Why Nathan Fielder's ‘You Can See Everything’ Left Us Reeling | Hard Fork

And I found this mention in the Wall Street Journal of Elizabeth Holmes. And so I did some research and, you know, there weren't any magazine stories or profiles or interviews. And I reached out to Theranos and got a yes to come down and interview her. So I walked into a, you know, at the Theranos offices, I wasn't allowed to go anywhere else other than the room that we were in, which had a phlebotomist to take my blood, and then also a place for me to sit with Elizabeth. And that's when I met her. Most notable immediately was what seemed like an affectation of her voice. It seemed kind of. odd she was wearing her steve jobs outfit and she had on like red lipstick um so and she had this sort of you know this this thing that now we've become quite aware of but this kind of big blue eyed stare you know kind of still and looking directly at you um and and i asked her a bunch of questions now of course like uh i was i you know wired in general at that time especially was their orientation really was on innovation and celebration of that innovation and i was I was actually genuinely excited to meet a founder who was working in biotech instead of, you know, trying to make food delivery faster or cars come quicker, you know, and it felt like significantly more interesting to me.

The part about her pitch that was about reducing health care costs, making transparent blood tests results to patients and potentially disrupting Medicare, you know, I thought that was that was pretty cool and I was excited to be there. So I interviewed her for about an hour, and then I had my blood drawn by a phlebotomist. So that was like the teeny tiny vial that you've seen in pictures, like a teeny tiny vial. And because I was dealing with some medical stuff at the time, I asked for the same panel that I had just had so that I could compare the results of my panel and the Theranos panel. Wow, you did more than a lot of her investors.

Caitlin Roperwell i mean i there was no i mean obviously and you guys know this but like there was no verifiable science i couldn't see the lab i couldn't talk to a lead scientist in some ways

she was sort of standing in for the lead scientist in the way that she talked about about the company and of course she was also talking about new science right um genetic testing of the blood in this different way but anyway they took my blood and i did look at the panel against mine And it was very much similar data to the same tests, like basically, like, you know, not exactly, but very, very close. Of course, since then, I've wondered, where was it tested? How did they do it since it was such a small amount of blood? It wasn't a pinprick, but it was like that tiny vial. And so, you know, I had I don't want to go on because I've said so much already.

But like, there's lots of things about like the experience of spending time with her that were interesting and odd. And I think, you know, if I had to characterize some of that, I would say I believe she had conviction. about what she was doing. Yeah. I mean, we definitely want to put a pin in that and get back to that because I think a lot of what we're going to be talking about is Elizabeth Holmes' conviction and our conviction as interlocutors of Elizabeth Holmes. Kaylin, you were sort of there at the rise. I mean, you're talking about early in her career. She had a little bit of investment.

Right, exactly. Let's turn to you, John, because you were there for the downfall. I mean, you played a prominent role in the downfall. When did you first hear about Elizabeth Holmes And what was your sort of experience of reporting on her? Yeah, she wasn't really on my radar until a New Yorker story of her profile by Ken Aleta was published, I think, in mid-December 2014. And I read that commuting back from the Wall Street Journal newsroom in Manhattan to my apartment in Brooklyn, read it on the subway. And there were some things that I picked up in that story that struck me as odd. The main thing probably is that, you know, she was making these bold claims about what

John Carreyrouher technology could do, but there were no peer-reviewed scientific journal studies or articles about her technology.

And then there was also a note in there about the secrecy. and um i thought you know i thought to myself there's something not quite right here but then um didn't really think any more of it uh for the next couple weeks until about three weeks later out of the blue i got a call from a source who was a practicing pathologist in Columbia, Missouri, and he'd read the very same New Yorker story. And he knew a lot more about blood testing than I did. And he was very skeptical of her claims and about the feasibility of what she asserted. He was like three times removed from any real information. But the fact that he was so skeptical about the science and the feasibility of the science coming on top of my own questions that I had spontaneously reading The New Yorker story, that kind of made me willing to look a little bit more into it.

So there were all these YouTube videos that I watched. And we've made it possible to eliminate the tubes and tubes of blood that traditionally have to be drawn from an arm and replaced it with the nanotainer. And there's something really odd about her. I felt like she was playing a role. There was some play acting going on. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I felt sure that part of it wasn't genuine. And that made me even more kind of suspicious and willing to delve deeper into the story. So if Caitlin was there at the rise and John was there for the fall, Erin, you covered Elizabeth's trial extensively.

What was that experience like? The trial took many, many years to actually happen. So I believe it started in 2021 in San Jose, which is about an hour and a half south of San Francisco. So me and half of the SF press corps is down there hanging around the courthouse for about four months. But it was really surreal in a way because we are in the hallway and like kind of in this same space as Elizabeth Holmes and her family. And we wound up actually kind of spending a lot of time sitting around with Billy Evans, her partner, who plays a really prominent role in the movie, and her parents, who are also in the movie.

And they were very, you know, friendly and chatty to us. Billy, you know, would talk about Burning Man or various things, but never anything about the trial or about Holmes. And the oddest thing that happened, I would say, is that Billy Evans' dad came to the jury selection and was hanging out with all of us in the media and kind of chatting with us. And he told us his name was Hanson and that he was just there as an observer because he was interested in criminal justice. And that's not a totally implausible story because there are a lot of people that, you know, some people call gavel groupies that hang out at trials.

They just like find the whole process interesting. There were some people that went to every single day of this trial over the course of four months. So, you know, we just thought he was kind of one of those. And then later on the first day of the trial, when Holmes shows up with her family arm in arm, he's with them, Hansen. And it turns out it was actually Billy Evans' dad. Wow. Wild. This is like, I mean, you know, once you see the movie, I feel like that it clicks something into place to learn that his dad, his dad was doing stuff like that. OK, so we have here sort of three periods of Elizabeth Holmes is the arc of her career.

