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 1,724 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…”
Luckey: Apple agreed to invest $275 billion in China to stay independent
“Apple's got 95% of their manufacturing in China. They agreed to invest. They've invested hundreds of billions of dollars in manufacturing capacity there. They've agreed to invest a further two hundred and seventy five billion dollars in Chinese manufacturing i…”
Liemandt: Trilogy cohorts were told to bet a month's salary on roulette
“At the end of our trilogy university, a hundred days, you know, if enough of the teams that hit their goals, we would take everybody to Vegas and then we would get everybody around a roulette wheel. And we'd say, you have to bet one month's salary. On the numb…”
Parr: Gen Z is the first generation since 1800 with declining IQ
“Starting in 2010, They noticed a decline, and this isn't just in America. It's in Norway. They noticed there's a bunch of different countries. I think 80 different countries have actually studied the same thing. This isn't just an American thing. But starting …”
Puri: Harvard had 1 African-American studies graduate for 57 faculty
“Like, I think there was only what was it? Like, there was one degree recipient in twenty-twenty-three in African-American studies. And 57 faculty.”
Puri: Cyberstarts promises startups $2M revenue through loyal CISO network
“He promises teams of fresh graduates, graduates from tech units, not only investment support in the startup, but initial revenues of two million a year. This is usually their first year of revenue, which is intended to boost them above their competitors and he…”
Parr: Traba explicitly promotes a 996 work culture
“And they basically, I think they explicitly said this on their website. We have a nine, nine, six culture, which means working nine AM to nine PM, six days a week.”
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.”
Means: 75% of FDA Funding Comes Directly from Pharma
“50, excuse me, 75% of the FDA is actually not funded by taxpayers. It's funded by pharma itself, and bureaucracies are built to grow.”
Means: 95% of USDA nutrition guidelines panelists receive food or pharma funding
“The USD nutrition guidelines committee, which basically approves and recommends various foods. 95% of it is funded by 95% of the panelists are directly funded by food companies or pharma companies.”
Means: Kellogg's US products contain ADHD-linked dyes omitted in Canada
“Kellogg's is a stark example, but their ingredient list, they changed completely for the American kids versus just across the border in Canada. It has addictive ingredients. It has the colorings that make it really bright that are linked to ADHD and other deve…”
Parr: Sports betting apps assign account managers to encourage losing gamblers
“DraftKings or whatever? They have account managers. So if you become, I read about this one woman who was making like, a 150 grand a year, so whatever that puts her at in terms of class, but not like crazy wealthy, and she's, and she lost all of her money, and…”
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…”
Enjeti: NIAID granted $600K to Peter Daszak in Anthony Fauci's final days
“Dr. Fauci on his waning days as the head of NIAID actually just granted a 600,000 dollar grant to the same individual for the same type of research, which possibly led to the escape of coronavirus from the Wuhan lab.”
Puri: Chamath profited from poorly performing SPACs while retail investors suffered
“Chamath in reality had a bunch of really shitty SPACs where he made a bunch of money. And people who invested in his SPACs on the whole, like just got ripped to shreds this year.”
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…”
Puri: MrBeast trains key executives by having them shadow him continuously
“Like, from morning to night, like, the guy, I remember one guy he hired, he was also Jimmy's alarm clock. Like, he would go wake him up, and from the moment Jimmy woke up, they were together, till the moment Jimmy signed off to go to sleep, and he would do tha…”
Liemandt: Alpha School requires second graders to run a 5K
“Our second graders gotta run a five K. Our eighth graders have to do a tough mudder, or they also all have to cross the finish line at the same time.”
Parr: Swedish twin study found 45% of investing behavior is genetic
“And the results that he found Was basically, and concluded, was that 45% of savings and investing patterns and behaviors was genetic, which I find to be astounding.”
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…”
Shaan Puri: DeepSeek outperformed OpenAI models without access to top-tier chips
“You ever heard of DeepSeek? They were in the news recently, created that big algorithm, didn't even have access to the best chips, and somehow outperformed all of the OpenAI models.”
