Conspirituality - Brief: DJ Khaled of Pseudoscience

Aug. 2, 2025 - Conspirituality

21:31

Brief: DJ Khaled of Pseudoscience

Strange billboards have been popping up all over Los Angeles featuring disgraced Theranos founder, Elizabeth Holmes, and an unidentified man listing a new URL—one that redirects to the Theranos website. Against all odds, the brand is back, with a wellness twist, as the new founder is directly courting MAHA. Derek and Julian dive in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	We've been on a mission and we're speaking with the FDA.
	A very dangerous cancer drug called Avastin.
	Spreading the cancer and making it worse.
	It's very important that this gets to RFK.
	This is based on undisputed scientific law.
	All right, you might be wondering what the fuck is going on.
	I've watched the entire 25-minute documentary that this is pulled from, and I'm still wondering the same.
	These are the opening moments of a video that appears on the homepage of a website called theinvestors.com, which if you're paying attention when you type it into your browser, redirects you to Theranoslabs.com.
	Uh-oh.
	Yeah, that Theranos.
	This is quite a story, yet one we've watched play out for years on this podcast, and one that could only probably be possible with RFK Jr. in power.
	Buckle up for this one.
	I'm Derek Barris.
	I'm Julian Walker, and this is another one because we the best.
	This conspiratuality brief titled by Julian, the DJ Khaled of pseudoscience.
	You can find us on Instagram and threads, as always.
	You can also support our work as independent media via Patreon at patreon.com slash conspirituality or via Apple subscriptions for our Monday bonus episodes.
	Okay, let's set the stage.
	Julian, you sent me an Instagram reel from KCRW last week.
	What is the 101 on that?
	Okay, yeah, so I should just say like KCRW is our flagship NPR station here in LA.
	As you know, Derek, they're out of Santa Monica College and they're just legendary, especially for breaking new music and having incredible live in-studio performances.
	But that aside, this was an Instagram reel from a young reporter there named Tohar Zamir.
	And in just 90 seconds, looking right at the camera and like pointing at what was over his shoulder behind him, he managed to connect the dots on these confusing billboards that are popping up all over LA.
	I actually saw one of them myself on Tuesday night on Lincoln Boulevard to their existence also in Miami and New York City in Times Square to RFK Jr. and potential attempts by a man named Ryan El-Hosseini to get Elizabeth Holmes pardoned and her Theranos pseudoscience brought under the wing of Maha.
	So I guess this just all shows she was ahead of her time.
	Oh, definitely a profit.
	KCRW, we were supporters when we lived in LA.
	It is amazing.
	I used to see Jason Bentley around town or at Equinox where I taught all the time, one of the people most tuned into new music.
	So you can check them out online and stream them online if wherever you are.
	And I highly recommend it.
	But before we dive into this story about the new Thuranos, let's get the basics down.
	So Elizabeth Holmes founded the original company in 2003.
	She promised a revolutionary technology that could perform hundreds of blood tests using just a few drops from a finger prick.
	The idea took off.
	She raised $1.4 billion for her vision, a ridiculous amount of money, especially back then.
	That included $150 million from the Walmart founders, the Waltons.
	Rupert Murdoch kicked in $125 million.
	Betsy DeVos' family kicked in $100 million.
	Many Silicon Valley investors jumped on this.
	She made retail deals with Walgreens and Safeway.
	She was everywhere.
	Holmes claimed that her miniature device called the Edison could deliver fast, cheap, and accurate diagnostics.
	There was a problem, however, and that was the fact that it didn't work and it never worked.
	Not at all.
	Thuranos conducted most of its tests using conventional machines and it produced unreliable results.
	Patients were often misdiagnosed.
	Investors and partners were deceived about the efficacy and regulatory approval of their technology.
	Yeah.
	And in the documentary that was made about this later, many of the former employees talked about how there was this culture.
	She was really trying to be like a female Steve Jobs in the biotech industry.
	And there was this culture of like, we're building the plane as we're flying it.
	We believe in our mission and we're going to get the investors on board and we're going to do all this PR and we're going to make all these claims with the kind of faith that we're going to get there eventually, even though internally we all know that this thing is a shambles and it doesn't work at all.
	It predated Bitcoin in that sense in terms of marketing.
	Like we're going to find the use case that will change everything, which never actually happened.
	And it makes it for a perfect setup for a wellness grift.
	Holmes was convicted in January 2022 on four counts, specifically for defrauding investors.
	She was sentenced to 135 months in prison.
