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00:00:34 · Max Read
[00:00:34] S1: It's been a week since I've seen You Can See Everything, the new documentary about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, and I still wanna talk about it. And from what I'm hearing, most of you wanna talk about it too. And I'm not surprised. As we discussed on the episode last week, Elizabeth Holmes has proven to be one of the most enduringly fascinating characters our culture has produced. On top of that, the documentary introduces us to a new fascinating and emblematic character, Holmes' domineering, sniffling, gun toting romantic partner, Billy Evans. The movie raises a lot of questions about Holmes. Is she a sociopath, neurodivergent, self aware, controlled by the men in her life? But it raises as many questions about Evans, like, who is this guy? Where does he come from, and why does he care so much about his scrambled eggs? What is he like when the cameras are off, and what is he getting out of this relationship? For that matter, what is she getting out of it? So we're gonna take on these two characters one at a time by talking with people who've reported on them. First, I talked to Times Finance reporter Rob Copeland, who spoke extensively with Billy while reporting on his blood testing startup last year and whose reaction to You Can See Everything surprised me. We were joined by Erin Griffith, who reported on the Theranos trial to discuss the fascinating character of Billy, the mystery of their relationship, and the response to the film in Silicon Valley. Then John Carreyrou came back to answer your questions about Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos, and the truth of what she knows. One final note. While we were gentle last week, this episode is filled with spoilers. If you haven't seen You Can See Everything, I suggest you hit pause now. But if you have, sit back and relax. I'm Max Read. This is Hard Fork. I'm joined by finance reporter Rob Copeland, who interviewed Billy Evans about his new startup last year, and tech writer Erin Griffith, who reported on Elizabeth Holmes' trial for the Times. Welcome to Hard Fork, guys.
00:02:27 · Rob Copeland, Max Read
[00:02:27] S2: Hey. Thank you. [00:02:29] S1: So one of the biggest surprises of this movie is that, the person who kind of dominates it over three hours is not Elizabeth Holmes, the subject, is not Nathan Fielder, the director, documentarian. It's this guy, Evans, Elizabeth Holmes' romantic partner and also, business partner. Billy is basically the protagonist certainly of the second half of the movie. I don't think this is the right phrase, but he is kind of the breakout star to the extent that a kind of sniffling reactionary quasi manic, you know, force can be thought of, you know, in a three hour documentary can be referred to as the breakout star. But he is the person about whom when I emerged, I kinda had the most questions. So, Rob, you spoke with Billy for an article you wrote last May called Elizabeth Holmes' Partner Has a New Blood Testing Startup. I wanna get into that story, the connection to Theranos, but maybe we can start by you telling us how that story came together. [00:03:25] S2: Sure. So this might be crazy if you've seen the movie now. But a year ago ish, someone told me that they heard that Billy Evans had a blood testing startup, and I thought that was the wildest thing I'd ever I'd ever heard. I thought I was being scammed. I thought, like, seriously, like, be more creative than Elizabeth Holmes is doing it all over again. [00:03:43] S1: So you hear that he's running a blood testing startup, and you start making calls?
00:03:43 · Max Read, Rob Copeland
[00:03:43] S1: So you hear that he's running a blood testing startup, and you start making calls? [00:03:47] S2: I start making calls, and someone had sort of tipped me off that he had asked them for money. And this person obviously took the meeting for the same reason we would, which was I can't believe this is happening. I will say that last year when I sort of got wind that there was such thing as Theranos two point o, although that wasn't what they were calling it by that time, I thought Billy Evans. I thought I'd call Billy Evans, and he would tell me to, you know, jump off a bridge. And in fact, he was extremely charming. I... When I called him and I said, I'd wanna talk about your startup, he said, which startup? That's a good joke. I mean, maybe the the one that involves blood testing, but... Yeah. [00:04:26] S1: Yeah. Wait. So tell me a little more about this business. We know it's called Haemanthus, which is the name of a flower also known as the blood lily, and it's really intended for pets. [00:04:35] S2: Correct. It was... The idea was you could take a sample from your pet instead of having to go to a vet and spend, say, $500 on a blood test, you could you could do it for, you know, a dollar a test. [00:04:47] S1: And presumably, the reason they're starting with pets is that it's a sort of lower regulatory threshold for them.
00:04:47 · Max Read, Rob Copeland, Erin Griffith
[00:04:47] S1: And presumably, the reason they're starting with pets is that it's a sort of lower regulatory threshold for them. [00:04:53] S2: Well, Max, I'm glad you asked because I just so happen to have here a piece of paper that Billy sent me, which was evidence in his mind that this was a lower regulated business, that it's dated October 2024 and it's correspondence with the USDA. And he said that this is evidence that we are allowed to do this. I called the USDA. They said that's not what that means. [00:05:20] S1: And what do you think was different between the Billy you talked to and the Billy that we see in the movie, if anything? [00:05:26] S2: Well, I would say that the big similarity is that Billy has a tendency to say, you can ask me anything you want, that he is an open book. And [00:05:34] S3: then You can see everything even?
00:05:34 · Erin Griffith, Rob Copeland
[00:05:34] S3: then You can see everything even? [00:05:35] S2: You can just say... Erin, enough. Come on. And and then proceeds to, you know, not tell you everything that you do want to know. The the big difference between what I was talking about and what was on screen was that on screen, he's so open about how Elizabeth is involved in this. I mean, I would have had no idea last year while I was speaking to him that they had already filmed months or years of footage of the two of them starting this thing together. Yeah. My impression was that she had nothing to do with this company, that they didn't bring her up in meetings. It was like she who must not be named. She's certainly not mentioned in the deck, and that Billy will give you long speeches about how qualified he is to start this, what a brilliant scientist he is, how he helped start this company which helps do, like, radar for self driving cars. So the... It was, like, the biggest inside joke. Right? Because it's a blood testing startup from Elizabeth Holmes' partner. The photographs they're providing look suspiciously identical to the Theranos device, but, oh, goodness gracious. Don't, you know, don't make the connection. I thought that I was breaking the biggest story in the history of technology, business, and media, and it turned out that Billy had been filming a documentary, like, memorializing it for two years.