The Dropout (podcast)

The Dropout is an American true crime podcast hosted by Rebecca Jarvis that follows the story of Elizabeth Holmes, her defunct medical company Theranos, and the related federal criminal fraud trial, United States v. Elizabeth A. Holmes, et al. It was produced by ABC News, Taylor Dunn, Victoria Thompson, and Rebecca Jarvis. After the initial six episodes of the podcast aired in 2019, a two-hour 20/20 episode premiered in March 2019, following the popularity of the podcast. A second season of the podcast, titled, The Dropout: Elizabeth Holmes on Trial, debuted in 2022 and followed along with the criminal fraud federal trial of Holmes.

The podcast series received favorable reviews, and won a Front Page Award, an iHeartRadio Podcast Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and two Webby Awards for Best Podcast. The 20/20 episode based on the podcast was nominated for a news Emmy Award in the Outstanding Feature Story in a Newsmagazine category.

The Dropout was adapted into a limited series of the same name &mdash; starring Oscar-nominee Amanda Seyfried as Holmes. Jarvis, Dunn, and Thompson served as executive producers along with showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether. The TV series based on the podcast received a positive reception and garnered multiple honors including a Critics' Choice Television Award and Producers Guild of America Award for Best Limited Series. Seyfried won a Golden Globe Award and Primetime Emmy Award for her portrayal of Holmes based on the podcast.

Background
Holmes dropped out of Stanford University and founded Theranos, a medical technology company, in 2003 and became the world's youngest female self-made billionaire. The company was valued at approximately $9 billion. The company claimed that it could complete a full range of blood tests with a single drop of blood, testing for hundreds of diseases. Theranos sold its blood-testing technology to Walgreens. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission later charged Holmes with defrauding investors. In June 2018, Holmes was indicted on 11 counts of felony fraud in the U.S. federal criminal fraud trial, United States v. Elizabeth A. Holmes, et al. The podcast interviews former employees, investors, and patients and includes portions of deposition tapes.

Research and original reporting
The series was produced by ABC News. The podcast was written and reported by Jarvis, along with ABC News senior producer Victoria Thompson and Taylor Dunn. Jarvis, Thompson, and Dunn served as producers of the podcast. The book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by journalist and author John Carreyrou formed the basis of research for the podcast. Jarvis and her team conducted detailed original reporting on the Theranos fraud. Jarvis spent three years investigating Elizabeth Holmes and carrying out investigative journalism about the defunct medical company. For the second season, Jarvis herself attended the federal trial of Holmes, United States v. Elizabeth A. Holmes, et al., in California.

Deposition tapes
Jarvis gained access to legal deposition tapes of Elizabeth Holmes, and multiple key individuals involved in the Theranos fraud case. The depositions of Holmes had not previously been publicized before the podcast release. Those featured in depositions excerpted in the podcast included Balwani, along with Theranos board members: former Wells Fargo CEO Richard Kovacevich, former US Chief of Naval Operations Gary Roughead, and former US Senator and medical doctor, Bill Frist.

Interviews
Jarvis hosted and narrated the podcast. She conducted interviews with medical patients that had been tested using the Theranos device. Jarvis landed an exclusive interview with the lawyer for Theranos former President and COO Sunny Balwani, Jeff Coopersmith. Jarvis interviewed former Theranos board member Avie Tevanian, who was also a former high-ranking business executive at Apple. Jarvis interviewed Theranos employees, including those that had worked within the company's laboratories. She discussed the experience of working at the company with Theranos whistleblower, Tyler Shultz, grandson of Theranos board member and former US Secretary of State, George Shultz.

Release


The podcast series launched in January 2019 with six episodes. It was made available on the ABC News app, along with other apps including Stitcher, Spotify, TuneIn, Google Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts. Jarvis simultaneously reported on content from her podcast research for ABC World News Tonight and Nightline. It was the number one ranked most popular podcast launched by ABC News. It was also among the top ranked podcasts on iTunes in March 2019. After the initial 2019 six-episode edition, a two-hour 20/20 episode premiered in March 2019, following the popularity of the podcast. It was nominated for a news Emmy Award in the Outstanding Feature Story in a Newsmagazine category.

