You Can See Everything: Elizabeth Holmes, Up Close and Impersonal | 239

Elizabeth Holmes checks off so many 21st century buzzwords: girlboss, tech founder, media darling, and fraudster. Now, she’s the subject of one of the buzziest documentaries in decades. Just a month before she was set to begin serving her 11-year sentence, Holmes welcomed comedian and prankster Nathan Fielder and documentarian Lance Oppenheim into her home to film everything – her emails, her journal, her family, her unwavering insistence that she did nothing wrong. More than three years later, the resulting documentary, You Can See Everything, is a box-office success and a masterclass in the question every scam story comes down to: who’s really fooling whom. We’re breaking it all down with New York Magazine features writer Alex Barasch, who recently published a profile of co-director Lance Oppenheim. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sarah Hagi?

  Audible subscribers can listen to all our episodes of Scamfluencers ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. Sachi, there's a lot that goes into what scammers we decide to cover. Like, sometimes we decide to skip a story because we feel like it's been done. I mean, there's just nothing new to say, right?

• 0:19Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, and that is why we ignore all of your calls and letters and emails and little love notes about Caroline Calloway. What else is there to say?

• 0:29Sarah Hagi?

  For some scammers, there's no such thing as enough. God knows Anna Delvey is still getting people to write about her, and you know what? Good for her.

• 0:37Scaachi Koul?

  It's almost impressive.

• 0:38Sarah Hagi?

  Well, today, we're gonna have a chat about one such scammer, someone who ticks off so many 21st century buzzwords: girl boss, tech founder, media darling, fraudster, and now the subject of the buzziest documentary in decades. On a soundstage in Salt Lake City this past March, Jen Shaw sits in a large studio space facing bright lights. She looks every bit the former Real Housewives star of Salt Lake City in full glam, wearing a cream suit with red piping. It's a stark change from just 90 days earlier, when she was wearing prison-issued khakis. Jen is here to talk to People Magazine about the nearly

• 1:20Sarah Hagi?

  three years she spent at a federal facility in Texas. Sachi, we've covered Jen's fraud on our show before. She was charged with running a nationwide telemarketing scheme for nearly a decade, one that preyed on elderly, financially vulnerable victims. In July 2022, she pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced to more than six years in prison. Even now, Jen isn't quite ready to own the full extent of her wrongdoing. Here's how she described how she got into this mess.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  It's such a, you know, you thought, you think you're doing the right thing. I thought I was doing the right thing for, you know, the majority of the time, and also, under the direction of other people that were running the companies. And honestly, you get there if you're not careful. You get there if you are not being diligent in your business dealings. You get there if you're not paying attention to the red flags.

• 2:20Scaachi Koul?

  I can't stress this enough. That is not what happened with her. Like, her fraud is not ambiguous. She did it, and she knew what she was doing. It's not an ambiguous crime that she committed.

• 2:31Sarah Hagi?

  No, it was pretty clear. And of course, Jen was not going to let time behind bars keep her from making headlines. A few months after she went away, people reported that Jen's penitentiary bestie was none other than disgraced tech founder Elizabeth Holmes. Elizabeth rose to prominence as the founder and CEO of Theranos, a tech startup that claimed to have invented a device capable of performing wide-ranging medical tests with just a few drops of blood, a technology that would have revolutionized medicine. By 2014, Theranos had lined up investors like Rupert Murdoch and Larry Ellison and was valued at $9 billion.

• 3:14Sarah Hagi?

  The problem was, the machine didn't work. In 2015, reporter John Carey broke the story that Theranos had lied about the capability of its tech. Three years later, the government accused Elizabeth and her co-founder and ex-boyfriend, Sunny Balwani, of making false statements about financial success and faking demonstrations of the device to lure in new investors. In 2022, Elizabeth was convicted of defrauding investors and sentenced to more than 11 years in prison. She was also ordered to pay more than $450 million in restitution. But to Jen, Elizabeth, who now goes by Liz, was someone she could relate to as another high-profile inmate.

• 3:59Sarah Hagi?

  She tells people that she and Liz would take evening walks around the facility's track and talk about their families. She was also the captain of the dance and step team there, and says she convinced Liz to sign up for her line dancing class, but that's where Liz drew the line.

• 4:14Scaachi Koul?

  I remember first hearing that the two of them were, like, hanging out in prison, and it felt exactly right. And so I can't say that I'm shocked that Jen had a dance and step team in prison, and I am only lightly shocked that Liz didn't want to participate.

• 4:31Sarah Hagi?

  I feel like after the dropout, she just didn't want to be seen dancing ever again, because that TV show featured a lot of dancing that, you know?

• 4:38Scaachi Koul?

  That's true.

• 4:40Sarah Hagi?

  It was rough. But here's where Jen and Liz are really different. Jen is willing to take some responsibility for ending up behind bars. Here's what she told people when asked about deciding to plead guilty.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  At what point do you let your ego go? So that you can do what's right, so that you can take care of the people in your, in your life that you should? And that's when it wasn't important to prove a point anymore. It was important to take accountability and say, you know what? I had a part. People can make mistakes, but we don't have to, we don't have to stay stuck in those mistakes. We can learn from those mistakes and move forward with integrity, with intention, with accountability, and be better.

• 5:22Sarah Hagi?

  Jen also apologized to the victims of the telemarketing scheme and said she's committed to paying them back in restitution. Her friend Liz, on the other hand, has had a very different relationship to her case, which we now know in extraordinary detail, thanks to the new documentary, You Can See Everything. Co-directed by comedian Nathan Fielder and documentarian Lance Oppenheim, the film follows Liz and her family, starting in 2023, about a month before she reported to prison, through some time in 2025. In footage filmed before she went away, Liz responds to Nathan's questions about Theranos by denying, deflecting, and repeating, "I don't know."

• 6:05Sarah Hagi?

  To this day, she maintains she did "nothing wrong." Jen claims she took on a kind of motherly mentor role with Liz while in prison, but she probably should have been hired to run Liz's PR. Because while Liz and her partner Billy may have thought inviting filmmakers to record their lives would show they have nothing to hide, it ended up exposing just how deep their self-delusions go.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  In New Orleans, truckers kept getting sideswiped the exact same way. When a man is found murdered under questionable circumstances related to these accidents, the rubber hits the road. Listen to Over My Dead Body: Operation Sideswipe wherever you get your podcasts.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  I'm Gemma Whelan, and in the new season of The Spy Who, we tell the story of the original femme fatale, The Spy Who Was Mata Hari. A famous dancer turned World War I secret agent accused of seducing Allied officers to uncover their plans. But was she a temptress or a scapegoat for French failures? Follow The Spy Who now, wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also listen to the full season of The Spy Who Was Mata Hari, early and ad-free on Audible.