	So obviously the investors website claims that she was wrongfully convicted, that her technology actually works because it's based on a science that we just don't understand yet.
	And the founder of the new Thuranos, which we'll get to, calls for the Trump administration to free her.
	Yeah.
	And one thing I don't think we've touched on yet is that these billboards, it's like her branding from the original company.
	It's a picture of her.
	And then it's this guy next to her who basically looks like a rapper, kind of kind of like mean mug in the camera with sunglasses and a big medallion and a beard.
	It's just like, what?
	So I went and watched the 25-minute film because I couldn't help myself.
	And I have to say, per our title, this guy is like the DJ Khaled of Pseudoscience Self-Promotion.
	He's stitched footage of himself being interviewed onto repurposed documentary footage that was actually exposing her.
	That actually, you know, parts of which are telling the real story of how she rose, Elizabeth Holmes.
	And then he's also got clips from RFK Jr. playing on a TV and he's trying to position himself as the like big pimp and CEO of this new business opportunity, you know, complete with a somewhat unimpressive like small private jet.
	But he also does drive Bugattis that have Theranos branding all over them in the movie.
	And then he's got this big old medallion That says Theranos on it.
	That looks like he ordered it online and it cost him about 20 bucks.
	And then he's got this product, which is, I guess, her original device that he's now calling Blue Magic.
	And that name, I immediately think of the high-purity heroin that made Frank Lucas a millionaire in the 1970s, as shown in the film American Gangster.
	So that's kind of weird.
	About five minutes in, he is trespassing at the Quest Diagnostic Headquarters in New Jersey.
	They're obviously the competition, the big pharma people that he's going to like, you know, stick it to.
	And he's in this convertible Bugatti with a racing spoiler.
	And all of it is staged for the cameras.
	There's no payoff.
	It's just about the security guards being like, you can't be here.
	You can't just sit outside our building in your sports car.
	There is no payoff.
	There is no payoff.
	And he's mostly filming it on a cell phone.
	And the thing you take away from it is this Bugatti has a really loud fucking engine.
	And then we're like nine minutes in before he makes any kind of claim at expertise.
	It's like, who is this guy?
	Why are we even listening to him?
	And the way he does that is he has a voiceover, as well as text on the screen, refer to him as a, quote, former lab CEO, which is interesting.
	Before then borrowing a page from Mickey Willis's, you know, adjit prop documentary bullshit by presenting a dramatized trial of the Theranos technology, you know, the way Willis does in Plandemic, where he like sets up a dramatic reenactment of like, you know, I don't know, the WHO or something or the UN talking about how they're going to manufacture COVID.
	Oh, and that entire full video, it's like 40 minutes is up on their YouTube page.
	It's part of the Opreme films, which is Ryan L. Hosseini's video company, production company.
	It's very slick.
	Nice.
	We'll get into that.
	El Hosseini describes himself unironically as the Steve Jobs of Medical Labs.
	He apparently holds patents for a next generation safety lancet and a novel blood collection device.
	So he is all in on this project.
	He gained control of the Theranos brand after its collapse and he launched a campaign to revive their original vision.
	And that includes these high-profile public demonstrations.
	And as you referenced the billboards, if you go to the company's Instagram page, you're going to see hired models rocking bikinis with the branding all over it.
	You're going to see the Bugattis with the logo and you're going to see El Hosseini and his crew jet-setting on that unimpressive, but it's still not easy to buy a plane.
	So, you know, and they're drinking champagne.
	Sure.
	He promises to deliver on the Holmes concept of revolutionary blood testing from a drop of blood.
	Now, Blue Magic by Thuranos, that is a new blood testing technology described as a bio formulation technology that, and I have to say this, I'm being completely serious right now.
	He claims it identifies substances in blood samples and generates a blue beam of light, which is then read by specialized computers to interpret the test results.
	This magical device requires only a nano sample of blood, which then goes a supposed ultra-purification step, and it's being marketed as capable of testing for conditions ranging from cancer markers and thyroid function and hormones to inflammation and cardiac risk factors.
	You might be surprised to learn that the precise scientific mechanism behind Blue Magic is unclear.
	El Hosseini lives in Palm Beach Gardens, which, yeah, is basically a suburb of Palm Beach.
	So his operations are just a few miles from Mar-a-Lago.
	In an interview with a local news crew, you can hear the angle he's taking with his product.
	It might sound familiar.
	I'm looking around your garage and I see Elizabeth Holmes and I see Theranos.
	It's on your t-shirt.
	And where my mind goes is this has got to be a joke because she was convicted for fraud and her company was a Fugazi.
