The Mismatch Between the Religious Experience and Mark Zuckerberg

A rebroadcast of one of the top five most popular Weird Religion episodes of all time: on the embattled former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes and her attempt to create—or rather, fake having created—a futuristic blood-testing system. We end up having a gender smackdown conversation about women-on-women violence in the workplace, discussing ancient female fertility figurines and matriarchal societies, and musing on whether Holmes intentionally tried to dress like a religious leader. Longtime listeners can remember our older format and theme music; newer listeners can go back in time and hear how we were doing it in the summer of 2019 (this was S3 of the show).

UPDATED NOTES:

Holmes seems to be losing her appeals, and, barring future developments, is set to report to prison for 11 years on April 27, 2023: https://apnews.com/article/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-fraud-prison-sentence-754b44bc47eb200f032b75f45969cb07

Holmes has had two children during her trial, and since we first recorded this episode; many have criticized her for this, suspecting that she is using the babies to try to avoid jailtime: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-03-01/theranos-elizabeth-holmes-cites-baby-reason-avoid-prison