Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos deceived investors like Jim Mattis and Bill Clinton by mimicking Steve Jobs and fabricating medical heritage, while using cult-like tactics to silence whistleblowers. Despite FDA bans on their Edison device and the FDA clearing the NanoTainer, Holmes rallied staff against John Carreyrou's exposé with Space Invaders games mocking him. As Walgreens severed ties and indictments piled up by late 2017, the company collapsed in Newark, leaving Holmes facing up to 20 years for fraud that endangered patients, ultimately exposing Silicon Valley's blind faith in charismatic deception. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Trust Your Girlfriends00:02:13
This is an iHeart podcast.
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On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Bajanista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never, ever taught.
If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
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Will Farrell's Big Money Players and iHeart podcast presents soccer moms.
So I'm Leanne.
This is my best friend Janet.
Hey.
And we have been joined at the hip since high school.
Absolutely.
A redacted amount of years later.
We're still joined at the hip, just a little bit bigger hips.
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We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey with all the snacks and drinks.
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Making Money Accessible00:15:33
What a hit a BOGO.
Well, then you done.
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I'm Robert Evans.
This is Behind the Bastards TV podcast.
Bad People talks about...
What are you talking about?
Oh my God.
Part two of our Elizabeth Holmes podcast.
It's actually a TV podcast.
It's a TV podcast.
The video of this would include even more salad eating than the audio does.
Oh, yeah.
And that's actually a bonus feature.
That is a bonus feature.
It's actually something you can just turn on like audio commentary.
You can just watch me eating a salad throughout.
It's you watching a salad, eating a salad, and me commenting on the nature of salads over the years.
The salad's really behind the salads.
The salad's really big, and I'm not going to finish it.
It's too large.
It's substantial.
It's an enormous salad.
Closing it.
Part two.
Now, in our last episode, we talked about Elizabeth Holmes' rise to prominence and the kind of wealth that people make when they haven't actually made anything.
But like because of tech industry voodoo, everyone says their company is worth billions of dollars.
She got that kind of rich.
Yep.
I also, during the break, came up with a nickname for Sonny Balwani.
Like we had Liho for Elizabeth Holmes, Sunball.
When I was listening to the ABC News podcast about Elizabeth Holmes a few months ago, my dog's name is Sonny.
And every time they would mention Sonny Balwani, my dog would be like, they'd be like, Sonny was a known scammer.
And then she could just stare at my dog and know that he's also all right.
One thing I'm excited for is when we have a mass shooter named Alexa because the news that day is going to be quite a trip.
That's going to be the time that it's like, you know what?
We are never again reporting on a mass shooter's name.
It's too messy.
That'll finally do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, if you watched any documentaries about Holmes or read much of the more sensational coverage about her life, you're left with a question.
How did she trick so many prominent, intelligent men into believing her smoke and mirrors were real, functioning technology?
Jim Mattis is probably the USA's most respected living soldier.
He's a general so widely admired that the Democrats in Congress didn't bother fighting when Trump appointed him Secretary of Defense.
His nickname is the Warrior Monk.
Here's what he told Fortune about why he trusted Elizabeth Holmes.
She really does want to make a dent in the universe, one that is positive.
The strength of the leader's vision in the military is seen as the critical element in that unit's performance.
I wanted to be around something again that had that sort of leadership.
In 2000...
I just, there's a lot of, I just have strong opinions about how J-Matt.
Not about J-Matt specifically, but about how all the people, specifically men who fell for all of this, have never been really asked to back it up with anything but a shrug.
I want to get through all of the different things and then we'll discuss.
In 2014, Fortune talked to board member Henry Kissinger as well.
The 91-year-old former Secretary of State and forever war criminal first said, she looks like 19.
And then, quote, asked to assess her as a leader because he's seen a few, he responds, I can't compare her to anyone else because I haven't seen anyone with her very special attributes.
She has iron will, strong determination, but nothing dramatic.
There is no performance associated with her.
I have seen no sign that financial gain is of any interest to her.
She's like a monk.
She isn't flashy.
She wouldn't walk into a room and take it over, but she would once the subject gets to her field.
Now, if you read up on Elizabeth Holmes, we'll hear a number of theories as to why this is all the case.
I've run across a lot of speculation on Twitter, mostly by women, that it's just because she's hot and these old distinguished men were just horny for her and let themselves get fooled.
Definitely part of the reason.
Definitely part of the reason.
That's certainly in line with some of the claims Dr. Fuse has made.
Remember back in 2005 when she convinced that VC, Donald Lucas, to invest a bunch of money in Theranos?
Well, Dr. Fuse claims, quote, Elizabeth called Lucas from China and he would hear her speaking Mandarin in the background.
When he saw how attractive she was, he got Oracle chairman Larry Ellison involved and he invested.
Now, again, Fuse is biased and a doctor.
He's a biased physician and also a psychiatrist.
But we do have Lucas' own recollections about why he got involved with Theranos.
In a 2009 interview with a Berkeley PhD student, he said this.
My assistant and I had a call from Beijing.
Of course, I'll take the call.
He said, you've got to meet this young lady, Elizabeth Holmes.
I said, John, what?
You've got to meet her.
She's fabulous.
Okay, I'm figuring 20 minutes, right?
This young lady comes in.
I think she probably was 21 years old at the time and had left Stanford, didn't graduate, and she had a company called Theranos.
And I thought this was going to be a short conversation.
Well, now I'm chairman of the board and I spent a lot of time with her and the company and she's doing super.
He then went on to tell this grad student that she was also good looking and then laughed.
I mean, of course.
There's like with it's which is crazy because it's like everyone now is like in retrospect being like, oh, Elizabeth Holmes is like a mad genius for pitching her voice lower and dressing like more masculine.
Yeah, we're not going to talk about her voice that much in this.
I I don't think it's relevant, super.
No, but it's just like, no, it's like it is so transparent when you look at it for two seconds.
It's like there's some bias involved.
Yeah, one of the reasons I don't want to get her on the voice, she's definitely like it's a, she objectively altered her voice for it to sound deeper.
That's been very well documented.
For sure.
I've known a number of women who like had to manage men, particularly in male-dominated fields like agriculture.
And they do the same thing.