Now, last month, a trailer drops for a new documentary that seems to suggest a kind of fourth period. I don't have anything to deceive you on. Of course, I'm not deceiving you. I'm engaging with you as a human being, hmm? Why would I deceive you? There's no, there's no reason for me to do that. Okay. all right okay good shot how did you guys react when this movie trailer dropped were any of you aware that this documentary was in the works yeah i i actually found out about it uh about 18 months ago a little more than 18 months ago, Fielder reached out to me and I was, uh, kind of unfriendly, uh, to him because at the time I was being harassed by this guy. And so when Fielder reached out to me in the middle of this, I was, uh, suspicious that he and this crackpot were basically in league and, and working together. Um, and so, um, I, you know, was, was pretty hostile.

Wow. Did you mention that to him or you just kind of said, no, thanks? Yeah. Eventually. I mean, I, I forwarded, um, Nathan's email to my agents and then my agent talked to his agent and, um, we were able to ascertain that they weren't, um, you know, it wasn't the same thing and that they weren't working together. Um, but, um, I didn't, I still didn't really have a good idea of what exactly Fielder was working on. I didn't understand what exactly he wanted from me. Um, I was kind of done with Elizabeth Holmes at Theranos. And I would say, like, I heard about the movie, not that, like, at the beginning of their promotion, and I thought, why? You know, uh, just because, like, at that point there had been so much, like and as you know and and you know and then i found out it was lance oppenheim and nathan fielder and i thought like those are interesting artists um you know but uh but i my overall question was like how much are we going to be paying attention to this woman how long so you you you were pretty forever as it turns out caitlin you were pretty sick of elizabeth of the elizabeth holmes story i mean just well i it just raises questions for me like why why is she you know there's lots of in in in my job i look at lots of stories of con people con people should

be a phrase but um and you know i i just i find they're unsatisfying because mostly they believe what they're selling for a long period of time and we think as regular people you know who go to a party and we say something weird and we think about it for four days or maybe that's just me like that uh if we were lying all the time it would you know really suck yeah and be hard and And I think actually, you know, they have a higher tolerance for deceit, sure, but also just uncomfortability. And I think both Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder have a very high tolerance for discomfort. Yes, you could say that.

I mean, it's interesting to hear you say this, Caitlin, because one of the most interesting things is how enduring their cultural fascination with a figure like Holmes is. There's a lot of people, I mean, I would include myself in this, who have been sort of obsessed with her without ever having really met her. And you guys are part of a small group of people who have gotten up close, to say the least. And I am interested, one of the main questions I have after seeing this movie is what you think of how she was portrayed or how she portrayed herself in the film. Like, was it surprising? Did it feel new or did it feel like more of the kind of same old?

John, you spent the most time thinking about Elizabeth. Let's start with you. Right. And just to be clear, she never granted me an interview. When I was researching Theranos, I tried to get an interview with her in late 2015 and, you know, made repeated attempts, repeated requests. And she would never grant me an interview because I think it was clear to her that I was very skeptical of what she had stated on the record. about her company's capabilities, and she just didn't want to engage with that. I tried to interview her again when I went on book leave in early 2016 for the book. I tried to make the case to her PR people that this was her opportunity to have some influence over the narrative.

And again, you know, I was declining any access. So it was with a bit of envy, actually, that I watched Fielder and Oppenheim get all this access and be able to ask any question they wanted. In terms of her portrayal, or at least how she comes across, I think that there are two sides of Elizabeth Holmes. One is that she can be very pleasant and she can be extremely charming if she wants to be. And I think there's another side which she doesn't show much, if at all, in this film, which is that she is feisty. She's combative. She's ruthless. And she's a liar. and um the the uh the feisty sort of combative ruthless parts you see in tiny little flashes i'd say in the film when uh she's being asked by fielder you know insistently well how did you get here don't you think you did something wrong and she says i did not and sort of there there's that she there are a couple times where she snaps back i did not um and and her demeanor is a little bit more tense. And I think that's the closest you get to seeing that other Elizabeth Holmes.

But for the most part, she does a very good job of hiding it. Caitlin, what about you? Was this similar to the Holmes that you remember from those interviews, from that interview now more than a decade ago? I mean, I think I think I interpreted them differently, obviously, in 2013 than now in 2026 but one of the things i've thought a lot about in the intervening years is teasing out what what her performances are for who they're for right like when i met her like again there was not a lot of female founders and certainly not raising this level of capital and focused on biotech and so i thought to myself that the way she was dressed the sort of black on black which didn't seem super weird to me but seemed very like um purposeful was uh was also about just being in rooms with men when you're trying to raise money there's lots of research that shows that women do not get investment in the same way that men do and so in my mind you know i thought of that as partially trying to pass as a strong um you know founder which like at the time the other thing that was going on was just like every single person saying like your investments are just in the in the founder right it's this sort of like auteur theory of technology that you know

you're investing in someone but i couldn't i did get a vibe that something wasn't totally you know she was performing something um and and and also she's just weird yeah you know so when i watched the movie i felt like the same i felt some of the same suite of feelings yeah i mean she to caitlin's point about her costume she very conspicuously dresses and makes herself up in almost an exact opposite way to to her at her most famous in the 2015 2016 there are no turtlenecks in this movie there are very few dark colors her hair is down most of the time uh and you know as you're saying caitlin it's hard not to wonder if this is itself a sort of strategy i mean in some ways it probably obviously is a sort of strategy to come across in a in a more relaxed and intimate and different way yeah especially in those scenes you know it's like we're we're they were in a temporary housing situation there but they're at the beach you know it's like it's like we're frolicking on the beach like literally we're frolicking on the beach we're just taking care of our dear child.

