall street journal and he was uh alerted by a blood testing blogger that uh oh the big bcb in a guy who was blogging about blood testing who noticed that uh theranos's technology didn't quite add up, but for whatever reason, he wasn't able to... Subscribe to my Patreon. Yeah. He wasn't able to reach a large audience with his

blood testing blog, so he started talking to this Wall Street Journal reporter. I've done the most I can. I gave them one star on my blood test blog. And so the Wall Street Journal guy was like, alright, I'll look into this.

And so he started to track down Theranos employees. And one of them was George Schultz, who we mentioned earlier, the former secretary of state, was his grandson who worked for Theranos and then quit because he realized that they were doing all kinds of illegal things to trick the government into approving their lab, for instance, by having the door to their main lab closed. The basement lab, that's what you're talking about? Yeah, the basement lab. So when there was an inspector, they just closed that door. Tyler Schultz. Yeah, Tyler Schultz. He jumped at the opportunity to intern for the future of blood information accessibility or whatever the elevator pitch for this was.

Yeah. Also, I read that Elizabeth Holmes had a Siberian husky that she named Balto and would let people know that it's a wolf, not a husky. The dog apparently would shit all over the offices and was also let into the sanitized zones of the laboratory.

When the scientists were like, hey, you can't let this dog in here, Elizabeth Holmes was like, no, that's fine. Balto's okay. I'm working on my next invention, shit box. It is a box for pets to shit in. Just a small prick of shit. You can learn

so many things about your body. It's called John Quincy Adams. You take a shit in the box. By the way, anyone know why you can't litter train dogs? What's the deal with that? You can do it. Litter train? There's videos of people on YouTube that did that.

Oh, they litter train their dogs? You can watch their dog shit. Then why does anyone take their dogs out to shit all the time? I don't get why animals can pee in public and the owner's not to clean that shit up. Well, how would you clean it up? Just spray a spray bottle. It ain't that hard. Just dilute the shit down a little bit.

I don't want to. Yeah, fucking lazy ass pet owners. People that wanted pets like pets more than they like brown people. I'm saying it out loud. Fuck this. Don't tell me when medical services for animals in this country are better than the services in third world countries that people with pets aren't all pieces of shit. Are you still mad because your mom told you as a kid you couldn't have a dog? I'm still mad about that, but I also don't disagree with everything

that I'm saying right now. Don't brown people also own dogs? Not the billion of people that don't have any money for clean water or a place to shit or electricity.

They don't own dogs. Are you sure? They don't own wild dogs. I mean, what about those Crestpunk kids that have dogs? Listen, they're not spending

thousands upon thousands of dollars on veterinary services for animals that they don't need to be alive. They don't need to be alive. I don't know how I got in this argument. I just wanted to bring it up for 59 episodes. I think everyone should be able to pee wherever they want. I mean, if that was the case, I wouldn't mind this dog pee shit. There's nothing more liberating than a backyard pee

Yeah That's spoken New York style You do that and a cop catches you You get a public urination thing And you get to go into sex registry depending on the state The cop catches you peeing in the backyard To discourage you The cop starts peeing on you

It's just a cycle of piss And by the way If you see a cop peeing on someone You want to protect that person Get your phone out and start peeing on the cop This cycle of pee won't end guys Pee on pee crime is serious Serious satellite radio

We can do this without Sean So Alright okay We can do this without Sean So Alright okay Okay good How can something be off the rails When it was never on them Think off the rails Grubstakers

Do or do not There are no rails So Grubstakers Do or do not, there are no rails Man, I'm Tanner So, George Schultz's son starts snitching to this Wall Street Journal article And I'm not the first one to use the word snitch Because Theranos kind of got hip to Tyler talking to the journalist Because Well, company and blood understand stitches

Hey Well, a number that Tyler apparently saw That he gave to the journalist because well company and blood understand stitches hey well a number that tyler apparently saw um that he gave to the journalist made its way to theranos and then they traced the number back to tyler and started threatening his family that sounds like theranos yeah and then uh tyler's grandfather started calling his family and then yelling at them because their son his grandson was snitching to the press um or at least he they were suspected of it and then so at them because their son, his grandson, was snitching to the press. Or at least they were suspected of it. And then, so Theranos sent their lawyers over to George Schultz's house to intimidate Tyler while his grandfather was there. And then, apparently, Schultz eventually took Tyler's side and said, and this is a quote,

Tyler is not a snitch. This is George Schultz who was involved in the Iran-Contra affair. So he's got good moral upstanding. Yeah. It's just funny seeing one of the Iran-Contra guys using the word snitch as a negative. Right, right, right. Anyway, so the company is kind of starting to go down. Eventually, the Wall Street Journal article comes out,

even though Theranos tried repeatedly to sue them, and they even got Elizabeth Holmes even got Rupert Murdoch to invest in Theranos and then started telling him, hey, you know this John Carreyrou guy? He's going to start this article full of lies. You should fire him.