Well, that's because like, it's just what you do if you're trying to get a bunch of men to listen to you.
You have to.
Yeah.
You have to like affect a more masculine tone because men have worms in their brains.
Because men have worms in their brains.
Yeah.
And I'm not sure why or how much importance I give to the fact that she was hot, but I will admit that watching early videos of her before she was as media savvy as she got makes it seem like hotness must have been a bigger factor than her raw charisma and brilliance.
Here's an excerpt from her very first TED Talk in 2014.
So this is like one of the very first.
This is a classic.
Yeah, and it's.
I believe the individual is the answer to the challenges of healthcare.
But we can't engage the individual in changing outcomes unless individuals have access to the information they need to do so.
Okay, that's probably about enough.
That's not a great speech.
That was a lot of words delivered in random order.
That was rough.
It's bad.
It's not charismatic.
It's not like it has nothing to do with the deepness of her voice.
It's just like not good presentation.
No, and it's totally unclear what the company is based on that conversation.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Now, with her body language and her outfit, which of course the people listening won't have seen, she's very clearly imitating Steve Jobs.
I mean, it's egregious.
Yeah, it's egregious.
And everybody, even in the Praiseful Fortune article, they noticed that she dressed identical every day and specifically in order to look like Steve Jobs, that he was a hero for her.
She hung a portrait of his Apple internet bio that she printed out on the day he stepped down as CEO because of cancer and hung it up in her office.
Yeah, it didn't seem to be much of a secret.
No, no.
She kept all the thermostats at Theranos offices extra low so she could always wear her trademark turtleneck.
That's also just another Lisa Frank thing.
Yeah.
It's always 55 degrees in those offices.
Well, that I agree with because I prefer it to be cold.
You're wrong.
No.
That's okay.
I like to be cold.
Why do you live here?
I am not soon, but yeah.
I forgot I was sad about that.
Yeah.
But I just don't like it warm.
Now, Elizabeth Holmes did not just affect Jobs' choice and outfit.
She went well out of her way to present the perfect image of the aloof, eccentric genius founder.
Here's Fortune again.
Holmes grips a plastic cup of an appetizing green juice, her first of the day.
It is made from spinach, parsley, wheatgrass, and celery.
Later, she'll switch to cucumber.
A vegan, she long ago dropped coffee in favor of these juices, which she finds are better able to propel her through her 16-hour days and seven-day weeks.
She admits, laughing nervously at the eccentricity of it, that after a meal, she sometimes examines a drop of her own or others' blood on a slide and says she can observe the difference between when someone has eaten something healthy, like broccoli, and when he splurged on a cheeseburger.
When we dine one night at an Italian place downtown with $14 pastas, the manager knows what she'll have.
A Spartan dressingless mixed salad and an oil-free spaghetti with tomatoes.
Prepared from whole wheat noodles, she has provided the restaurant in advance since it doesn't stock them.
No wine.
Yeah.
What a weird self-mythologizing pack of lies.
But so many Silicon Valley people do shit like that.
Yeah.
And so here's the question I want to give you.
Peter Teal's a literal vampire.
Peter Teal is a literal vampire.
Yeah.
This is the question I want to ask.
So we've got the one speculation that all these old guys bought into her because she was hot.
And we've got the other speculation, which I think is at least as big a part of it and maybe a bigger part of it, is that she made herself look like a crazy Silicon Valley genius.
And these guys were just, they were looking for that.
And then gender was a component in that.
Gender was a component in that.
But not the entire thing.
But not the entire, like the fact that these guys thought she was attractive was part of their magnetism to her.
But I think it was more the part that like they were, they all wanted to get a shitload of money by being involved with the next Steve Jobs.
And what do you look for in the next Steve Jobs?
A crazy asshole who does weird things.
Right.
Which she was imitating to a T.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I mean, I agree.
I think it's like reductive to say that it's like completely because of her looks.
But I also think that like, especially like old dudes are always, like, I'm sure that they thought they were supporting, much like people, like early supporters of like Cheryl Sandberg when she was starting to do fucked up stuff.
They're like, they're like, well, I'm supporting a woman, so I'm not a bad person.
Yeah.
Where they just are like searching for the easiest, least challenging version of what they're, what they think is feminism.
And then being like, oh, so I'm, it's like the equivalent of like saying you have a black friend.
It's like, I gave money to a woman.
I don't hate women.
This is, this gets on like a totally different issue I have, but it's like, you remember when Joss Whedon it came out that he like cheated on his wife a bunch and everybody was saying he was a fake feminist?
They're like, no, he can be a feminist and cheat on his wife.
It doesn't mean you're a good husband.
You can be a shitty person and a feminist.
It's not a high bar.
It's the bottom.
It's like, you're not a good person for saying black people and white people should have equal rights.
That's the bottom.
They're serial killers who aren't racist.
Yeah, like they're, I don't know.
I mean, and I think that a lot of these like investors, that's just like it's at least in part them failing to meet that bottom.
Yeah.
Because they're just like, well, I threw money at a woman's company.
Threw money at a woman's company.
But she, she is imitating one of the, I mean, I don't know.
A lot of it is a testament to her commitment.
She really knows how to commit to the bit.
She's soul to the bit.
Yeah.
She is, I mean, I wish I could, I would be a lot more successful if I could commit to the bit like that.
Oh, James.
Sometimes I think if I had only used my power as a, as a tall, confident white man to start a Silicon Valley company making, I don't know, like an app that does your laundry.
Yeah.
I could have a billion dollars right now.
Yeah.
Oh, a laundry?
I bet that exists.
Oh, no, they've tried it a couple of times.
Damn it.
I probably, yeah.
Like half of Silicon Valley right now is just doing things that 19-year-old millionaires' moms used to do for them.
Cool, Totally sustainable.
Great part of the world.
Terrifying place.
Yeah.
Now, it didn't hurt Elizabeth Holmes' ability to con all these statesmen who people think are brilliant.
I don't think being a secretary of state makes you brilliant.
I don't think Hillary Christian, I don't think Kissinger is all that smart.
Whatever.
I think he's smart in certain ways.
He's, I mean, that's a whole other thing.
That's a whole.
Let's not talk about Kissinger because we got to talk.
When we talk about Kissinger, it's got to be like a four-hour talk about it.