I mean, her child Child is present, right? But that's also like a kind of telegraphing ease and intimacy, right? Like you're inside someone's real self. And how to interpret that is kind of like, I think the filmmakers, Oppenheim and Fielder, made choices carefully about what's in their edit, as anyone would. and and we're thinking about the question of like what she was performing that scene where she doesn't understand fielder's question about like and over and over again she repeats the same answer it's like that was one of the most intense like scenes for me because it's just completely baffling yeah and it there was a parallel that reminded me of actually at the trial there were moments i don't know if you remember this john when like she was being interrogated by the prosecutors and they're asking the same question over and over and over and like just slightly different ways and trying to like get her to and and it just very much reminded me of that where it's like there's a little bit of a communication breakdown here yeah yeah because i think the the reason communication breaks down quite simply is she's not answering the question she's evading the question she's alighting and yeah um i mean i i felt like there were some some moments in the

film where she was just brazenly lying um one scene that that comes to mind is um when they're at this photography studio that uh billy her companion has taken her to to um film uh her from a bunch of different angles to to basically create a digital replica of her that he's going to be able to show their children when she's in prison and uh before she goes on to have her picture taken, suddenly she breaks down in tears, and you hear her say through the tears that last time people in her entourage pushed her into the spotlight, it didn't go well. And I almost jumped out of my chair, because to me, that was like a brazen lie. And the reason is that the first time

John Carreyrouaround, she embraced the spotlight. She jumped into the spotlight. She did everything she could to attract the spotlight. And there are even texts that show that she was enjoying the spotlight and

that she premeditated the coverage text that came out during her criminal trial. So I felt like those tears and that moment at the photography studio were completely manufactured um and well it's also possible though that she but isn't it possible that even regardless of if she was into it or not when she was doing it at the time that the result is that she's like kind of traumatized by how it all turned out but and also i mean i i mean john like i hear you that does seem like a brazen lie to me and yet one of the interesting things of the film is as a mother like i'm watching it and i'm actually every time i remember that she's about to go to prison and she's just given just has these young children i i felt like sad and empathy for her you know because like this is such a weird period of time to be with someone no matter who they are right like the last days before they go to prison for how many years 12 11 and three months 11 years and three Yeah, although she's now going to be moving to a halfway house apparently next year or so.

And John, I don't think that negates your point. It's like my sadness about her situation, just a human sadness about her situation doesn't change this question of her calculations about what she's saying and lying. I think that's kind of what makes the movie work so well. I was very nervous that it was like, oh, well, this is just going to be kind of a redemption story or getting us all kind of on her side emotionally. and it does take us into her emotional state and like... Makes you feel bad for her at times. She's going to prison. Like you said, she's going to be away from her, her family, but it doesn't also let her off the hook, which is what I was kind of most worried about.

Right. There's a scene where I think she and Fielder are outside in the dunes above the beach. And he asks her whether she's ever lied in her life, whether she's ever told a lie ever. And her answer is no. Never. And he goes, Liz, really? Yeah. Yeah. And that's all of us. It's preposterous. But but I felt like they gave her enough rope to hang herself there. You know, you could take the the point of view that letting her say that on camera with a straight face is giving her the opportunity to manipulate the public and to rehabilitate herself. But I think the way it comes off is not that. It comes off as this absurd statement that can't possibly be true. And if anything, you know, she she looks worse for it.

Yeah, there's a real sense that the movie is trying and maybe Fielder as the as the sort of motivating force within the movie is trying to come down on this idea. Is she manipulative? Is does she believe what she's saying? Is she full of it? Is she? Can we redeem her? And I'm not sure there's a satisfying answer. But Caitlin, it was interesting to hear you say that you could generate a kind of academic sympathy for her or not even academic, a real sympathy for her in the situation, because you're probably the person here who has the best claim to herself to have been manipulated by Elizabeth Holmes.

I mean, did you feel manipulated in retrospect through that interview, by that interview? I mean, yes, I felt like I felt like it was, you know, the granting access to that interview was the beginning of a plan that they rolled out and that there was a calculated interest in validating what they were doing. So like, but I was like, do I blame her? I never felt like I didn't feel personal enemies against her. I felt regret that that I that we wrote about her so early when we couldn't validate any of her scientific claims. You know, I was wondering, did you ever feel like she was reluctant at the time that she was a reluctant participant in in the interview and that she was dragging her feet?

No way. Not at all. I didn't. I thought she was trying to telegraph strength and thoughtfulness. And of course, anytime I asked a question that she didn't want to answer, she would look to someone. But like clearly she was deciding she had already decided she wasn't going to answer. But honestly, it seemed familiar to me. I interviewed other tech founders, and they would withhold some information and try to give you the information that was beneficial to their IPO or to their, you know, to their round of funding. And so the idea of that manipulation, it was always at play, you know, in these interviews. These are not like unvarnished people. Again, back to my point about like, you know, you're investing in a person.

And if you're if you're not compelled by that person, you know, you can't believe what they're going to do. You know, I felt like that was a lot of what everyone was doing at the time. But so so that that scene where she cries and she blames her her entourage at the time for pushing her into the limelight, I felt like is, you know, shirking responsibility, her responsibility. And there's another moment where she does that, too, when Sonny Balwani comes up and without explicitly doing so, she implicitly throws him under the bus. Sorry, we should just say Sonny Balwani was her partner, her romantic partner, but also her business partner at Theranos. And he was the chief operating officer, if I'm remembering.

