John Carreyrou

I love reading about interesting companies and how they rose to the top or came crashing down. I love a good dive deep into the design aspects of their products and the financial side of things. But I am open to all kinds of books. One of the recent ones I enjoyed was Bad Blood by John Carryrou.

Novel lovers please help! I have almost exclusively read nonfiction until this year and I’m trying to jump into novels that you can really lose yourself in. But I really like to learn something when I read a book. What are some novels you read recently that left you with some new knowledge on a subject, culture, historical event, etc. ? I recently read Kite Runner and had to have Wikipedia/Google open the whole time so that I could learn more about the context of the era and the situation in Afghanistan and I really enjoyed reading a story that had me doing my own research at the same time.

Recent nonfiction I read/am reading, if that helps: The Demon in the Freezer - Richard Preston How to Hide an Empire - David Immerwahr The New Jim Crow - Michelle Alexander They Were Her Property - Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers Bad Blood - John Carryrou Catch and Kill - Ronan Farrow The Spider and the Fly - Claudia Rowe

I am having a hard time getting into the Hulu show. I don’t find EH very compelling as a subject matter (I am more interested in what allowed her to flourish despite her BS) and having it all happen through her eyes feels really dull and lazy.

I keep imagining the show I would like to see instead: a thriller-type escapade primarily through the eyes of Erica Cheung, Tyler Schultz, and John Carryrou.

What about everyone else? If you’re not crazy about the show, what do you wish they would have done instead?

Just finished American Kingpin by Nick Bilton and loved the “non-fictional narrative”; and listened to Bad Blood by John Carryrou not too long ago, which was also great. Loved these true stories that were so well written/read and I’m looking for more! Would love any suggestions of true story books - open to any theme but I’m less interested by murderer stories. TIA!

I recently picked up my first non-fiction book (since I thought they were all stuffy and boring), which happened to be "Bad Blood" by John Carryrou, about Theranos' blood testing and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes.

The book was a blast, but it was unbelievable how so much that was happening, actually happened and that got me thinking... what other non-fiction books out there that cover a topic or theme, that's just too unbelievable to be true, even if it is?

I recommend the book by the way. It focuses on Elizabeth Holmes, a Stanford drop-out who came up with this idea to test people's blood and have pharma-companies and doctors to monitor the blood against new medication the patient is having. If the blood shows that the patient needs a higher dose, or a lower dose, then the doctor or the pharma-company can increase/decrease on the next prescription.

The problem is, is that Elizabeth is petrified of needles and while in theory, what she wanted to do could be done, she demanded it be done using the smallest drop of blood possible. Not only that, but she designed a machine called the Edison that could test the blood but it wasn't working -- so instead of spending seven years that was needed to fix it, she went and created ANOTHER MACHINE called the miniLab, a machine that could run 250 blood tests from a single drop of blood, neither of these worked by the way (they ended up hacking on-the-market blood analyzers and pretending the results were being used on the miniLab). Even though they didn't work either, she still sold them to companies, Safeways and more prominently, Walgreens.

I won't spoil the rest, but it's 300-pages of "what the fucks" and "are you insanes".

I'm not a really good reader, and i've always had trouble getting into books. I've probably picked up more books that i haven't finished compared to the ones I have finished.

My friend recommended the BAD BLOOD book and I figured I'd like it since I'm sort of into intense real life events like this one. I was not expecting to like this book so much and I loved it! However, now I feel like if I don't find a book I like it'll probably take me another year to pick up another one.

Do you guys have any recommendations?

I'm not super big on fiction, but very into drama and actions and heists. Ocean's Eleven is one of my favorite movies if that helps :)

Thanks!

So unlike the Letters of Support Holmes submitted, and the references the Prosecution made in their Sentencing memo, victim impact statements are sealed. So we don't know, other then the Prosecutions own references, who submitted victim impact statements. So this is interesting, and hasn't widely been reported on yet (that her own Aunt submitted a statement).

Elizabeth holmes is responsible for the suicide of Ian Gibbons. Now Tyler Shultz confesses in the Bad Blood podcast that he too was suicidal after she sent her lawyers to his house threatening to sue him. Thanks to Tyler's bravery, millions were spared from shody blood testing. Elizabeth should rot in gaol from having blood on her hands.

I just finished the book and I’m totally in awe. The writing is solid. The stories are engrossing - I often read into the night. My jaw just kept dropping page after page, shocked by what the company was doing to defraud its investors, business partners, consumers, et al.

Most of all, the company culture was torturous. Employees from different departments were separated and discouraged from speaking to each other, just to prevent them from knowing fully what was going on in the company.

And Sunny Balwani, omg, he’s just an asshole. He never appeared in the story once without being angry.

Any chance someone is reading / has read the book? What do you think of it?

I recommend this to anyone who’s interested in investigative journalism and corporate wrongdoing stories.

First in the line for the Press, I should clarify. Good for him.

Still waiting for it to load on Castbox app. Carreyrou retweet:

They played clips from this meeting in the HBO documentary, but I haven't been able to find the whole thing online?

Does anyone have the full link to this, or any other depositions surrounding Theranos? Thanks.

How long do you think Elizabeth and Sunny would have been able to continue the charade? The cracks were already starting, but I would be curious how many rabbits out of their hats could have pulled out.

I just finished this and wish I could read it for the first time all over again. I’m looking for similar books about industry scandals and investigative journalism. I’m open to anything except stories about serial killers/murders. Thanks!