Theranos: The Sequel Nobody Asked For

DerekOkay, so get this. Somebody pointed a camera at Elizabeth Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, right before she reported to prison, and the camera belonged to Nathan Fielder.

GrantThe comedy guy? Seriously?

DerekHa. Yes. The A twenty-four documentary is called You Can See Everything, and it put Holmes back in the news.

GrantOh, man, of course it did. Nothing says low profile like an A twenty-four release.

DerekI'm Derek, this is Grant, and this is Vaporware, where we pick apart tech cons so you don't have to read the court documents.

GrantAnd Theranos is our canonical fraud. We name-drop it constantly. We have not actually covered it in a while.

DerekWhich feels rude, honestly. Like inviting everyone to the reunion and forgetting the guest of honor.

GrantSo here's my question. When a documentary gets this close to her, is it exposing the pitch or is it quietly running the pitch again?

DerekWait for it, because that's the one I can't stop chewing on. Is the story over or just in syndication?

GrantSeason two, now with a halfway house.

DerekBefore we judge any sequel, let's rewind and remember how the original pitch worked.

GrantFine, but I'm bringing a blood sample. Just kidding. Please don't test it.

DerekOkay, so get this. The original Theranos pitch fit in your pocket. One small box, a finger prick, a few drops of blood, and a whole lab's worth of answers.

GrantWait, nobody checked?

DerekOh, people checked. They just checked the wrong things. They toured the polished lobby, met the board, shook the right hands.

GrantSo the proof was the vibe.

DerekThe proof was a room full of smart people all nodding at each other. Nobody wanted to be the one who said the magic box looked empty.

GrantNobody wants to be the guy who killed the future in the meeting.

DerekExactly. And that's the pattern I keep coming back to on this show. The pitch runs on people wanting to believe and on claims nobody ever makes anyone defend.

GrantOkay, but how much money are we talking? Because believers in a room sounds cute until somebody's paying for it.

DerekABC News reported that the fraud's losses were in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

GrantHundreds of millions.

DerekPlural hundreds, plural millions for a box that, you know, wasn't doing the thing.

GrantAnd I keep thinking, that's not one gullible person. That's a lot of people, each one assuming somebody else already did the homework.

DerekThat's the trap. Everyone borrows confidence from the person next to them, and nobody notices the loan was never repaid.

GrantAnd the promise is the kind a regular person gets instantly. Fewer needles, faster answers.

DerekRight. Simple to say and hard to verify. A claim that easy to repeat travels fast, and a claim that hard to check stays safe. Plus, a very confident voice on top.

GrantRight, the voice. We're gonna need to talk about the voice.

DerekLater, because the more interesting thing now is who's holding the camera. So what happens when a camera crew gets inside her home instead of an investor?

GrantOh, that's a different kind of room.

DerekOkay, so get this. NPR reviewed the film, and the reviewer describes it as two halves.

GrantTwo halves, like a sandwich?

DerekLike a sandwich where the first half is ninety minutes of Holmes at home. NPR says it covers her last month with Billy Evans and their kids before prison.

GrantNinety minutes of a last month.

DerekOf a last month. Dude, that's a lot of kitchen, right? No boardroom, no black turtleneck, just a family, a countdown, and a camera that never leaves.

GrantOkay, but I'm a skeptic by trade. Home footage is the one place you'd expect the polish to come off. Does it?

DerekThat's where the reviewer has a problem. The NPR review argues that Fielder sets the evidence aside.

GrantSet aside how?

DerekAs in the fraud case is mostly not the film's business, and the review says Holmes' claim that she never lies goes largely unchallenged.

GrantHold on. Never lies. She says that on camera?

DerekThat's how the review describes it. And to be fair, that's the reviewer's argument. Other people may watch it and see something different.

GrantSure, but let's say the reviewer is right, then I've got a question.

DerekGo.

GrantIn a pitch meeting, a claim nobody challenges becomes a fact by the end of the meeting. Nobody says prove it, so the room just carries it forward. Does a claim nobody challenged on camera work the same way?

DerekOh, that's nasty.

GrantI'm asking, not ruling. A viewer isn't an investor. Nobody's wiring money after the credits.