He was her second in command, and he was the chief operating officer. President, yeah. Right. And he essentially ran the company with her. But there's an unwillingness to take any sort of responsibility in Elizabeth Holmes. There's this subtle blaming of other people that I find incredibly manipulative, because she's doing that at the same time as she's trying to get you to feel sympathy for her. Yeah. This is a great place to take a break. When we come back, we're going to talk a little bit more about why Elizabeth Holmes continues to obsess us and what it says about the tech industry today. Welcome back.

I'm with Aaron Griffith, John Carreyrou, and Caitlin Roper talking about Elizabeth Holmes and the new documentary by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim. John, you are writing an essay about your experience watching this movie and your reaction to it, and also about the question of why Elizabeth Holmes is still an enduring figure. I mean, she's such a sort of emblematic figure of 2010s and tech, and yet here we are in 2026, and we seem unable to kind of escape her. So what for you is the thing that makes Elizabeth Holmes such a continuous object of obsession for culture and media? You know, I've long asked myself that. Why are people so fascinated with this person? Because I got to say, I found the story interesting, you know, for a couple years, but it's gotten a little bit old for me personally.

I think the answer is that people are captivated with the psychology of deceit, especially when it's a woman doing the deceiving. And I think there's another dimension here, which is that this was a medical story. This was not just a fraud where investors were defrauded. It wasn't just your run-of-the-mill corporate fraud. There was a public health element to it where patients' lives were arguably put in. jeopardy. And so I think people are just fascinated with the notion of what goes through the mind of a woman who's willing to play with patients' lives. And I think that, you know, clearly a decade in, people are still captivated by this.

Caitlin, you were saying before that you felt like gender played a pretty significant role also in her rise. I mean, do you agree with John that this is part of what's happening with the continuing kind of interest in her? Yes, I think that as a culture in the United States, we see men lie all the time and they get caught in those lies and we don't see them reviled in this way. So, you know, I'm not equating, you know, stealing money or a phony business deal with exactly what Elizabeth Holmes did. But I think we are shocked when we see a woman do that and we are not shocked when we see a man do that. And I do think that gender plays a huge role in just like the idea that we want to continue to drag, like, you know, focus and energy against a woman over time. I think there's a lot of energy for that. Now, I'm not saying at all that I think that that energy is not deserved for Elizabeth Holmes, but I do think there's culture at play on the question of who we disparage and continue to disparage over time.

And Max, to your question, I mean, her gender was absolutely a part of the rise because like Caitlin was saying, like she was the entire tech press was looking for examples of standout female founders, because at that time in the mid 2010s, everyone kind of looked around and realized like, oh my god they're where are all the women like silicon valley more so than any other sector seems to have a real problem with like elevating women when we've got all these tech bro unicorn founders where why aren't there like any female founders of billion dollar companies and then suddenly here is one and so that's why she got put on the cover of like every business magazine because we finally found an example of it and so and i think this kind of happened later too with the quote unquote girl boss era where like a lot of female founders got disproportionate press because there was so much excitement about promoting a female founder. And then of course they got disproportionate criticism and like, you know, they would call it takedowns because of all of that press and attention. Yeah. And Erin, like to your point, it's like literally I wrote about her because I was a woman editor at a mostly male magazine covering a mostly male industry.

And it was so novel to me to find a founder who was a woman, and not only that, but someone in biotech. So I do think gender played a huge role in my, personally, my covering her at that early stage. But to your question of the enduring interest, that one is a little bit different because there are just so many elements of her story that are a little bit like odd or attention grabbing. I mean, from the outfits to the voice to like all of the kind of like the secrecy and obsession. Being a mother. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. There are just enough pieces of it that I feel like it touches every possible demographic.

Like one thing from the trial, I remember, you know, talking to a lot of the toward the end, there were a lot of spectators showing up and including people who were in a book club who read John's book and who came together as like a little book club outing. And, you know, I'm asking them, like, what are you guys doing here? And one of them told me, which I'll never forget, like, oh, we're just fans of white collar crime. And I was like, are you you mean as a as a book genre or as a genre of story? OK, sure. And in the same way that there are people who are fans of like, you know, murder stories or murder podcasts, like there's also a fraud contingent as well.

John must be such a celebrity to those people. Yeah, I agree with everything you guys just said. But let me ask this, though. We're now, you know, 11 years after I broke this this story in the Wall Street Journal. And who is stoking the interest? Who is recreating reasons for us to to again pay attention to her?

John CarreyrouIt's Elizabeth herself. She is the one who invited these filmmakers into her home 30 days, 34 days before she was scheduled to go to prison. She's the one who is still asking for the public attention.

And so, you know, I think we also have her own very proactive efforts to blame for this, for why this is still, you know, a story that's in the news and that's generating tons of coverage 11 years later. That's a great point. And honestly, I would not be surprised if Sam Bankman-Fried is currently emailing Nathan Fielder about getting a meeting. Unfortunately, SBF really has nothing on Liz Holmes as a kind of cultural figure. He just does not have the juice in the way she does. I mean, sorry to be totally reality TV producer about it. She's got something that he just doesn't have. So one thing I'd love to talk about is the romantic relationships of Elizabeth Holmes, which have been on display in these two giant ways in the trial and all of the reporting around what was happening at Theranos, but also in this movie in which we are inside her marriage, inside her house, with her husband and her children. And I don't want to spoil the movie, but I would say the kind of extreme devotion that was captured in a lot of what we learned about her relationship with Sonny Balwani was very, very similar here. And there's something watching this as a woman of trying to toggle between, well, first of all, you're still

asking yourself the questions, is this real? Do they think it's real? Do real people talk like this to each other? Like, you know, that's one fundamental question. But then, like, what is the role of this, you know, partnership, romantic partnership and business partnership? And then why is she picking these guys what i what i found so fascinating is when she's talking her and billy are getting really excited like jazzing each other up talking about theranos 2.0 and her parents are there and they're just kind of slowly zooming in on her parents and the looks on their faces are they're just you can just see them just sort of you know stealing themselves because it feels like they're like, here we go again. Yeah, they look they look very nervous. And around that time in the film, Nathan asks Mr. Holmes, Christian Holmes, whether it's a good idea for Elizabeth to be getting into business again with a romantic partner, given what happened the first time.

