Society & CulturePhilosophyScienceSocial Sciences

The Collators

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.

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22 episodes
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Avg 1 hr 13 min
English

Episodes 22

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S2 · E22
September 4 · 1 hr 1 min
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. Drawing on more than two decades in public libraries and his recent work in AI security, José explains why librarians have always done far more than look after books: they help people navigate information, assess what they can trust, and connect what they know to what they actually need.
S2 · E21
August 28 · 1 hr 26 min
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, academia and professional training, Nadia reflects on the culture of intelligence analysis, the value of intellectual humility, and why thinking itself should be treated as a skill that can be developed.
S2 · E20
August 21 · 1 hr 16 min
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 destruction and TWA Flight 800 to climate reporting and the rise of social media, the conversation explores how journalists, analysts and scientists can get things wrong even while trying to establish what is true.
S2 · E19
August 15 · 1 hr 31 min
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 institutions. The conversation explores the tension between secrecy and openness, the cultures that develop inside intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, the importance of professional trust and informal networks, and whether traditional organisational silos still make sense in an increasingly connected world.
S2 · E18
August 1 · 45 min
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 Atkin explains why an unsolved case does not simply stop when the original investigation ends. They explore the relationship between active investigation and independent review, how limited resources affect which cases are revisited, and why evidence, records and human memory become more difficult to recover as time passes.
S2 · E17
July 2 · 1 hr 38 min
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 disappear from the historical record, and what happens when disciplines studying human behaviour attempt to imitate the physical sciences. The conversation examines the limits of objectivity, the uneasy relationship between evidence and narrative, and why being willing to revise our beliefs is a strength rather than a weakness.
S2 · E16
June 19 · 1 hr 22 min
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? CTO and Inventor Mike Hawkes returns to the Collators to trace the evolution of surveillance from the earliest days of radio interception to a world of smartphones, mesh networks, and Wi-Fi routers. We also discuss the growing gap between collecting information and understanding it, and whether we are about to use AI to charge into an Orwellian situation?
S2 · E15
June 14 · 1 hr 3 min
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 reading and writing? Is insight something that can be taught? Are analysts too focused on argument, and not enough on thinking? And how do our tools, categories, filters, emotions and intuitions shape what we are able to know?
S2 · E14
June 4 · 51 min
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 of analysts will need more than technology to remain useful. The conversation explores what changes when intelligence analysis leaves the traditional intelligence world: how analysts adapt to new cultures, how they communicate risk without causing panic, whether analysts should make recommendations or just assess the situation.
S2 · E13
May 26 · 1 hr 7 min
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 institutions. Konstantin shares powerful personal insights into what it's like to grow up inside a state-controlled information system. He opens up about the exact moment he realized as a child, that the narrative he was being fed didn't match reality, and how events like the response to the Chernobyl disaster cemented that understanding.
S2 · E12
May 21 · 1 hr 3 min
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, market insight, expert networks, conferences, regulatory signals, and even industry gossip to make high-stakes decisions about drug development and partnerships.
S2 · E11
May 15 · 58 min
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 geek culture. This is not just an episode about comics or science fiction. It is about why imagination matters; how stories shape identity, how science fiction helps us ask "what if?", and why the ability to think beyond the obvious may be one of the most important skills we have.
S2 · E10
May 3 · 1 hr 21 min
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 information could sometimes become the key to serious investigations.
S2 · E9
April 9 · 1 hr 29 min
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 enforcement, and the private sector; the pressures analysts face when decision-makers want certainty without enough data; the role of ethics and professional standards in analysis; and whether the profession is keeping pace with modern demands.
S2 · E8
March 23 · 1 hr 5 min
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. Howard shares how his first experiences of murder investigation shaped his career, including his early work building physical timelines on incident room walls to help detectives make sense of huge volumes of information. The conversation also challenges popular myths created by TV crime dramas and reflects on the emotional cost of working the most serious investigations in policing.
S2 · E7
March 10 · 1 hr 20 min
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 authority on situational awareness, an engineer, and a former Chief Scientist of the United States Air Force.
S2 · E6
March 6 · 54 min
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 Office of Constable, the Peelian principles, and the idea that police should operate with the consent of the public, not simply the power of the state.
S2 · E5
February 24 · 1 hr 13 min
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 audience, and why the invasion of Ukraine pushed him from observer to daily documentarian, and ultimately forced him to leave. He recounts the moments when the risks became real and the wrenching decision to leave Russia with little time to prepare.
S2 · E4
February 19 · 1 hr 13 min
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 "good" looks like in practice. Debbie's journey into the craft is anything but linear (she didn't become an analyst until her forties), and that outside perspective shapes a sharp critique of how the role is taught, labeled, and valued.
S2 · E3
February 17 · 1 hr 43 min
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 practitioner) sits down with Mark Lockwood and Howard Atkin to discuss how analytic standards evolved from "guild" practice into codified frameworks like ICD 203.

Showing 1–20 of 22 episodes