JUST FINISHED LISTENING: BAD BLOOD: THE FINAL CHAPTER

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She was once the world's youngest self-made female billionaire. Now Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the blood-testing startup Theranos, stands accused of leading a massive fraud, and lying to investors, doctors, and patients about the capabilities of her technology. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison. But Elizabeth may be able to sway a jury with her charisma, highly unusual defense strategy and the fact that key evidence has gone missing. John Carreyrou broke the Theranos scandal. Now he’ll take you into the courtroom as he examines Silicon Valley’s fake it-til-you-make it culture, and the case against Holmes.

MY VERDICT: I can’t explain why but I have been obsessed by the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos saga since I heard about it. I wasn’t in on the ground floor hearing about the ‘technology’ before it was revealed to be all fake (I don’t think this is a spoiler at this point) – I think if I was I would have been even more fascinated with the whole thing. I’ve been trying to put my finger on why this story interests me so much, I think it’s the wonder at someone who can lie on such a scale or the uncertainty about whether this was a lie at all or just a delusion. The debate about this is interesting alone. But also there’s an element of the belief that if you want something enough and you work hard that you can achieve anything – and I think this story proves that that’s just not true in all cases but for a while you can live on that dream and the outcome just depends on how you deal with the facts. Elizabeth Holmes did not deal with the facts and this is where the possible delusion comes in. There’s so many facets to this story. I’ve watched the documentaries and I’ve listened to the podcasts and watched the YouTube videos. I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied until Elizabeth Holmes does an interview and explains what was behind the whole thing, at some point she knew she was lying, this has been proven but what was her thinking behind the lies and what was her thinking up until that point? This podcast is superbly made and a well told tale which I would recommend even if you know the story already.

Listen to this here…