DerekFair, but an audience is also a room. And in the old pitch, the camera was never the problem. It was who got to stand in front of it.

GrantHmm.

DerekAnd here's the wrinkle. A film can be beautifully shot, intimate, even tender, and still leave a statement just hanging there. Silence does a lot of work.

GrantBack in my car world, we call that not asking about the service records. The seller says it's never been in an accident. You nod, and suddenly it's the car's personality.

DerekNever been in an accident. Never lies. Same energy.

GrantSame energy. Much worse stakes.

DerekHere's what I keep turning over. Even a challenge would've been a choice. A filmmaker can ask the follow-up or let the camera sit there, and the review says the follow-up mostly didn't come.

GrantThough a follow-up on camera is a strange thing to demand from a film about someone's last month at home. Some viewers might call that restraint, not a gap.

DerekTotally possible. That's why I keep saying it's the reviewer's reading. Same footage, different viewers, different takeaways.

GrantAnd I'd add the obvious caveat. We're working from a review, not a verdict from the filmmaker. We haven't heard Fielder's side of it here.

DerekWhich is why the review matters, whatever you think of it. It frames the whole thing as a question of whether the film is looking at the pitch or running it.

GrantAnd we don't have to settle that today.

DerekNo, because the film is about the past, but there's a present tense company in this story.

GrantWait, a company now?

DerekNow. Okay, so get this. There's a company, it's called Haemanthus.

GrantHaemanthus. Sounds like a medication you'd be warned about in a commercial.

DerekRight? NPR reported on it back in May of twenty twenty-five. It's Billy Evans' blood testing startup.

GrantBilly Evans, the partner from the film.

DerekSame guy. And NPR describes the product as an AI-powered laser tool for scanning blood, saliva, and urine.

GrantHold on. Blood, saliva, and urine? Three things, one laser?

DerekThat's how NPR describes it. I'm not claiming it works or doesn't. I'm telling you what the pitch sounds like.

GrantFine, but a blood testing company a few years after the most famous blood testing company ever? You see my eyebrow.

DerekI see the eyebrow, and it gets a little more pointed. Two sources told NPR that Holmes advised him from prison.

GrantTwo sources. Named?

DerekNo. Anonymous. So this is reporting, not a confirmed fact, and I'd keep it exactly there.

GrantGot it. Report says she advised. Not proven, not denied.

DerekRight. And notice the chain. NPR sources told NPR. We're hearing it from NPR, not from Holmes, not from Evans, and not from a document.

GrantSo even the reporting is secondhand from where we sit, and the sources behind it are invisible.

DerekWhich isn't a knock on the reporting. Anonymous sourcing is a normal tool. It just means the strength of the claim is the strength of our trust in the outlet.

GrantIs two sources a lot or a little, though?

DerekIt's what NPR reported, and I wouldn't read anything into the count. Two anonymous sources is two anonymous sources.

GrantOkay, that's fair. Then I assume the money number is on shakier ground.

DerekRight. Now the money. A trade outlet, Digital Health Global, wrote up the company and named a figure of over eighteen million dollars.

GrantEighteen million. Is that confirmed?

DerekNo. It's reported by that one outlet, so treat it with caution. The same write-up says the pitch is Raman spectroscopy plus AI.

GrantOkay, in English? I sell cars. I don't do spectroscopy.

DerekShining light at a sample and reading what bounces back, then using AI to interpret it. That's my plain language read, not a technical review.

GrantLight and a smart algorithm. Honestly, that sounds like a normal pitch.

DerekAnd that's the thing with this kind of description. It's short, it's plausible, and nothing in it tells you how well it works.

GrantRight. A description isn't a result. You can describe a lot of things in one sentence. Doesn't make it the unusual pitch or the normal one. It's just a pitch.

DerekIt might be, and here's something that cuts the other way. The write-up also says the company itself acknowledges its CEO is Holmes' partner.

GrantSo nobody's hiding the connection.

DerekNot according to that write-up, and I want to be careful here. Nothing I've seen says Evans or the company did anything wrong.

GrantRight. Starting a blood testing company isn't a crime. Being related to a crime isn't either.

DerekExactly. So the question shifts. It's no longer whether the film reran the pitch.

