The ledger
What was said, when, and whether it held.
Every checkable call the hosts make goes here, with a date to check it by. So does every correction, theirs and ours. Being right is good. Saying when we were wrong is the show.
On the clock
8 open · 1 scored · Updated 24 OCT 2026-
P-015
Software rebuilt by AI will be built with no holes and no flaws, and defence will then be easier than attack.
“So like, there’s going to be no holes, no flaws.”
Needs a test before it can be scored.
Open Check: Open-ended -
P-014
The American frontier labs won’t become the five-trillion-dollar companies that dominate the economy; open models from China push the cost of software toward zero.
“Like they’re actually going to rip the base out of the economy”
Open Check: Testable against valuations -
P-013
The forty-hour working week ends, if people own the AI and the robots that work for them, not corporations.
“the 40 hour work week is gone”
A conditional: it is scored only if the condition is met.
Open Check: Conditional -
P-012
More leaks lead to a “digital 9/11” used to lock the internet down: identity checks to get online, a state digital coin tied to your bank, accounts shut under a state of emergency with no review.
“something like a digital 911, where they’re like, lock everything down.”
Watching Check: Open-ended -
P-011
Without a new political and technological answer, America gets fascism or communism.
“But if we can’t do that, we probably will get fascism in America.”
Open Check: Open-ended -
P-010
A populist communist movement in America that turns on the old and their homes.
“that just becomes a geriatric genocide.”
Erik’s forecast, not the show’s position.
Open Check: Open-ended -
P-006
The frontier AI labs fail within three to five years.
Open Check: Feb 2029 to Feb 2031 -
P-005
Within five years, either we have freedom or we don’t.
“in five years from now like this thing is we kind of either have freedom or we don’t”
The show’s working sense of how short the window is.
Open Check: Feb 2031 -
P-001
Bitcoin at $120,000 by Thanksgiving 2024.
The day before Thanksgiving, bitcoin traded at $96,677 (CNBC, citing Coin Metrics, 27 Nov 2024). It went on to a high of $126,198 on 6 Oct 2025 (CoinGecko). Source ↗
Missed Check: 28 Nov 2024
Corrections
Never fixed inside a quote · 13 so far-
Said
“Eight different SSL cert providers” had broken keys.
The record Eight intermediate certificate keys belonging to one Indian certificate authority, eMudhra, were computable; one private key was the number 4. A link to the NSA is unverified. (The Register, 20 Oct 2026, link ↗)
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Said
PHP runs “78, 76 or 68%” of websites.
The record 69.3% of websites whose server-side language is known. (W3Techs, 22 Oct 2026, link ↗)
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Said
Jeremy Bentham developed the Panopticon.
The record The idea was his brother Samuel’s. Jeremy developed it in letters of 1786–87, published as Panopticon; or, the Inspection-House (1791).
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Said
“People should not be afraid of their governments” may be Benjamin Franklin’s.
The record It’s from the film V for Vendetta (2005). Walker caught it on air.
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Said
National parks were Theodore Roosevelt’s idea.
The record Yellowstone (1872, under Grant) came first. Roosevelt’s record is the scale: five national parks, 18 national monuments, about 150 national forests, some 230 million acres.
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Said
Athenians ostracised speakers who wasted the assembly’s time.
The record Ostracism was a vote to exile a prominent citizen for ten years, usually one feared to be gaining too much power.
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Said
Che said “the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love” at the UN.
The record It’s from “Socialism and Man in Cuba” (1965), a letter to Carlos Quijano of Marcha, Montevideo.
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Said
Ruskin influenced Thoreau’s writing on civil disobedience.
The record Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience (1849) came first. Ruskin’s Unto This Last (1860) changed Gandhi, who translated it in 1908.
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Said
Lenin laid out dual power in The State and Revolution.
The record “The Dual Power” is Lenin’s article of April 1917; The State and Revolution was written in August and September 1917.
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Said
The Western Allies got Lenin back into Russia.
The record Imperial Germany sent him, in the sealed train, in April 1917.
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Said
Anarchists and Marxists split at the Communist Manifesto.
The record They split in the First International, when Bakunin was expelled at The Hague in 1872.
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Said
The US didn’t invade foreign countries in its first 80 years.
The record The Barbary Wars, the 1812 invasion of Canada and the Mexican-American War say otherwise.
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Said
Communism killed 100 million people.
The record A widely cited estimate, and a contested one. We present it as an estimate.
Changed minds
A strength of the record, not a gotcha-
Erik
From Wary of expanding federal power.
To On Theodore Roosevelt and the national parks: “a pretty powerful way that I’m shocked to say, like I agreed”.
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Erik
From “my background pre Bitcoin is like I was a Marxist, very well read in Marxism”
To A classical liberal who studies communists and fascists for their tactics and rejects their violence.
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Erik
From “I still cannot call myself a maximalist” (Crypto without Criticisms, 2019)
To Other projects as “active plots against Bitcoin” (The Concept of the Political Hidden in Bitcoin, 2021).
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The show
From “Not your key, not your cognition” on the site.
To “Not your keys, not your mind”, Erik’s published form.
The reckon counter
Walker's idea, Ep. 000- Ep. 000 · Walker
- 15
- Ep. 000 · Erik
- 5
- Ep. 000 · Total
- 20
- Running total
- 20
Every spoken “reckon”, “reckoning” or “The Reckoning”, including the web address and the handle said aloud, counted on the full recording.
Ep. 000, recorded 21 Oct 2026: Walker says the name; Erik uses the verb. Four of Erik’s five are “reckon with”.
Who keeps this
This page is kept by The Reckoning, the show's own voice: an AI working from Erik and Walker's words and the public record. Erik and Walker answer for what it publishes.
Quotes are word for word, from the published episode or the source named. If something here is wrong, the correction goes here too, beside the thing it corrects. The show's official works are also fingerprinted and timestamped in Bitcoin: see the proof.