• 7:30Sarah Hagi?

  From Audible Originals, I'm Sarah Haggie.

• 7:32Scaachi Koul?

  And I'm Sachi Cole.

• 7:34Sarah Hagi?

  And this is Scamfluencers.

• 7:43Sarah Hagi?

  In 2023, just a month before she was set to begin serving her 11-year sentence in federal prison, disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes decided to welcome a camera crew into her home. Not just any camera crew, the team working with comedian and prankster Nathan Fielder and auteur documentarian Lance Oppenheim. More than three years later, the resulting documentary examines how Elizabeth and her partner Billy Evans exist in the wake of one of the biggest scandals to ever hit Silicon Valley. But it's also about much, much more than that. To celebrate the biggest scam zeitgeist moment in ages, we're doing something a little different. We're talking about You Can See Everything with New York

• 8:27Sarah Hagi?

  Magazine features writer Alex Barasch, who recently published a profile of co-director Lance Oppenheim. Alex has the inside scoop, and we've been talking about scammers for more than four years, nonstop, and we've all seen the film multiple times. We are so ready. And yes, this episode will be jam-packed with spoilers, so don't say we didn't warn you. I'm calling this episode "You Can See Everything: Elizabeth Holmes Up Close and Impersonal."

• 9:00Scaachi Koul?

  Okay, Alex, I'm so excited to talk to you. I know Sarah is excited to talk to you. We've been frothing at the mouth about this movie, and we wanted to find a work-mandated reason to talk about it more. How can I get paid to talk about this?

• 9:13Speaker 05

  Happy to provide.

• 9:15Scaachi Koul?

  Thank you. I first found out about the documentary when the trailer came out with everybody else, and then was barking like a dog. How did you first hear about it? What did you think about it when you first heard it was coming?

• 9:27Speaker 05

  I had been hearing whispers of a documentary for a minute. There was a tabloid item, I think, almost a year ago at this point, that Nathan Fielder was visiting Elizabeth Holmes in prison. But that sort of didn't go anywhere, and no one really knew what it meant. I found out about the doc in the form that it ultimately took, the day everyone else did in Telluride, where it was a secret screening, they confiscated people's phones going in, no one really knew what they were about to sit down and see. And then it was this three-hour documentary about Elizabeth Holmes by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim. And I didn't get to see it until it played at New York Film Festival, and I spoke to Lance the very next day. So I was sort of thrown into the mix as well. I'm happy to be here talking about it on this podcast,

• 10:10Speaker 05

  because I just instantly wanted to dissect every moment of it, and I think that was the feeling that a lot of people had about it.

• 10:16Scaachi Koul?

  I know. God bless you for sitting on it for so long. I had to be quiet for three days, and I was furious.

• 10:24Sarah Hagi?

  When you saw it, was it like a press screening? No audience feedback? Because I feel like the experience is very different when you're seeing it in an isolated way versus when you can feel the energy of the crowd.

• 10:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, definitely. I saw it at the New York Film Festival premiere, which was a packed audience. And people were laughing, people were reacting. Like, that first shot of Nathan, the reveal that he's in the room with them, really got a huge response. And it was interesting talking to Lance the next day because he was saying to me, he's watched the film like 300 times at this point in various iterations. And it wasn't until that screening in New York where he was like, oh, I guess it's funny. Like, I guess people are reacting to this in a different way than I had been reacting to it. And it was making him think about the whole thing differently. So I do feel that the audience response is kind of adding a layer to things as well. And like, when it played in Telluride, I think a lot of those people didn't even know who Nathan Fielder was. It's a very different environment.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  So you're getting different reactions from different circles, for sure.

• 11:21Sarah Hagi?

  So for people who don't know who Nathan Fielder is, he started out as a comedian in Canada. And on his breakout reality kind of show, Nathan For You, he posed as a consultant helping people fix their businesses through these really, really elaborate schemes. And then in his most recent show, The Rehearsal, he created out these scenarios for people to live out their fears in like, this really weird way that I don't want to spoil. So he's kind of known as this like awkward, almost trickster comedian who also does have something larger to say through his elaborate stunts.

• 11:56Scaachi Koul?

  You knew who Nathan Fielder was before you went into it to some degree, I imagine?

• 12:01Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Very much so.

• 12:03Scaachi Koul?

  You did, okay, right. I watched a little bit of his stuff. It's really not for me. It gives me third and fourth degree burns in terms of embarrassment. Like, I can't, I can't do it. But I went in and was like, this is gonna be crazy. And then my jaw was on the floor the whole time. And then two days later, I went to see it again. So-

• 12:19Speaker 05

  Oh, wow. So you've been in deep?

• 12:21Scaachi Koul?

  I'm like, really in it. I'm in the reddits, I'm reading everything. I have a lot of thoughts about the bowl.

• 12:27Scaachi Koul?

  But like, for you, do you think that the movie encapsulates some of Nathan's work and then also Lance's work? Does it feel like it's that? Or is it like, this is beyond comprehension, beyond definition? Because I think people are having a hard time, like, putting it in any kind of box.

• 12:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've been seeing all these debates about like, well, is it a documentary? To which I think the answer is obviously yes. And I'm really curious to talk to people who didn't know who he was going into this. But I also think in a funny way, him being more of a public figure has kind of warped the conversation around it. Because, you know, maybe I'm biased for having profiles of Lance, but I actually think he is as much a part of what is interesting about it as Nathan is, but he's just more behind the scenes. And so, depending on what you know or what you think you know going in, that's gonna affect what you get coming out. If you come into this with the knowledge of Nathan Fielder, you might be primed for like, the cringe humor, as you're saying. He's messing with people, he's prodding at people. But, you know, Lance was saying to me when we spoke, that he feels this is the closest

• 13:27Speaker 05

  we've ever come to seeing Nathan truly as himself. Like, all of his reactions that we see on screen are real. It's not just him trying to elicit a response from Elizabeth Holmes or from Billy Evans or a partner or anyone else. These are his authentic reactions. He's not just doing a bit, he's not playing up this persona. And I don't know if I'm fully convinced by that, but I do think we're seeing flashes of the real Nathan Fielder. I feel like a lot of people have gone into this film knowing a lot about Nathan and not knowing very much at all about Lance. Because, again, he's primarily been a documentarian, he's very young. You know, between this and primetime, he's like, having his big moment in the sun. But I've always been really interested in his documentaries and how they have this cinematic feeling to them.

