The Collators

In this episode, Mark and Howard unpack what "professionalisation" really means for intelligence and analysis, and why professional bodies can be both a career accelerator and a hidden constraint. They explore the "guild vs club" problem (who controls standards, entry, and accountability), why silos persist across sectors, and why this matters more than ever as AI-driven decision support becomes w...

Mark and Howard sit down with Prof. Andrew Dillon (UT Austin) to ask what information really is and why the answer starts with people, not machines. Andrew maps the triangle of data, people and technology and argues that information is an experience, not a spreadsheet.  A discussion of the lure of AI, why judgement still matters, and how we might regulate misinformation the way we regulate food; t...

In this episode, Mark and Howard explore why forecasting is so often wrong and what prediction really requires. From homicides to the stock market, prediction sounds simple until the future fights back. Statistics and logic can take you far, but judgement, context, and humility do the rest.

In this episode of The Collators, Mark and Howard explore the promises and pitfalls of virtual reality. Not as a gaming gimmick, but as a tool for intelligence, analysis, and decision-making. From Minority Report-style data walls to simple post-it notes, they ask whether VR and data visualisation actually help us see the world more clearly, or just distract us with prettier illusions. Transcript,...

From Tandy Radioshack to nuclear submarines, this episode traces an extraordinary journey through the intersections of technology, curiosity, and courage. Mark and Howard talk with Mike Hawkes, a technologist, inventor, and pioneer of secure digital systems whose career began in fixing computers in a local store and ended up influencing the security architecture behind global online transactions t...

In this episode of The Collators, Mark and Howard dig into the firehose of the digital age. From the days of cereal-box reading and limited TV channels to today's infinite scroll of TikTok, Twitter, and AI-generated content, how has the internet reshaped the way we process and perhaps fail to really think about the information we receive. Visit us at https://thecollators.com

From crime scenes to classrooms, boardrooms to briefing papers, the tension between numbers and narratives runs through every profession that tries to make sense of the world. Mark and Howard ask whether everything that counts can, in fact, be counted. What happens when we mistake measurement for meaning? Why do humans crave certainty even when the evidence is uncertain? And how do analysts, scien...

In this special episode of The Collators, Mark and Howard speak with Carmen Medina, former Deputy Director of Intelligence at the CIA and one of the most respected reformers in modern intelligence analysis. Carmen's career spanned three decades at the heart of U.S. intelligence, leading analytic teams through the end of the Cold War, the information revolution, and the challenges of a world where...

Musical spreadsheets, a string of car thefts, and a chance observation spark a question at the heart of this episode: what exactly is a pattern, and how do we recognise one? Mark and Howard explore Florence Nightingale's statistical diagrams to modern AI pattern recognition, exploring how humans find meaning in data and how sometimes, meaning finds us. They discuss the risks of seeing structure wh...

Reflective, sometimes funny and occasionally heretical, this episode pulls together the threads of the series so far. Revealing how all analysis hinges on one thing: how we think, and sometimes, how it can sometimes drift into ritual rather than insight.   What does it mean to analyse? Where did modern analytical thinking come from? And why do so many disciplines: intelligence, academia, business...

 From courtrooms to laboratories, from policing to public policy, "evidence" is a term loaded with assumptions. But what do we really mean when we say something is evidence?  Who gets to decide? Not just in the courts, but in real life too? Mark and Howard ask: What is evidence? From courtrooms to science labs to public policy, they explore how this powerful word shapes truth, trust, and decision-...

Dr Wilson takes us through his journey from medical school in the shadow of Ebola outbreaks, to rainforest fieldwork, to NASA satellite projects that caught the attention of the intelligence community, and later, front-line pandemic response. Mark and Howard welcome Dr. James Wilson, a practicing pediatrician and one of the world's leading experts in operational health security and biosurveillance...

In this special episode, Mark and Howard welcome their first guest: Dr. John Elliott, honorary research fellow in computer science and coordinator of the SETI Post-Detection Hub at the University of St Andrews. Arthur C. Clarke once described John's work as "of great importance," and with good reason. His research spans human language, dolphin communication, computational linguistics and the searc...

Mark and Howard wrestle with the deceptively simple question: What is intelligence? They explore why intelligence is so hard to define, how it differs from raw data and information, and why it sits somewhere between science and art. Along the way, they highlight the many uses (and misuses) of the word "intelligence," from law enforcement practice to political spin. Visit us at  https://thecollator...

We use the word "information" every day, but what does it actually mean? In this first episode, drawing on experience from intelligence, law enforcement and academia Mark and Howard dig into the foundations of our information-saturated world, exploring how data becomes meaning, why context matters, and how our assumptions shape what we think we know. Visit us at https://thecollators.com

This is a trailer episode to introduce the pod - We've tried to make a show for people who want to sharpen their thinking. Whether you're a seasoned analyst or simply curious about how we make sense of the world. If you're interested in critical thinking, information theory of just how people form beliefs, then I think we might have something for you. On behalf of Mark, Howard and Jay, Hello world...