Galloway: $40B child tax credit was stripped while $120B Social Security COLA passed
“Forty billion dollar child tax credit that would benefit young families stripped out of the infrastructure bill, but the hundred and twenty billion dollar cost of living adjustment for Social Security flies right through.”
Brian Armstrong manipulated Polymarket odds during a Coinbase earnings call
“His team passed him a note and he goes, Oh, before we hang up here, I just would like to say web three crypto blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum. Thank you very much. And he just basically, he's like you know, just for all the prediction markets out there, you know…”
Puri: Sora will be the fastest app to reach 100M downloads
“I think this is going to be the most downloaded app in the history of the world in a short period of time. So I think it'll be like the fastest to get to a hundred million downloads.”
Puri: Alex Hormozi made $100M in one weekend from book launch
“His last book launch, he just did it about a month ago. His last book launch sold three million copies. And with all the add on courses he added to it, he made a hundred million dollars in a single weekend, a hundred million dollars as one guy.”
Braziel: SBF gave FTX employees guaranteed 10-year million-dollar salary contracts
“I mean, Sam was giving out 10 year contracts to people, guaranteed 10 year pay contracts, you know, like million dollar contracts to like salary employees, a little bit like the, you know, like AI, you know, meta thing.”
Parr: Surge AI did $1B in revenue with zero outside capital
“So this company is only five years old. And it's it was leaked that they did one billion dollars in revenue in the last 12 months. And this guy, Edwin Chen, he's only 37 years old, and he owns 100% of the company. They have not taken any outside funding.”
Ury: US men are more religious than women for the first time
“For the first time in history, men in the U.S. Are more religious. They're more likely to go to church than women, and we're just seeing that men and women are really being polarized.”
Ury: Arranged marriages become happier than love marriages after five years
“So when you compare love marriages versus arranged marriages, love marriages usually start off happier, but around the five year mark, arranged marriages are happier.”
Nagpal: Peter Thiel grew Roth IRA from PayPal shares to $5B
“He put his PayPal founder shares in a Roth IRA. Sold those for about twenty seven million dollars, then used this as a supercharged investment account to where it is today, where he has five billion dollars in his Roth.”
Mah: Jet buyers can write off $12M jet with $3M down
“Last year it was 60% upfront, but now with the new administration, it looks like accelerated depreciation is back. So if you bought a twelve million dollar airplane, financed it, you can write off the whole twelve million dollars off your tax bill, even though…”
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.”
Currier: Consumer software window closed in 2014, producing only ten unicorns
“Between 94 and 2013, it was a fantastic time to start companies in the consumer software space and invest in them from seed or series A. In 2014, the window just closed. You can look at the number of unicorns created in two th from 2014 to today, and it's real…”
O'Brien: Foreign actors cut about 11 subsea cables in the past year
“I think in the last year about 11 cables have been cut by foreign actors”
James Altucher publicly claimed his premium newsletter generates $120M in annual revenue
“He said he made a hundred, he said it on stage.
He said a hundred and twenty million dollars a year in revenue.”
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.”
Colleges will spin out athletic departments to private equity
“I think what's going to happen is again, it's uncharted territory. You don't know exactly how it's going to play out, but I think the short version is the college will spin out the program. Their athletics program is its own business entity. They'll sell equit…”
Parr: Elon Musk will become a trillionaire within 3-5 years
“A person worth one trillion dollars, which is what Elon will be in three or four or five years.”
Puri: Half of finance pros lost money trading with tomorrow's news
“Half the players lost money, even having been given the news. One out of every six players lost everything, and the way they lost everything was they let you trade on leverage.”
Puri: Harvard enrollment flatlined over 20 years while administration grew 40%
“Enrollment has been flat over the last 20 years. Faculty growth has been modest, you know, growing at half a percent, but administration growth has grown by 40% in 20 years.”
Parr: Harvard's operating margin is -40% without its endowment distributions
“He says, the operating margin would be a -40% without distributions from its endowment.”