• 14:09Speaker 05

  And I think you start to see a through line in the types of subjects that he gravitates towards. I think he's very interested in people who are telling a story about themselves or have convinced themselves of something, and then showing the cracks in that. One of his first short films, which was published by The New York Times, is called The Happiest Guy in the World. It's about a guy who's been living on a cruise ship for 19 years. He has like, completely left his life on land. And he's talking about how amazing it all is, and like, the amenities, and everybody on the ship knows him, and he's greeting the staff by name, and isn't it luxurious? It's very short. But even in that time, you begin to see that, in fact, this is not the idyllic life he is telling himself it is. And his narrative of himself is kind of collapsing before your eyes in an interesting way.

• 14:51Speaker 05

  And his first feature-length doc was called Some Kind of Heaven. It's about this really beautiful manicured retirement community in Florida. It's like, very well-resourced. It bills itself as Disneyland for retirees. And of course, he finds like, the three most disaffected people in this community. And is sort of like, so what's actually happening here? Like, are we good? Are we still thinking about death? You know, let's, let's get into it.

• 15:16Scaachi Koul?

  The answer is yes.

• 15:18Speaker 05

  And the answer is absolutely yes. And actually, there's a scammer in that one, too. This guy who doesn't live in the community and sleeps in his car and like, sneaks in every day and is trying to seduce a rich woman to like, live out his days with. Anyway, but, but all of this to say, like, Lance's preoccupations, I think, are all over this film in really interesting ways. I think it's an interesting kind of match between the two of them. And I talked to the DP of the documentary about this. And he was saying that Lance is very much about presentation and about the feeling of things and the look of things. But Nathan is all about the moment, like, capturing someone's reaction, the immediacy of the thing. It's about the, the interaction, the interplay. And I feel like this is kind of a fusion of those two styles.

• 16:02Speaker 05

  And they sort of met in the middle in this interesting way. And you get this thing that is like, a beautiful, strange cinematic object, but also has the craziest conversations you're gonna see in your life. And it just gets increasingly heady and insane as it goes.

• 16:16Scaachi Koul?

  I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about kind of the dynamic between these two filmmakers. I would think that they had a really weird dynamic as co-directors, but one of them is in it and is driving the story in a very weird way and is maybe obfuscating things. What did Lance tell you about the dynamic between the two of them?

• 16:34Speaker 05

  Originally, the idea was not for Nathan to be a character in it. But obviously, they were both present. And then Elizabeth or Billy would ask a question, and he was just off-screen, and then he would start to answer it. And that was kind of awkward. And they also realized, I think, quite quickly, that they needed someone there to push back against whatever was being said, to be like, what do you mean? You've never told a lie in your life? Like, you have in fact been convicted of fraud? Like, just basic exposition and pushback was necessary. So Nathan ends up becoming a character in the way that he is in so much of his stuff. And Nathan like, physically moved in with them a couple of weeks into filming. And so I think he and Lance had a kind of interesting dynamic, where Lance is always behind the camera and is seeing all these things.

• 17:18Speaker 05

  And they would have conflicting takes on what was happening. And so would the camera crew. The style that they arrived at was where they would have a camera trained on each of the kind of main characters, as it were. So Billy, Elizabeth, Nathan, all have a camera on them at all times, so that any micro shift in expression can be captured and you can have the real-time reactions. But that would mean that a camera operator had their lens trained on someone for 16 hours a day. And there would be times when the person who was watching Elizabeth the whole day was like, I don't believe a word she's saying. And the person who was watching Nathan the whole day would be like, no, she's being completely cynical. And David Bolan, the cinematographer, who's worked with Lance since he was 17 insanely, he would go to bed and he would hear Nathan and Lance debating moments until like, 2:00 in the morning.

• 18:03Speaker 05

  They were going back and forth all the time, and they were having these competing ideas about what things meant or what was important and what should be included. And I think a lot of that back and forth kind of makes it into the shape of the film, like, the uncertainty of it. I think that's intentional. I asked him, when Nathan seems to be sort of taken in by Elizabeth, was that like, a device on your part? You're like, okay, this is the guy who's gonna get suckered. And then Amanda comes in and is like, that's not true. And he was like, no, that's just actually how Nathan was reacting to what was happening. So there was definitely an interplay between them. And I think they had different feelings at different times about who was telling the truth and what that meant or what people thought or believed. And all of that is there in the end result.

• 18:44Sarah Hagi?

  So Liz and Billy invite Nathan and Lance not only to film them, but also offer that they can move into their home for the final weeks before Liz goes to prison. And after a couple of weeks-ish of filming, Nathan takes them up on their offer and posts up in their weird little guest house. Why do you think they wanted Nathan to actually live in their home? What do you think their motive could have been?

• 19:09Speaker 05

  I think part of it is this performance of total transparency. Like, they really want to present themselves as open books, and they're people who have nothing to hide. And would a scammer really just welcome you into their home 24 hours a day?

• 19:22Sarah Hagi?

  Yes.

• 19:22Speaker 05

  Yes, the answer is yes. But Lance was telling me that when they first arrived, it was like, they're filming Elizabeth's laptop screen, they can see all her emails, they're open, do not disturb is not on, so all her texts are popping up. Like, her journal is just like, open on the couch. You know, her partner is showing his dick. Like, all of this feels of a piece to me with, we have nothing to hide from you because we are telling the truth, is what they want to convey. Whether they succeed in conveying that, I think, is a very different story. And I think Lance still had a bit of that when we met, where he was like, yeah, that was crazy, I still don't know how I feel about it. You know, I'm still sifting these things. And I really wanted to talk to him about the relationship between Billy and Liz.

• 20:06Speaker 05

  And he thinks that they are deeply in love, like, that is for real. Whatever else is going on.

• 20:12Scaachi Koul?

  Same.

• 20:12Speaker 05

  You, you agree?

• 20:13Sarah Hagi?

  Yeah, absolutely. I don't think it's necessarily a positive thing. I don't think people being meant to be is necessarily that they're meant to be and it's a force of good. But they do match each other's freak completely.

• 20:26Speaker 05

  Yeah. No, it is like a fully adored situation. Like, they really are just locked into this thing together in a way that I find completely fascinating. But yeah, I just asked him a million questions. I was like, how did the shower scene happen? Like, why did Billy show his dick? Like, please explain to me.

• 20:40Scaachi Koul?

  I saw that someone close to Billy is now saying that it wasn't his idea to show his penis, but it does seem like it would be.

• 20:47Speaker 05

  Oh, he's denying, fascinating. To hear Lance tell it, he followed him to the gym, we see the workout scene, how could we forget? And then he was like, what else are you doing today? And he obviously had to take a shower post-workout. And then Lance is like, oh, well, you know, the tasteful way to do this, like, I've shot people in the shower before, he could angle it this way, he could do it that way. And like, while he's trying to explain, Billy just strips and hops in. And he's like, okay, well, I guess we're doing it now. So, you know, who can say?

