Ehsan Ahmad & Deric Poston

The episode opens with a trailer for a new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. One participant says that within the first five seconds they knew they would watch it. The clip shows Holmes insisting she has no reason to deceive the interviewer. The hosts react to her face and eyes as much as to what she says. They say they can see her "calculating the right moves" and compare her stare to a snake's, describing it as "Something that came out of the Garden of Eden."

When one guest asks who Holmes is, the group sums up the case as they understand it. Her company was supposed to be a huge thing, she wore a black turtleneck and talked like Steve Jobs, and the product did not work. They describe customers who believed blood-test results telling them they had no cancer or no cholesterol problem. According to their account, the company quietly fell back on conventional blood draws while blaming a machine that needed recalibrating. They also say the fraud lasted a long time because people did not want to give up the story they had already accepted.

It's all fake. It was all fake.

Holmes's voice gets the most attention. The hosts say women who went to college with her said "that's not her voice." They contrast the softer voice in the documentary clip with the deep register she used in conference speeches about being a strong woman in business. One participant says she sounded like she "smoked a hundred cigarettes a day for a thousand years." They first pull up a clip of someone parodying her voice, then switch to an actual speech so there is no music or commentary over it.

Her TED talk line that protecting the health and well-being of the people we love is "a basic human right" is taken as proof that she "would say all the right things" and "dressed the right way." Playing the documentary clip again, they call it "a completely different fake voice." Their admiration is grudging. One remark is that "It's impressive how much scammers go through," and that the act took real work.

The discussion widens to the startup culture that rewarded Holmes. One participant calls that world "so full of shit in so many ways," especially "the super woke lefties in tech" of that period. They add that things have "changed quite a bit now" because people found that approach "really bad for business." In their reading, back then the right image (a strong woman, a turtleneck, a deep voice, a brilliant dropout who was "too smart for college," a "female Steve jobs") was enough to attract a $9 billion valuation. They point to Bill Gates as an example of the dropout story and call it "a really good backstory to create" for anyone trying to scam people in tech.

Even inside the TED talk, one participant imagines, Holmes must have known the scheme would eventually collapse: "At a certain point, you have to know that house the car is going to fall."

An Uber Eats sponsor read follows. It advertises $10 off a first grocery order with a code, a $30 order minimum, and limits on which order types qualify.

Back from the ad, the conversation returns to the idea that some social worlds run on agreed ways of talking that cannot be questioned, "even things that don't make sense." As an example outside the tech world, they play a video from Portland. A couple wore shirts referencing XX and XY chromosomes into a sports bar that features women's sports, and they were asked to leave because the shirts were making people uncomfortable. In the clip, a person says they are uncomfortable with the shirts and will call authorities if needed. The patrons ask what is wrong with the shirts and get no answer beyond "I've already explained."

Chromosomes make people uncomfortable. That's insane, bro.

The hosts admit that wearing such a shirt into a women's sports bar was predictably provocative. Their main argument, though, is that support for women's sports depends on recognizing a difference between men and women. They link this to Title IX, which they describe as requiring women's sports to be funded as much as men's. They also note the shirt made no claim about sports at all. It just stated XX and XY, which is "literally stating a fact." One participant concludes "Facts are offensive. I think real life is offensive." The bar's apparent message is summed up as "You're making too much sense."

The group ties the bar incident back to Holmes. A shared illusion, they argue, lets someone like her "slip through the cracks," because people are "already living in that bullshit world." One participant compares it to a cult, where nobody asks why the leader gets everyone's money or partners because "The rules are the rules." The conclusion is that a scammer is "always looking for a way to find how to make the rules work for him or her."

There's something about bullshit worlds. It's like you're in a cult.

The next case is a man the transcript calls Dejan Love. He reportedly posed on dating apps as a San Francisco 49ers wide receiver, carried a 49ers helmet in his car, filmed himself running routes on the beach, and posted photos outside the stadium. According to the discussion, he told women he had property and investments, offered to invest their money, and "got $1.3 million out of these women."

Asked why the women didn't just Google him, one participant explains that this was the point. He had set up enough fake social media pages that the first AI-generated Google answer reportedly described him as a 49ers wide receiver, and he also had a LinkedIn profile claiming the job. The participant admits they often accept the first Google result too, and imagines the victims thinking "why would Google lie to me about this?"

One host describes a boxing coach who tried to recruit them into a pyramid scheme around 1994, shortly after they moved to Los Angeles. The coach caught them in the parking lot after sparring. He explained that the more people you sign up, the more money you get out, and said a friend had put in about 20 grand and received $85,000 within a year for doing nothing. The host says they had to explain to the coach what a pyramid scheme is: "you're describing a scam."

The group agrees that the only ways to profit are getting out in time, starting the scheme, or recruiting "enough suckers." They joke that a gym where people get hit in the head all day is an ideal place to find them. The host says the pitch felt "really humiliating" because it implied they were that easy to fool. They also say they ended up looking for a new gym, and that schemes like this end with someone going to jail.

The conversation goes back to the Holmes documentary. One participant believes it was filmed shortly before her prison term, "something like 34 days before she's going to jail," with Nathan Fielder given full access. Another speaker adds, with some uncertainty, "I think she's in now." The hosts comment on how physically close the interviewer gets and say Fielder is a master at getting people to a place where their true selves come out.

The technique they single out is silence. When the subject says something, the interviewer says nothing back. They describe a manipulator's conversation as a game of ping pong. If the other side doesn't return the ball, the manipulator is left "just holding the paddle." In their reading, Holmes wanted a response she could work with and got none, so she ended up standing there "Looking stupid as fuck."

He also did something very wise right there, which is when someone says something, you say nothing back.