The second season of The Dropout debuted on August 30, 2021 with two new episodes, and was timed to follow the federal criminal fraud case against Elizabeth Holmes: United States v. Elizabeth A. Holmes, et al. During season two, Jarvis simultaneously reported on the trial for ABC News, Good Morning America, and Nightline. The series released one episode per week in the second season. Jarvis used the podcast to follow along with Holmes' federal trial. She enlisted the help of law scholars, Theranos medical patients, and Holmes' prior business associates, for commentary upon the trial. The second season was titled: The Dropout: Elizabeth Holmes on Trial. It was released on the ABC News app, Audacy, TuneIn, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. An episode of the podcast was released January 4, 2022, one day after Holmes was found guilty of fraud and conspiracy in the federal case. By 2022 the series had released 21 episodes. The second season of the podcast concluded in January 2022.

On March 4, 2022, ABC News released a special two-hour-long 20/20 episode with reporting by Jarvis, covering the federal fraud trial of Holmes. The 20/20 investigative journalism piece by Jarvis was titled: The Drop Out - The Rise and Con of Elizabeth Holmes. It focused both on personal developments in Holmes' life including her new partner an heir to a hotel business, and her accusations of abuse against her former partner Sunny Balwani, that he denied.

ABC News released a bonus episode of the podcast The Dropout: Elizabeth Holmes on Trial, on August 11, 2022 titled: "Amanda and The Other Liz". It featured an interview by Jarvis with Amanda Seyfried, the actress portraying Elizabeth Holmes in the television miniseries, along with showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether. A second bonus episode of the podcast was released in November 2022, following the sentencing of Holmes in her criminal fraud trial.

Season 1
The first season debuted with a trailer on January 15, 2019 followed by the first full episode one week later. It concluded with the sixth episode on February 26, 2019.

Season 2
The second season began with a trailer released on August 5, 2021, followed by the first full episode of the second season on August 31 of the same year. The second season concluded on November 18, 2022.

Television miniseries adaptation
The success of the podcast led to it being developed into a television miniseries. The Dropout was adapted to a limited series of the same name &mdash; starring Oscar-nominee Amanda Seyfried as Holmes. Jarvis, Dunn, and Thompson served as executive producers along with showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether. The television miniseries drew upon material from the first season of the podcast.

Meriwether expanded upon the podcast in order to elaborate upon a character study of Elizabeth Holmes. Meriweather listened to the Jarvis podcast and attempted to conceive how the character of Holmes behaved when she was out of the public eye. She explained to The New York Times her attempt to understand and delve into the character of Holmes: "I felt like people's understanding of who she was had been limited to the deep voice and the turtleneck. I was interested in going deeper, and I felt like Rebecca's podcast was made with that spirit of wanting to figure out what motivated her." Television director Michael Showalter listened to the podcast to gain context on the material presented in the miniseries.

Actress Amanda Seyfried had been a listener following the podcast, prior to being cast in the miniseries of the same name. Seyfried assessed the podcast: "There's something very calming about Rebecca. There's something very fair about Rebecca and her journalism, the way she speaks about things, the way she articulates them, the questions she asks. The whole team of them did an amazing job."

The miniseries debuted on Hulu in March 2022. The series received a positive reception from critic reviews. It garnered an 89% positive score on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, and a 75% rating on Metacritic. The TV miniseries was recognized with multiple awards, including a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Limited Series, and a Producers Guild of America Award for Best Limited Series. Seyfried won multiple awards for her portrayal of Holmes based on the podcast &mdash; including a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Limited or Anthology Series or Television Film, and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.