And his answer is, good question. I trust Billy. Good question. I trust Billy. You know, and implied, of course, is I didn't trust Sonny. My view of those two relationships is that as much as Elizabeth tried to blame it all on Sonny in the trial, you know, the jury obviously

John Carreyroudidn't buy it. It convicted her. I didn't buy it. But I do think there was a grain of truth there in the sense that Sonny was a terrible influence on Elizabeth Holmes. And I think we see through

this film that Billy Evans is a terrible influence on Elizabeth Holmes. He's narcissistic, he's arrogant, he's controlling, he's manipulative. He lied. and uh i feel like the pattern is repeating itself yeah i mean i think you know that scene you describe then billy evans appears even though the dad christian holmes has just said i trust billy and he comes right over to say no more talking right no more talking so like that was a really like i thought that that scene was very powerful um but you know i do both of these guys seem pretty awful yeah but i do feel like as with everything around elizabeth holmes we have to come back to like what's going on inside of her like what what what is this because not only is she having these relationships with these kind of men but she's also um she's also using this like intense like um eye-catching like desperate extreme bombastic language in both cases like Right. So it's like there's something there that's performative and also some kind of construction, a romantic, an understanding of what romance is like.

There's something in here that's very strange on the question of like, why, you know, put it this way. You know, I don't know how you guys feel about PDA, but seeing people like walk down the street and they're making out or they're talking in a loud, loving way. These things don't bother me particularly. but like having a friend say like he is my everything like that would like take let's you know let's go to a psychologist from here you know what i mean like it's like it's and she's doing all of that and so this question of like what does she think her romantic relationships are because we see her in this movie repeatedly show us that what she thinks this is is perfect you know perfect parody they're aligned and synced they're two twin souls they're dolphins you know leaping out of the water towards each other.

It's like, it's very bizarre. And that's what the text with Sonny Balwani revealed. Yes. A similar thing. Like, what's that about? She calls their love a monument to love over and over, right? They're building monuments to love. To love. Every day. Every day. For each other. Every day. You know, I think all that being said, yes, it's bizarre and it's grandiose and it's cartoonishly romantic. but I do think probably the most genuine thing in the movie is their love. I actually do think they love each other. And I also think that Elizabeth and Sonny were in love. It does, I think, help explain a little bit why she was so willing to bring Nathan Fielder in to live with her for 30 days before she went to jail, which is to say, like, she really clearly has she's a she commits full on to basically everything she does. And I don't know whether that's about reassuring herself or about, you know, sort of faking it till you make it. But if you're going to commit to your relationship to that extent, if you're going to commit to your lies to that extent, you're going to commit to your fraud and your business. Why not commit to inviting this weird Canadian comedian to make a documentary about you at one of the most intimate

moments of your entire life? And the irony being like it's all about transparency and you can see everything is literally the title and billy is then the one cutting off access like left and right um all throughout the film i i want to ask a question i think this is a good a good place to mention it so there's there's um there's one way of looking at this movie is of sort of elizabeth holmes as a kind of allegory for tech like you have this uh this way that she was it as we've been saying a kind of emblematic figure of the 2010s she's she's doing the steve jobs thing she's getting all these these covers. And then there's the downfall. I wanted to ask you, Erin, since you're reporting on this all the time, you know, I think it's fair to say Elizabeth was like an emblematic figure 10 years ago. Is she still now? Like, what is the relationship that people who work in the Valley right now have with her? I think in general, the tech industry kind of rejects somebody who has been convicted of fraud. During the trial, I wrote a lot about how this the the trial was kind of emblematic or symbolmatic of like Silicon Valley's ethos of fake it till you make it and how Holmes had simply taken the same thing everyone else does, including Elon Musk

or other founders who need to exaggerate to, you know, get people on board with their vision. But she had just taken it a little bit too far. And, you know, Judge Davila even talked about that in his sentencing and at the end of the trial as well. So I had a lot of fights with Silicon Valley investors about this who were like, no, she is not part of Silicon Valley. This is not what we're about. But it's really hard, I think, for a lot of founders to parse where that line is because she was following the playbook that everybody and, you know,

Erin GriffithCaitlin's talked about this a little bit as well. Like you do have to exaggerate and paint a grandiose vision that may not be anywhere close to reality in order to get investors on board,

in order to get employees on board with like whatever thing it is that you're inventing and bringing into the world. Obviously, when that crosses into lying and deception, it becomes illegal. But like, I think there's a there's a very strong argument that you can make that she was absolutely a product of Silicon Valley culture. And that a lot of people get really confused about where the line is, especially when you have people like Elon Musk, who is constantly promising things that he doesn't deliver on. Right. I would say there's an extremely fine line, extremely fine line between Elizabeth Holmes and Elon Musk. And I think it would be completely legitimate for some lay person, you know, who parachutes in to Silicon Valley today or to American society today to wonder why one of them is in prison and not the other.