One participant links this to Victor Lustig, described as a prolific con man who "sold the Eiffel Tower" and "Almost sold it twice." They say Lustig wrote ten commandments of scamming, one of which is to say nothing, listen and keep the other person talking. Here the roles are reversed. Holmes is the one getting nothing, and the participant says you can see her "wall start to crumble."

The hosts say there is "no way she wasn't scamming people," pointing to whistleblowers inside the company and to her ex-boyfriend's conviction. One host stops short of speculating that the two informed on each other and says it could get them in legal trouble. They describe the couple's lifestyle (a Lamborghini, "Nine billion coming in") and wonder whether a brief taste of that wealth felt worth it. Another participant rejects that idea. They say she is serving about ten years, scammed powerful investors of "hundreds of millions of dollars," including one who gave her "$150 million," and may be in danger even after she is released.

A lookup read on air describes Sunny Balwani (spelled "Sonny" in the transcript) as a former software entrepreneur who met Holmes in 2002 when she was 18 and was roughly 19 years older. It says he later became an informal advisor and investor, formally joined the company in 2009 as president and chief operating officer, and left in 2016 around the end of their relationship. The figures read out are 12 years, 11 months for Balwani and 11 years, three months for Holmes. That second figure is more precise than the earlier remark that she was doing "10 years." Their only comment on the gap is "they were both guilty."

The lookup also says Holmes alleged that Balwani psychologically, physically and sexually abused her, and that he denied this through his legal team. It notes that the allegations were part of her defense "not a finding that Balwani was criminally convicted of abuse." The hosts are dismissive and treat the allegations as an attempt to shift blame. The source also says that after the company collapsed, Holmes became engaged to hotel heir Billy Evans and had two children with him. The hosts question having children with someone facing a long prison term.

A DraftKings sponsor read follows. It describes football-season profit boosts and a new-customer offer (spend five dollars, get 200 in rewards within 21 days), along with problem-gambling hotlines, age and state restrictions, and expiry terms.

After the ad, one participant worries whether children are safe around a prolific liar. Another pushes back that "a scammer versus someone who's a killer or someone who's an abuser" is a very different thing. The read-out also mentions that she is at a federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas ("Brian" in the transcript), the same facility as Ghislaine Maxwell ("Galane" in the transcript).

Next, one host raises "the elephant in the room," asking what medication Holmes might be on. The AI tool they query (Perplexity is named) declines to answer.

I'm not aware of any reliable public record listing Elizabeth Holmes' personal medications. It would be inappropriate.

The hosts openly brush the warning aside ("Too late. We already have"), but their comments shift to psychiatric drugs in general rather than anything documented about Holmes. One participant argues that people who tell a psychiatrist they feel depressed end up on medication because the doctor is inclined to prescribe and the patient is inclined to trust them. They say people have been conditioned to believe "a pill can make you happy."

The discussion then turns to sexual side effects that "some people get" on SSRIs. One host recalls a woman who gave a speech saying she started the drug in her 20s and afterward had no orgasms, no feeling and no desire. Asked whether this is deliberate, the host says "it's an accidental side effect. It doesn't happen to everybody." They then lay out a hypothetical. If someone wanted people more invested in cultural and political fights, removing their sex lives and desire for children would push their identity into a political team. This is framed only as "one thing that is possible," and no evidence is offered for it.

From there, the hosts argue that the most scolding political voices they know are often people in their 50s without children, many of them women. Their explanation is that such people have "infantilized the world" and treat the culture as their children. One host contrasts this with a guest who has a young baby and is focused on that. The same host then adds a caveat.

By the way, be really clear. It is not all women who don't have kids. There's a lot of women who don't have kids that are awesome and they don't need to have kids.

The host stresses the freedom in America to live without children. They still maintain that the scolding behavior seems to start after the reproductive years and say it applies to childless older men too. The argument also does some rough arithmetic: "20 years ago was 2006," so someone in their late 50s has about 20 years left and will be "77, 78 years old," which makes the host ask why such people focus on everyone else's problems.

Their main objection is to scolding itself, more than to having strong opinions. They describe it as aggressive insults meant to intimidate opponents into self-censoring, "instead of just like effectively arguing your perspective." One host allows that mockery can be fine if it is genuinely funny, but objects to the "mean-heartedness" that treats opponents as others. A participant names calling people Nazis as the fastest way to make them stop listening. They call it ironic, because "if they disagree with me, they're a Nazi" is itself "a pretty Nazi" way of thinking.

The section ends on a broader political claim. One host says the idea that one side of the country is good and the other bad is "such a bad way to approach the reality of our current situation." In their view, that situation is complicated and has been "influenced by government organizations," which benefit when citizens are at each other's throats. They argue that people who fight each other this way end up handing over power piece by piece to defeat the other side. No specific evidence of government involvement is offered.

divide and conquer is the most common strategy

They hold up the chromosome-shirt ejection and an argument about a woman who killed her children as examples of how strange the fights have become. The excerpt ends with an unresolved question about how a group of women knew to wear pink and coordinated it. The excerpt doesn't say what that refers to.

This stretch of the conversation opens on the women who gathered in pink shirts outside the courthouse where Lindsay Clancy was being tried. One participant describes her as a woman who, one at a time, strangled her children with an exercise cable, and says some supporters brought their own children and held them up. The reaction is incredulity. The group repeatedly calls the demonstration a "sci-op" (the transcript's rendering of psy-op), and one speaker says they would be disappointed in the government if it were not one. The opening line also asks how much USAID money was involved, framing the scene as an example of "divide and conquer." No evidence of funding or organization is offered; the claim rests on how implausible the participants find the demonstration.