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 secrets collide with the open internet.

Together, they explore:

- What it means to think critically inside large institutions.
- How bias and diversity of thought shape intelligence work.
- The tension between secrecy, sharing, and truth.
- Why categorisation, curiosity, and dissent are vital to good analysis.
- The impact of AI and automation on human judgement.

Reflective, candid, and often funny, Carmen’s insights reveal the reality of analysis as both craft and calling, and a human attempt to make sense of the world.

Transcript and more at https://thecollators.com

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 where none exists, the value of curiosity, and why luck and lateral thinking still matter in an age of algorithms.

Shownotes and more available from https://thecollators.com

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, shownotes and more are available from https://thecollators.com/s1e7

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-making.

Transcript, shownotes and more are available from https://thecollators.com/s1e6

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. Wilson has built systems used to anticipate and detect infectious disease crises, served as the first operations chief of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Biosurveillance Integration Center, and has decades of experience in epidemic forecasting and intelligence analysis.

This is not just a story about pandemics. It’s a story about information, uncertainty, and the resilience of societies when confronted with the unknown.

Visit https://thecollators.com for shownotes, transcript and more episodes

To learn more about Dr Wilson visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmwilsonv/

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 search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Visit https://thecollators.com for shownotes, transcript and more episodes

Visit SETI / SETI Post-Detection Hub

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.

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