	What do you say to the person who's at home watching this and is going to have the same reaction as me when they see her face on these posters and that name on your t-shirt?
	Well, you know, science is undisputed.
	When you prove something scientifically, right?
	That is not a joke.
	That is science.
	And if you want to bring up a joke in Fugazi, the only thing that's actually quite a joke is how nobody within the Pfizer or Genentech, the makers of Avastin or the laboratories knew.
	Well, I believe they knew, but you cannot detect a protein if it has an antibody over it.
	First off, science is undisputed.
	It's not something anyone actually interested in science ever says.
	They might make general statements like, we know vaccines work, but experts leave room for discussions when it comes to specific vaccines.
	No, no, no, no.
	Science unified the belts in the heavyweight title clash with religion some time ago.
	You haven't read your new atheists carefully enough.
	Oh, shit.
	They're under the same.
	I recently got the first dose of the shingles vaccine now that I just turned 50.
	The pharmacist told me that with two doses, I would be 95 to 98% protected against developing shingles.
	She then went on and listed all the potential side effects and complications with this vaccine.
	She did not say it is undisputed that you will never get shingles.
	That type of language comes from people with a marketing agenda.
	And given that his product, which is just a reboot of the Edison, has never been shown to work, it's a ridiculous statement.
	Second, notice, we've seen this for years with wellness influencers.
	He immediately pivots to scary Pfizer.
	It's, uh-oh, I'm being called out.
	Time to invoke big scary pharma.
	This is El Hosseini's entire platform, though.
	In order to market his blood tests, he demonizes Pfizer by specifically citing Avastin, which requires a little bit more unpacking.
	In 2007 and 8, Thuranos worked on a Pfizer-sponsored study involving Avastin.
	The research focused on the process of new blood vessel formation, which is a critical, which is critical in cancer treatment and is targeted by Avastin.
	Thuranos apparently Developed assays to measure the markers for this formation, and they concluded that traditional tests could give false results about the effects of Avastin and miss dangerous rebound effects when the drug is discontinued.
	Now, to be clear, Avastin does have issues, mostly around its use in breast cancer treatment, where it showed mixed results and severe side effects.
	It is still in use, however, in many other forms of cancer treatment where proof of efficacy has been confirmed.
	Yeah, and the thing that these kinds of people and the audiences who find them convincing always miss is that all of this is standard.
	Like, this is what goes on in medical science.
	You develop a drug, it has promising effects, you test it, it goes through various trial processes for safety and efficacy.
	You start using it with the public.
	Sometimes there are issues, you do more research.
	Sometimes you discontinue a drug.
	Sometimes you realize it should only be used in certain cases or used in combination with other drugs.
	The conspiracist position and the pseudoscience position is always to say, is always to demand a kind of perfection from medical science, which is just never there, but it is always still miles and miles ahead of the types of pseudoscience claims that posture as if they have perfection because they're natural or holistic.
	Never there, never been there.
	And people who actually study it for a living know that and they admit that.
	And there's a humility around it, which does not exist in Mr. Khaled over here.
	All of what I just said is different from his argument, which he claims is an issue around pharma safety and diagnostic methodology, which is what El Hosseini has revived that particular argument.
	Now, here's the thing: the Edison never worked.
	Holmes claiming Avastin is problematic because her non-functional tech is as rich as El Hosseini saying his retool product works because it generates a beam of blue light.
	So when you can't actually prove something, you do what wellness grifters have been doing forever.
	Claim the current tech can't possibly measure something, but oh, look, I have a tool that science hasn't caught up with yet.
	It doesn't surprise me that El Hosseini is trying hard to get RFK Jr.'s attention.
	On the homepage of ThoreanosLabs.com, he claims they are leading the science to make America healthy again.
	After the clip we opened with, he features Kennedy speaking about big bad pharma on their Instagram page.
	He asks his small but fervent following to tag Kennedy, which they faithfully do.
	And I wouldn't write off El Hosseini getting in touch.
	A few weeks ago, he published a press release claiming to be in touch with the FDA, citing conversations with actual officials there.
	There's a video with him in the room with people from various agencies and organizations.
	And then he added this: We are here to support Maha, not just in word, but through real action by pressing for transparency and accountability in the regulatory process.
	Protecting America's public health is our shared mission.
	Our work highlights critical safety concerns, and we're committed to doing everything in our power to save lives.
	Big picture rhetoric, same thing.
	Make America healthy again.
	So you don't focus in on the specifics.
	El Hosseini, as we've covered, you said earlier, he's never spoken with Holmes.
