Welcome to the ninth and final episode of the fifth season of Explore Explain, a long-form video and podcast series all about data visualisation design.
In this latest episode, I am delighted to welcome Alan Smith, Head of Visual and Data Journalism at the Financial Times in London.
We explored the story behind a unique project Alan worked on titled the ‘FT Money Machine‘: faithfully recreating an analogue computer – built in 1949 by Bill Phillips designed to model the flow of an Economy using water and pumps – but translating it to be experienced in VR, with the FT’s first application built for the Apple Vision Pro.
This is a unique episode for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the recording was made in-person with Alan at the FT’s offices in London. Secondly, unlike all other episodes published to date where the podcast is the audio twin of the video episode, this episode features additional material in the video. Given the subject matter, the video version is the optimum choice which includes additional footage of a visit to see the original machine in the Science Museum and a section at the end of the conversation showing the VR app and device in use. These contents were not included in the audio podcast as they just didn’t translate well enough.
Here are links to some of the key references or resources mentioned during this episode:
- This is the project’s primary homepage with links to various spin-off articles
- Here’s the FT’s press release
- The FT Money Machine app on the Apple Vision Pro App Store
- Alan’s Bluesky thread launching the work
- ‘How does the economy work?‘ article from the Science Museum, profiling the original Phillips machine
Video Conversation
You can watch this episode using the embedded player below or over on the dedicated Explore Explain Youtube channel, where you’ll find all the other video-based episodes and curated playlists.
Audio Conversation
To listen directly, visit this link or use the embedded podcast player below. The audio podcast is published across all common platforms (such as Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music etc.), so you will find this series listed in their respective directories by searching for ‘Explore Explain’ or by manually entering – or copying/pasting – this url to your subscriptions – https://feed.pod.co/exploreexplain.