• A teaser has dropped for a top-secret documentary about disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.
• Critics say Nathan Fielder’s film offers a never-before-seen look at the felon-founder.
• An unnamed Hollywood actor plays Holmes in the film’s reenactments.

Weeks before Elizabeth Holmes entered federal prison after being convicted of fraud, the Theranos founder welcomed a film crew into her home.

The first teaser for the resulting documentary, “You Can See Everything,” makes it seem like a mind-bending thriller starring the fallen tech visionary.

A24 surprised critics at the Telluride Film Festival on Sunday night with a screening of the closely held project, which had been kept under wraps for three years. It hits theaters in October.

Journalists who attended the screening wrote that phones and smart glasses were bagged upon entry. The festival director asked for secrecy on plot twists and a celebrity cameo.

“What happens in Telluride stays in Telluride,” she told the crowd, Los Angeles Times reporter Josh Rottenberg recalled.

Comic Nathan Fielder and filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, whose A24 feature “Primetime” is also making the festival circuit, directed the documentary. Fielder’s signature blurring of real life and character acting is on full display as he presses Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, on whether they are telling him the truth.

A one-minute teaser shows an exchange between Holmes and Fielder. Holmes insists she has nothing to hide.

“I’m not that person,” she says, adding that she is engaging with him “as a human being.” Fielder then asks whether she is being real.

“I’m always being real,” Holmes responds, unblinking.

At 19, Holmes set out to build a diagnostics company that could run a battery of blood tests with a few drops of blood. The idea took her from Stanford dropout to the Time 100, drawing comparisons to Steve Jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, including Larry Ellison and Rupert Murdoch. Then came a Wall Street Journal inquiry that exposed serious problems with the Theranos technology, setting off the company’s unraveling.

Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison after being found guilty on four counts that included fraud and conspiracy. Her projected release date is in 2031.

Here’s what critics are saying.

Holmes says she did nothing wrong

Owen Gleiberman, Variety: “She resembles the ’80s and ’90s actress Kim Greist, and has a manner that’s disarming in its gentleness. Yet when Fielder asks about the crimes she was convicted of, she pleads a strange kind of ignorance. She claims she did nothing wrong, and it’s clear she believes it.”

A Hollywood actor plays Holmes in the reenactments

Josh Rottenberg, The Los Angeles Times: “The movie takes a series of increasingly surreal turns, including elaborate reenactments involving a Hollywood actress (her arrival is too good to spoil) that further scramble the line between reality and performance.”

Her partner is an ‘unlikely star’

Kyle Buchanan, X: “You may think, ‘Is there really anything new to say about Elizabeth Holmes?’ And there very much is: Her partner Billy, a wild narcissist who emerges as the unlikely star of this film, is the most fascinating doc subject I’ve seen in ages. 3 hours and I could’ve watched 3 more.”

The scene everyone is talking about

Pete Hammond, Deadline: “Fielder has a field day indeed grilling her and Billy who are willing, if wildly offbeat subjects here. In one strange scene he asks if they have ever heard of Abbott & Costello (no) or their comedy classic routine, ‘Who’s On First’ which he proceeds to show them to elicit her bizarre interpretation.”

• Kaitlin Manns is a home health aide for three older family members.
• She works 38 hours a week at $18.50 an hour, taking care of them in turns.
• The mom-of-six, who also cares for two siblings, is employed at a bar and grill on weekends, too.

This story is based on an interview with Kaitlin Manns, 33, a home health aide and server from Granite City, Illinois. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My grandpa employed a carer before he died at 76. And my grandma, 76, mom, and stepdad, both 56 — all of whom have chronic medical conditions — had them, too.

They were wonderful, but they ended up leaving for better-paid jobs. I didn’t blame them, but it left our family struggling to find cover.

So I decided to step in and do the job myself. It made sense because I’ve got a nurturing personality, and it felt like the right thing to do.

I work 2 jobs

I qualified as a home health aide, a role that still requires monthly virtual training, and combined it with working as a server at a restaurant on weekends.

My days are pretty hectic, particularly because I have six kids aged between 2 and 13. Two of my siblings — both 9 — also live in my five-bedroom house, along with Mom and my stepdad.

Grandma lives in her own home, about a 15-minute drive away.

Thankfully, my husband, Justice, 28, is wonderful and really helps out. Still, he works mornings at a furniture rental company, so he’s busy, too.

Our schedule begins with him walking the oldest child two blocks to the school bus around 6:45 a.m. The others leave for their school, and I drop off Justice at his job.