I don't even know where to start.
But I think it helped a lot that like everyone always talked about when before Theranos, like the con was revealed, that she had the most distinguished board of any company in the history of the world.
There were like three secretaries of state on it.
And it was like you look at just like the, like that's part of what tricked that Fortune article is he's talking to all these people who are like, well, all of you are some of the most famous people in the history of American politics and you're all for the same company.
And the cosines were on both sides of the aisle too.
Like there was like Bill Clinton and Joe Biden.
Betsy DeVos put in like $150 million.
Joe Biden.
You got Biden and Clinton.
Biden and Clinton approved it.
Yeah.
So it's, yeah, she's got bipartisan.
Yeah.
And here's what's most important is that like all of those people were very distinguished.
None of them had any background in medicine or science.
Like none of them were quite like anyone is equipped to look at a phone and be like, oh yeah, I bet people will want to put this in their pocket.
Anyone's qualified to use a phone.
Like almost no one's qualified to test blood.
Yeah, like the bizarre footage of Joe Biden going to Theranos and being like, cool blood curing, guys.
And it's one of those things, like, I can't even attack, like, I don't like Biden, but I can't attack him for that.
Because, like, what was he supposed to do?
Like, like, he walks into a lab and is like, yeah, it looks, it looks like a lab.
It looks like a lab.
Like, I'm Joe Biden.
I'm not a doctor.
Yeah, there's better Joe Biden hills to die on.
Yeah.
I mean, you speaking of, like, who you as the administration send to look at Theranos, maybe the, what do you call the, the boss doctor?
What?
The boss doctor of the country.
The, the, the doctor in charge?
Yeah, the president of doctors.
Big doctor.
Big daddy.
Surgeon general.
You send the surgeon general.
Like, that would have been a better person to say.
Big doctor.
But that's not as famous.
The big doctor.
The big doctor.
Dr. B. He's just the biggest doctor.
They have to fight each other.
They have to fight each other.
So Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos were actually incapable of selling themselves to people who knew the first thing about medical science, which is why they focused on grifting secretaries of state and retired generals.
According to Dr. Fuse, Holmes was expert at talking her way through little matters like her technology not actually working, mainly by bringing up her famous dead relatives.
Quote, that family background was part of the con.
She would be introduced, and when questions were asked about her scientific knowledge or business acumen, these family members would be brought up.
Now, Fuseopsy, again, has an axe to grind and is a doctor, but the 2009 interview with that venture capitalist Donald Lucas back when Theranos was still king shit backs all this up.
Quote, here's what Lucas said when he was explaining why he invested.
She had no background in business, so it's quite presumptuous for somebody to say, I'm going to be president of the company, but there's an important distinction.
That's what I felt when I first met her.
After spending a lot more time with her, I learned her great-grandfather was an entrepreneur and started Fleischmann's Packaged Yeast.
It was very successful.
So that was one side.
That's the entrepreneur side.
But she was in the medical side.
Ah, it turns out later, the hospital very near where they lived is named after her great uncle who was involved with medicine.
So she came by both of those talents necessary here.
One medicine and the other entrepreneurship.
Quite naturally.
Completely unhitched.
That's insane.
Completely unhitched.
He's literally saying, I thought it was crazy that a 19-year-old would run a company, but then I learned out one of her relatives was a doctor and another 200 years ago started a business.
That is completely unhitched.
I mean, the fact that she constantly is like deploying this excuse of like, but yeast.
And then they're like, oh, yeah, totally, but yeast.
When I first read that Fuse quote, I was like, okay, this seems like he's exaggerating.
But then you read this thing from Lucas and it's like, oh no, that's exactly what she did.
It worked.
My grandfather was a prisoner of war in Korea.
That doesn't make me a prisoner of war in Korea.
Breaking The Mold00:04:16
It just doesn't make, that doesn't make it.
Jamie, thank you for your service.
Thank you.
So I, listen, I use the clout I got to break traffic laws constantly.
That's mainly what I use.
Just shout it at the traffic cops as you drive past.
Yeah, I just flip them off and say, you know, P-O-W, bitch P-O-W, baby.
And I just shoot my purple hearts at them.
You just keep like a pile of purple hearts in the center console.
Yeah, I stay strapped with my purple hearts.
Just wipe them out.
That's fucking absurd.
It's ludicrous.
Imagine saying that and meaning it.
Imagine saying that as Donald Lucas, distinguished venture capitalist, and not realizing that all of venture capitalism is a fraud.
Right.
You're literally saying because two dead people that she never met were good at two parts of her business that she's equipped to run a business.
She's genetically qualified.
Are you running fucking serious?
That is, I've never heard that quote before.
It's fucking insane.
Wow.
Man, it's like stupidity, you know, infects at every level.
Yeah.
That's wild.
It sure does.
That should be, that should replace E. pluribus unum as our as our national motto.
Stupidity infects every level.
Get that t-shirt design done.
Now, one thing Elizabeth Holmes could not fool were the laws of physics.
Theranos' equipment did not work in 2014, but they were performing tens and then hundreds of thousands of blood tests in multiple states.
While Theranos' marketing focused around the nanotainer, the friendly little capsule that only required a teeny bit of your blood, that was only capable of handling a couple of different tests.
Theranos used traditional venipuncture, aka the thing everyone in the industry did, for the others and just continued to lie on their marketing that they could handle more than 200 tests.
Roger Parloff, the author of that Fortune article I keep going back to, pinned a Mia Culpa in 2015 after Theranos exploded.
LOL, I'm sorry.
LOL, I'm sorry.
Talking about how Holmes had misled him.
He thought it was weird when he learned they still did venipuncture for many of their tests, and he asked her about it.
Quote, The biggest reason Holmes told me in May 2014 is we're scaling.
As we're building out this infrastructure, we're also building out our inventory and our capacity in terms of the number of samples that we can handle at any given point in time.
We'll use venipuncture in addition to the micro samples just to handle the volume of sample that we're processing.
Now, Parloff noted correctly that this made no goddamn sense.
Drawing way the fuck more blood would not help in handling volume.
He kept asking her about it until she told him answering this question would be revealing a trade secret.
Right.
And the fact that, I mean, that's what I hope is one of the outcomes of this whole mess is that like you can't say, you can't like withhold information when it's a medical company.