	He's never talked to her.
	It's not like he bought the company.
	He was able to claim the name through a new business registration after it was dissolved due to Holmes' imprisonment.
	Oh my God.
	So just picture this.
	You're in prison for defrauding investors.
	And then you find out there are billboards all over LA with your picture next to a dude you don't even know who the fuck he is.
	He's reviving.
	Well, let's be honest.
	He's stealing the company you're sitting in prison for.
	And then there's a documentary online featuring you numerous times.
	And he's advocating for your release.
	It's got to be really strange.
	Yeah, I just see a light bulb going off over his opportunistic head when he realizes, oh, I can swoop in and use the name and the branding of a defunct and disgraced company whose founder is in jail by like doing some conspiracy mongering.
	And these are our times, Derek.
	These are grifters ripping off grifters.
	And he's another one of these guys who clearly is so, he's just so far up his own narcissistic ass that he doesn't have people around him, right?
	Who are who are giving him any sort of input or advice?
	You know, even just from the clip that we played off the very top, those pro tools like string slams with no compression on them that are just like so loud.
	It's like, you don't even have a producer or someone who knows anything about audio, you know, is sitting there going, yeah, actually, that's going to be too over the top and it's not going to sound good.
	No, nothing is too over the top for this man.
	And you might be wondering why you came up with the DJ Khaled.
	It's not just how he looks.
	Let's hear it.
	One drop of blood and they acting like you committed crimes.
	You listen deeper than you probably read between the lines.
	You can't assess something from the outside while looking in.
	No, that's like a pen with no paper.
	Can't see the writing.
	Wow.
	Dude's got bars.
	I mean, we smelled that coming from the first site of the billboard.
	He's got bad wannabe rapper written all over him.
	And that's also like part of what is so great about this grift is that he can't decide which lane he's going to be in.
	So he's trying to be an MLM guy.
	He's trying to be a rapper with like all of the conspicuous consumption of the wealth.
	And then he's also trying to be some kind of CEO lab technician expert, which, I mean, you go, King.
	I did not play the entire song.
	I don't think you want to listen to it.
	I did.
	Thank you.
	You got enough right there.
	Thank you.
	If you go to the Ipreme Film's YouTube page, you can see what El Hosseini is working on next, which is a trailer for a film called Pharma Gang Unit.
	Features more bikini models with machine guns trained on pharma execs while the Bugattis dash around the streets.
	It's all spectacle.
	It's not cheap.
	He is spending serious money on all of this.
	And I have no idea where it comes from.
	I looked into him.
	His LinkedIn page says that he's from my home state, New Jersey.
	He worked for Access Medical Laboratories in Jupiter, Florida for nearly 13 years.
	Before that, he founded his own energy drink called Oprem.
	Never heard of it.
	And then right before That he worked as an assistant manager at Dunkin' Donuts for two and a half years.
	He saved his money.
	I guess so.
	He took over Thuranos in May of 2025.
	So this is all very new.
	I want to write it off as parody or as trolling, as satire.
	Yeah.
	The number one comment on his YouTube page is, Are you kidding?
	And it's actually hard to tell, but it is getting eyeballs.
	His Pharma Gang unit trailer has 32,000 views, but his video that supposedly validates Elizabeth Holmes' research has 291,000 views.
	Yep.
	While all his videos play like a joke, they are slickly produced, audio engineering problems aside, which you're right on.
	It features many people in locations.
	I doubt they're donating their time.
	He's in Times Square with a billboard and these models.
	So that's, you know, he's hiring people to do this work.
	And that's the feeling I can't shake.
	It feels like parody, but so does everything else in Maha.
	So did Donald Trump coming down the golden escalator.
	It felt like parody.
	Right, right.
	Maha's myopic focus on food dyes while cancer research is being gutted, expert panels are being dismantled, and Kennedy's huckster friends are being positioned, given positions of power.
	It feels like the biggest fucking joke imaginable, even though Vinay Prasad just got booted, but that's a different story.
	We might have to do a brief on that.
	That is funny, though.
	That's a legitimately funny thing.
	All of this makes me think El Hosseini just saw what's going on right in front of all of our eyes and thought, huh, I'm going to go get a piece of that.
	And in a few short months, he's created the type of wellness rhetoric that could just get him that piece.
	He could replace Prasad in his position.
	I've been speculating that private-public partnerships are going to flourish under Kennedy.
	My guess was that another unproven blood test run by Mark Hyman's Function Health was going to be the first company to benefit.
	But fuck it.
	At this point, it could be Thuranos.

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