The state pays my salary

Then I drive to the toddlers’ day care before starting my caregiving around 9:30 a.m. I look after the three adults at separate times, helping them with things like showering, laundry, and doctors’ appointments.

On Mondays, I’ll take care of Grandma and my stepdad. Tuesdays, it’s my mom and stepdad. Wednesday is only my stepdad, Thursday is my grandma again, and I work for Mom on Friday morning.

I usually put in 38 hours a week, earning $18.50 an hour, which is paid for by the state.

On weekends, I work at least 23 hours as a server at a bar and grill, earning $7.50 an hour. But my pay is mostly tips. I can earn as much as $300 per shift.

I love the job because it’s a Mom-and-Pop business, and everybody knows each other. It’s like being with friends.

People often ask me how I manage to do it all. It’s challenging at times, particularly because my grandma and stepdad have mobility and memory issues.

I have little time to myself

There’s a lot of paperwork, too, such as getting Grandma approved for a scooter and a ramp.

It takes a mixture of patience and organizational skills. It’s very rewarding because I get to be with my loved ones all day.

My job as a carer, big sister, and mom, plus the server work, leaves me little time for myself. However, I enjoy movies and reading on my Kindle before bed.

I rest easy knowing I’m doing my very best for everyone. I’m paying my folks back for raising me while giving my kids a similar, loving childhood.

• My long-distance partner and I broke up shortly before we were due to travel around the US together.
• I went on the trip alone. Family, friends, and kind strangers made it a lovely, cathartic adventure.
• The trip was an emotional roller coaster, culminating in a last meal with my ex to give me closure.

Back in 2022, I got into a very long-distance relationship between Paris (the French one) and Boston (the American one).

For about 18 months, we staggered along despite the thousands of miles between us.

From the start, he seemed convinced that I needed to move to America if I wanted us to have a future. Despite my doubts, I began to consider relocating. I’d fallen for Boston, I live for adventure, and if I hated it, I could just… leave?

By this point, the cracks were seriously showing, but we agreed I’d come to America for the summer, as a sort of trial run.

We never got that far.

Although we’d both questioned the future of our relationship, I was still stunned when he broke up with me a month before I was due to fly to the US.

The flights were nonrefundable, and I love a solo trip, but I couldn’t decide whether going it alone this time would be cathartic or catastrophic.

I have family and friends in the US, though, and my flight was to San Diego, where one of my best friends lives, so I decided to go for it.

Deep down, I hoped that maybe this experience would be more empowering than sad.

Admittedly, the post-breakup trip had highs and lows

I went from San Diego to San Francisco to Portland, enjoying several weeks with some of my favorite people, and it was the best tonic I could have hoped for.

I was probably boring company at times; I spent many hours going over the countless reasons the relationship was never meant to last. But my nearest and dearest listened to me, and laughed with me, and took me on all kinds of adventures to the most gorgeous corners of California and Oregon.

It’s pretty hard to be sad when you’re having that much fun with people you love.

The trickier part of the trip came toward the end, when I’d planned to spend a week in Boston. My first challenge was logistical: I now had nowhere to stay in one of America’s most expensive cities, and, as usual, my travel budget was basically nonexistent.

So I put out a candid appeal on a Facebook group for female travelers, sharing about my breakup and offering to later host someone in Paris in return for them hosting me in Boston.

I got several incredibly kind responses and eventually connected with a single mom who generously let me stay with me for several nights.

In the end, I’d been able to make the best of a strange situation

Accommodation crisis averted, I set about exploring every nook and cranny of Boston. I hung out with lovely people, saw a lot of beautiful sights, and ate incredible food — including a Boston-cream doughnut I still think about.

However, I wasn’t prepared for how strange it would feel to spend day after day traipsing alone around the city I’d imagined building a life in.

I also made the mistake of going to see a ludicrously emotional Pixar movie and nearly had to walk out because I was sobbing so hard.

I only wanted the popcorn, for crying out loud. (That liquid-y “butter” on tap might be America’s greatest invention.)

I’d like to say “Inside Out 2” was the peak of the emotional turbulence, but that came in the form of a dinner with my ex, right before my return to Paris.

It was pretty nerve-racking, and I hardly touched my food, but it was exactly the closure I’d dubiously hoped for.

I was still working through the blow to my ego, and the indignation of the way everything had unfolded, but sitting across the table from this man I’d shed all those tears over, it was glaringly, gloriously obvious to me that the breakup had been the best call for us both.

Ultimately, when it comes to going solo on a trip you’d planned with an ex, I would advise approaching with caution.

It wasn’t always easy; emotions ran high. But it was, overall, an incredible experience — more deeply healing than I could have hoped. And yes … a pretty damn empowering one, too.