Like that can't, there can't be all these NDAs surrounding medical equipment for this one happening.
Goddamn iPhone.
Right.
Like, yeah, keep your iPhone secret.
Whatever.
Who gives a shit?
You know, I find the facial unlocking to be triggering.
I don't, I don't do that.
It doesn't recognize me when I look nice.
Oh, Jamie.
I know.
It hurts me.
It hurts my feelings.
That's hurtful.
It hurts my feelings.
It hurts my feelings.
Let's go pee on Steve Jobs' grave.
Okay.
Honestly, I was going to dump my D-book up in Steve Jobs' grave anyway.
Oh, that sounds like a fun road trip.
Yeah.
Now, in August of 2015, the FDA did its goddamn job and surprised Theranos with an inspection.
According to Vanity Fair, quote, according to someone close to the company, Holmes was sent into a panic, calling advisors to try and resolve the issue.
At around the same time, regulators from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which regulates laboratories, visited the labs and found major inaccuracies in the testing being done on patients.
CMS also soon discovered that some of the tests Theranos was performing were so inaccurate that they could leave patients at risk of internal bleeding or of stroke among those prone to blood clots.
The agency found that Theranos appeared to ignore the erratic results from its own quality control checks during a six-month period last year and supplied 81 patients with questionable test results.
Cool.
Cool.
Some of the most unfortunate things about like this story is that one of the major people who like exposed Elizabeth Holmes' name is Tyler.
Yeah, that's a frustrating thing.
I don't like when Tylers win.
Regulators Find Inaccuracies00:03:27
I do.
In this case, he was right too.
He seems like a nice guy.
I know.
He seems like someone who really has a conscience.
I just don't want to chalk one up for a Tyler.
No, it's like when you meet a nice guy named Chad, which I have a couple of times.
And it's always like, you're like, I don't like this.
I would prefer.
Okay.
Just wish he wasn't.
But like, good for him.
But good for him.
Good for you for breaking the mold.
You know?
Speaking of breaking the mold, you know what really breaks the mold, Jamie Loftus.
What?
These products and services?
These services and products.
Products.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modem.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
Woo, My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come.
Look for up-and-coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him.
I was, hi, dad.
And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk.
This is this badass convict.
Right.
Just finished five years.
I'm going to have cookies and milk come on.
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I feel like it was a little bit unbelievable until I really start making money.
It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating Wall Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
If I'm outside with my parents and they see all these people come up to me for pictures, it's like, what?
Today now, obviously, it's like 100%.
They believe everything, but at first it was just like, you got to go get a real job.
There's an economic component to communities thriving.
If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
And what I mean by fail is they don't have money to pay for food.
Theranos Doubles Down00:13:42
They cannot feed their kids.
They do not have homes.
Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them.
Listen to Eating Wild Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Hi, I'm Bob Pippman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
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I'm talking to leaders from the entertainment industry to finance and everywhere in between.
This season on Math and Magic, I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario, financier and public health advocate Mike Milken, take-to interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick.
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Listen to Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you could get your podcast.
We're back.
Yeah.
Now, the next month, after that surprise FDA, you know, inspection thing that found out nothing worked, the FDA declared the NanoTainer to be an uncleared device, removing it from availability for all but one test.
Theranos was now using traditional old-fashioned venucture for nearly all of their tests.
And since neither the Edison nor its successor, the Mini Lab, worked for shit, they were doing most of the analysis on equipment they bought from other companies, including the companies they were claiming to want to disrupt.
It's sort of like if Apple had just been ripping apart HP laptops and putting a fancy-looking case on the outside.
They're just like, here's an iPhone, but it's a Sony violet.
Now, at this point, you're probably wondering, what the hell was going on with the rest of Theranos at this point?
Was anyone inside like standing up and saying, what the fuck?
Nothing works?
Oh, yeah.
Well, like any good cult leader, Elizabeth Holmes organized the entire company in such a way that everyone's job was incredibly compartmentalized.
People knew about their specific project and nothing else that was going on at the company.
Employees were often banned from communicating with one another about their work.
This didn't seem super insane because many Silicon Valley companies like Apple had similar policies aimed at stopping devices from leaking out, but was weird because this is literally the opposite of the way good medical science is done.
You kind of want everyone talking.
You want there to be transparency.
That's the point.
That's the point.
It's not, it's crazy.
Like Elizabeth Holmes at no point was like, wait a second, lives aren't phones, but that's not her vibe.
Lives aren't phones.
Yeah, I'll say that for Steve Jobs.
He never was like, like after Apple, he was like, I guess I'll make fun movies and different computers.
Right.
He wasn't like.
He was like a repulsive person who had a stink and harassed everyone, but he wasn't trying to kill anyone.
He knew his pleasure.
That was like, I can, you know, this is what I can get away with and I'm going for it.
He wasn't like, I'm going to make a machine gun next.
Right.
I bet I can make a really good machine gun.
But that's, that's classic.
She's really disrupting people's health.
Yeah.
Disrupting people's health.
That's a good tagline for this.
Yeah.
Oh boy.
You want to know the tagline that I initially had for this episode.
Yes.
Elizabeth Holmes, the white woman who became a white man.
Whoa.
Brave.
Brave of her.
God.
I mean, I just want girls to also have access to the spoils of late capitalism.
Is that so wrong?
Don't we all?
Oh my God.
Now, the secrecy and stress of managing a $9 billion company did not actually do anything that didn't actually do anything required an insane schedule from Holmes.
She reportedly slept four hours a night and ate chocolate-covered coffee beans all day in order to stay awake.
Corporate grifter recognition tip.
Be wary of anyone who brags about how little they sleep.
It is not a good thing.
Yes.
No one makes better decisions when they don't sleep.
Absolutely agree.
In order to keep shit further under wraps, she hired her brother Christian to be the associate director of project management in 2011.
Super cool.
He had been out of college for college for two years and had no relevant educational experience that would help him manage products in a blood diagnostics company.
Amazing.
Yeah.
Well, he'll fit right in.
He'll fit right in with Sonny, the president of the company.
He's going to shout his way into a medical breakthrough.
He's like, we're just screaming in a cold building.
We're ruining people's lives.
