Telling the Untellable: with Andrew Revkin

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 for Competitive Intelligence at the University of South Florida's Research Development Institute, Karen discusses the evolution of competitive intelligence, its roots in business and strategic analysis, and how the discipline has been adapted for the university research environment. For more episodes, visit thecollators.com Please consider subscribing, supporting or sharing the show Details at https://thecollators.com/support

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 stabilising the system may also have helped shape the conditions that made crisis possible in the first place. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?