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Rick Smolan

CEO & Co-Founder, Against All Odds Productions · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

authorjournalistfounderexecutive@ricksmolan ↗LinkedIn ↗againstallodds.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Rick Smolan is a former photojournalist for Time, Life, and National Geographic, best known as the co-creator of the 'Day in the Life' photography series. He is also the founder of Against All Odds Productions and creator of projects including The Human Face of Big Data.

8statements → 8claims → 5claims resolved → 20%fully supported → 4.25/5average certainty → 1.88/5average debate potential →

1 supported 3 partly supported 1 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

8 assertions · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 5 are resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Rick argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
'24 Hours in Cyberspace' was the first website added to the Smithsonian
“When we did 24 hours in cyberspace years ago, it was the first website to go into the Smithsonian.”
Rick Smolan Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 17:11 Rick Smolan, "The Human Face of Big Data" // Data Driven NYC #8 // Sep 2012

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Japan's sensor network stopped every bullet train 43 seconds before 2011 quake
“Every bullet chain And every factory in Japan stopped 43 seconds before the earthquake hit.”
Rick Smolan Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 8:28 Rick Smolan, "The Human Face of Big Data" // Data Driven NYC #8 // Sep 2012

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
33% certainty 4
75% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

292 words/min while actually speaking · 21.7 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Rick Smolan: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,552 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Rick Smolan said on the MAD Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Smolan: Humanity is at the cusp of re-engineering the human species
“I mean, we're at the cusp of being able to re-engineer our species. This is the first time in human history we've ever been able to do this.”
Rick Smolan Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 19:59 Rick Smolan, "The Human Face of Big Data" // Data Driven NYC #8 // Sep 2012
Assertion Partly supported
In 2012, humanity generated five exabytes of data every two days
“All the information collected by the human race from the dawn of humanity in 2003 is five exabytes, whatever that is, because I'm not a data scientist, and now every two days we're generating five exabytes.”
Rick Smolan Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 4:20 Rick Smolan, "The Human Face of Big Data" // Data Driven NYC #8 // Sep 2012
Assertion Contradicted
Japan's sensor network stopped every bullet train 43 seconds before 2011 quake
“Every bullet chain And every factory in Japan stopped 43 seconds before the earthquake hit.”
Rick Smolan Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 8:28 Rick Smolan, "The Human Face of Big Data" // Data Driven NYC #8 // Sep 2012
Assertion Partly supported
Smolan: One third of drugs in Africa are counterfeit
“A third of the, ah, drugs in Africa today are counterfeit.”
Rick Smolan Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 12:40 Rick Smolan, "The Human Face of Big Data" // Data Driven NYC #8 // Sep 2012
Assertion Partly supported
Smolan's first photobook became a bestseller without being sold in bookstores
“The book became the number one book in Australia. It was never in a bookstore for the first year”
Rick Smolan Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 2:13 Rick Smolan, "The Human Face of Big Data" // Data Driven NYC #8 // Sep 2012
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Modern daily information intake equals a 15th-century person's entire lifetime exposure
“The information that we're exposed to in the course of a day now is as much as somebody from the 15th century was exposed to in their entire lifetime.”
Rick Smolan Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 6:55 Rick Smolan, "The Human Face of Big Data" // Data Driven NYC #8 // Sep 2012
Assertion Not checkable as stated
The cost of measuring physical phenomena and creating data is approaching zero
“The cost of measuring things and creating data is plummeting to almost zero.”
Rick Smolan Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 5:05 Rick Smolan, "The Human Face of Big Data" // Data Driven NYC #8 // Sep 2012
Assertion Supported
'24 Hours in Cyberspace' was the first website added to the Smithsonian
“When we did 24 hours in cyberspace years ago, it was the first website to go into the Smithsonian.”
Rick Smolan Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 17:11 Rick Smolan, "The Human Face of Big Data" // Data Driven NYC #8 // Sep 2012

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Rick Smolan, "The Human Face of Big Data" // Data Driven NYC #8 // Sep 2012 Dec 5, 2013 18m
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