That's kind of what we do here.
Numerous employees did, of course, recognize that something was up.
Theranos had outrageous rates of turnover.
At one point, Holmes hired a bunch of employees from her favorite company, Apple.
They were all gone inside of two years.
But Theranos kept any former employees from talking by threatening to sue anyone who so much as wrote about their job in detail on LinkedIn.
I think it's also a dead giveaway when your company hires a disproportionate amount of people fresh out of college who don't have other options.
Yeah, that's part of it.
Part of it.
She did a lot of.
She did a lot of that.
Now, Theranos' law team was incredibly expensive and headed by David Boyce, another incredibly respected old white dude.
He was Al Gore's lawyer during the recount, among other things.
He was one of the big lawyers behind marriage equality.
He's like the Steve Jobs of lawyers, I guess you'd say.
But that doesn't really translate because he's actually...
Is he good or bad?
He's bad.
He's bad.
I was like, he's bad, right?
He's a bad person who was a lawyer on good cases.
All right.
But that happens.
Lawyers are often bad whether or not they do good or bad things.
They're lawless people.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, all lawyers are anarchists.
Justin Maxwell was one of the designers behind the Edison.
He later spoke to Carrie Rue for the book Bad Blood.
His story provides a good look at just how Holmes treated her employees on a one-on-one basis.
Quote: During an email exchange one evening, he asked her for a piece of information he needed to write a section of software.
She responded that she'd look for it when she was back at work the next morning.
The clear implication was that she had gone home.
But minutes later, he stumbled on her in Tony Nugent's office down the hall.
Justin got angry and stormed off.
Elizabeth came by his office a little later to say she understood why he was upset, but warned him, Don't ever walk off on me again.
Justin tried to remind himself that Elizabeth was very young and still had a lot to learn about running a company.
In one of their last email exchanges, he recommended two management self-help books to her: The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't, and Beyond Bullshit, Straight Talk at Work, and included their links on Amazon.
He quit two days later.
His resignation email read in part: Good luck and please do read those books.
Watch The Office and believe in the people who disagree with you.
Lying is a disgusting habit, and it flows through conversations here like it's our own currency.
The cultural disease here is what we should be curing before we try to tackle obesity.
I mean, no ill will towards you since you believe in what I was doing and hoped I would succeed at Theranos.
I feel like I owe you this bad attempt at an exit interview since we have no HR to officially record it.
That's a great resignation.
A savage moment for him.
A Savmo.
A Savmo.
Another Sav Mom.
That's great.
I don't understand why he recommended she watch The Office.
That just seemed like a fun thing to have.
I think it might just be because she was that bad of a boss.
He was like, maybe you'll understand what you're doing if you watch.
I think he's saying you're like Michael Scott.
That seems generous, honestly.
Yeah, because at least he had a he would, Michael Scott.
Well, no, Michael Scott would totally have tried to create a medical device company.
She carries herself more like a Jan Levinson Gould, but Jan Levinson Gould was good at her job.
That's the difference.
Yeah, at the start, at least.
Yeah.
Now, Elizabeth did not respond.
I have found no evidence that she ever watched The Office either.
God damn it.
God damn it.
The areas where she most shown seemed to be: one, talking people into investing in Theranos, and two, motivating employees at company-wide events and parties.
She was legitimately talented at inspiring people.
During one company Christmas party, she gave this speech: The mini lab is the most important thing humanity has ever built.
If you don't believe this is the case, you should leave now.
Everyone needs to work as hard as humanly possible to deliver it.
Cool cult.
Cool cult.
During the company party to celebrate the deal with Safeway, Holmes told everyone: If anyone here believes you are not working on the best thing humans have ever built, or if you're cynical, then you should leave.
And for all of these speeches, I like to imagine she's sipping from a mug of human blood.
She's getting a little milk mustache from it.
She's like, anyways, slurp.
Yeah.
I do give Sophie almost that same speech before every single episode of Behind the Bastards.
Behind the Bastards is the most important thing.
You don't believe this is the most important thing anyone's ever done.
And then you chug a 40 of blood.
That's generous.
I've seen it.
It's malt liquor.
Okay.
It's very dark and viscous.
Well, I mean, I put my protein powder and malt liquid.
You got your yeast in it.
I'm sorry to get my pump on.
I pour a protein shot into my malt liquor, stir that up real quick.
Get it really thick?
I feel sick.
Great, great, great.
My big problem with Cold 45 is that it's not quite thick enough.
I wish that beer was thicker.
Yeah.
I wish that malt liquor.
We're not talking about beer when we talk about Cold 45 and steel reserve.
I wish that Mike's hard lemonade came in a solid.
Mike's hard jello.
Oh my God.
Jamie, that's our billion-dollar idea.
We make ice cubes, too.
Get them on the fucking floor.
Someone call Mike.
Someone call Mike.
We need this shit cubed.
Stat.
Cube your shit, Mike.
You fucking fool.
One of the few distinguished older men Elizabeth Holmes was unable to brainwash was John Kerry Rue, a multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist with the Wall Street Journal.
He received a tip from a former Theranos lab director that led to a much deeper investigation.
In October of 2015, he published the first of two dozen articles.
His first piece revealed Theranos' problems with the nanotainers and the fact that very, very little of their promised revolutionary technology actually worked and that they were using other companies' technology to do their blood tests.
This was not great for Theranos.
The company went into lockdown.
For two days and nights, she holed up in what was probably a very smelly conference room with Sonny Bawani and all the company's lawyers, plus a team of crisis management professionals.
Forming a good plan proved impossible because Theranos' technology was fucking vapor.
And had been for 10 years.
It had been for 10 years.
According to Vanity Fair, absent a plan, Holmes embarked on a familiar course.
She doubled down on her narrative.
She left the war room for her car.
She's often surrounded by her security detail, which sometimes numbers as many as four men, who, for safety reasons, refer to the young CEO as Eagle One and headed for the airport.
She's been known to fly alone on a $6.5 million Gulfstream G150.
Holmes subsequently took off for Boston to attend a luncheon for a previously scheduled appearance at the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows, where she would be honored as an inductee.
During the trip, Holmes fielded calls from her advisors in the war room.
