The Collators

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.