Because Wall Street Journal was owned by Murdoch and to Murdoch's one and only credit, he actually didn't stop it. Do or do not. There is no truth. Didn't give much of a shit. And so the article came out. At least, I mean, they probably would have collapsed under their own weight.

But I read the book that was written by the guy who wrote the Wall Street Journal article. So according to the book, it was the one and only thing that took down Theranos was his article that he wrote the book about. Oh, good thing he did it. Yeah. Um, the documentary,

the, the, the climax, uh, when they're taking down Elizabeth Holmes, they're interviewing the CEO of fortune magazine. And that's how, you know,

she crossed the line. He's talking about Elizabeth Holmes. Like, how could you lie to me? I run Fortune magazine. You're just some other rich lady now. Suck up to me. It's just so unrelatable.

Like, all of these people's lives are completely unrelatable. And then this guy's crying. You're just like, does he have a box? Right, right. I would like to say George Shultz is, he's credited as defeating communism, and he was then

defeated by capitalism. First they think you're crazy, then they strike you, and then all of a sudden you change the world. I've also heard on Good Standing that his grandson Tyler

is a snack which I have a hard time identifying but I'm just sharing the information now yeah he was quite a snack wasn't he he's got a jaw

or something but he also has this weird like blue blood type mannerisms a way of speaking yeah he's got a blue blood nanotainer

to the point where even this guy who like helped bring the company down, you're like, there's something off about you, too. Right, right. There's something off about everyone here. Well, it's like, one of the things he said is like, you know, I'm trying to salvage my grandpa's reputation, because I don't want, he's really old, I don't want Theranos to

be the thing that really sullies his reputation. It's like, he was Reagan's Secretary of State. He loves Daddy Iran Contra. Yeah. He just wants his love so badly. The better whistleblower was that woman who wrote to the CMS, I thought. Oh, who? She's like Chung. Chung.

Yeah. Oh, right. And she was friends with Tyler, apparently. Oh, I noticed that this lady that didn't have a deep voice, none of us can remember right now. Just a coincidence. Yeah. Well, if she had a deep voice, it would have been confusing because there was so much Elizabeth Holmes. Do her...

Well, like her... We'll just get to her. I mean, I don't really have much about her. You have nothing about the women. Wow, Andy. No, she was being threatened. Let me make up for that then. Okay, go for it. She was being threatened

and harassed by Theranos lawyers for a while too right yeah yeah and eventually um she decided like you know what i'm gonna be a whistleblower too and wrote an email to the the local regulatory authority the cms oh yeah the right people i forget that what that stands for um creamy mandy sweet consumer medical sweet whatever services first i think you're crazy then they fight you and then all of a sudden you change the world cover my shelf in your blood well that email led to kind of like one of it was like the death knell almost for for Theranos right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well I mean in my book it was John Carey's article in the Wall Street Journal that was the death knell for it. A functioning free press. Oh you know what?

It was the death knell for using Edison in in Walgreens. In Walgreens I think. Oh nice. It didn't bring down the company but that was

It dissolved that contract which was their main revenue at that point, I think. Yeah, so it's weird. What other contracts do they really have after that? Right. Also, the first they fight you drop, that's from after the article comes out. And then everyone's pulling their money out of Theranos. And so she goes on mad money with Jim Cramer. First they think you're crazy, then they fight you.

And then all of a sudden you change the world. That's what happens when you try to change things. And Jim Cramer's like, Sal! Sal! Sal! Jim Cramer's actively snorting cocaine while he's asking her about her contracts. He's like, yeah, tell me about Walgreens.

The vagueness of her pitch never changes, and that probably is the comedic underline of this whole thing is when she's selling the company to begin with. There's a, there's a line in her pitch. It's like the chemistry reactions react chemically, leaving a signal to more cells,

which are chemical. Yeah. There's also a through line of just like people with just the slightest amount of like chemistry or medical knowledge who are working with her. And they'll be like, she doesn't seem to know what she's talking about. And then they'll tell her bosses and her bosses will be like, she's great.