She and her team decided on an interview with Jim Kramer, the host of CNBC's Mad Money, with whom she had a friendship that dated from a previous interview.
It was quickly arranged.
A few friends with Jim Kramer, that's not a great thing.
I mean, that's such a bad look where you're like, well, here's the trusted, very rational source I've chosen.
Yeah, it's like, oh, okay, a guy who's won two Pulitzers is attacking us.
We got to fight back with Jim Kramer.
With the bastion of truth, Jim Kramer.
Oh, God.
Her interview in that is, I can't.
Oh, yeah.
I'm going to play a brief selection from that interview right now.
It's amazing.
Just a fucking liar.
She does get, she is, if you know, compared to the first clip we played, she's gotten a lot better at shock.
She's her PR trainer.
Yeah.
Nailed it.
That person, you should get a lot of people.
They're Pulitzer.
Yeah, they should get a Pulitzer for lying.
Mm-hmm.
This is what happens when you work to change things.
And first they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world.
And I have to say, I personally was shocked to see that the journal would publish something like this when we had sent them over a thousand pages of documentation demonstrating that the statements in their piece were false.
But we're doing things differently and we're working to make a difference.
And that means people raise questions and that's okay.
But in this case, it was pretty disappointing to see that after every single one of the sources that we spoke with who the journal had contacted told us that the statements that were being attributed to them were false or misleading.
And the only sources who were left were ones who wouldn't speak with us, who on their own website say that they now do business with LabCorp in their office, or in the other case, demanded in writing that we pay them in cash upfront $2,500 for an hour to talk to them about their statements to the journal.
Did the journal knowledge weren't restricted?
Did the journal know everything that you just said before they wrote the article?
Of course, absolutely.
That was all lies, of course.
I mean, commit to the bit.
Commit to the bit.
There is something to be, I like, she's horror.
I like no doubt she's a bad person.
Bad person.
But there is something kind of majestic about watching someone go down with the ship.
Yeah.
Just in complete ignorance.
Yeah, there's a little bit of the L. Ron Hubbard in her where it's like, well, okay.
You didn't just run away and blame someone else.
You just denied there was ever a problem.
She is not going to admit she's done anything wrong.
She said like 666.
I don't recall.
Like, it's amazing.
It's Ronald Reagan level, I don't recall.
Yeah.
Not genius, but consistent.
Yeah.
Now, it was obviously not a super compelling rebuttal to, again, one of the best reporters on the planet tearing you apart in an article for the Wall Street Journal, but it was the best she could do, getting the fact that, you know, everything that Carrie said was accurate.
Yeah, she's got that Mad Money vibe.
Fucking Mad Money.
Jarring Documentary Appearance00:05:45
Why is he on the air?
Why is he in the documentary?
How is his heart not exploded from what I assume is a daily cocktail of cocaine and Red Bull?
I will say it was when he appears in the documentary.
It was very jarring to see him outside of that set.
It seems like he has not left in many years.
He seems disheveled.
Seems like they must lock him in there.
I think he lives in a tent just off screen.
There's guys with like rifles hanging out outside the set.
We got to make sure Kramer doesn't get out.
I've never seen him outside of that set.
It was very jarring.
It's weird.
Yeah.
I guess he just had to.
Now, when she got back to Palo Alto, Holmes had to finally address her employees.
She insisted again that the journal had gotten the story wrong and that the reporter, John Kerry Roo, was just picking a fight with her company to make a name for himself.
You know, a better name than having two peeled surprises.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Now, as Holmes and Balwani pumped up the crowd, a chant started up.
Fuck you, Carrie Roo.
Fuck you, Kerry Rue.
Fuck you, Kerry Roo.
First of all, original.
Very original.
Super love it.
Kind of right.
Start shooting out there in those t-shirts out of t-shirt guns.
You know it.
You know, she was just tossing blood vials in purple hearts.
She'd have got nano tanners.
Jock jams start to play.
I, you know, go down in style.
And if you want to go down in style, you need the stylish products and services advertised by our advertisers.
Smooth transition.
Thank you.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Modem.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
Just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him.
I was, hi, dad.
And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk.
This is badass convict.
Right.
Just finished five years.
I'm going to have cookies and milk come on.
On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption.
On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trail to talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances.
The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Addish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.
I'm an alcoholic.
Without this probe, I'm a guide.
Open your free iHeartRadio app.
Sir Casino Show.
And listen now.
I feel like it was a little bit unbelievable until I really start making money.
It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating Wall Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
If I'm outside with my parents and they see all these people come up to me for pitches, it's like, what?
Today now, obviously, it's like 100%.
They believe everything.
But at first, it was just like, you got to go get a real job.
There's an economic component to communities thriving.
If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
And what I mean by fail is they don't have money to pay for food.
They cannot feed their kids.
They do not have homes.
Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them.
Listen to Eating Wall Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
I'm talking to leaders from the entertainment industry to finance and everywhere in between.
This season on Math and Magic, I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario, financier and public health advocate Mike Milken, take-to interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick.
If you're unable to take meaningful creative risk and therefore run the risk of making horrible creative mistakes, then you can't play in this business.
Sesame Street CEO Sherry Weston and our own chief business officer Lisa Coffey.
Making consumers see the value of the human voice and to have that guaranteed human promise behind it really makes it rise to the top.
Listen to Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
We're back!
Putting Her Away00:11:41
For a while, employees and management at Theranos hunkered down and tried to wait out the storm.
They attempted to ignore the mounting problems by focusing their rage against Carrirew.
At one company party, Seranos staff programmed a video game based on Space Invaders.
The gun was the mini lab, the bullets were nanotainers, and the aliens were John Carrieroo's face.
Kind of a niche game.
Kind of a niche game.
It's inside baseball.
Yeah.
Not a lot of traveling power.
Tragically for Theranos, that was not enough to stop Carrieroo's reporting and the inevitable unraveling of Theranos that it triggered.
Walgreens cut all ties with the company and closed their wellness centers.
The FDA banned the company from using the Edison too.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services banned Holmes from owning or running a medical lab for two years.
The SEC and the U.S. Attorney's Office opened investigations.
Two class action lawsuits from people who had their blood analyzed by Theranos are still underway.
Forbes removed Holmes from its list of America's richest self-made women, lowered its estimate of her net worth to nothing.