And I would say as an editor at Wired around that time, did I get a tour of a factory so I could see incredible Tesla robot, you know, robot arms before there was a car, you know, and there wasn't a car and there still wasn't a car and there still wasn't a car after that. So like, you know, I mean, not to mention like, you know, whatever high speed rail in California. I mean, you know, every single founder is trafficking across that line. So I agree that that is is true about Elon and Elizabeth Holmes. So in that spirit, we've got Theranos 2.0 coming. Do you guys think is there is this the next chapter?

Are they going to be successful? Are we going to see Elizabeth Holmes run Walgreens Wellness Center anytime soon? Oh, my God. I don't understand. The technology worked the first time. I mean, the machine could do hundreds of tests. You know, she explains it in the film. You know, the cloud, you know, sent the orders into the cartridge. Weren't you listening? Everything worked perfectly. So why does there need to be a second iteration of the technology? Why do they have to use lasers now? And why did there even need to be, you know, drawings and another prototype? It was all done right the first time.

Okay. My question for you, John Carreyrou, is, and I thought about this as I watched the movie, what was your, like, emotional weather as you watched it? Like, how did you feel? So, I've seen it twice. And the first time I saw it was about 10 days ago at the A24 offices in Manhattan. And I was in a screening room virtually by myself. Actually, one other person was there, my wife. You know, I did nearly jump out of my chair the first time I saw the scene of her crying and blaming other people for pushing her into the limelight. um i would say that the the second time i i enjoyed the film even more the second time i i read you know revisiting uh some scenes uh the second time around i felt like um there were there was more they were more pregnant meaning than perhaps I'd given them credit for the first time around. I guess I was over two viewings. I was really won over by the artistry of the way they filmed this thing, but also the structure, the amount of meta thinking that went into it, how unusual it is. And whereas the first time I saw Fielder living in that house in San Diego with them and asking Elizabeth repeatedly whether she did anything wrong and her repeatedly denying that she didn't do anything wrong.

That first, you know, time that I saw those 90 minutes was frustrating a little bit for me because, you know, I would have liked to jump in and grab the mic from Fielder and And drill down a little bit more and not be so polite. But, you know, on the whole, I really like this movie. Caitlin, can I ask you the same question about your emotional weather as you watched it? Well, I have a hat that says make movies shorter. And on the back it says 97 minutes with credits. And so that's my, like, philosophical platform. So I went into this thinking, not only are we back to Holmes, culturally, you know, or not that we left, but also we are spending three hours with Elizabeth Holmes. And that, you know, my emotional weather to that was like, what the fuck? You know, but on a number of levels.

But I have been asking myself this question, you know, for more than 10 years, like, what does she think is real? What does she think is real? Like, what is real? And what I know what is real now, thanks to John. What does she think is real? And what does she think is happening? And so that was how I came in. Like, my feelings were like, what are we going to learn that adds to what we know about her? Are we going to learn anything different? Are we going to see and perceive her in a different way? And how is it going to make us feel? and really a lot of my feelings at the beginning were really just about the filmmaking.

Like what, you know, this question is like the idea of objectivity is nowhere anywhere in the movie. And on purpose, like, you know, like John said, thoughtfully so, like it's meta, they're thinking about it. They obviously did incredibly important thinking, not just filming, right? About what they were going to do, not to mention the edit, but there's just lots of things in there that are odd. the feeling of it felt manipulative in every way to me like emotionally it doesn't mean i didn't like the movie i i actually loved it i thought it was great and um but i did feel like manipulated on every level by elizabeth holmes by billy evans by lance and nathan and and i don't um and i you know i love movies so i don't mind being manipulated but i was so conscious of it that i like felt it the whole the whole time yeah my experience of watching this was like uh i i love but i'm terrified of cringe comedy you know and so i had this this sense of like really wanting to kind of hide my head sometimes as the as the encounters got more and more awkward but unlike say like the british office or whatever where i really as my wife will tell you just have to completely go under the couch to like have it happen i was riveted like i could not hide i

could not look away it was like total anxiety total fascination like uh you know like you're Stanky and sort of admiration and John too, like admiration of what's happening there, but also just feeling this sense of rollercoaster ride is almost too cliche. It's just like I was worried it was going to fall off a cliff at any moment. And it kind of does, but in this way where you're like, I guess I'm going off the cliff. I guess I'm going off the cliff with you guys. So yeah, it was a sort of exhilarating movie to watch in a funny way, which is not something you often say about. three hour long documentaries, but it, it had this, this sort of, um, adrenaline pumping aspect of not even mystery, but just like the, the strangeness of the encounter that, that, uh, it kept circling around. You, we also had like, we, we go in not just knowing Elizabeth Holmes at this point, but largely culturally knowing Nathan Fielder. And so the other thing that's playing against is like what your understanding is of what he makes and what he does. Um, and so I think Like, again, like, just how much are you, like, you were, you're describing basically being, like, in the shoot, you know, and I'm just, like, very much, like, out of the shoot, holding onto the edges, not going down the shoot, you know?

Like, it's, like, there's, because I'm conscious of this thing, and yet, I also really enjoyed the movie. Yeah, totally. Guys, this has been a fantastic conversation. I feel like I need to go see the movie again with all of this in mind. John and Caitlin are going to drop off now. We're going to go to break, and Aaron's going to come back. We're going to talk about the spy from OpenAI, plus a bunch of other news headlines from the week. John and Caitlin, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having us. Welcome back to Hard Fork. After a stimulating discussion about Elizabeth Holmes, I am back with our old friend Aaron Griffith to talk about the headlines of the week.

Hi. The big story that we need to talk about more than anything is the alleged OpenAI spy. So the FBI arrested an OpenAI employee this week, and he's been accused of planting a bug in the office. I think the main media that everybody needs to consume about this is the photograph allegedly capturing this guy looking at the recording device, which he plugged into the back of a television. I'll describe it for our listeners. And there is the accused spy whose name is Abdulrahman Al-Fazan. He's a 35-year-old from Saudi Arabia looking. I don't know. How would you describe it? He almost looks like he's sort of a movie monster pose.

