A guide to blood and fraud in Silicon Valley

And the Army. And science. And Walgreens. It’s a wild tale: Holmes was a 19-year-old Stanford student when she dropped out of school to start Theranos, a company she said was developing a blood-testing device that could run hundreds of tests from just a finger-prick of blood rather than whole vials. But it couldn’t.

The story of Theranos’ Silicon Valley rise and eventual total collapse — the company has dissolved, and Holmes was indicted on fraud charges — has lent itself to multiple retellings in various formats, including long-read articles, a meticulously researched book and a podcast, among others.

Alex Gibney’s documentary “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” premiering Monday on HBO, is the latest account of the ostensible visionary who managed to deceive a lot of people (including two former secretaries of state). If you’re already deeply familiar with the story, certain points won’t come as a surprise: Holmes’ apparent fascination with Steve Jobs and Apple is mentioned constantly across all the retellings (her black turtleneck aesthetic especially), as is her deep voice, perhaps an affectation, even though it’s really only notable if it’s fake.

But if you just can’t get enough of this Silicon Valley fraud, or don’t know where to begin, this is your guide to what to watch, read and listen to.

The Beginnings

If you really want to go along for the full Theranos ride, start with the hagiographies, which together demonstrate just how easy it was for many in media to buy into Holmes’ persona and vision. Read the Fortune article from 2014, a Wired piece from 2014 or the New Yorker story from 2014 where Holmes, when asked to explain how a Theranos device actually works, said “a chemistry is performed.” She was on the cover of Forbes in 2014 as the youngest female self-made billionaire, and there’s also her Time 100 blurb from 2015 written by Henry Kissinger, a Theranos board member. She was on the cover of T Magazine, too, just before the scandal broke.

The Biggie

“Bad Blood” is the real be-all end-all of Theranos information, and some of the other material on this list draws heavily from it. Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou first broke the story of Theranos’ deceptions in 2015, and this comprehensive and fascinating book details every step in the company’s history and every step in his dogged reporting. “Bad Blood” is wild, and more happens on one page than in many other entire books. (There’s a Saddam Hussein cameo!)

Beyond the staggering facts Carreyrou reports out, this is the only work here that really drives home just how long it took for the truth to emerge. At one point while I was tearing through the book, I thought I must be getting pretty close to the company’s collapse; then I tapped my Kindle and discovered I was only 23 percent of the way through.

The Podcast

The six-part podcast “The Dropout,” produced by ABC Radio and ABC News’ “Nightline,” covers some of the same ground as “Bad Blood” and includes many of the same major players (including Erika Cheung, a former Theranos employee and one of the original whistleblowers, and Carreyrou himself.) The episodes wander a little — uh, Holmes always carrying papers around in high school does not seem like a particularly salient detail — but the portions that emphasize the legal side of things are quite juicy. “The Dropout” includes audio clips from depositions and spends a lot of time on the coming legal battles for Holmes and Theranos’ former president and chief operating officer, Ramesh Balwani, known as Sunny, who was also Holmes’ boyfriend. (On Friday, ABC also aired a “20/20” special of the same name.)

The Movie

“The Inventor: Out For Blood in Silicon Valley” airs on HBO on Monday night. While it, too, hits many of the same beats as “Bad Blood,” it also expands its scope a bit to examine the psychology of fraud, but in more specific (and compelling) ways than “The Dropout” does. The film’s director, Alex Gibney, also directed “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “The Armstrong Lie” (about disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong) and “Going Clear” (about Scientology), among other documentaries, and this zips along with calm expertise. The footage from a batch of Theranos promotional videos directed by Errol Morris might be able to bend time with the potency of its irony, as Holmes gazes right into the too-bright lights and chuckles that she doesn’t have any secrets. “The Inventor” also notes some of the dangers of handling blood — and that Theranos machines would be, you know, full of blood even if they did work great, which they did not.

No, the Other Movie

Jennifer Lawrence is set to star as Holmes in a feature-film version of “Bad Blood,” adapted by Vanessa Taylor (“The Shape of Water”) and directed by Adam McKay. The project was first reported in 2016 and is in development, but doesn’t have a release date yet. We’ll see!

Even More

According to Vanity Fair, Holmes got a dog and named him Balto, and he peed in the Theranos offices.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.