PODCAST · society
The Collators
by Mark Lockwood, Howard Atkin
Dive into the philosophy and practice of analysis and information sharing, with insights from leaders in tech, academia, intelligence and beyond on how they make sense of the world. Hosts Mark and Howard draw on experience in intelligence, law enforcement and academia to unpack the ideas and methods that shape understanding. Thoughtful but accessible, it's a podcast for anyone who wants to sharpen their thinking in a complex, fast-changing world.
Episodes
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Competitive Intelligence - With Karen Walker
Karen Walker explains why good intelligence work begins with understanding the real question behind a request, why data without context rarely leads to good decisions, and why judgement, curiosity and an understanding of human motivation remain central to effective analysis. Associate Director…
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Who You Know: Central Banks and Financial Collapse with Aditi Sahasrabudi
In this episode, Mark and Howard are joined by Aditi Sahasrabudi, author of Bankers Trust: How Social Relations Avert Global Financial Collapse. Together they explore how central banks manage crises, why independence from politics matters, and what happens when the people responsible for...
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Who Guards the Answer?
What happens when the systems we rely on to find information stop simply retrieving answers and start generating them? Library science and AI governance specialist José Ruiz-Vázquez joins The Collators to explore what librarianship can teach us about the rapidly changing information environment....
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When Insight Arrives First: With Nadia Tuominen
Intelligence veteran Nadia Tuominen joins Mark Lockwood and Howard Atkin to explore how analysts think, how professional judgement develops, and why some of the most important parts of analysis may be difficult to explain. Drawing on a career spanning policing, sports integrity, economic crime,...
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Telling the Untellable: with Andrew Revkin
Drawing on more than four decades of reporting, Andrew Revkin reflects on the craft of journalism, the danger of becoming captured by a compelling narrative, and what happens when complicated realities are compressed into headlines designed to compete for attention. From Iraq's weapons of mass...
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Intelligence Without Walls: Interview with Carson Checketts
Drawing on experience spanning the US Navy, the intelligence community, national security law and Capitol Hill, Carson Checketts discusses how he found his way into intelligence, the enduring lessons of 9/11, and why information-sharing remains one of the hardest problems facing large…
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Warming Up Cold Cases
What does investigating cold cases really involve? The conversation reveals cold-case investigation not as a self-contained event, but as a continuing process shaped by time, technology, professional judgement and the enduring experiences of victims' families. Former UK Detective Inspector Howard...
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Roy Casagranda - Honest Eulogies Lead to Better Futures
Historian and educator Dr Roy Casagranda joins The Collators to explore how the past is reconstructed from incomplete evidence and how easily interpretation can harden into accepted fact. Roy discusses why historians must be honest about their assumptions, why entire people and perspectives...
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Orwell Everywhere All At Once - Interview with Mike Hawkes
Surveillance has evolved from intercepting what people deliberately communicate to detecting what they involuntarily reveal. Who controls these capabilities? Can legislation and oversight keep pace? And what happens when surveillance no longer requires us to communicate or even carry a device?…
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Insight on cue: Interview with Carmen Medina
Carmen Medina, former CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence, returns to The Collators to discuss her new project capturing the hard-won lessons, adages and mental cues that help analysts think better. The conversation becomes a deep exploration of what analysis actually is. What happens between...
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Interview with Dean Baratta
Dean Baratta joins The Collators to discuss a career that has taken him from Cold War military intelligence to law enforcement, homeland security, and the private sector. Dean also reflects on the future of the field, the danger of losing apprenticeship style learning, and why the next generation...
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Propaganda - Interview with Konstantin Samoilov
This week, we are doubly blessed to welcome back a very special guest: Konstantin from the Inside Russia YouTube channel. Moving past regular news cycles, we sit down for a deep, philosophical, and deeply personal conversation about the global information shift and the decaying trust in our media...
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The Human Factor
Mark and Howard are joined by Sarah Holland, Chief Business Officer at Swiss biotech CDR Life and President of the Swiss Healthcare Licensing Group, to explore what intelligence looks like in the private sector. Sarah explains how biotech companies use competitive intelligence, scientific data,...
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Imagination Matters: Interview with Ian Jackson
Mark and Howard are joined by Ian Jackson for a wide-ranging conversation about comics, science fiction, nostalgia, imagination, and critical thinking. Ian shares his journey from archaeology, theatre, travel, and art handling to running a one-man comic shop built around nostalgia, community, and...
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The Collators Office
In this episode, Mark and Howard are joined by David Allen, a former Metropolitan Police officer who joined the job in 1966 and later became a collator at Bow Street. David shares what policing the West End was really like, how the Collator's Office worked, and why apparently trivial scraps of...
