By Two weeks ago, we were all forcefully reminded that America is far from a meritocracy, and that those with means have always had ways to pay their way into America’s elite universities. Despite the outrage many people felt in discovering that celebrities and millionaires had been paying obscene amounts of money so that their fail-children could get into universities they had no business attending, there was a deeper sense that the corruption that had been exposed was something we’ve all accepted for a long time as a fact: wealthy people are allowed to pay their way into positions the rest of us can only dream of accessing, and so often they get to pass off their privilege as hard work. We all know this is how it’s always been, but it always makes us mad to be confronted by it.
This is essentially the story of Elizabeth Holmes, the focus of THE DROPOUT, a podcast by ABC’s radio division. At one point Elizabeth was deemed America’s youngest “self-made” female billionaire, except for the fact that her fortune was entirely built on bullshit technology that was never going to work. You couldn’t even really call her self-made, considering she came from a dynasty yeast fortune and her father was the vice president of Enron. Elizabeth Holmes was able to land herself a prestigious spot at Stanford (no judgement on how much her parent’s money may have helped to get her there), and while at Stanford Elizabeth quickly developed a patent for a new technology that could run full blood tests with just a few drops of blood. When she initially presented the idea, she had one professor immediately tell her the invention was physically impossible, but another professor told her it was brilliant and encouraged her to pursue her ambitions. She dropped out of college before even finishing her sophomore year to start her bold new company, Theranos.
What happened next almost defies belief. A 21-year-old woman began literally dressing like Steve Jobs, talking in a bizarre, affected voice, and poaching as many employees from Apple as she possibly could. Through her connections at Stanford, she was able to convince everyone from Henry Kissenger to Joe Biden to Errol Morris to invest in Theranos and endorse it. By essentially faking all the right credentials, rubbing the right elbows at the right time, Elizabeth built a fortune on something that was doomed from the start.
An HBO documentary about Holmes is also out right now, but I have to stress how well the podcast series makes it clear that Holmes was able to somehow fool all the people we’re so often told are “the smartest guys in the room.” The best and brightest of Silicon Valley fell for her bullshit, the political leaders we’re supposed to admire endorsed her, Walgreens put her faulty machines in its stores across California and the Southwest. By just marketing herself as the Steve Jobs of healthcare, Elizabeth Holmes duped the supposed best and brightest. THE DROPOUT doesn’t exactly come to this conclusion, but it’s pretty difficult to listen to it and not come away thinking that Forbes and Bloomberg may not actually know much of anything.
Something encouraging to take away from a story like THE DROPOUT is that even though you may not have started out in life already on third base, you are most likely less full of shit than Elizabeth Holmes. You are less delusional, and probably more capable, than someone who at one point was “worth” almost $9 billion. Our entire social order is based around people who can afford to create the illusion of being qualified, but in reality they’re no better than you or I. It’s cathartic to see the ultra-wealthy get their just desserts every once in awhile, but THE DROPOUT is a stubborn reminder that we shouldn’t let them get so wealthy in the first place.
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