00:45:49 · Max Read, John Carreyrou
[00:45:49] S1: I know she tried to get Rupert Murdoch even to shut down the Wall Street Journal investigation. [00:45:54] S7: That's right. She appealed to Murdoch. There was a a point in, I think, was September 2015. We were about less than a month from publishing the story where she showed up in New York and took the elevator. I think it was the 8th Floor at the time where Murdoch had his office and went to visit him there. Of course, you know, she had access because Murdoch had invested in Theranos. He was actually Theranos... Unbeknownst to me at the time, he was Theranos' biggest... Single biggest investor. He had put in a $125,000,000. So she went to see him in the News Corp building, three floors up from where I was in the newsroom, and appealed to him to to kill the story. [00:46:35] S1: Yeah. Let me get to another viewer question. The the movie is constructed around encounters that Nathan Fielder has with Elizabeth Holmes. And in the movie, at least the first half, he's living in this beach house with her, and he's sort of trying to figure out, you know, who she is in some sense, whether she really believes what she's saying. And she, both intentionally and maybe inadvertently tries to defend herself. One of her defenses, which comes up in the film on a few occasions, is that she was misled or framed by her boyfriend, Sunny Balwani, the chief operating officer. I have a question from a Twitter user named Mark b. Devil's advocate, is it possible that it was all Sunny? I'm genuinely asking. What do you say, John?
00:46:35 · Max Read, John Carreyrou, Rob Copeland
[00:46:35] S1: Yeah. Let me get to another viewer question. The the movie is constructed around encounters that Nathan Fielder has with Elizabeth Holmes. And in the movie, at least the first half, he's living in this beach house with her, and he's sort of trying to figure out, you know, who she is in some sense, whether she really believes what she's saying. And she, both intentionally and maybe inadvertently tries to defend herself. One of her defenses, which comes up in the film on a few occasions, is that she was misled or framed by her boyfriend, Sunny Balwani, the chief operating officer. I have a question from a Twitter user named Mark b. Devil's advocate, is it possible that it was all Sunny? I'm genuinely asking. What do you say, John? [00:47:17] S7: No way. I mean, Sunny absolutely had a hand in this, but they ran this company as a couple. [00:47:23] S2: Mhmm.
00:47:23 · Rob Copeland, John Carreyrou
[00:47:23] S2: Mhmm. [00:47:24] S7: And probably the the best way to understand that is to go and look at their texts. Mhmm. The government pulled, you know, thousands of their texts spanning a number of years, I think, essentially, from from when he joined Theranos in o nine to 2015, 2016. And when you read those texts, you get the the picture of a couple running this company together. They're checking in with each other all the time. They're doing everything together. This was a duo. Mhmm. And, you know, you could certainly accuse Sunny of being a bad influence on her. You could also make the case that she was a bad influence on Sunny. But the the notion that that she wasn't involved Mhmm. Is farcical. Yeah. And I would argue that the the blame should be on her even a little bit more than on Sunny because she was CEO. Right. She was chairman of the board. She had voting rights that gave her, you know, something like 90% voting control of the company. She was at the controls of this thing. Right. And she was piloting the cover up.
00:48:44 · Max Read, John Carreyrou
[00:48:44] S1: Yeah. Another defense that comes up in the movie is the idea that she'd never quite quite lied, but had merely miscommunicated or sort of communicated incorrectly. Was that a familiar defense to you? Was that something that she had talked about before or or used at trial? Wait. I'm thinking specifically of this scene. We've already touched on it where she brings out, the Edison. And she She brings out the mini lab. Right. That's exactly the problem she brings out the mini And she effectively says that when she says this machine can do something, she doesn't mean it literally can do it, but but sort of in some hypothetical way someday could do it or something like that. Yeah. Was that a familiar defense to you? [00:49:22] S7: I mean, I think it's one of, you know, a panoply of defenses that she's used. I can't remember if she used it at at the trial or not, but the the bottom line is the mini lab couldn't do anything. The the mini lab... I don't think the mini lab had a single test ever validated on it. You know, using the word can [00:49:45] S1: Yeah. [00:49:46] S7: And and the whole debate they... The back and forth they have over the meaning of the word can, it's kinda besides the point. That machine couldn't do anything.
00:49:46 · John Carreyrou, Max Read
[00:49:46] S7: And and the whole debate they... The back and forth they have over the meaning of the word can, it's kinda besides the point. That machine couldn't do anything. [00:49:55] S1: Yeah. What did you make of the Abbott and Costello scene? This is another sort of pivotal scene in the movie where Nathan shows her who's on the classic Abbott and Costello routine, who's on first. And he tries to get her to talk about what's funny about it. And she says that she doesn't... She says, oh, I find it funny, but then she can't figure out... She... She's unable to answer the question, what's the name of the first baseman, which is obviously the whole premise of the joke. Do you think it's possible that she actually didn't understand? [00:50:24] S7: I think she understood it and that she was playing dumb. Yeah. And the reason for that is that there there was a a sequence. It was either the the sequence immediately before that one or the one before where, you know, they're sitting at the dining room table in the beach bungalow in San Diego, and the the pieces of the Theranos device are are, you know, laid out in front of them, and Fielder floats the notion that she just interacts with the world differently. [00:50:55] S1: Mhmm.
00:50:55 · Max Read, John Carreyrou
[00:50:55] S1: Mhmm. [00:50:56] S7: She sees the world differently and that perhaps, you know, that explains why, you know, statements that she felt were innocent were interpreted by investors and others, doctors, patients as lies. And so, my interpretation is that she felt that playing dumb about the Abbott and Costello routine in the next sequence Mhmm. Would further that narrative that she's, you know, this neurodivergent autistic, entrepreneur who functions on a on a different wavelength. She's very calculating, and her calculus was behaving this way helps me. Yeah. And it helps this narrative that Fielder himself floated. And so therefore, that's what I'm gonna go with now. [00:51:42] S1: What makes you so sure of the calculation that's going on there? [00:51:47] S7: Because I've seen her be calculating for years now Mhmm. About... In a in a in a bunch of different situations, you know, in the way she responded to questions when she was interviewed for three days in a row by the SEC. I I saw her testify on her own behalf at the trial. I saw how she responded to my stories back in late two thousand fifteen. There was one incredibly telling moment, which was when she came to the Wall Street Journal's tech conference about ten days after my first front page story was published. And, you know, she came out swinging, and she said some bald faced lies in that appearance, and she knew exactly what she was doing.