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JZ Jason Zinoman On The Daily (NYT)

“I mean, she's a genius at saying nothing. And you're left with this question: is she the most naive human being in the world or the most cynical? And my take coming out was there's nothing in between.”

The Daily (NYT) · October 2026

“I mean, she's a genius at saying nothing. And you're left with this question: is she the most naive human being in the world or the most cynical? And my take coming out was there's nothing in between.” — Jason Zinoman, The Daily (NYT)

Asked how Elizabeth Holmes responds when Nathan Fielder suggests she chose a comedian rather than a journalist to avoid hard questions. Zinoman notes that Fielder doesn't show a mastery of the facts of the case.

Transcript

The Daily (NYT) Around 35:47 into the episode
Jason Zinoman

…not, he doesn't demonstrate in this film a mastery of the facts of the case. And quite early on, he says to her, You picked me, who's a comedian, basically saying, Did you pick me? Because I'm not going to give you the hard-hitting journalistic questions. She didn't pick a journalist. What does she

Michael Barbaro

say in response, if I can ask?

Jason Zinoman

I mean, she's a genius at saying nothing. And you're left with this question: is she the most naive human being in the world or the most cynical? And my take coming out was there's nothing in between.

Michael Barbaro

Well, so it seems pretty clear, and here I know we'll walk up to the edges of spoiler dumb, that these are two masters of maybe manipulation isn't the right word, but they are very much in control of information and how it's going to be presented, when it's going to be presented. And so I think it…

Jason Zinoman

Completely. I think, look, you know, one thing Alyssa said about her having kids is really remarkable: how she uses the kids in this movie. How does she use

Michael Barbaro

the kids in the movie?

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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