He looks like he looks like a cartoon villain that just got gut punched. Yes, exactly. I mean, this is really like whenever I have to unplug stuff from the back of my TV, I feel very glad nobody's taking any photos for me because I assume I have this kind of pain. Well, this is the question I have is like, do they have a camera back there or I mean, that's not taken by the security device. Is it like it was just a recording device? So how did they capture that photo? Well, so OpenAI says they made the announcement on their Twitter feed at the same time as the FBI was talking about it. And they said, and this is to me, this is like an extremely OpenAI statement.

We discovered a sophisticated recording device that was hidden inside one of our offices. We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier. Yeah, they used ChatGPT to discover the thing or whatever. Always be marketing your model. Exactly. It's like really, it's like no wonder everybody accuses everything they do of marketing because everything they do is marketing. I was, I mean, so one thing that's interesting about this, I think we're presuming that he was spying on behalf of the Saudi Arabian government, which also we will remember allegedly planted a spy on Twitter or in X.

Not alleged. That was, that, that one fully went to trial and we can just say happened. Yeah. This seems to have been, so the Twitter one, my memory is that there was, some of it was about spying on dissidents who were organizing. It was on masking anonymous dissident Twitter accounts. Yeah, that's what the person was trying to do. This seems more about bugging meetings, like high level meetings. Yeah, no. Yeah, that's true. I mean, I actually would love to hear even more details about what they think this person was trying to get. I mean, we don't we don't know a lot about that yet. I have to say, too, like this guy is obviously not like a top tier spy if he's just plugging stuff in the back of the TV and getting caught that easily.

It does make you wonder if there are other spies inside any of the labs. I mean, surely every government on the planet would love to have one inside some of these places. Yeah. And I mean, this person has at least a long track record of working in tech. I mean, I'm not sure how real that is, but, you know, people are reporting on their LinkedIn that he was at Meta and he was at various startups before. So, like, either he's been, like, playing a very long game, he's been spying for a very long time, or he just got converted, which, you know, given how easily he was caught might be the answer. Sometimes I'm surprised we don't see more stories like this because it seems really clear to me that all the action in espionage these days has to be trying to, you know, insert people into huge multinational corporations with really valuable intellectual property.

I remember this was a really big issue during COVID when everyone went fully remote for the first time because you're hiring all these people that you never meet. And then, you know, there's all these stories about people having two jobs and like that was the big thing. But there's also kind of a little like unspoken thing of like, what if our employees aren't real? I'm learning so much about how spying works here. Apparently the bar is pretty low. Clearly, maybe that's maybe when journalism finally collapses, Aaron, this is something that you and I can get into. Delete that, please. Also in AI news, we should talk about Character AI, which recently declared bankruptcy.

Character AI, you will remember, our audience will remember, was a sort of chatbot platform where you could create characters that you would interact with. You know, I mostly knew it as a source of very funny, like, screenshots that I would see posted on Twitter, but also it later became quite controversial. It faced a number of lawsuits from states and individuals. There's suggestions that it had pushed its users into suicide, self-harm. um uh it filed for bankruptcy earlier this week uh and it is selling some of its assets to walt disney um it's claiming lack of profitability uh despite having roughly 12 million active users this is from a reuters article due to the high cost of computing power and employing ai talent um what did you make of this well i mean i've actually been kind of wondering what's going to happen for a while to all the kind of like leftover nubs of these AI companies that did aqua hire deals with big tech companies. And this kind of hasn't been reported in some of the stories I've seen are not as prominently. And for some reason, I'm obsessed with this. But if you recall, Character AI was started by these two Google guys, Noam Shazeer and Daniel Melody Freight has, and they left Google because Google's moving too slow.

um google's like we need them back um but for antitrust reasons we're not really sure about making a big acquisition and they won a lot of money so they did this like backward deal where they hired character ai like they hired back shazir and they hired back the founders they

Erin Griffithhired back like 20 of the employees as part of it they have to leave this like kind of sad leftover company behind that no longer has its founders, is probably not going to really raise

any more money, doesn't have the momentum or the excitement. The most valuable employees are gone. And I've been wondering, OK, well, what's going to happen to all these old companies? A couple of them have already sold. Character AI is notable in particular because they've had just a barrage of lawsuits against them over their product because there are harms that have happened. There are users who have died by suicide. There are people who, you know, are suing them because their chatbots have been posing as doctors. They've been telling people to starve themselves or kill themselves. It's like, you know, there's some gnarly stuff happening with the product.

So part of the bankruptcy is just to wipe the slate clean and deal with that. But I sort of see it as a result of this like extremely weird moment that we had in 2024 of talent wars where all the big tech companies tried to buy up all the like most valuable founders without actually buying the companies. Yeah. And, you know, all these sort of it's the talent wars means that a lot of the top people at these little, I think you call them nubs, which I enjoy as a viscerally unpleasant way of thinking about them, like disappear. And also like their reasons for existing seems sort of increasingly you don't need a specialized, you know, chatbot or whatever.

Yeah. And this was one of the most promising AI companies that was developing the kind of like core LLM technology because they had this guy, Noam Shazeer, who's like, you know, a very, very prominent researcher in this very small field. And, you know, basically all of these companies that were in this kind of class have gotten kind of picked off during the talent wars. Yeah. The other thing I want to talk to you about is Apple's new device, the HomeView, for which an advertisement appeared this week. I don't know how to describe this product except as they took the kitchen iPad and they just turned it into, like, its own device, basically. They, like, productized kitchen iPad.

