This essay contains spoilers for “You Can See Everything,” Nathan Fielder’s new film about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.

As I watched Elizabeth Holmes tell Nathan Fielder that she has never lied in her entire life, I kept thinking back to one time I’m pretty sure she lied to me.

During the height of Theranos mania in 2015, I interviewed Holmes on stage twice in a matter of months in my role as a health reporter at Forbes. The first was just before the publication of the exposes by journalist John Carreyrou that resulted in Theranos’ unraveling. The second was weeks after the Food and Drug Administration took an action that meant Theranos could no longer market most of its tests.

So I have to do something Fielder’s new film “You Can See Everything” never does: get a little technical. The FDA forced Theranos to stop offering almost all of its finger-prick tests by saying that the container the company used to hold blood samples, called a “nanotainer” by Theranos, was not approved. This was a fast way to yank most of its tests at once.

I asked Holmes about this; my memory is she said there was another version of the container that would address the FDA’s problems. (I couldn’t find a video of the session online.) Contemporaneous articles say that she did talk about another container onstage. She also claimed that more patients than ever were using Theranos’ tests.

No new “nanotainer” ever surfaced to allow the finger-prick tests to relaunch.

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