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, hollowed-out state capacity, and a politics increasingly powered by distraction — mostly in the UK, but with familiar echoes across the West.

Warning: This was recorded late on a Friday night and the conversation got… enthusiastic at times. Apologies for the salty language, but we're talking about difficult issues and with deep feeling.

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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, banter and occasional hot takes.

All the best for 2026, take it steady folks.

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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 widespread.

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; to nourish and not poison the public.

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

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

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 that we all use.

This is a very human story, with ebbs and flows of good and bad. Innovation, hard work and opportunity, but also cybercrime, litigation and loss.

Shownotes, transcript and more at https://thecollators.com

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.

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