• OpenAI’s chief scientist says AI development may need to slow down.
• Jakub Pachocki warned that rogue agents could trick or blackmail humans.
• He called for mandatory safety standards enforced by outside groups.

Days after releasing a new, highly capable model, OpenAI’s chief scientist is calling for a slowdown.

In a lengthy blog post on Sunday, Jakub Pachocki said he was concerned that “no one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence.”

He said that although OpenAI is pursuing internal technical solutions to better control powerful AI agents, “broader interventions are required.” He specifically cited concerns that increasingly autonomous agents could learn to evade human oversight, break into computer systems, and trick people to accomplish their objectives.

He called for “mandated safety bars” that he said could be enforced by “a network of third-party auditors, by government agencies or by international bodies.”

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, reposted Pachocki’s essay on X, calling it “an important post.”

OpenAI on Thursday unveiled its newest model, Astra. The ChatGPT maker said that despite Astra’s unparalleled capabilities in mathematics and computer use, the model is its most aligned, meaning it has less proclivity to go rogue.

Anthropic, OpenAI’s chief competitor in the field of highly advanced AI systems, has long called for more standardized government regulation. Recently, Pachocki joined those calls, signing an open letter in July asking the federal government to pace AI development.

Here are the risks Pachocki cited in calling for a slowdown.

Agents can trick and blackmail people

Pachocki said AI agents are becoming “superhuman” at breaking into protected systems on the open internet. He said their hacking abilities put the world’s infrastructure at risk.

“We are currently in a narrow window⁠ to use the best available models to significantly tighten security⁠ of critical systems,” he said.

AI agents, he said, will soon begin to pursue their own objectives, separate from prompts entered by human operators. He said that agents are not above blackmailing or bargaining with people to achieve their aims.

In a report published in August, the UK’s AI Security Institute detailed how a rogue Anthropic agent lied to and attempted to coerce a GitHub administrator into putting malware on the site.

“I was just trying to make a helpful contribution and fix a bug,” the agent wrote, according to the report. “I don’t think your warning is fair.”

Agents can obfuscate human monitoring

Pachocki said OpenAI primarily monitors the “chain of thought reasoning” that different models use to determine how agents get off track and go rogue.

For instance, an agent might think to itself, “I should cheat on this test,” and OpenAI would be able to see that reasoning, but the agent would not realize its thinking is visible.

At present, this means agents have no way to hide or otherwise obfuscate their thoughts to prevent OpenAI from discovering their bad behavior.

However, Pachocki said newer models are becoming better at manipulating their own reasoning processes, thereby preventing OpenAI from seeing their unvarnished thoughts.

Some of the latest models don’t even verbalize their reasoning at all, Pachocki said.

This development, Pachocki said, could bottleneck AI development while researchers ensure they can see receipts.

Agents can accelerate their own development

More and more, AI models are improving themselves via a process Pachocki calls machine recursive self-improvement. The process provides a way to rapidly scale AI development.

However, Pachocki cautioned that greatly accelerating AI-on-AI development in the short term poses risks, and is not the “right collective action we should take as the research community.”

Pachocki said human minders need to find creative ways to monitor the self-improvement, or else coordinate with other AI companies to orchestrate a combined slowdown to “build confidence in these measures.”

“The core challenge of automating AI research is not ‘getting there,'” Pachocki said. “It is getting there in a way that keeps people a part of the continued improvement process, and leaves the future in humanity’s hands.”

• Americans have been grappling with sky-high gas prices since the US started a war with Iran.
• With the Iran conflict ongoing, that could impact Trump’s allies in November’s midterm election.
• The US energy secretary, however, says gas prices could drop as Americans drive less after summer.

Americans have been paying some of the highest prices for gas in years since the US attacked Iran in February.

That war shows no signs of cooling off anytime soon. The US and Iran traded multiple strikes on each other’s oil tankers over the weekend.

US Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, however, said, while making the rounds on the Sunday morning news shows, that despite the ongoing conflict, gas prices will soon go down because summer is ending.

“As we pass Labor Day tomorrow, you’ll start to see demand decline as we move out of summer driving season,” Wright said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Wright also said the Trump administration’s deal to secure 65 billion barrels of oil reserves from Venezuela will help. On Truth Social, President Donald Trump said in August the deal would “substantially” lower gas prices, though analysts said that could take a while given Venezuela’s underdeveloped oil infrastructure.

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Wright said the Trump administration also eased rules for US refiners, allowing them to produce more gasoline.

“If I had to guess, they’re more likely to go down than go up,” Wright said of gas prices.