• 21:13Sarah Hagi?

  When we come back after the break, for a three-hour documentary about a notorious scammer, there was surprisingly little scam in it. We ask Alex why the filmmakers made that choice, and whether separating a convicted fraudster from their felony is an ethical endeavor.

• 21:37Speaker 06

  Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat and Fish are back for a whole lot of wonderfully whimsical fun. What happens when you switch bodies with your best friend? Discover a caveman frozen in ice? Or make an alien so angry, he threatens to destroy the planet? Find out in season two of the Cat in the Hat podcast. The Cat and Fish are traveling the world in the great catastrophic cacophony cruiser, meeting genies, clown professors, cave trolls, and extraordinary characters along the way. With clever wordplay, imaginative rhymes, original songs, and stories celebrating curiosity, empathy, and creative problem solving, every adventure brings something new to discover. It's a world of wonderful

• 22:21Speaker 06

  words, big imaginations, and plenty of heart for the whole family. Listen to the Cat in the Hat podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all 20 episodes early and ad-free right now.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  In January 1995, 18-year-old Krista Pike and two friends lured a classmate, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, to an abandoned steam plant and killed her. At just 20 years old, Pike was sentenced to death. 30 years later, on September 30, 2026, the state of Tennessee tried to execute her and failed. I'm Candace DeLong, former FBI profiler and host of the podcast Killer Psyche, where we go inside the minds behind the most shocking crimes. In our latest episode, we take you inside the case of Krista Pike. The brutal crime, the childhood of abuse, three decades of appeals, and the night an execution went

• 23:21Speaker 04

  terribly wrong. Follow Killer Psyche wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of Killer Psyche one week early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.

• 23:44Sarah Hagi?

  So when we heard there's a new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, most of us probably assumed it'd focus on Theranos in some way. But the movie actually sidesteps most of the fraud at the heart of Theranos and the reason she went to jail, which was for defrauding investors hundreds of millions of dollars. The questions we see Nathan ask are pretty basic, and most of her responses are just wide-eyed, I-don't-knows and denials. And of course, by now, the story of Theranos has been told in detail in just about every imaginable medium. So why do you think the film chose to focus on Liz and Billy themselves rather than the scam at the heart of their story?

• 24:25Speaker 05

  I think this is super interesting. And you're right, the Alex Gibney version of this documentary is so different. Or even like the true crime version of this documentary. Like, I definitely had moments of frustration as a journalist, listening to Nathan ask questions of Liz, because I'm like, you're not even doing the hardest-hitting version of the interrogation that you could do. I have seen that line of critique for sure in like, why didn't he push on certain things? Why didn't he mention certain things? Why didn't he pursue certain lines of questioning? But I also do feel, as you say, like, we have that version of things. Like, we have Bad Blood, which is there to go back to. We have the Dropout podcast. We have a lot of reporting around Theranos. And I think, certainly

• 25:08Speaker 05

  looking at Lance's filmography, there's a lot more interest in self-delusion and kind of character studies, and people who have tricked themselves into a certain belief or a way of living and entrapped themselves in a narrative. And I think Elizabeth Holmes really fits that description. So as a kind of psychological portrait of this person, and also a kind of interrogation of like documentary ethics, and how we get to the truth, and how we define the truth, and like, construction of personas, I think it's a lot more successful on that level. And I think that's kind of the level on which it's trying to operate. So I personally was into that dimension of things. But I'm curious, you're like, a little more skeptical of that.

• 25:50Sarah Hagi?

  Very much so, yeah. And you mentioned in the profile, that is his favorite book, The Journalist and the Murderer, the Janet Malcolm. Its whole thing is dealing with the ethics of, you know, interviewer and subject, and that kind of deception that is there, and having someone open up, but maybe on a personal level, feeling like you're betraying them. And like, who's in charge, I guess, is a question I think both of us had a lot throughout this movie of, is she the one who's pulling the strings? Are they being fooled? Are they in charge? Are they manipulating her? It goes back and forth in your mind, right?

• 26:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, The Journalist and the Murderer is like a core text to me in making sense of this film. And I think it's something that Lance has always been preoccupied by. The most famous quote from The Journalist and the Murderer is probably this. "Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse."

• 26:56Scaachi Koul?

  And that's why we do it. That's why we do it.

• 26:58Speaker 05

  It's what it's all about.

• 27:00Scaachi Koul?

  That's why we're all here.

• 27:03Speaker 05

  And Lance was kind of like, I don't know if I would go that far, but like, I do think a lot about this. And I think you can see that in this doc and in kind of everything he's done. We talked a lot about this, like, in his past documentaries, it's been a way more collaborative process with his subjects, because he really doesn't want people to feel surprised, or disappointed, or unrepresented by the final product. Very often, he would be like, playing cuts for people, or like, playing them the music that he has in mind for a scene, or being like, here's why I'm talking to you about this, because I'm trying to get to this. Like, it's much more transparent with the subject about the shape of the thing. And that's pretty unusual in docs. And for this one, he really had to turn off all of

• 27:47Speaker 05

  those instincts and say, actually, I'm gonna go back behind the camera, and it doesn't matter what these people think of the final version, because, yeah, they're fraudsters. And like, this just can't be something where I let them into the process too much, because that will undermine the integrity of the whole thing, and it'll sort of collapse in on itself. So he had to kind of relitigate his relationship to documentary subjects in the process of making this. And I find that interesting, too.

• 28:13Sarah Hagi?

  So about halfway through this documentary, a new character comes in, actress Amanda Seyfried, who played Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout, the Hulu drama about Theranos. It was an incredible performance. She won an Emmy and a Golden Globe. So what did you think of the decision to bring her in? We'd already been grappling with the question of documentarian and subject, and now we have an actor known for portraying that same subject.

• 28:43Speaker 05

  I asked him how Amanda became involved. And he told me that neither of them had ever met her. And it was Emma Stone, who's friends with Nathan, and also friends with Amanda, who kind of connected them. But that partly came about because Nathan Fielder was just like, please, God, I need to talk to someone about what I've been seeing. Like, I actually don't know how to make sense of it myself. They had a Zoom call where he was like, hey, I've been doing this thing with Elizabeth Holmes, can I like, show you something, and can we film your reaction? But they didn't know where it was gonna go from there. And it was just this desperation to debrief with someone about what they'd experienced. To me, her involvement is the thing that elevates it. Like, it changes the game completely. It makes it a way more interesting documentary than it might have been. Because it does raise all these questions, as you're saying. I love that Amanda kind

• 29:26Speaker 05

  of has her own agenda, and her own priorities, and her own sense of who is good and evil in this story. I love her immediate suspicion of Billy, and her desire to kind of interrogate that relationship.

