00:11:56 · Erin Griffith
[00:11:56] S3: I mean, we talked about this a little bit last week, but it just was so reminiscent of her relationship with Sunny Balwani, especially when it comes down to the fact that they're starting the same company again over again. And so, like... And and it's clear that the movie wants you to sort of make that connection. When I was preparing for this podcast, I went back and looked at the eight page single spaced letter that Billy wrote to the court ahead of Holmes' sentencing to try to essentially argue for her to get, you know, a lower sentence. And there were... There was, like, over a 100 letters that she collected from a bunch of people, and it was really fascinating because it was kind of the first look into her personal life. There was a lot of photos in his letter. But, like, one thing that really stuck out to me was that even then, he was kind of participating in this narrative that the movie continues, which is that she's this sort of weird person who doesn't really relate to others in the same way, and that's why she was a little bit of a miscommunicator with investors. And he had this line in it that was like, you know, everything about... So many things that were written about her were untrue, including the fact that she's a good salesperson. And he writes, Liz has no ability to sell something. She simply believes in things with such depth that it is alluring. She's more of a zealot than a showman. And it kind of it kind of fits into this movie a little bit because you're... The movie is showing us how she believes her own reality. And so you're like, okay. I I sort of see the narrative that you're making, and and it actually is kind of proven out in the movie.
00:13:30 · Rob Copeland, Erin Griffith, Max Read
[00:13:30] S2: Yeah. I I think I had a slightly different take, which was, one, I I didn't necessarily buy their relationship 100%. But as someone who interviews people for a living, he did something very recognizable, which is he volunteered answers to questions that were not asked. You know, Nathan asks him, you know, if he was dating other people when he met Elizabeth, and all of a sudden, he's volunteering. I was dating three people, actually. It was like he's wanting... He has, like, a PR strategy to answer the question he wishes he was asked, and it's sort of our job as journalists to get around that or to just repeat the question. But that seems very very b list corporate executive who's just done one day of PR training to me. [00:14:16] S3: Probably at two x speed. Right? [00:14:18] S2: Yeah. For sure. Whereas she at least... Elizabeth was sort of a a difficult person to interview, really, if you were trying to to get anything through her because she's just looking at you and not blinking. [00:14:31] S1: Do you guys think... I mean, I'm just gonna come out and ask it. Do you guys think they're in love? [00:14:35] S3: Yeah. I mean, maybe I just am a sucker who got taken along for a ride by Nathan Fielder and Elizabeth Holmes, but I felt like their relationship was genuine. It was maybe the most genuine thing in the whole movie. [00:14:48] S2: I thought, honestly, they had definitely made eggs together before. Like, she... He knew what... How long that was going to take, and I I related to that.
00:14:48 · Rob Copeland, Max Read
[00:14:48] S2: I thought, honestly, they had definitely made eggs together before. Like, she... He knew what... How long that was going to take, and I I related to that. [00:14:58] S1: Having made eggs with somebody in the past, you were able to recognize that exact exact dynamic. [00:15:05] S2: And by the way, for the record, he's he's wrong. You shouldn't overbeat scrambled eggs. It makes them tough. She was doing a better job. [00:15:12] S1: This is the kind of hard hitting step you can only get on Hard Fork, how to make eggs. So one reason I wanna ask about the love stuff is something that has come together in our conversations, Rob, for me is the sense that part of what Billy gets out of this relationship is, attention, notoriety, sort of access to, people that he might not otherwise have. You know, in many ways, it sounds like Theranos is a sort of circus show. It doesn't have a ton of money. It's kind of... The only thing it offers is this kind of inside joke as you were saying. So I wanted to ask you, Erin, as somebody who reports on the the world of investing in Silicon Valley. I mean, is there any chance that they could that they could build this into something bigger than than a sort of a joke?
00:15:56 · Erin Griffith
[00:15:56] S3: Well, I mean, there has been this trend in the last few years of big Silicon Valley venture capital firms doing what can be kind of characterized as a troll investment, writing a big check to someone who has either been, like, canceled or embroiled in controversy. There... There's been a few of these deals lately. A lot of them are coming from Andreessen Horowitz. They gave money to Andy Rubin, who was pushed out of Google after being accused of sexual impropriety with some colleagues. They gave over $300,000,000 to Adam Neumann for his we work kind of we live flow company. There is this kind of history of, like, firms investing in a controversial founder as a way to make a stand to say, like, we don't care about, like, the media or the zeitgeist or the cancel culture or anything like that. We are going to back founders no matter what. And so I could see somebody taking that side of the bet. That said, I did do a little search, and I haven't seen too many examples of VC firms doing this for people who are actually convicted Yeah. Of fraud. And so, I mean, she's a felon. And so the the only example that I can find is Trevor Milton, who was the CEO of Nikola, the self driving truck company that they, you know, famously posted that video of their truck driving itself, but in fact, it was it was rolling down a hill. And so... And and that guy was pardoned by Trump, and he now has a new company called Cyber Jet Aircraft that they were going out trying to raise some money. You know, he's he's the CEO of that company, and I don't know if they've actually raised a lot of money. Billy McFarland from Fyre Fest not been successful in trying to raise money. So so I do think there's a there's a chance that they draw a line at, you know, someone who has actually been convicted of of fraud. You know, TBD on Sam Bankman Fried Yeah. Whenever whenever he gets out or if he's if he's working on FTX two point o with Caroline Ellison from, you know, from prison.
00:18:01 · Max Read, Rob Copeland, Erin Griffith
[00:18:01] S1: Speaking of the great love stories of our time. [00:18:04] S2: Can I add? Sorry. Just one one thing I sort of disagree with you on, Erin, is I think we underestimate a little bit how much, at least on Wall Street for sure, how much they love to prove journalists wrong, pundits wrong. So the fact that this film has reignited a whole bunch of of people like us talking about, oh my gosh. Can you believe what she did? Can you believe... She actually... No, guys. I swear she was found guilty by a a jury of her peers. That just pushes people... That pushes that button, right, to, like, to to flip back at you. So at least I've definitely been hearing from from people who want me to know that, like, she's not all that bad. I I could see a universe in in which, you know, it works. [00:18:47] S3: I think the I think the way... The the thing that that it would hinge on is if she gets a pardon, because then that's just an easy way to tell that story to investors and for them to tell it to their LPs.
00:18:47 · Erin Griffith, Max Read, Rob Copeland
[00:18:47] S3: I think the I think the way... The the thing that that it would hinge on is if she gets a pardon, because then that's just an easy way to tell that story to investors and for them to tell it to their LPs. [00:19:00] S1: I mean, one thing it's... I'm glad you brought that up because one theme of the movie and one thing that... Consistency and the thing you're talking about is there's a political edge to this. And part of the journey we see Billy take over the course of the film is from this kind of overprotective, but, I mean, let's be honest, controlling sort of supportive partner to this, you know, jaw grinding, gun toting reactionary who's defending Charlie Kirk over the dinner table. And it seems... You know, I I I wanna note too that, Jessica Reed Kraus who runs a blog called House and Habit, which is sort of... I'm not quite sure how to put it other than to say it's kind of a MAGA gossip blog, has declared Elizabeth Holmes, the original maha. So there is... I think there are these sort of vague efforts to kind of grab onto Holmes, you know, aided by Billy as a kind of Trumpian figure, as a figure for the tech. Right? So maybe if anybody's gonna do it, it would be Andreessen Horowitz. But I I think I agree with you that there needs to be some kind of pardon or mechanism that they can tell the story. [00:20:02] S2: A MAGA gossip blog is what Erin calls me on Slack when she's angry. Speaking