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
00:20:02 · Rob Copeland, Max Read, Erin Griffith
[00:20:02] S2: A MAGA gossip blog is what Erin calls me on Slack when she's angry. Speaking [00:20:10] S1: of the, the Charlie Kirk scene, one of the sort of big actual real world revelations in the movie, maybe big is overstating it, but it certainly feels big in the movie, is that Elizabeth Holmes' Twitter account, which has been active over the last period of time that she's been in prison and has gotten strangely combative and conservative, is being run by Billy. And Billy is sort of claiming that she... Either that she's sending him the specific words or that, he's just... He's tweeting on her behalf. You... I imagine, Rob, you had no idea that that this was happening while while you were interviewing him. [00:20:45] S2: I had no idea, and it would have been so off the wall, truly. [00:20:49] S1: So there's one tweet in particular that, it doesn't quite play a role in the movie, but it it bears... It's... It bears on something that happens in the movie. I'm gonna read this and then some other tweets, and I want you guys to tell me whether you think those are tweets from Elizabeth Holmes or from Billy Evans. So the first tweet, Charlie Kirk talked profoundly about forgiveness, its power. I keep thinking about that today and what it means to rise in the face of the unforgivable. Is that Elizabeth Holmes or Billy Evans? [00:21:16] S3: That sounds like her. I mean, it's like pretty obvious, especially having watched the movie, which tweets are coming from Holmes and which ones are coming from Billy. [00:21:24] S1: Okay. I'm gonna read
00:21:24 · Max Read, Erin Griffith, Rob Copeland
[00:21:24] S1: Okay. I'm gonna read [00:21:24] S3: There's like one that's like very online brain, and and then the other is kind of like this fortune cookie, like, you know, inspirational stuff. [00:21:32] S1: Okay. Here's one. She posts a photo of Daenerys from Game of Thrones. Daenerys is the dragon princess who emerges from flames having birthed dragons to retake her throne, and she says, they can bruise and bloody me, but still I rise. Is that Elizabeth or Billy? [00:21:48] S3: I mean, given that she didn't even know about Abbott and Costello, I feel like she probably hasn't seen Game of Thrones, maybe, but feels like Billy. [00:21:56] S1: That's a Billy one. Okay. One about, Zohran Mamdani. What are the odds that Zohran... [00:22:02] S3: I'm just gonna... Billy. [00:22:03] S2: Tony, okay. We're planning to read this. Is she... She's... Oh, this councilman that she really liked. [00:22:12] S1: Okay. Here's one. It's a question. Ever feel like a book was written for you, question mark? And it is an... I'm pretty sure AI generated image of a hardcover book, the title of which is How to Fit into Society When You're an Alien from an Alternate Universe. [00:22:28] S3: I mean, this speaks to the narrative that I was talking about that Billy's trying to put out there about her, about, like, how she's just so strange and unknowable and weird. So in a way, it kinda feels like him. And also, we know at least that she did not AI generate Yeah. From prison.