• 29:39Sarah Hagi?

  I also think there was like, this element of, with the reenactments themselves, a lot of it was from Nathan's memory of how things went down.

• 29:49Scaachi Koul?

  I was gonna ask you, if watching the documentary brought up any ethical questions you had about Lance's filmmaking style. I produce documentaries as well. They are moving in a way I would never imagine, for myself, legally or morally. Like, I couldn't really get my head around it.

• 30:08Speaker 05

  We'll say more about that.

• 30:09Scaachi Koul?

  Well, like, I wouldn't do a reenactment. I would not tell anybody else what a source tells me. I won't go to another person who's involved in the story. Like, they're breaking the form, but it does bring up a lot of ethical questions. Did you watch it and think, I have some questions and concerns about the ethics of this project? Or do we have to not think about that because it's Elizabeth Holmes, and like, fuck her?

• 30:32Speaker 05

  There's a bit of that. I had questions and concerns about halfway through, when it was not clear whether they were gonna be profiting from the film, which to me would have been a huge red flag.

• 30:43Scaachi Koul?

  I remember at that point in the movie, I was in the theater, and everybody was like, looking around. And it was like, we were all looking at each other to be like, did we just make Billy money? Like, it's caught in my chest, like, oh, no, $24.

• 30:58Speaker 05

  I know, straight into Billy's pocket. Yeah, so that I definitely was alarmed by and the fact they sort of went so long with that being possible. Obviously, ultimately, he does sort of relinquish the right to profit on the back end, but I think we'd be having a very different conversation had that not happened. In terms of the ethics of like reenactments and things like that, I think that's fair game in a doc, especially, I mean, they're being clear about what that is. I think sometimes reenactment can reveal something deeper or truer, more interesting, and I don't mind that so much, especially when they're showing their hand to the extent that they are.

• 31:34Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Speaker 05

  I like the kind of meta.

• 31:36Scaachi Koul?

  I think, to be clear, I think it works in this one. It's just like, they are using tactics journalistically and creatively that I simply would never do.

• 31:44Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. And like, they are so not journalists.

• 31:47Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, totally.

• 31:48Speaker 05

  It is abundantly clear that they are not journalists.

• 31:50Scaachi Koul?

  Oh, very clearly. We will have to keep talking about Billy. And I want to go back to that money that he then did not actually recoup from the project. Do you have any feelings or ideas about why he didn't end up taking the cash or went back on the deal? I can't fathom why he would then turn it down after all that.

• 32:11Speaker 05

  I know. It's a huge question. I mean, I don't know. At the end of the documentary, or towards the end of the documentary, we see Nathan having a conversation with Elizabeth about, A, whether she knew that this deal had been made in her name. And I'm curious to hear whether you guys think she did know or not. And B, whether Billy could be persuaded to relinquish that agreement, or to go back on that agreement. And she says she's going to talk to him. She has a kind of vague, you know, if it's what's best for the project, I'm sure that's what he'll do. So the only thing I can think of is that he was persuaded from an optics perspective, this will look better for you. In the same way as they're

• 32:52Speaker 05

  kind of performing transparency, for them to be able to perform detachment from the project and saying, okay, we were willing to give you all of this and we're not getting anything back except the clearing of Elizabeth's name. If that was the calculus in his mind, maybe that makes it make sense. But I don't really have clarity on what tipped him over the edge in the end. Relations between Billy and Nathan and Lance did break down a couple of months ago, and they haven't spoken since. So I don't really know what was going through his head at that time. I tried to reach him for the piece, and he perhaps predictably did not respond to a request for comment. So we can only speculate. But I'm curious about that, too. And I would love to hear your theories.

• 33:34Scaachi Koul?

  I don't think there's anything he does that Liz doesn't know, and I don't think there's anything that Liz does that he, like, I think they are just in lockstep. And I I think maybe towards the end, they were thinking, like, if it gets out that we've taken the money, then this, like, really nice documentary that's going to clear our name will look bad. And now they're watching it and they're like, we should have taken the money. We look like assholes. Like.

• 33:54Sarah Hagi?

  I totally agree, Scaachi. I think they are completely in lockstep. I don't think there's any moment where one doesn't know what the other's doing. I do think Liz is pulling the strings. And I think she knows a good mark. And I think Billy's the kind of perfect guy for her in that way. Another reason why they're meant to be is that she's fearless, he is crazier than her. Like, you know what I mean? It's like, like, I just do think that they have a very good idea of what they want people to think about them. And I think it's totally correct that they wanted this money and they realized it did probably look bad. And also, there is Liz's restitution that she has to pay. And I think

• 34:39Sarah Hagi?

  also a part of him getting power of attorney over her was that, and her, you know, feigned ignorance so much of the time, was that, like, he can accumulate wealth that will not then have to go to her restitution.

• 34:49Speaker 05

  I think you're absolutely right that she knows everything that's going on. And it's been interesting, even in the days since the documentary came out, like, that the scene where she and Nathan have this whole back and forth about can versus could and like, oh, hypothetically, the device could ultimately eventually have done all of these things. And that's what I meant. Like, all of that was litigated at trial. We're replaying conversations that she has had in a court of law and in depositions. And I think the vagueness and the, I don't know, the uncertainty is clearly performative. And I think, as you're saying, like, if Billy can be part attack dog, part fall guy,

• 35:31Speaker 05

  like, that's very convenient in that arrangement. And, I mean, it's interesting even that they're not married. Like, I wonder if that is part of the.

• 35:38Scaachi Koul?

  Part of the restitution.

• 35:39Speaker 05

  I don't know how the money flows, but it's like.

• 35:41Scaachi Koul?

  That's why he was going to take the money and not her. Yes.

• 35:44Speaker 05

  Exactly. Like, there's a firewall between them. There's just enough of the pretense of a firewall that they can kind of keep things separate on paper in a way that allows them to operate in the way they need to do. But, yeah, I agree with you that she is calculating at every turn. And the sheer force of her denial at every step, when she's like, I've never told a lie in my life, is obviously completely deranged. But it's like, I think she has almost tricked herself into believing it, but it is obviously untrue on its face.

• 36:15Scaachi Koul?

  Well, if you believe a lie, it's not a lie. Yeah.

• 36:19Speaker 05

  You say it with feeling.

• 36:20Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, if you say it with verve.

