{"id":477,"date":"2019-11-17T19:40:32","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T03:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/?p=477"},"modified":"2020-10-10T17:19:55","modified_gmt":"2020-10-11T00:19:55","slug":"the-dropout-vasan-jagadeesh-bp3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/2019\/11\/17\/the-dropout-vasan-jagadeesh-bp3\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dropout – Vasan Jagadeesh BP3"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have continued to listen to The Dropout <\/em>which explores the fraud committed by Elizabeth Holmes through her company, Theranos. To recap, over episodes 3-5, there have been major twists and turns exposing the truth behind the scam that Elizabeth Holmes was making money off of. She had \u201ccreated\u201d a biomedical device that was supposedly able to use just one drop of blood and diagnose disease and run a full blood report for the patient. Previously, there was enough major content per episode that I was able to write my responses to single episode, but through episodes 3 and 4 there was not much new or interesting content. Both those episodes served as what I would call \u201csetup\u201d episodes that helped make episode 5 the next pivotal point in this podcast series. The major reveal prior to episode 5 was that Elizabeth Holmes was in a relationship with her primary investor, Sunny Balwani. With all the money she needed, the fraudulent behavior had begun immediately. The two scammed Walgreens and were able to get \u201cwellness centers\u201d established in Walgreens stores almost all throughout California. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Episode 5 was what I had finally\nwanted from The Dropout. <\/em>Throughout the first 4 episodes of this podcast\nseries, I had been waiting to hear from the legend herself, Elizabeth Holmes. The\npodcast series uses the foundation of interviews with people that wither worked\nfor Elizabeth Holmes or were a major influence in her life to tell the story of\nwhy the fraudulent actions may have even occurred in the first place. The\nmajority of the story however has been told from the outsider perspective and\nwe haven\u2019t heard anything from Elizabeth herself. In episode 5 however, the host\nuses interjections of an interview with Elizabeth in which she\u2019s being interrogated\nabout the actual efficacy of her billion-dollar product. Throughout all the\nquestions Elizabeth is asked she simply responds, \u201cUmmm I\u2019m not sure about the\nexact numbers regarding your request\u201d. This small narrative element of introducing\nthe perspective of the main character is important since it is the first native\nopinion that the listener is able to form about Elizabeth Holmes without the influence\nor words of other individuals. In my personal opinion, it was very incriminating\nthat Elizabeth answered these questions with little confidence and lots of\nevasion. Not only does the listener form negative opinions about Elizabeth, but\nthis element also adds more credibility to what the several other interviewees\nhave been proposing in the previous episodes of The Dropout<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Another major element that the narrator\nuses throughout the podcast series is repetition of structure. In my personal\nopinion, the episodes are starting to become very repetitive and almost indistinguishable\nunless there is some major plot twist or piece of evidence that is revealed.\nThe narrator starts with a recap of who Elizabeth Holmes is, how she was the\nyoungest female self-made billionaire, and how all of it turned out to be a\nscam. I don\u2019t believe this to be an effective structure since it makes the listener\nwaste upwards of 5 minutes, hearing the same thing over and over again.\nAdditionally, since all the episodes use interviewees as the main focus of storytelling,\nit becomes very predictable that every new character brought into the podcast\nwill have some negative comments to share about how Elizabeth was a bully and extremely\nweird. While I am probably unhappy with The Dropout <\/em>due to my in-depth\nanalysis, I definitely think the podcast series has widespread popularity because\nit is an easy listen. Missing some details or zoning out for a little while will\nnot affect the average listener\u2019s comprehension (and may even serve for the\nbetter!). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Word\nCount: 611<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have continued to listen to The Dropout which explores the fraud committed by Elizabeth Holmes through her company, Theranos. To recap, over episodes 3-5, there have been major twists and turns exposing the truth…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-engl200c"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":478,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions\/478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}