00:54:52 · Max Read, John Carreyrou
[00:54:52] S1: Yeah. Let me ask a question from Twitter. This is from a user called Inquisitive Mind. Do you have any basic human sympathy for her? You reframe to her victims, and I understand that, but this is a woman who's been through some rough things. [00:55:07] S7: Yes. I have sympathy for her. I think the The US justice, system is is really harsh. The US criminal system is harsh. She got eleven eleven years and three months, I think her her sentence was. And, you know, that's that's pretty heavy sense, perhaps, out of whack with with the crime. I I also felt sympathy for her, you know, seeing her in in that bungalow with the kids, juggling the kids. There's a scene that I felt was very genuine where I felt for her when Fielder is talking to Billy, and she's in the foreground talking to her lawyers on the phone about what prison is going to be like. [00:55:54] S1: Yeah. [00:55:55] S7: And you see her gradually break down in tears, and I think those tears were very genuine, and I felt bad for her then. [00:56:01] S1: Yeah. It's a it's a... One of the remarkable things about the movie is it's a sort of portrait that I don't think is... It doesn't... It generates sympathy without removing any of the sort of dam... Damning parts of of what happened and and why you would expect her to be in jail, I suppose. I I do wanna ask about Billy. I have a question from Ryan Parks on Twitter. Do you think the husband is a mark or opportunist?
00:56:01 · Max Read, John Carreyrou
[00:56:01] S1: Yeah. It's a it's a... One of the remarkable things about the movie is it's a sort of portrait that I don't think is... It doesn't... It generates sympathy without removing any of the sort of dam... Damning parts of of what happened and and why you would expect her to be in jail, I suppose. I I do wanna ask about Billy. I have a question from Ryan Parks on Twitter. Do you think the husband is a mark or opportunist? [00:56:26] S7: I think he's both. Yeah. I think she is using him. I mean, you can't tell me it's a coincidence that the first guy she dates seriously gets together with after the Theranos scandal has blown up and and basically made her this this notorious con woman. You can't tell me it's a coincidence that it's a very rich heir. Yeah. I think he's also an opportunist because you get the sense as you watch the the film that he wants to capitalize on this opportunity. There are parts of him that are, you know, outraged by what she's gone through because he feels she's innocent. There's... You know, there are parts of him who love her love her and and feel empathy for her, but there's also a part of him, I feel confident in saying that does see an opportunity Yeah. For his own, you know, career, for... You know, they were hoping to make money off the film. Right. They were hoping to rehabilitate her image. He's definitely an opportunist. [00:57:38] S1: Yeah. I mean, that's... It seems like one of the major themes of the second half of the movie is the many ways that he's found opportunity even as she's in prison to make use of her image and and Yeah.
00:57:38 · Max Read, John Carreyrou
[00:57:38] S1: Yeah. I mean, that's... It seems like one of the major themes of the second half of the movie is the many ways that he's found opportunity even as she's in prison to make use of her image and and Yeah. [00:57:47] S7: Mean, the the digital replica, that right there is... It feels exploitative. [00:57:53] S1: Yeah. Yeah. One question we got, one response we got to the episode we recorded last week was a sort of question about why why should we still care about Elizabeth Holmes? I'm gonna I'm gonna read a comment, a sort of representative comment from Matt on the Times site. Why can no one look away from Elizabeth Holmes? Because the media keeps throwing stories about her at me. Every time I see a headline, my first reaction is, who is this person again? And my second is, why are we still talking about her? So we talked a little last week about why Elizabeth Holmes is a fascinating cultural figure, and you, in fact, wrote a great piece on the subject too that's available in the Times app. But I'm also wondering if you think we should stop talking about her. Like, is there a case? What is the case for her continued relevance as a news story?
00:58:36 · John Carreyrou, Max Read, Rob Copeland
[00:58:36] S7: First of all, I'll remind everyone. Why are we talking about her? We're talking about her because she invited these filmmakers into her home thirty four days before going to prison to try to basically retell the story, rewrite history, and have people feel sorry for her. That's why we're talking about her. She did this. She's the one who made this moment happen. And, you know, I suspect that it hasn't panned out exactly the way she hoped. Sure. Because I do think this film is is damning in its own way. It's a terrific movie. It's a terrific piece of art, but I think it really doesn't make her or Billy look good. Yeah. But, yeah, I keep coming back to the fact that she's the one who is making us talk about her. Mhmm. She's the one who's not going away. [00:59:30] S1: Yeah. Okay. Let me ask one final question. This is also from Corey O'Neil on Twitter. Corey writes, judge Davila asked whether the pathology of fraud is the inability or refusal to accept responsibility. After years of investigating Holmes, do you think someone can evade reality so persistently that a conscious refusal eventually becomes a genuine inability to recognize reality? [00:59:55] S7: Again, I don't buy the narrative that she doesn't know that she lied and that she doesn't know that she did wrong. I think she does. [01:00:04] S2: Mhmm.
01:00:04 · Rob Copeland, John Carreyrou, Max Read
[01:00:04] S2: Mhmm. [01:00:04] S7: But she's continuing, yes, to put on the act that she didn't do anything wrong and that whether or not you believe that she did or not, that she doesn't believe she did anything wrong. Yeah. I think judge Davila was incredibly wise when he made that statement during her her sentencing because this is someone who had many, many, many opportunities to take responsibility or take partial responsibility or show contrition, admit, you know, that she could have done things differently, feel sorry for the patients whose lives she impacted, employees, doctors, investors, she never once did that. [01:00:49] S2: Mhmm. [01:00:50] S7: And, so I actually wrote that quote down. I was at her sentencing hearing. And when Davila uttered those words, I wrote the quote down verbatim in my notebook, and then I used it in the epilogue I wrote, for the book. I wrote an epilogue after the sentencing hearing, the long one, chapter length, and I used that Davila quote because I thought it was... It really encapsulated, her mind and her psychology and her just refusal to take responsibility. [01:01:22] S1: Well, that's a great note to end on. John, thank you for joining us again. I have to recommend Hard Fork listeners, our audience, read Bad Blood if you've seen this movie. If you haven't seen this movie, it's a great work of, journalism, a great work of nonfiction, and thanks again for coming on. Thanks for having me.
01:01:22 · Max Read, S0, S6
[01:01:22] S1: Well, that's a great note to end on. John, thank you for joining us again. I have to recommend Hard Fork listeners, our audience, read Bad Blood if you've seen this movie. If you haven't seen this movie, it's a great work of, journalism, a great work of nonfiction, and thanks again for coming on. Thanks for having me. [01:01:45] S0: Compute scales in an instant. Storage scales in an instant. So why does the network underneath them still get ordered months ahead? Sized for a peak that may never come? With Lumen Intelligent Internet, businesses can add network capacity in minutes when demand shows up and dial it back when things quiet down. No guessing months ahead, just room to grow across more than 10,000,000 US business locations. Finally, a network that moves as fast as your ambition. Visit lumen.com/ambitionready. Lumen, the trusted network for AI. [01:02:19] S6: Ripple has been powering modern finance for a decade. It's not our first trip around the blockchain, and it won't be our last. We're leading the charge to bridge the gap between existing financial systems and the future of finance. You can have it all. Legacy stability and digital innovation. Systems that work with your other systems. Because with the right partner, the question isn't crypto or traditional finance. The question is simply, why choose? A new standard of modern finance. It's happening with Ripple. For informational purposes only, availability of products can vary and may be provided by different Ripple entities.