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The Dropout
Theranos
This is the new hot Theranos anthology that everyone is raving about right now. It’s a very well researched, in-depth account of the entire Theranos story with first account interviews of investors, reporters, and former employees. This series is as good as everyone says so definitely start here with episode one. Tap on the Apple button in the Wilson player to get linked.
If you’ve already caught up on this, skip to the Last Days episode below.
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Inside the Hive
Last Days
Nick Bilton’s podcast on Vanity Fair (actually quite good) does a posthumous report on what happened during the last couple of days of Theranos, where Elizabeth Holmes is now (she has a dog that she thinks is a Wolf named Balto), and how she’s facing criminal charges while also trying to raise another round of money for another scammy idea? This episode is definitely worth the commuting listen if you’re all caught up with the story.
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Recode Decode
Bad Bloods
This Recode episode is an interview with the John Carreyrou of the “Fuck you, Carreyrou” chant. The WSJ Journalist that broke the story of Theranos and the author of the thrill like read book Bad Bloods. He talks about how he got into this particular beat, his journalistic methodology, and the heaps of challenges he faced. This episode is really about the story ‘behind the story’
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Stuff Mom Never Told You
Soho Grift
Anna Delvey (25), aka the SoHo Grifter who paid for everything in cash, lived in 11 Howard and the Bowery Hotel for months before getting kicked out, infiltrated New York City’s most elite socialite society and got a lease on a “45,000 square feet occupying six floors of the historic Church Missions House ( a landmarked building on the corner of Park Avenue and 22nd) for her “startup” project is now at Rikers. Her story is incredibly fascinating and brings out the value of unsolicited vouching and the insecurities of the young and rich. The Cut has the entire story and it’s worth a read as an addendum to this episode.
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Popcast
Fyre Fest
Of course you’ve heard this by now especially with two separate competing documentaries on both Netflix and Hulu (watch both) this episode of Popcast has more of a roundtable discussion about the scam but mainly the two documentaries themselves. If you’ve seen both of them then this is a great follow up to the Fyre Saga.
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Knowledge@Wharton
Billion Dollar Whale
Jho Low aka the Billion Dollar Whale and perhaps the least well known of the bunch here, but has nothing low profile about him, scammed billions from the Malaysian people and spent it on an extravagant lifestyle from producing the Wolf of Wall Street (the irony here), buying Kim Kardashian a White Ferrari as a wedding gift, gifting Picasso’s and Basquiat’s to Leonardo Dicaprio, and giving over 8 million dollars worth of jewelry and a transparent piano to Miranda Kerr. This Wharton educated, middle class born guy was estimated at one point to have more liquid cash than any person in all of history…
Millennial Scammers
Selected by:
Wilson
Scam and scammers have been around as long as time but they use to happen on the low. What captured our imagination previously was learning how they were able to stay under the radar while getting away with their grift. But what is infinitely more fascinating about this new generation of grifters is how present and publicly prolific they were about their scams. And it’s no coincidence that the millennial zeitgeist of influencer culture, #FOMO, social media, blended with the cultural cancer that is ‘WeWork’, hustle porn, and Forbes 30 under 30’s idea of success that our crop of scammers are so young, public, and overly ambitious. This issue is about them, and we’ll start off fully indulging ourselves with a Theranos K-hole. We’ll bite!