Something like a million people were told their blood test results had been complete bullshit and they would need to retake them.
Now, Holmes tried to stage a comeback for some reason.
She started this by adopting a husky puppy and naming it Balto after the dog that led a sled team filled with medicine to save an Alaska village in 1925.
Balto became a constant companion both at the Los Altos mansion Theranos rented for Elizabeth and at the Theranos offices, even though all her scientists warned her that dog hair did not mix well with blood testing laboratories.
She did not bother to potty train Balto, so he pissed and shit all over what was ostensibly, again, a medical lab.
Holmes also started to claim that her husky was a wolf at this point, telling everyone who asked and probably also a lot of people who did not ask.
By the end of 2017, things were bad enough that Elizabeth Holmes had to stop traveling by private jet.
The company was forced out of the office that had been expensively redesigned and spent more than a million dollars a month in rent on.
They moved into a lab facility in Newark, which is not generally seen as as nice as Palo Alto.
Balto continued to shit on the floor in this new facility.
According to Vanity Quare, fair, quote, it's been a long read.
According to Vanity Fair, quote, through all this, former employees of the company have told me Holmes had a bizarre way of acting like nothing was wrong.
Even more peculiarly, she seemed happy.
The company was falling apart.
There are countless indictments piling up.
Employees are leaving in droves.
And Elizabeth is just weirdly chipper, one former senior executive told me.
One former board member also noted that Holmes would come to board meetings chirpy and acting as if everything was great.
She would walk up to people in the office who have just testified in front of the SEC or been questioned by lawyers at the FDA and she would give them a hug and ask how they were doing.
She was so confident that the company would be fine.
Executives who worked with her said that she enrolled Balto in a search and rescue program.
Holmes spent weekends training him to find people in an emergency.
Unfortunately, Huskies are not bred for rescue.
They are long-distance runners and Balto failed out.
That's tragic.
Her dog failed out of school.
Her dog failed out of school.
I bet her narrative was like he actually dropped out.
He dropped out.
He actually had an idea of the story of the world.
She's going to start a search and rescue company.
Oh, God.
I mean, these are like classic things of just like ignoring reality.
Your best friend is not a person.
Yep.
Not, I mean, listen, I love my dogs who's named after Sonny Balwani.
My best friend is a cat that lives in Texas.
So that's true.
It's not, but you know, like the completely ignoring reality and being like, my dog's a cop.
Yeah, my dog's a cop.
Theranos officially died in September 2018.
All $900 million Elizabeth Holmes had raised via grifting evaporated into a pile of broken nanotainers and dog shit.
Numerous lawsuits and investigations into Holmes and Theranos are still ongoing.
She faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted for all her crimes.
Her defense and the defense of her co-defendant, Sonny Balwani, seems to rest on the idea that they didn't actually commit fraud.
Theranos was just a normal business failure.
Also, technically, neither of them made money off the company.
This is sort of true, but for more than a decade, Holmes' travel, bodyguards, mansion bills, et cetera, were all paid for by Theranos.
One former employee later recalled, quote, the company paid for everything.
She would submit her miles if she drove the six miles to her house in Los Altos.
Which is what you do if you're working for like 20 bucks an hour.
Not what you do if you're the CEO and they're renting you a mansion.
Elizabeth.
Former Theranos executives who were close to Elizabeth Holmes during the end of Theranos noted that she never really accepted any responsibility for what had happened.
One former colleague said, Elizabeth sees herself as the victim.
She blames John Kerryrew.
She blames David Boyce and she blames Heather King.
Boyce and King were both her lawyers.
Holmes thinks that her lawyer should have somehow been able to contain the bad PR from, again, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter tearing their company open with unimpeachable facts in a Wall Street Journal article.
At this moment, Elizabeth Holmes lives in San Francisco in a very nice apartment that seems to be paid for by the rich kid she is dating.
She now dresses like a normal person.
Last year, she and her boyfriend went to Burning Man.
She looks weirdly normal in the pictures, like an actual adult person.
She seems to be trying to turn her dog into an Instagram star.
Here's some of her Instagram pictures.
Oh my God.
This could have been your life, girl.
She looks like a normal person, though.
She looks like a normal, basic white lady.
Yeah.
Wow.
Look at that hat.
Look at that.
That fur vest.
It is a great dog.
It is actually.
No shade on the dog.
The dog did nothing.
The dog did nothing wrong.
The dog was just trying to learn how to get her dog into an insta-thought.
Yeah, it seems like it is.
She's got nicknames for him.
I'm very interested into what happens with her because it's like I could see it going one way of like, you know, classic scammer getting the minimum punishment and then, you know, staging a comeback 10 years from now.
But I could also see it as like a making an example for Silicon Valley and actually putting her away.
Maybe she'll get to go to prison, even though like none of the guys in the financial industry who did irreparably more harm will ever see the inside of a cell.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Like one of those example makers.
She's more criminal than she is victim, but part of her seems to be a victim.
And we just, I just don't know enough about the relationship with Sonny, but it does seem like something fucked up happened there.
I mean, it's, and I'm sure that there's some relationships with that age gap that have turned out fine by and large.
But I don't know.
I mean, not to continue to stand for Elizabeth Holmes, it does seem like she has deluded herself into thinking she did nothing wrong.
I do believe that she thinks that.
Yeah, I totally.
I think she's taking a look in the mirror.
And it's partly because she was doing, again, when I say Steve Jobs was a grifter, it's not that he didn't.
eventually produce great stuff.
It's that he knew how to lie and obfuscate and con people until the product was ready.
And I think that's what she was trying to do.
But I think my impression of Steve Jobs was always like he knew more what he was doing and like just didn't care versus like totally scissor fucking your own brain into believing something that is patently untrue.
Yeah, I think he was a very comfortable person with himself, and I doubt she ever was.
Maybe she is now.
Maybe, I mean, listen.
She looks happy in the pictures.
She's got a hot boyfriend.
They're going to Burning Man.
That's everything that's annoying to me.
So, cool.
It's possible that if she doesn't wind up doing 20 years behind bars, Elizabeth Holmes may have gotten over the need to cosplay as Steve Jobs.
I don't know.
