Elizabeth Holmes tried to revolutionize blood testing.

In 2004, she dropped out of Stanford to found a company that would come to be called Theranos.

After almost a decade of product development, Theranos began to claim in 2013 that using its

proprietary Edison machine, it could perform dozens of diagnostic tests using just a few

drops of blood pricked from a finger. A major blood testing partnership with Walgreens

followed. Holmes, Theranos, and the Edison attracted immense publicity.

The startup also attracted prominent directors, such as former Secretary of Defense James Mattis,

and prominent investors such as Rupert Murdoch. It all began to fall apart in October 2015,

when the Wall Street Journal published an investigative report finding that many of Theranos's tests were performed on conventional commercial blood testing equipment, that Theranos possibly engaged in unethical practices such as diluting blood samples for testing, and that many of the Edison tests were of

questionable accuracy. In 2018, the federal government indicted Holmes and her fellow

Theranos executive and former boyfriend, Sunny Balwani, for wire fraud. Holmes's trial is set to begin

at last later this month.

Welcome to a special edition. Perhaps we can call it a true crime edition, depending on the

outcome of the trial, of the tech policy podcast. I'm Corbyn Barthold. Here to discuss Holmes's rise, fall, and upcoming trial is Sarah Randazzo, a reporter with the same famed Wall Street Journal that first broke this story.

Sarah, it is such a pleasure to have you.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I mean, it's quite topical. I mean, you even had to

delay slightly this recording to write an article on the case this morning. So it's top of the

news and it's it's great to have you here. For a lot of people, I bet, though, the rise and fall of Theranos is pretty ancient history, actually.

I mean, John Carey-U's Wall Street Journal article raising questions about Theranos, it came out almost six years ago now.

And of course, all of this happened, you know, before the pandemic.

So could you give us a little refresher, you know, start us off with the rise, you know, beyond the very skeletal outline I just provided.

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