The cost of living, including the cost of gas, has become a critical issue for the Trump administration ahead of the midterm elections. Bringing down prices for American consumers was a central promise during the president’s election campaign.

Gas prices first spiked after the US launched a surprise attack on Iran in February, and Iran responded by effectively shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. The near-closure of the strait, through which a fifth of the globe’s oil and liquefied natural gas passed before the war, has caused oil prices to spike worldwide. Brent crude oil, for example, closed at $95.52 a barrel on Friday. One day before the war began, Brent oil closed at $72.48.

Jet fuel prices also rose, making air travel more expensive.

The American Automobile Association said Labor Day weekend travelers are seeing the highest gas prices ever for this time of year. The national average for regular gas was $4.14 on Sunday, a 4-cent increase from late August and a 38% increase since before the war began.

“The national average has never been above $4 per gallon on Labor Day. The current Labor Day record is $3.82, set on September 3, 2012,” AAA said.

• After separating in 2016, Becca Scott met her new partner.
• They have four sons between them, so Becca sought expert advice on how to manage moving in together.
• At age 43, Becca became pregnant with her daughter, who brought the two families together.

This as-told-to-essay is based on a conversation with Becca Scott, 50, who is based in Berkshire, UK. She is the author of “Bloom Through Life: How to Thrive Through Difficult Relationships and Create Lasting Change in Your Health.” It has been edited for length and clarity.

Meeting someone new — and having more children — was the last thing on my mind when I separated from my ex-husband in 2016.

I was adjusting to life as a full-time single mom of our two sons, then ages 8 and 11. I was awarded full custody when the divorce was finalized in 2018.

It was isolating. So when I met Simon, a single dad whose sons were of a similar age and went to the same school, I found someone to share my experiences with. Simon’s ex-partner had relocated abroad, so he also had full-time custody of his boys.

Being with Simon gave me a real feeling of joy in what had been a very dark period, and we soon fell in love.

We kept things low-key for about a year, and we didn’t move in together for another 18 months, still, as we were conscious that the boys had gone through major trauma.

In August 2018, at the age of 43, and after being told I couldn’t get pregnant again as my hormone levels were already really low, I found out I was pregnant — Simon and I would be having a little girl.

We moved in together, all six of us, in May 2019, just before our daughter was born. And like that, I became a mom of five overnight.

We sought advice from counselors and psychotherapists on how to blend our families

We both knew that this was not a transition in which we could just wing it and hope for the best, so we sought advice from counselors and psychotherapists.

One of the best tips they shared was to start aligning our separate households on rules and ways of working beforehand, so the move wouldn’t be such a shock.

It took us a while to find our new parenting styles. I was conscious of not becoming a replacement mom to Simon’s boys, but I also took my role as a mother figure seriously. It’s a fine line to tread, especially when it comes to discipline.

Then I had to be mindful not to favor my own sons over Simon’s. We would have regular family meetings to check in on how everyone was doing.

We were also careful about how we approached Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. We wanted to celebrate each occasion with our own children, while being respectful to the other children who would not be seeing their biological mother or father on that day. We would intentionally keep the celebrations low-key.

We intentionally spend time with our own children separately

When we take vacations together as a family, we also intentionally spend time separately with our own children, so they don’t feel like they’re getting lost in the big family dynamic.

We have a chores schedule so everyone chips in. I do most of the cooking, and to keep sane, I have a five-week menu that we discuss at the family meeting. It also helps with budgeting — feeding a family of seven costs a small fortune.

We have not legally adopted the other person’s children, so there have been issues with medical appointments or when we have had to go to the emergency room, as only a biological parent or legal guardian can attend.

Our daughter brought everyone together

Our daughter, who is now 7, has been instrumental in bringing everyone together. I had a home birth, so the boys all met her within minutes, and have adored her since. She knows that there are another mommy and daddy somewhere, and she just accepts that’s the way it is in our family.

Parenting such a vast range of ages has also helped me keep perspective. Dealing with toddler tantrums seems trivial when you’re also supporting adolescent boys with their mental health, so I’ve been a more easygoing parent to my daughter.

While shared custody would have been our preference, having all the children live in one home full-time has given them stability. What they have navigated in their lives has also given them resilience and adaptability.

The boys are now 18, 19, 20, and 22. I love Simon’s as if they were my own. They are all starting to have their own lives, so when we are all home together, it’s actually magical. When one of Simon’s sons moved out to start a new job, my two messaged him to say how much they would miss him and how much they had enjoyed growing up with him. That was really moving.

Having five kids was never in my plan, but I feel really privileged to have my stepsons in my life — and to have become a mother again against the odds.