GrantIt's whether a new company is running some version of it.

DerekOr whether it's just a different company with an unfortunate family tree. The answer matters, and we don't have it.

GrantAnd honestly, that's the discipline here. Hold both possibilities open until somebody shows something checkable.

DerekExactly. Fundraising announcements and pitch descriptions are the start of the evidence trail, not the end.

GrantPlot twist, the sequel might just be a startup.

DerekHeh. Could be. Meanwhile, the person in the center of all this has a calendar.

GrantOh, she does. And it's got dates on it.

DerekOkay, so the calendar. Her sentence started at eleven years and three months. ABC News reported in October it's now ten years and three months.

GrantA full year off. How?

DerekTwo things. A retroactive change to the sentencing guidelines, plus credits under the First Step Act.

GrantRetroactive. So nobody did anything new, the rules just moved underneath her.

DerekRight. And the release date that comes out of all that is February twenty-second, two thousand and thirty.

GrantHmm. That's less far away than it sounds.

DerekLet me slow down on the sequence because it's easy to blur. There's the original sentence, eleven years and three months. Then there's the cut to ten years and three months, which ABC ties to two things, the guidelines change and the First Step Act credits.

GrantSo it's not a pardon and it's not a reversal of the conviction. It's the same sentence with the arithmetic adjusted.

DerekOh, you're gonna love this part. The judge saw this coming, sort of. ABC says Judge Davila's order back in March included a line that the reduction does not diminish the seriousness of the fraud.

GrantHeh. The judicial version of, "This doesn't change how I feel about you."

DerekPretty much. Cutting the time and saying the crime still counts in the same breath.

GrantAnd the crime, remember, cost investors and others hundreds of millions of dollars. So that line is doing some heavy lifting.

DerekIt is. Now, the move itself, The Hollywood Reporter has the specifics.

GrantGo on.

DerekAustin Transitional Center in Del Valle, Texas, August twenty-seventh.

GrantWait, that's a date. That's an actual date on a calendar.

DerekAnd The Hollywood Reporter says it comes from the Justice Department Victim Notification system.

GrantHuh. So not a rumor, not a leak from a friend of a friend?

DerekWell, it's a notification system for victims, so it's an official channel, but it's still one outlet relaying it.

GrantWhich is why scheduled is the word doing the work.

DerekRight. Though it's scheduled, not done. Nothing has happened yet. For now, she's at FPC Bryan, also in Texas.

GrantOkay, so she's not leaving prison. She's graduating to a halfway house, like going from a locked garage to a carport.

DerekUgh, I'll allow it.

GrantBut seriously, what does a move like that actually change? I'm picturing something less locked down, but I don't wanna guess.

DerekSame. The reporting I have gives the place and the date, not the rules she'd live under there. So the honest read is a scheduled change of setting, and the details are not in what we've got.

GrantDid the Bureau of Prisons say anything about all this? Because I'd love to hear them explain the carport.

DerekABC says the Bureau of Prisons gave a no comment statement.

GrantOf course they did.

DerekWhich honestly is the most consistent thing in this whole story.

GrantThough a no comment isn't an admission of anything. It's just a closed door. We shouldn't read a secret into it.

DerekAgreed. It's a gap, not a clue, and there are two kinds of gaps here, things nobody has said and things the sources we have can't tell us.

GrantTwo kinds. Got it. The unsaid and the unknowable.

DerekRight, and I'd rather name a gap than fill it with a guess.

GrantFine. So what does the pattern say?

DerekOkay, so lay the old checklist on the table. Three ingredients, a big promise, a technology nobody outside can check, and a room full of people who want it to be true.

GrantFine. Run the new company through it. Promise first.

DerekScan blood, saliva, and urine with a laser and some AI. No needles. That's a big promise. Maybe not whole lab in a pocket big, but it's in the neighborhood.

GrantHmm, neighborhood.

DerekAnd a promise is only as big as what it replaces. Replacing a needle is smaller than replacing a lab, but it's still the kind of promise people lean toward.

GrantLean toward how? Like a regular person hearing it?

DerekExactly. Anyone who has dreaded a blood draw perks up at fewer needles. That's the emotional hook, and it's the same hook as the first time.