Critical response
In a review of the podcast for The Verge, journalist Andrew Liptak commented, "the series has provided a good overview, aided by interviews and audio from the people who worked there." Time reporter Hannah Lynn wrote, "While many podcasts have had singular episodes about Elizabeth Holmes, The Dropout is the definitive audio documentary that tracks the rise and fall of Theranos." Common Sense Media gave the podcast a favorable review: "Every inch of the Theranos downfall is covered in this podcast, making it intriguing, informational, and shocking all at once." Jake Greenberg of Podcast Review called it "a Bulletproof Retelling of the Theranos Scandal". Greenberg wrote, "The Dropout is investigative through and through". Author Susie Orman Schnall called the production, "Rebecca Jarvis' fascinating podcast". Robert M. McManus, Stanley J. Ward, and Alexandra K. Perry noted the work was a good journalistic resource on the topic of Theranos, in their book on Ethical Leadership. Gerard Cockburn wrote for The Adelaide Advertiser, "Documenting the collapse of Theranos, a prominent medical tech start-up which made CEO Elizabeth Holmes America's youngest female self-made billionaire, The Dropout is a gripping tale of the boom and bust nature of America's tech industry." He called the podcast a "gripping account", and an "enthralling tale of a modern day boomtown antics." Cockburn concluded, "This podcast is well worth the listen, engrossing you in a tale of lies and deception and rorts in the American tech industry."

Phoebe Luckhurst reviewed the podcast for the Evening Standard, and wrote that Jarvis had, "done an exhaustive job in charting Holmes's incredible rise and consequent disgrace, including interviews with those who observed her at close range, and never before aired testimony from Holmes." Luckhurst characterized the production: "It's an astonishing expose lies, damned lies and Silicon Valley hubris." Fiona Sturges of the Financial Times wrote of her need to complete the series quickly: "All of which is to say that, in listening to The Dropout, I am late to the party. But over the past week I have inhaled the entire series, bathing in its addictive narrative of greed, ambition and duplicity." Of the research that went into the podcast series, Sturges wrote that Jarvis: "is fastidious in her approach, exhaustively chasing down Theranos's employees, board members and investors, illustrating how they got drawn in to such a dishonest and doomed enterprise." Patricia Nicol reviewed the podcast for The Sunday Times, and highlighted it among, "17 Podcasts for Packed Commutes". Nicol called it: "an assured, well-connected guide to the spectacular fall from grace of 'the world's youngest self-made female billionaire', once hailed as a Silicon Valley visionary." She said the podcast was addictive due to schaudenfreude.

Erin Bury wrote for Quill, "Based on the book Bad Blood, which is well worth reading before or after you listen, The Dropout podcast weaves Holmes’s story into a compelling narrative through interviews with key players, past media interviews, and depositions." Bury concluded: "By the end of it you can’t decide if Holmes is a mad genius or the world’s biggest con artist - but either way, it’s one hell of a story." Alison Foreman of Mashable wrote, "The Dropout is the most comprehensive Theranos-centered podcast on the market." She observed, "this six-part series tackles Holmes' downfall from multiple angles and with meticulous detail." Foreman concluded, "If you're looking for the most complete Theranos narrative with the most informational value, The Dropout is your best bet." Writing for The Courier-Mail, Sarah Matthews commented, "The Dropout is the result of a three-year investigation by US journalist Rebecca Jarvis, and is a fascinating insight into the pressures of Silicon Valley and how one charismatic visionary managed to fool so many people for so long."

Writing for The Herald-Sun, journalist Glenn McDonald commented, "In a podcast environment where opinion reigns — and louder is mistaken for better — The Dropout is a rock-solid example of straight, no-nonsense investigative journalism." McDonald observed, "The Dropout is one of the most definitive accounts of the Theranos scandal". Danielle Stephens reviewed the podcast for The Guardian, and wrote that the series, "leaves you wondering; how on earth did this scam go on for so long? And when does ambition become dangerous?" Writing about the quality of the production, Stephens said: "The story is expertly told and left me feeling personally aggrieved by a woman I have never met. Not just for her scheme, but for the damage it has done to the idea that a woman could be the next Steve Jobs in an industry dominated by men." A review of the second season in The Guardian wrote, "episodes expertly dissect the live-time trial happenings with thrilling exclusive interviews." The Guardian noted that Rebecca Jarvis, "takes the listener through a gripping, multi-year investigation". A subsequent article in the newspaper called the podcast a "riveting series".