What I do know is that the system that allowed her to fuck with so many people's lives and cost so much money and con so much money is still alive and well.
That Vanity Fair article I keep referring to has a great breakdown of this.
Quote, it generally works like this.
The venture capitalists, who are mostly white men, don't really know what they're doing with any certainty.
It's impossible, after all, to truly predict the next big thing.
So they bet a little money on every company that they can with the hope that one of them hits it big.
The entrepreneurs, also mostly white men, often work on a lot of meaningless stuff, like using code to deliver frozen yogurt more expeditiously or apps that let you say yo and only yo to your friends.
Man, people are so hard on yo.
It was a fun app.
The entrepreneurs generally glorify their efforts by saying that their innovation could change the world, which tends to appease the venture capitalists because they can also then pretend that they're not only there to make money.
Also, this helps to seduce the tech press, also largely composed of white men, which is often ready to play a game of access in exchange for a few more page views of their story about the company that is trying to change the world by getting frozen yogurt to companies more expeditiously.
The financial rewards speak for themselves.
Silicon Valley, which is 50 square miles, has created more wealth than any place in human history.
In the end, it isn't in anyone's interest to call bullshit.
Hard agree.
Yeah.
Kind of nailed it.
Well, yeah.
No, that's like a terrific piece.
That is everything that's happening in that little chunk of California.
And it's very unclear of like whether anything will actually be done to people.
I mean, she might, but there's always so many cases of like sacrificial lambs just so like Silicon Valley can move forward with being like, look, no, we took care of that.
Elizabeth Holmes is in jail.
The one female CEO is in jail.
The one grifter in Silicon Valley is in jail.
Mark Zuckerberg is disrupting AIDS medicine.
I mean, either way, I feel confident that bullshit will prevail.
That also could be this country's new motto.
Bullshit will prevail.
Bullshit will prevail.
I hope that, you know, if Elizabeth Holmes goes to prison, she does do Facebook live streams from her gorgeous cell.
I hope that she tries to write a novel, a la Lauren Conrad.
Oh, I bet it'll be great.
I hope she tries to start a lifestyle contract.
I hope she does every scam.
I hope she tries to write a novel that is like a fictional way of addressing America's race problem.
Because I think anyone's qualified, it's Liho.
Oh, God.
I don't know.
I guess we just have to sit tight and hope that this Jennifer Lawrence movie doesn't come out because it sounds insufferable.
Yeah, I hope it proves to be like Theranos, a giant, overfunded, unworkable mess.
Still, I mean, Blood Keurig, a good idea.
A great idea.
A great idea for A Haunted House.
Great idea for like the sequel to What We Do in the Shadows.
Oh, like a fantastic idea for that.
Yeah, hope it's in the TV series.
Hope it's in the TV series.
Absolutely a great idea for that.
Well, she should have just been in Hollywood.
She's just in the wrong area of California.
Yeah, and I think it was just that she came in too late to like try to make a tech product.
Like she saw that, like, well, no, like that's that clearly we're near the end of where you can just jump into that company with a new gadget.
So blood.
Blood.
Yeah.
Hey, hashtag relatable.
Hashtag relatable.
Got it.
We've all got blood.
Except for Peter Thiel, which is why he needs your blood.
Peter Thiel vampire narrative.
That's what I want an Adam McKay movie about.
I want to.
Peter Thiel vampire.
Peter Thial, the vampire nerd who's helping the government track undocumented immigrants in using like appropriating tolking terms to do it.
Like that's a better use of everyone's time.
The worst guy in those books' device to name his company after.
Like, stop it.
Stop it, Peter.
I don't think we need to run Elizabeth Holmes over with another intellectual property car.
Like, I just don't think we do.
No.
So, Jamie Loftus.
Yeah.
We're back in the P-zone.
Here we are.
P-zone of the B-zone.
It's freezing here.
It is.
It's very cold.
It's for my turtlenecks.
Yeah, you can listen to the Bechtelcast every Thursday with me and Caitlin Durante.
You can find me on Twitter at Jamie LoftusHelp.
And I'm touring my show, Boss Whom Is Girl, about a fictional girl boss called Shell Gasoline Sandwich.
Touring that around the country in the spring and summer.
Well, that sounds great.
Check out her show, Even If You're Not in Cleveland.
What?
Can I get you to say I apologize for pronouncing Steve Jobs 10 different ways throughout these two episodes?
I don't apologize for pronouncing Steve Jobs 10 different ways throughout this episode.
Touring Boss Whom Is Girl00:03:15
And you know why?
Why?
Because he was a dick.
May he burn.
I'm kidding.
I don't feel how strongly about it.
Yeah, I don't feel that strongly about it either.
I just feel badly for Steve Wozniak, who I'm sure still mourns him beautifully because he's very good.
He's badly for his daughter at her book.
Oh, that's a heartbreaker.
Yeah, it's a tough one.
Bad dad.
Dead.
Check out our website, behindthebastards.com.
Check us out on the Twits and the Grams at Bastards.
Pod.
Listen to our t-shirts.
Buy them.
Tee Public.
They have a lot of secrets.
Listen to our t-shirts on TeePublic, Behind the Bastards.
I have a new podcast called It Could Happen Here.
It's a sad podcast about how we're all going to die in horrible, horrible conflict soon.
Awesome.
Can't wait.
I love you.
Bye.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that: trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On a recent episode of the podcast Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budginista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never ever taught.
If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Earners, what's up?
Look, money is something we all deal with, but financial literacy is what helps turn income into real wealth.
On each episode of the podcast, Earn Your Leisure, we break down the conversations you need to understand money, investing, and entrepreneurship.
From stocks and real estate to credit, business, and generational wealth, our goal is simple.
Make financial literacy accessible for everyone.
Because when you understand the system, you can start to build within it.
Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Earn Your Leisure, and listen now.
Will Farrell's Big Money Players and iHeart podcast presents Soccer Moms.
So I'm Leanne.
This is my best friend Janet.
Hey.
And we have been joined at the Hip since high school.
Absolutely.
A redacted amount of years later.
We're still joined at the Hip.
Just a little bit bigger hips.
This is a podcast.
We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey with all the snacks and drinks.
Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer?
Oh, they hit a BOGO.
Well, then you got it.
Listen to soccer moms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.