GrantSo ingredient one is present, just in a smaller size.

DerekRight. Second ingredient, can an outsider check it? Raman spectroscopy is a real technique. The open question is whether the AI layer does what the pitch says, and from outside, who knows?

GrantSo the technique is real, and the claim stacked on top of it is the part nobody can see.

DerekWell, that's the pattern, real science underneath, unverified leap on top.

GrantSo what separates a real science startup from the old pitch?

DerekWhether the leap on top gets tested where outsiders can see it. The old box stayed shut. Early science often looks like this, so the pattern isn't a charge. It's just a place to look.

GrantThen the third ingredient, a room of believers. Is there one here?

DerekThe reporting mentions a raise, so somebody was listening, but believers only count as evidence if they saw something checkable, and from here we can't see what they saw. A crowd nodding is the least informative data point there is.

GrantSo the honest question is whether anyone has checked.

DerekAnd has anything public changed since the first time around? That I can't tell you.

GrantHmm, and here's what bugs me. We've done this song before, not Theranos, other episodes.

DerekOh, we have. Demos that only worked when the right person was watching.

GrantThe demo that works on stage and goes missing in the follow-up email.

DerekAnd the AI ones, wait for it, a product called artificial intelligence that turns out to be a very busy human somewhere.

GrantWe're not rehashing that one.

DerekNo, no, just the shape. Whenever the claim can't be inspected, somebody ends up filling the gap with confidence.

GrantThough I'll admit the risk on our side. When you've seen the shape a lot, everything starts to look like it.

DerekGood point. Pattern matching is useful until it turns into a conclusion. That's why the checklist is for asking questions, not handing down a verdict.

GrantSo if the pattern is a checklist, we can't tick all three boxes for this starter from the outside.

DerekRight. We can tick maybe one, and the half is doing a lot of lifting.

GrantThen the half stays a half until somebody outside gets a look, and until then, I'd rather ask than tick.

DerekSo what here is actually settled, and is this story over? And a short pause.

GrantOkay, so sort the pile for me, Derek. What can we actually stand on?

DerekThree buckets, and I won't reread the list. The firmest ground is the sentence cut and the judge's order as ABC reported them. That's the firmest ground we have.

GrantAnd the rest?

DerekEverything else is reported, and the money figure is not confirmed. Some of it is anonymous sourcing. Somebody told a journalist or an outlet related, but nobody has shown us the books.

GrantMm. So the third bucket is the scary one.

DerekUnknown. Whether the laser tool does what the pitch says and what role Holmes actually has, if any, beyond what anonymous sources told NPR.

GrantWhich is a very polite way to say we have no idea.

DerekRight, and I'm not putting a verdict in any bucket. The listener gets to hold the pile.

GrantEven the firm bucket comes with a footnote then.

DerekAlways. Firm just means someone credible reported it, not that we checked it ourselves.

GrantFunny thing, in my world, that's the whole job. Separate what's on the title from what's in the seller's mouth.

DerekAnd the seller always sounds the same either way.

GrantEvery time.

DerekWell, that's the news as of late October and a decent place to stop talking.

GrantAgreed. Nothing left in my notes but coffee rings.

DerekThen that's the episode, Grant. Time to sign off. Okay, so before we go, a job for everybody listening.

GrantOh, no. Homework?

DerekTiny homework. Think of the friend who still believes every pitch deck they read, the one who forwards you a slide with a hockey stick chart and a little rocket emoji.

GrantI have three of those.

DerekSend them this episode gently, then subscribe and leave a review so the next person finds us before they find the next demo.

GrantAnd if the review is a one star, we'll treat it like an unverified claim, very closely from the outside.

DerekFair.

GrantAlso, small request, bring a little skepticism to your next pitch deck. Ask to see the box open.

DerekAsk the boring question. Who checked this and how? Boring questions are underrated.

GrantHonestly, what sticks with me is the box. We never got to see it open, and somebody still got a halfway date out of the story.

DerekMm, and a camera crew.

GrantRight.

DerekNext time, we pick another con, another founding myth, another room full of nodding people. Bring a skeptic.

GrantAnd bring snacks. Dark humor runs on snacks.

DerekThanks for listening to Vaporware.