You can't take the iPad off of the stand. Right, exactly. It has to live there. So it's like this little dome. It looks a little bit like, you know, listeners who are about my age will remember the like those iMacs with the with the rotatable arm that were on top of the little dome. It's like a little dome. Oh, I had one of those. Yeah, I had one too. Exactly. I actually pulled it out of my parents' closet recently and found that it didn't turn on. So that's a pretty uninteresting story. um this this home the uh the home view is sort of similar it's like a little dome it's got basically a slightly smaller than ipad size screen on it and it has you know you can receive text messages on it you can set your calendar you can ask siri anything it's somewhere between an ipad and a home pod always on always listening i mean i have to ask you like would you ever put one of these in your house uh i'm the worst person to ask on this kind of thing i'm sort of a late adopter i have currently in my kitchen i have an amazon echo from i think 2014 that is mostly a glorified timer um and occasionally plays songs but um i mean i don't want another i don't really need a screen in my very tiny kitchen so i'm not sure that i i saw wired describe it as like a

giant apple watch for the home and i don't have an apple watch really selling it there that's a great yeah that one's for the boss needs one um i did i i will say though like i i can see the the value and the appeal like I watched this ad which as I was telling you it kind of the the ad for it uh kind of reminds me a little bit of like the bear um like the the vibe of the bear but set to like that Peter, Bjorn, and John song. Becca we're late. Come right here. Mom breathe. So good. Who's that? Uh that's Asa. Who's Asa? He's a person. It's like a family getting ready before uh before school and it's like super stressful and chaotic but instead of like this like thumping drum beat it's like happy fun music and that's because they have the apple home view which they can you know it's kind of like another member of the family that they're all interacting with and like in my ideal version of the world like i yes i can see that like mornings are chaotic for families for sure um but i don't need like yet another person or another entity to be involved with it. Yeah. It had the real Apple marketing materials feel where they like invented a bunch of problems that can be solved by the by by the new Apple device that that when you watch the

video, you're sort of like, I mean, like there's so much better at marketing than basically any tech company because they seem to be the only one that where like normal people work in the marketing department. And they're like, oh, it's compelling. Yeah. They're like, let's make a fun, loving, like messy family, sort of sitcomy messy family. And you're like, yeah, I totally need this. And then I'm thinking, well, no, I don't need it for any of the single use cases that they've described. And if I did have them in my kitchen, I think I would probably just end up watching TV on it because like it's a screen and that's sort of that's sort of what you do on screens.

So I'll be very interested to see if this if this gets any kind of adoption. I mean, I will say I did a story a couple of years ago about like couples and families using tech to like manage their their day to day lives. And I kind of went into it like thinking it would be a little bit poking fun. Like, oh, these couples are using Notion and Slack to like, you know, all these like tech tools to basically like just do the stuff that families just basic communication and like they're managing their lives like they're product managers. But then when I started talking to more and more families, I was like, oh, your lives are so complicated that I completely understand why you need like a technological household manager to anything that can like simplify things and offload the mental load for you. I totally get it. And there are companies that are doing well that sell these like kind of different screens that are kind of family friendly that you can have.

And Apple's probably now just going to put them out of business, unfortunately. But yeah, I can see where there's an appeal for this specific use case. I mean, what I really need, so Gus, my son is in first grade and there's like seven different apps across his camps and schools. And like I get texts and I get emails and I need Apple to find out a way to like receive all of that and just give it to me in like one simple, easy format. And I know people are going to write in and be like, just get an agent to do that. I don't want an agent. I just want somebody. I want somebody else to do it for me, please. And that is when I will buy the Apple. I'm sorry, I keep forgetting the name HomeView. The Apple. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was going to say you beat me to it. I was going to say just get an agent for that. But I mean, I did see a bunch of people sharing that Anthropic is hiring, you know, an assistant. They had a job listing that listed out all of these duties that are exactly what an AI agent is supposed to do, like scheduling meetings and, you know, just like kind of the one-on-one stuff that like agents all claim that they're going to to solve for us. And so everyone's like, ha ha ha.

There's one last thing I want to talk to you about this week, which is this interview with the Palantir CTO, where he claims so many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI. incredible incredible i i mean when i when i first saw the headline i have to say i i actually thought that they were taking up smoking because they have like a high p doom and it's like a leftover it's like the leftovers like You saw that show where like they're nihilists who are going to just start hanging out with Liv Tyler and wearing white and like, because nothing matters.

But it's the opposite. Yeah, as it turns out, the reason is that they think that AI is going to cure cancer. So smoking is a way to show how much you believe that AI will cure cancer. So if you get cancer, it's like no big deal. It's very funny. It has to be the least cool reason to smoke cigarettes I can possibly imagine. Like this is one of the classically cool things to do, smoking cigarettes there's so many cool reasons to do it like nihilism like you know because you know you look good to meet people all this stuff because you want to signal to other ai researchers that you think ai is going to cure cancer soon that is like it negates all the coolness all the cool points you get from smoking a cigar outside you completely lose from this i yeah like you meet a woman outside a bar and then you start you start like you know explaining the the way that like ai is just walks away i actually don't need a light anymore i'm fine thank you i'm good But this has been the cigarette portion of our tech talk show.

Erin, thank you for joining me again this week to talk through all of these things. You can catch Erin on OpenAI security footage trying to plug things into the back of the TV. She's also – she wrote a great piece this week that I hope we'll get a chance to talk to you about AI agent dinner parties that you can read in the New York Times app. Oh, yeah. Thanks for the plug. Yeah. Well, thank – let's thank our audience. Thank you guys for listening. It's been another great week on Hard Forward.