• 36:21Speaker 05

  The fact that the crime she was convicted of is defrauding investors. I've seen a lot of memes of people being like, you know, oh, I didn't try that hard at work today. And it's like a picture of Elizabeth Holmes. You know, like, there's a sense of like, oh, we're scamming the man, and so that's okay. Or she can be relatable and quote unquote innocent seeming, or like, it's a victimless crime, which I don't think is true in the case of Elizabeth Holmes. I mean, there was a Theranos scientist who committed suicide. Like, she really went after whistleblowers. She really went after John Kerry who, when he was on her trail. There are objectively crimes beyond just like, oh, some VC guys, like, lost a couple million. You know, like, the depths of the deceit and the emotional component. If you got a false result from one of these tests, which were in Walgreens

• 37:05Speaker 05

  at a certain point, like, there are stakes to this beyond quote unquote mere fraud. But I think if you can focus on the white collar stuff, some people feel that that is less evil or less tangible in some way. It's all like monopoly money. I don't know. I'm curious what your theory of the case is.

• 37:22Sarah Hagi?

  Yeah. I mean, there is just something, I mean, listen, she's got something. I'm like, there's something about this one that's different. You know, in a way, there are people who are like, tech people do crazy stuff all the time. Like, they're not going to prison. That kind of goes with my frustration with, like, not repeating some of the worst elements of her crimes. But yeah, Scaachi, I'm curious what you think.

• 37:44Scaachi Koul?

  I think that there are people who look at Elizabeth Holmes and they are distressed by the idea that, like, a nice-ish looking, average white lady could steal from them like that. And it wigs them out because they're like, this is supposed to be the safe person. And then I think a lot of people look at her and want to believe that she is so vulnerable that she just keeps being abused by these men, because that is an infrastructure for white women that we understand.

• 38:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, Sunny Bawani's involvement in Theranos 1.0, Billy in Theranos 2.0, like, there is always kind of a guy for her to hide behind to a certain extent.

• 38:23Scaachi Koul?

  Her argument with Sunny was that he was the mastermind and he lied to her, and he made her lie to all these people. The court disagreed with her assessment of this. This documentary seems to be positing that similarly Billy is taking advantage of her, that she is a doe-eyed idiot using a concealer that's three shades too light to make her look really lost in the woods and like blush and the mascara and the crying and the soft sweaters and all of this, you know. But the argument is still that she is, like, weak enough that she can be coerced like this again and again. I think the movie is asking us if we believe that. So I'm, for both of you, I'm curious if you think that that is the case with, at least with Billy. We'll start there.

• 39:08Sarah Hagi?

  No.

• 39:08Speaker 05

  No. I mean, there are certainly things about their dynamic that I don't love the look of, but I do think, as we've been saying, like, they are in lockstep and this is a partnership. And she is getting something out of that as much as he is. And I think certainly she's playing with that perception, or she knows that that is an option she has, and she knows how she might be perceived in relation to him. And I think that's useful to her. But I think they're on the same page about what they want.

• 39:39Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah. By making this documentary, though, we obviously really like it, it has replatformed these two goons who are using public attention, right, to try to relaunch something. The problem with them is that, like, she was spending her last days of freedom rebuilding a fake company that didn't work the first time, and she's going to be out of jail in five minutes. I don't think we cannot talk about evil people, but we have to think about how we do it. What do you think about their reentry in the public record and what they may be able to do next because of all this media attention?

• 40:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting question. I agree that we need to be able to document and engage with subjects like this. I don't think they come out of this looking great. So hopefully that sets them back a bit. It's been interesting to see some people coming out of this film feeling quite sympathetic towards Elizabeth Holmes. And I don't know where that leaves us when she does reenter the world. I think she comes off as a manipulator. I don't think the tech comes off well at all. One of my favorite moments, which I wish there had been a bit more of, is after the kind of time jump when they're in Austin and they go to the office of what will be, I suppose, Theranos 2.0. And they're interviewing someone who works at the company

• 40:58Speaker 05

  and he's kind of giving his take on the first go around and saying, well, you know, all founders lie. Like Elon Musk lies. I'm lying right now. And I think that's true. I mean, he's exposing the kind of underpinnings of the move fast and break things tech bro ethos of like, oh, we'll figure it out later. And one day, this will be like a great story that we can tell about the bumpy road to a world changing invention. But I think all of that is true. You know, maybe we could have stood to see a bit more of that, but I don't think they come out of this covered in glory. So hopefully that.

• 41:32Sarah Hagi?

  Yeah, a part of me is like, again, as someone who was so entertained by this and enjoyed every minute, there's still like a feeling in the back of my mind where I don't know how much it matters if someone looks good or not anymore, when people kind of love what they're a part of. This is a woman who fooled Henry Kissinger, you know? She like, she is out here kind of feigning innocence despite us all knowing she's guilty. And I think people who aren't familiar with scammers don't understand that scammers like scam for life unless they are like completely repentant. Like, there's no part of her that has to be honest because

• 42:17Sarah Hagi?

  she knows she doesn't have to like, you know? I feel so torn about it because I do think she's kind of, she can get memified into being like in Trump's cabinet or something at some point.

• 42:29Speaker 05

  Oh, gosh.

• 42:29Scaachi Koul?

  She's gonna be his press secretary in 18 months. She's gonna be on Dancing in the Stars in five minutes and I'm going to have to like walk into the seat.

• 42:37Sarah Hagi?

  No, she's too scared of dancing now. They're gonna make her dance to How to Love.

• 42:40Scaachi Koul?

  You say that now. She's gonna be the Masked Singer. She's gonna be one big eyeball on the Masked Singer.

• 42:45Sarah Hagi?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 42:47Speaker 05

  Absolutely. We'll find the one that fits the bill for her.

• 42:50Sarah Hagi?

  I mean, anything, the thing is like truly at this point, like anything can happen with these people. Like, we've seen the craziest shit happen with known criminals that I'm just like, I really don't know. I feel like there's just a whole other part of the story that hasn't even unfolded yet. And I guess even speaking about Theranos 2.0, do you think there's any chance of her getting anything off the ground when she leaves prison? And also, you know, but like Silicon Valley, they kind of don't care if someone is wrong and they just kind of want to give famous people money sometimes. I'm like, do you think there's any world where she can be successful again in the same way she was before?

• 43:31Speaker 05

  I don't think so. I mean, maybe there's some eccentric billionaire who will throw money at her, but I cannot imagine the press welcoming her again with uncritical arms. I can't really imagine her reaching the level of exposure and success that she had at the height of Theranos really under any circumstance. And also, the technology just doesn't work. Like, none of it works, which is really.

• 43:56Sarah Hagi?

  Well, the thing is, it could. It didn't, but it could.

• 43:59Speaker 05

  But I actually don't think it can.

• 44:01Sarah Hagi?

