The trial of Elizabeth Holmes
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 December 2021
⏱️ ? minutes
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Summary
The trial of Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos founder and CEO.
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Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of the medical technology start-up Theranos, is on trial for 11 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Tech reporter Rachel Lerman has been covering Holmes’s trial for about three months now. Lerman dives into what we’ve learned about the Theranos founder from her extraordinary moments on the stand – and what that tells us about the “fake it ‘til you make it” culture of start-ups in Silicon Valley.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I just woke up, but I am honestly pretty excited not to be awake at 3.30 a.m. today, |
| 0:10.9 | which is going to be the rest of my week. |
| 0:15.7 | Rachel Lerman is a tech reporter for the post who has been waking up early for many weeks |
| 0:19.9 | to cover the trial of Elizabeth Holmes. Holmes is the founder of Thernos, and she now faces |
| 0:25.6 | charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. This trial has been incredibly |
| 0:32.0 | high profile. Every day there are throngs of reporters and cameras, and at the center |
| 0:37.9 | of it is this one woman. Truly the most striking moment for me was when they called her to |
| 0:42.7 | the stand because we've just heard so much about her during the trial, and we've heard |
| 0:47.8 | so much about her in books and documentaries and podcasts that actually seeing herself |
| 0:54.5 | speak for herself in person was quite striking. |
| 1:02.4 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Martine Powers. It's |
| 1:07.6 | Monday, December 6th. Today we're talking to Rachel to unpack what's been happening in |
| 1:12.8 | the last three months of this trial. The new information that's come out about Elizabeth |
| 1:16.7 | Holmes, and what this all says about the pitfalls of Silicon Valley's startup culture. |
| 1:22.6 | As before we head into this conversation, just a warning that we talk about sexual abuse |
| 1:26.5 | and assault in this episode. |
| 1:33.6 | In Silicon Valley, back in the early 2000s, Holmes had this idea for these portable blood |
| 1:39.5 | testing machines that were small enough to sit on a countertop, but were allegedly able |
| 1:44.2 | to do the work of a whole blood lab. |
| 1:46.8 | She started this company Thernos when she was young, probably only 19 years old in a student |
| 1:52.0 | at Stanford. This company had a technology that it said could take just a couple drops |
| 1:58.4 | of blood from your fingertip and then run hundreds of blood tests on it. |
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