The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 200 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Means: The Flexner Report legally mandates siloed pharmaceutical medicine in the US
“The way medicine exists today, the guiding law in Congress is called the Flexner Report, which actually mandates that we can't look at disease holistically. We have to look at things in silos, evidence-based. We need to name a condition and then treat it with …”
Means: Stanford medical dean took $4M from opioid firms for ethics research
“Reached out to the Dean of Stanford Med School, who was a pain specialist, and we funded him directly with consulting payments, and then made a donation to Stanford to his lab for four million dollars from opioid companies to study ethics and pain management.”
Means: 15 of 19 members on 2011 NIH opioid panel took pharma payments
“The Dean of Stanford Med School who just took a bunch of money from opioid companies was appointed in 2011 to the blue ribbon panel on opioid recommendations. He shows 19 other elite academics. 15 of the 19 had direct payments from opioid companies that we Ver…”
Means: Big Tobacco drove the largest food M&As in US history
“In 1990, two of the three largest M&A deals in American history were cigarette companies buying food companies. So every single processed food companies we can actually point to is either still owned by a cigarette company. We don't even realize this craft is …”
Means: 15% of American high schoolers are prescribed Adderall
“We prescribe 15% of high schoolers basically meth, you know, Adderall, which is literally like one molecule away from meth.”
Shkreli: Every insurer covered Daraprim because it was cheaper than ICU stays
“There's not an insurer in the world that didn't cover Daraprim because If you don't pay the 50,000 dollars roughly what Daraprim costs for a whole course, forget per pill, about 50 grand if you end up needing Daraprim. If you don't pay that, you're gonna pay f…”
Abraham: Zcash and Monero can be decrypted; Iron Fish is truly anonymous
“So you had, you know, coins like Zcash and Monero that were created, but it turns out Those actually can be decrypted and you can figure out where all of that went. So she's the first person that really figured out how to make truly anonymized crypto. And it's…”
Smith: US Longevity Gap with G7 Is Driven Primarily by Diseases of Despair
“America is falling behind some of the other, like, G-seven nations around longevity, but I thought it was because generally people were dying earlier but it's actually due to these things called diseases of despair. So just like alcoholism drugs, etc. But if y…”
Currier: 85% to 90% of all tech returns originate from the Bay Area
“Why is it that sort of 85, 90% of all returns in tech have come from the Bay Area? It's because the mindsets here are slightly different from New York and London and LA and other things.”
Silk Road Founder Made Millions of Dollars a Day
“Next thing you know, he's making millions and millions and millions of dollars a day as the biggest drug dealer on the internet.”
Rydhan: Meta Quest headset sales have outpaced PlayStation 5 console sales
“And I believe it's outpaced. It's outpaced PS five sales, for example.”
Puri: Two-thirds of late-stage startup employee stock options are underwater
“Two thirds of employees right now that are working at these companies are working for options that are actually worth zero, and they probably don't even realize it yet, meaning they got a pay package of stock options at a 24 dollar strike price. That stock is …”
Guo: ElevenLabs is the only independent voice API startup doing $10M+ revenue
“There's like exactly one independent voice API business and tens of millions of revenue, and that's 11.”
Means: 90% of US doctors graduate without taking a single nutrition class
“90% of doctors graduate without taking one nutrition class. To this day.”
Means: Novo Nordisk Ranks in Top 10 for US Lobbying and TV Ads
“This Danish company is one of the 10 largest lobbyists of US politicians and one of the 10 largest spenders on TV news.”
Means: Pharma Funds US Politicians Five Times More Than Oil Industry
“They fund politicians directly five times more than the oil industry.”
Means: Thousands of ingredients banned in Europe are permitted in US food
“We literally thousands of ingredients that aren't legal in Europe are allowed in the United States.”
Means: HBS Alumni Are the Most Depressed Cohort 10 Years Post-Graduation
“This professor He surveyed white blue collar workers, different socioeconomic classes, you know every different professions, you know, like, 30 different cohorts. The most depressed group was these graduates 10 years out.”
Sam Parr: Blue Zones longevity claims are driven by age fraud
“The commonality between the five blue zones is that they have a huge amount of like age fraud.”
Puri: Diet Coke removed aspartame due to Craig Clemens's viral video
“Coke changed the formula for Diet Coke. They took aspartame out on the, because this video was causing so much like public, you know, like awareness and an uproar over these like fake sugars that people were putting in things. He's like, and then over six mont…”
Yanowitz: CoinDesk event attendance fell 80% in 2019, nearly destroying the company
“CoinDesk almost died in 2019 because of that reason. They had like, I don't know, 10,000 plus people in 2018. And then in 2019, they fell to like 2000 people, right? They fell 80% and that almost wiped out their whole business.”