She's an innovator. She has a turtleneck and I'm scared of her. Her like comic quote, comically like misinformed aware of description of it. Yeah. It was like a, like the box does chemistry or something to the nanotube. You know how the takeaway a lot of people

had from the Trump election was that if you just never apologize, you can never be wrong. Right, right. The takeaway from her rise to power is just if you keep repeating the words, change the world, people will just assume you're right. Yeah. It is funny that James Mattis, he went

from this clearly fraudulent company and then cleaned up his act to go work for the Trump administration. And then Henry Kissinger, of course, I don't know, went back to genocide, whatever he was doing. So, Sonny gets... Call me when you develop a floating chair. Elizabeth breaks up with Sonny and then fires him. Not sure which one comes first. And then tries to save the company by saying,

oh, but we'll still develop a thing. And then in 2018, the whole company just shut down entirely and shuttered its boards. And since then, she's still about to go to trial. She hasn't gone to trial yet, but she is being charged with wire fraud. Her and Sonny, among a bunch of other things. But good news, she's engaged to a young stud who's the heir of what's the thing? Hotel.

He's a hotel heir. He's a hotel heir, and they went to Burning Man. Oh, wait. Because she broke up with Sonny and fired him. Yeah, yeah. So she decided to no longer date older guys and now she's dating younger guys who take her to Burning Man. That's a double breakup.

If you're broken up with and then fired. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know. And he's probably like, oh, I never took her to Burning Man. Yeah, someone needs to take him to Burning Man. Yeah. And the worst thing about this entire thing, similar to the Fyre Fest situation, is that we're

fucking celebrating these goddamn failures and not pointing them out for the terrible piece of shit they are, which is the sad reality that a white failure is a media success.

And it's fucking bullshit because now they're going to make a movie about this Elizabeth Holmes Theranos situation and Jennifer Lawrence is Elizabeth Holmes and Sonny Balwani,

I just checked this, Aziz Ansari is going to be playing him. That is not true. That is completely true. There's no way this is true. That's right, yes. And the fact that our audience and Alex

are excited about this only further proves my point that celebrating these goddamn anti-heroes is ruining society and rotting people's brains. You're lucky your apartment has no signal. Can't check any of those. I'm sure there are more qualified Indian actors to play Sonny. Yeah, they could get Randy. Yeah, I love that guy.

He's never been rude on a date, ever. He's only rude in his jokes. He's a generous lover. There's a scene in the movie where Sonny Balwani is swimming around looking for the pussy, looking for the pussy, looking for the pussy. I was going to say where he pitches a new aspect of the Edison called the claw. Yeah, like the thing that he did. I like Alex's. Like the sex thing.

Yeah. The swimming in the hot tub made me laugh more. Uh-oh. He has to eat that shit underwater. Yeah, I hope they go to jail. Yeah, I do too. Also, I kind of hope that movie fails.

She can run the jail. Do you think she'll run the jail? Yeah, I think so. I think after one day of, I noticed that you are individually shackling people, but if you take their blood, you can control them from their mind. First they don't listen to you, and then they try to fight you, and then you run the jail. Suck it to me.

Well, I wish them the best of luck in hell. Do we have anything else? I'm out of stuff. finished my notes that's where the movie ended so i don't have it i just want to say movie not that good yep i agree listen to this podcast instead you don't need to follow up now yeah also we have way less ads than the uh we have no ads then well for now yeah Yeah, we'll get a negotiation. We're going to make a Taylor Swift bad blood version

of the Elizabeth Theranos bad blood situation. So look forward to that, ladies and gentlemen. If you enjoyed this podcast about Theranos, you'll love Blue Chew, a pill you can take over the counter, makes you as hard as the financial regulations around blood in America. I think that's everything.

And with that, this has been Grubstickers. I'm Yogi Paiwal. I'm Andy Palmer. Steve Jeffries. I'm Sean McCarthy. Thank you very much. New episode. Oh wait, do you have anything to plug? Yeah, listen to my podcast. Idiots. I'm on Poddam America and Ballin' Out Super

if you wish this podcast was about Dragon Ball instead. First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world. I'm Sean McCarthy. Nano Tanner. Want to go first? I think absolutely. I think the promise of technology is that

we can make access to basic infrastructure and, in many cases, to more advanced infrastructure than is even currently available today in developed economies, available to people who are the most in need in the same way that cell phones have leapfrogged over the lack of landlines in so many places. And I think the promise of Silicon Valley and these places in the world in which there's so much creativity is that we can demonstrate that there are models for doing well by doing good. Look, I know that we all have numbers in this game. We're supposed to just forget that we make people die.

But when it hits home, it's hard. I're supposed to just forget that we make people die. But when it hits home, it's hard. Gonna cover your little breasts with some bubbles. Excuse me, I'm Detective Harrison, Conway Police. Oh, shit. Yeah, I wasn't touching her in a bad way or anything.