  No, it can't, it can't.

• 44:04Speaker 05

  I think physically it is not possible to do the thing she was imagining. And maybe she will find some other initiative. It is interesting, when I went to the New York Film Festival screening, when we went outside, there was this huge truck with Elizabeth Holmes's face on it. And it said, Free Elizabeth Holmes. And they were handing out T-shirts. It was like a small but devoted band being like, she has just been misunderstood. If you look at the science, you will find that this is possible. And she was simply an idealist. And I asked them if they were for or against the documentary. And they're like, well, we haven't seen it yet, so we don't know. But like, it was, I am curious whether this will be fuel to the fire for those kinds of people who are just gonna be

• 44:49Speaker 05

  truthers no matter what. But I don't think there are enough of those people for her ever to reclaim the rarefied air that she occupied at the beginning or before the fall.

• 44:59Sarah Hagi?

  That makes me feel better. I'm gonna hold that in my heart.

• 45:03Sarah Hagi?

  Yeah, you know what, Alex, you're right. And I'm gonna believe that she'll never, I'm like, maybe she'll come up with something where she's like, she's like, okay, how about we take the blood with a syringe and then put it through a machine, like regular labs? And it's Theranos 2.

• 45:16Scaachi Koul?

  When we come back, why can't we quit Elizabeth Holmes? We talk about the pull to do a close reading on this documentary and what it conveys better than any straight nonfiction telling of the Theranos story ever could.

• 45:34Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Kenia Perez.

• 45:36Speaker 03

  And I'm Malcolm Gladwell. We're back for season two of our Audible original podcast, The Unusual Suspects.

• 45:42Speaker 06

  We'll sit down with extraordinary guests from the worlds of art, film, literature, comedy, and wellness to hear from their unexpected stories of success.

• 45:49Speaker 03

  And who do we have this season? Well, we'll talk with Grammy winning artist Anderson Paak, athlete Rich Roll, portrait artist Amy Sherald, Oscar winning director Ron Howard, legendary writer David Sedaris, and many more. These conversations are more intimate than last season, wouldn't you say?

• 46:06Speaker 06

  I would. Listen to season one of The Unusual Suspects wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for a free trial Audible to listen to season two in the Audible app or by subscribing to Apple Podcasts.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  You stepped out for your morning jog. Except it's not your usual morning jog. You started listening to an epic sci-fi book on Audible. 30 chapters later, you've accidentally run a half marathon. You've lost track of how far you've run, somewhere just past the city limits. You can't stop. You have to find out what happens next. Then it's over. The universe seems bigger. You feel different. You feel like you have no idea where you are. Audible, stories that speak to you.

• 46:59Sarah Hagi?

  Alex, you mentioned in this profile, and you just said it today, that Lance watched this film 300 times, which for a three hour documentary is kind of insane. I'm curious what you think successive watches actually do, because it almost feels designed for rewatching. I felt like Errol Morris, like I'm doing Thin Blue Line about a documentary. It's like a documentary about a crime that makes me want to make a documentary about the documentary about the crime.

• 47:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, I absolutely feel like it rewards successive viewings and kind of demands them. And it's interesting, I talked to Lance about this and he said that initially, A24 were like, well, could it be a TV show? And he was like, no, it needs to be a movie. You need to be like locked in a room the way we were locked in this Delma rental.

• 47:43Scaachi Koul?

  It's so claustrophobic as a movie. It's terribly claustrophobic.

• 47:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I think it's like deliberately super immersive. And I feel like it kind of lures you into that sensation of to be taken in by this person, you know? Like Lance's big thing in his documentaries is he feels that there is no objective truth once a camera enters the equation, like especially now in the age when we all have people's phones in our faces and like everything is filmed and we all have a relationship to the camera. He's just like, it's not possible for someone not to perform in that environment. And so he was like, let me just lean into this subjective. Like, I'm going to try to inhabit the experience of my subject. I'm gonna make it feel like if your life were a movie, this is how it would play. And then with this one, he was like, I actually can't do

• 48:29Speaker 05

  that because her reality is so detached from our reality, it would be, like, you can't follow her there. And I think instead, he almost was like, well, let me just get inside my own subjective, which sounds very heady, but it's like. How does it feel to be in the presence of this person? What would it mean to start to be lulled into that? Like, I don't think it's an accident that all the exposition about her fraud and her scams is kind of front loaded at the beginning. And then, as it goes, you just sort of get sucked into the person. It's like, oh, I see how someone could be suckered in this way. And I also think it plays into the kind of modern obsession with like, reading people's body language.

• 49:08Scaachi Koul?

  Yes.

• 49:09Speaker 05

  When that first trailer dropped, everyone was like, okay, she's blinking like this. What does it mean? Like, what are these nods? Is this a tell that she's lying? Like, there is this hunger to dissect every second. And this is really catering to that impulse. And the sense of like, we are all investigators now and we're all trying to like, get to the bottom of things. Like, this is just giving you a trove and saying, here you go, good luck, make of it what you will.

• 49:33Scaachi Koul?

  I watched that documentary, like, the JFK assassination tapes. Like, I, if they had let me in that projector booth, I would have been like, okay, stop here and let's, and now go frame by frame. Like, but they don't let you do that.

• 49:47Sarah Hagi?

  At a certain point, I was like, okay, I'm gonna see how long it takes for she or Billy to blink.

• 49:52Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah.

• 49:54Sarah Hagi?

  Like, there's just like, you know, her big saucer eyes and the way the film was framed and just shot was just like, yeah, I feel like it added so much to that effect of being there with them in this like, really sick way. Like, it made me ill. I was honestly, I was sick.

• 50:14Scaachi Koul?

  Something that's really unusual and kind of gratifying about the movie is that you get to watch Elizabeth Holmes work her magic on someone. For us, we talk about this so much on this show. How do we explain to an audience how much a scammer can alter reality for somebody? And how they can change gravity for someone who's in their sway? The documentary really sets the fact aside so we can just experience what it's like to be in the thrall of a scammer.

• 50:43Speaker 05

  One of the most fascinating things about the documentary is just, it is a document of how people get scammed. You're seeing it happen to Nathan, you're seeing it happen, to a lesser extent, to Amanda, where she, you know, that moment when she goes to the house in Austin and Elizabeth calls and she's sort of there with her family and she blurts out in this moment of panic, like, you're wonderful. And then she's like, why did I say that? But it's, you know, it's the lulling into a sense of, oh, but if I just look at this person, she seems so guileless, she's looking at me.

• 51:15Scaachi Koul?