Manson: No therapy modality has a success rate over 50%
“You start looking at the research, and it's startling because there's nothing that has more than a 50% hit rate. Nothing like none. There's no form of therapy that is successful, like produces positive outcomes more than 50% of the time, which is crazy.”
Shkreli: First individual personally sued for monopoly by the FTC
“The Federal Trade Commission actually personally sued me for monopoly. I'm the first person in American history, the Sherman Act, which is 125 years old, the first person to personally be sued by the Federal Trade Commission, which is very odd. Because John D.…”
Wilkinson: Ackman exited his short position before his viral CNBC interview
“If you actually look at the timeline, he'd already sold out of that position when he went on CNBC.”
Parr: 90% of chiropractic claims are nonsense and school acceptance is 100%
“Now, some chiropractor can help very little, like, but 90%, like, 90% of what chiropractors, what we think they do, you can't adjust your spine and, like, your headache stop. Like, that's just not how your body works. But it's nonsense, right? Also, the accept…”
Puri: Uniswap's market cap exceeds three major global banks combined
“It is it's bigger than Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and State Street all combined.”
Yeung: Prenetics netted over $100 million from COVID-19 testing
“Yeah, we made over a hundred million dollars net.”
Liemandt: Trilogy Was the First AI Product to Sell $1 Billion
“And then we built Trilogy and our claim to fame actually in the nineties, it was the first AI product to sell a billion dollars.”
Liemandt: Trilogy ran an exchange program with the Navy SEALs
“We actually trilogy university, you know, there's Harvard business, you know, case studies on it and you can read about it, but we literally had a swap program with the Navy seals. Literally the Navy seals are like, okay, you know, we're going to send a couple…”
Puri: Golf Courses Use 100x More Water Than Data Centers
“Golf courses use a hundred times more water than data centers, but nobody's out here like protesting a golf course.”
DHH: Basecamp had SaaS project management to itself for a decade
“It certainly served us well for many, many years when we had the entire project management space in SaaS to ourselves, and we were laughing all the way to the bank because clearly someone else must have realized this was a highly profitable, not even niche, bu…”
Confiscating all billionaire wealth wouldn't close California's spending deficit
“But people have done the math, like, even if you tax the billionaires, even if you took all the billionaires' money, it doesn't, like, plug the hole of the California spending.”
John D. Rockefeller was twice as rich as Elon Musk is today
“John Rockefeller, he was a tycoon, In the early 1900, and he was the richest man to ever live. He was two times richer than Elon Musk is today.”
Shaan Puri: Savannah Bananas has more social followers than all MLB teams combined
“They have more followers on TikTok and social media that follow their brand, their team. Then every single professional baseball team, including the Yankees and the Red Sox and the Dodgers combined, all MLB teams combined.”
Isenberg: LLM Search Makes Up 5% to 10% of Organic Search
“What people are noticing is that LLM search as a part of organic search is maybe now five or 10%.”
Puri: Joe Lonsdale has founded more billion-dollar companies than anyone in America
“It was Joe Lonsdale, a billionaire who started more billion dollar companies than anyone else in America.”
Rydhan: Indie VR multiplayer game Gorilla Tag hit $200M in revenue
“I think Gorilla Tech has a two hundred million dollars of revenue.”
Lakkaraju: Video dubbing was a $60 billion market in 2022
“Dubbing is a sixty billion dollar market in 2022”
Kellogg invented the idea that breakfast is the most important meal
“Breakfast being the most important meal of the day. Kellogg invented that idea.”
Baby showers did not exist until J&J ran ad campaigns
“So baby showers weren't a thing until Johnson & Johnson started running ad campaigns.”
Lysol invented the widespread tradition of spring cleaning
“That really wasn't the thing until Lysol came up with this idea of spring cleaning.”
Means: Americans consume 100 times more sugar today than a century ago
“We now eat a hundred times more sugar than we did a hundred years ago.”
Means: Doctors have the highest suicide and burnout rates in America
“One statistic that's alarming, doctors have the highest suicide rate and highest rate of burnout of any profession in America.”
Means: Grass-fed beef reverses omega-6 to omega-3 ratio vs grain-fed
“The genetic makeup of a grass-fed cow versus a grain-fed cow is entirely different. It's a reversed ratio of omega-three or omega-six. The grain-fed, which cows are not made to eat, which is totally a new phenomenon, are Predominantly omega- six fatty acids, w…”
Elite athletes experience a testosterone surge and cortisol drop under high pressure
“And they discovered there's a biochemistry of what they call championship biochemistry. It's where these people like Tom Brady's down by 10 points, and it's the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, and he comes back the way to me. How? He has this huge surge of t…”