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Analysis under pressure: An interview with David Jimenez
In this episode of The Collators, Howard and Mark are joined by veteran intelligence professional David Jimenez, whose career spans military intelligence, federal law enforcement, counter-drug analysis, and higher education. The conversation explores what really transfers across intelligence, law...
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Homicide
Mark and Howard explore the reality of murder investigations through the lens of Howard's 34-year police career. Together, they unpack the complexity of homicide inquiries, from scene guards and incident rooms to timelines, evidence, scrutiny and the sheer weight of responsibility involved.…
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Paying Attention - Interview with Dr Endsley
What does it really mean to be situationally aware? In this episode, Mark and Howard speak with Dr. Mica Endsley about how people and teams make sense of complex, fast-changing environments, and why situational awareness is crucial for everyone, not just the military. Dr. Endsley is a leading...
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Good Cop, Bad Cop
A simple but urgent question: what is policing actually for? Prompted by recent events and troubling examples of law enforcement in action, Mark and Howard step back from the headlines to explore the principles that are supposed to define good policing. The conversation traces the history of the...
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Russia: Inside and Out: Interview with Konstantin Samoilov
Konstantin Samoilov grew up in Russia, lived in the United States, then returned to build a successful life in Moscow, until 2022 changed everything. In this conversation with Mark and Howard, Konstantin explains how his YouTube channel began as a hobby to translate everyday Russia for a Western...
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Making Sense: Interview with Deborah Osborne
Mark and Howard are joined by Deborah Osborne. Retired intelligence analyst and educator whose career spans the Buffalo Police Department and the U.S. Secret Service. A wide-ranging conversation about what analysis actually is, why the profession so often struggles to define itself, and what…
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Standards Matter - With Jeremy Levin
There's an old joke in intel. Three analysts, six opinions. Well in this pod, three intelligence nerds walk into a podcast and end up debating about standards, ethics, and the limits of what humans can explain about their own thinking. Jeremy Levin (analyst, trainer, and long-time intelligence...
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Trust me, I'm a doctor - Dr James Wilson
Dr. James Wilson returns to the collators, and this time the topic is trust. Jim shares what it's like when families walk into the clinic sceptical, anxious, or armed with competing "expert" advice, and how he had to rethink his own approach: less authority-as-command, more humility, disclosure,...
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The madness of our times
What does a banking crash have to do with frontline services quietly collapsing a decade later? In this episode, Mark and Howard are joined by award-winning political scientist and economist Mark Blyth (Brown University) to trace the "breadcrumb trail" from 2008 to today's brittle institutions,...
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Comedy, Clients and Leadership with Paul Chato
For our special Christmas episode, we're honoured to speak to Paul Chato, comedian, TV executive, and YouTuber. We talk about his journey, comedy in general, and more than a fair share of Star Trek nerdiness (spoiler: Paul and Mark are pre-Kelvin fans; Howard denies all knowledge…). Some laughs,...
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Guilds vs Clubs - The pros and cons of professionalisation
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...
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Information as experience - Interview with Professor Andrew Dillon
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...
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Mystics and Statistics - Why is prediction hard?
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.
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Virtually Real - What is real?
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...
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Challenge Everything - AI, Raves and Nuclear Subs - Interview with Mike Hawkes, digital inventor.
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…
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OMG, TMI - How much information is too much?
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...
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Can everything that counts, be counted? Qualitative and quantitative analysis explored
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...
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The CIA, Rebel Alliance and pandas - An inteview with Carmen Medina
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...
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Patterns and Trends - What is a Pattern?
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...
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One house; Many rooms - What is analysis?
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...
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Proof Positive - What is evidence?
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...
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Trust is everything - Interview with Dr James Wilson
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...
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Intelligence Beyond Earth - Looking inside and out
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...
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Intelligence; good, bad and indifferent
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...
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An appeal for information
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…
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Who are The Collators?
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…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Dive into the philosophy and practice of analysis and information sharing, with insights from leaders in tech, academia, intelligence and beyond on how they make sense of the world. Hosts Mark and Howard draw on experience in intelligence, law enforcement and academia to unpack the ideas and methods that shape understanding. Thoughtful but accessible, it's a podcast for anyone who wants to sharpen their thinking in a complex, fast-changing world.
HOSTED BY
Mark Lockwood, Howard Atkin
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Collators have?
The Collators currently has 41 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Collators about?
Dive into the philosophy and practice of analysis and information sharing, with insights from leaders in tech, academia, intelligence and beyond on how they make sense of the world. Hosts Mark and Howard draw on experience in intelligence, law enforcement and academia to unpack the ideas and...
How often does The Collators release new episodes?
The Collators has 41 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to The Collators?
You can listen to The Collators on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Collators?
The Collators is created and hosted by Mark Lockwood, Howard Atkin.
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