  It's her children. Here's Amanda, who's like, a mother and a person in society, and she's playing with her kids, what's she gonna, what is she gonna say? We talk about this all the time because it is human nature to believe someone and to, and to trust. Like, when someone tells me something, and especially because Liz's business was altruistic in nature, it's a healthcare company, you are inclined to be like, well, okay, here's my credit card.

• 51:38Sarah Hagi?

  Also, you kind of think, you know, if someone has already been caught for lying the way she did, what does she have to gain from continuing to lie? I think it's such a mindfuck if you're, again, someone who lives a normal enough life where your day isn't filled with scamming and lying to people and breaking the social contract anytime you can. It's like, it's so hard to wrap your head around the fact that people are liars that way. Like, they will lie about everything and anything, which is, I think, the craziest part of watching the experience and also like, even watching people watch it. She's never gonna tell the truth. I feel like the only time she was real in the movie was when she was on the phone talking

• 52:22Sarah Hagi?

  about checking into prison and like, what would happen and what her days in prison would be like. Like, I feel like that was the most honest breakdown because any person, no matter how evil or dishonest they are, is going to have that breakdown about literally going, like, it is such a crazy reality to imagine even going to a minimum security prison where you're locked there. I think that is when like, her reality also really hit me.

• 52:48Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It finally ruptures this, oh, it might not happen, or it might be postponed again, or I'm not really going and she has to confront this thing. And it is horrifying. I mean, to, you know, to be separated from, I do feel, I feel terrible for her kids. They have been with her for years and they will be for years still. But, yeah, that is the moment of the rupture, for sure, in this universe that she's created for herself.

• 53:14Scaachi Koul?

  Do you think we've learned our lesson? Has Liz taught us a lesson about scam artists? Do we have better scam artist literacy?

• 53:22Speaker 05

  Based on some of the responses I've seen to this doc, I'm going to say no.

• 53:27Scaachi Koul?

  Cool.

• 53:28Sarah Hagi?

  Damn, we're not doing our jobs.

• 53:29Scaachi Koul?

  Really comforting for us. We've spent four years trying to get people to like, do a Google search.

• 53:33Speaker 05

  You've been fighting this fight. You've been, you've been in the trenches.

• 53:35Scaachi Koul?

  I can't get a woman to Google a guy that she goes out with, never mind take a peek at your investor's portfolio.

• 53:42Sarah Hagi?

  Ultimately, okay, this is kind of a big question. What was the point? It's not that I think a documentary has to be like, made by a journalist and there's something you're uncovering in a big way after, obviously, this has like, a lot of artistic merit. It is creating these incredible conversations. I'm so happy something like this exists and that people are like, paying money to watch it. But I'm, I'm kind of like, what are we supposed to take away from it?

• 54:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really interesting document because by their own admission, they didn't know what the point was going to be going in. The way they negotiated to make this thing, they asked A24 for immediate funding to start shooting and they asked for a kill switch. So that at any point in the documentary, if they were like, we don't like what we're getting, we don't feel like we have enough to make a film out of, they could just end the project, no questions asked, no money needs to be repaid. And I think Lance, the way he makes documentaries in general, he's used to these kinds of fishing expeditions. He will spend like, 100 days on a shoot, just shooting 16 hour days, trying to find the story in the edit. And there was definitely some of that happening here.

• 54:49Speaker 05

  But I think, to me, not to be like, the journey is the point, not the destiny. But like, it kind of is. I think the attempt to know someone or to study how a persona is constructed, both the story someone tells about themselves, but also the story that, you know, an actress is telling by embodying them. Like, there are all of these different facets of it that I think coalesce in a really interesting way and create a really interesting conversation about our narratives and what we believe about ourselves and what we want others to believe about us and what all of that means.

• 55:30Speaker 05

  So I, I kind of like that it ends on an ambiguous note with Amanda just saying, it's really complicated because it is. And I, I almost feel that the point is the discussion that comes out of it and the threads that they were exploring. And it's okay that it doesn't wrap itself up in a bow. I actually feel it would have been sort of dishonest for it to do that. So I, I like the uncertainty.

• 55:52Sarah Hagi?

  Again, the story is so settled. We know she's a liar. We know she's a scammer. So, yeah, I guess it is just kind of more of a document of a person and an experience and what it's like to talk to someone who's so in denial and kind of the human response, perhaps, that Nathan has to someone who he knows is deceiving him, I think, is a huge thing. Maybe the point is just that you watched it.

• 56:19Scaachi Koul?

  It's the friends we made along the way.

• 56:21Sarah Hagi?

  Yes, exactly.

• 56:23Speaker 05

  Truly.

• 56:23Scaachi Koul?

  Alex, thank you so much for talking to us about this fever dream. I'm gonna go home and think more about this movie.

• 56:30Speaker 05

  Truly a pleasure. I could talk about it for hours, so I'm happy we did this.

• 56:34Scaachi Koul?

  Okay, we're gonna talk about it more now, without everybody else.

• 56:36Sarah Hagi?

  Perfect.

• 56:43Scaachi Koul?

  Follow Scamfluencers on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of Scamfluencers ad-free by joining Audible.

• 56:57Scaachi Koul?

  For Audible Originals, this is You Can See Everything, Elizabeth Holmes, up close and impersonal. I'm Sarah Haggie.

• 57:05Sarah Hagi?

  And I'm Sachi Cole.

• 57:07Scaachi Koul?

  If you have a tip for us on a story that you think we should cover, please email us at [email protected]. Huge thanks to Alex Berish. Find his profile, Lance Oppenheim is going places, in New York Magazine and at vulture.com. This episode was story edited by our senior producer, Sarah Enni. Our senior producer is Ginny Blue. Our producers are Sachi Cole and Sarah Haggie. Our associate producer is Charlotte Miller. Our managing producer is Desi Blaylock. Fact checking by Gabrielle Drolet. Sound design by Sergio Enriquez. Additional audio assistance provided by Augustine Lim. Our music supervisor is Scott Velazquez for Freeze on Sync. The executive producer for Audible is Jenny Lauer Beckman. The head of creative development at Audible is Kate Navin.

• 57:51Scaachi Koul?

  The head of Audible Originals North America is Marshall Louis. The chief content officer is Rachel Giatza. Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals LLC. Sound recording copyright 2026 by Audible Originals LLC.

• 58:08Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Kenya Berish.

• 58:09Speaker 06

  And I'm Malcolm Gladwell. We're back for season two of our Audible Original Podcast, The Unusual Suspects.

• 58:14Speaker 03

  We're bringing you fresh, new conversations from guests like Anderson Paak, David Zedares,

• 58:18Speaker 06

  Ryan Howard, Rich Roll, Amy Sheldon, and many more. Sign up for a free trial to Audible to listen to season two in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.