New York Times bestselling Irish author Colum McCann joins Zibby to discuss TWIST, an urgent and utterly compelling novel about a journalist reporting on the underwater cables that carry the world’s information—tiny fiber-optic tubes that carry words, images, memes, voices… Colum unpacks the mind-bending reality that 95% of our global communications travel through fragile cables at the bottom of the ocean. He shares the real-life inspiration behind his maritime thriller, blending geopolitics, underwater espionage, and the deeply personal story of a man in recovery. The two explore themes of repair—both technological and emotional—and the fragile threads that connect us all.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome Column. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked to talk about your latest novel Twist. Congratulations. 

Colum: Thank you. It's nice to be Totally Booked. 

Zibby: Aren't we all just Totally Booked all the time? Like everybody crazy busy. 

Colum: I do feel that increasingly in life we're all totally booked and every minute, and if it isn't taken up, then your Gmail's gonna take it up, or your TikTok or whatever else is happens to be that every minute is booked until you hit the, until you hit the hay.

Zibby: It's true. Now what do we do with all that? I don't know. 

Colum: Just, I dunno. I think we get, I think we get less done and just a lot of fluff in and around it. It's, it's the disease of our times. 

Zibby: It's true. I feel like I read to get out of the totally booked mindset. Like reading for me is the only time I am not looking at my phone, my phone to see what time it is and all of that.

That is my only. You know, sacred space. 

Colum: Me too. And I love the physical book. Increasingly. I love just having the, the, the, the, the, the, the physical book, not, you know, not on the, on the computer or, or any other device, uh, just to, to take it away. It feels like a, feels like a bit of a friend, doesn't it?

Zibby: Totally. Yes. I know. I'm always like dog earing and I don't know, I haven't learned how to do that well enough online, I guess. So. Doesn't have the same satisfaction anyway to your story, which aside from the bout of complete seasickness on the boat where I felt like I was getting sick myself, just like imagining the four days of like vomiting and whatever.

I found this to be just like so utterly immersive and immersive water anyway. Didn't mean to anyway, but what a story and what a unique perspective on life when we go through life on land and don't spend that much time thinking about everything else below the surface, which is just mind boggling when you think about it a lot, which is of course, like some of the things.

So anyway, why don't you tell listeners what Twist is really about? Now that I've sort of mangled it. 

Colum: It is sort of. Mind boggling because 95% of our world's intercontinental information goes under the sea. Now, I used to think before I started embarking on this book that everything bounced up into some sort of benevolent heavenly cloud, and then got bounced back down and we're all working on, uh, radio waves.

And there was something comforting actually about that. It was going outta the atmosphere. No, actually. All of our inform, virtually all of our information travels in the cold, wet, dark bottom of the sea in these very small tubes that are no bigger than the plumbing pipes at the back of your toilet in wires inside those tubes that are no bigger than your eyelash.

And so everything, even our conversation right now is bouncing down through fiber optic wires with billions of pulses of light per second, translated then into ones and zeros, and then translated back into a machine, and then translated into our voices and our images, and suddenly it's there in 0.006 of a second.

If this is not a miracle, then I don't know what is, but these wires break. That's what the book is about. The book is about the repair of the repair and sabotage of underwater cables and how we rely on communication and what happens when that communication breaks down. And it's kind of also a retelling of the heart of darkness in certain ways.

Uh, Joseph Conrad's heart of darkness because information is power. Information is what is owned now, the way we are owned is through the ownership of our information and all of that information amazingly is bouncing around on the sea floor. 

Zibby: I actually couldn't believe that that is how the wires get fixed.

Is that all true? There? There are these boats and they just like put things into the water and hope to find them. I mean,.. 

Colum: Isn't it crazy? So, uh, so it's a novel and, and and, and, and, and there's a crew go out on a boat and the boat in the, in the novels called the George Quant, which is a Belgian ship. But I went out on a friendship called the the Leon Tein, and I was amazed.

Uh, yes, we can repair wires close to the shore with divers and, and even closer, close or further out from shore with what they call ORVs, which are remotely controlled vehicles. But after two kilometers, you cannot send a remote controlled vehicle that will fix these cables down. So these men and women who are out at sea, there's only 50 repair boats in the world.

They have to t trawl the bottom of the ocean with a basically what amounts to a grappling hook. And this, this cable may be lost, it may be buried. It could be a landslide, it could be an earthquake, it could be in a fishing trawler. That's snapped it and sometimes. If a cable gets snapped, it can take up to two months to fix it, which is an extraordinary length of time, particularly if that cable is important.

And guess what? There are only about 400 working cables in the world. So if a few of them get disrupted at once, it can cause chaos and in fact. There are ways and there are people who say that it is possible that the next nine 11 will happen underwater and um, 'cause our cables and our landing stations for the cables come in are so vulnerable to, uh, potential sabotage. 

Zibby: I feel like maybe we need to keep this quiet. Like, don't give anybody ideas, Colum. 

Colum: It's, it's, it's all there on the internet. Anybody who wanted to could easily do it. Okay, so I live in New York and I went out to a landing station during the pandemic. Granted, but I went up to a landing station, uh, in Long Island where I was able to access the back of the landing station.

No problem. Just walk the beach, walk up to the landing station where the cables come in and they get translated and, and put in underground and I stood over the manhole cover, which I could have lifted up with a crowbar and touched the, the cables as they bring in the pulse of the world's information.

It's amazing how little security there is. And, and look, anybody who wants to know about this can find it. You can find the coordinates of the, of the stations online and, um. It, you know, there might be a chain link fence, uh, around the LA landing station, or there might be a camera, but there is no man security and really, it's quite easy to get startlingly, easy to get at those cables. And so, yeah, I, I, I, part of me was like, uhoh, am I opening a secret? But no, it's been there for a long, long time and some people, uh, the Nostradamus have been, uh, warning us about this. For a little while now, but you know, hopefully nothing will come up.

But all you have to do is look at the news. And in the past three months, several cables in the Baltic Sea have been chopped by Chinese and Russian fishing vessels, dragging their anchors as part of a proxy war that, you know, builds into, uh, what's happening with nato and, uh, information, uh, gathering and all these things also to scare people.

Because guess what, I, I, look, I'm not a thriller writer, uh, but this turned in, turned into a, a, a, a thriller for me. Uh, I began to realize that there are submarines, there are, uh, all sorts of activities going on, uh, under the water listening devices and people, you know, who can drop certain devices on top of the cables down in the water and listen to what's going on.

Now, most of that as you and I know is Flo and Jetsam, whether it be, you know, your local soccer match or your TikTok, or the, the reams and terrible reams of pornography that go online and all of that is blowing in underwater, but there's also very sensitive military and financial data. Um, and, and there, uh, it is $10 trillion dollars worth of transactions go on every single day.

If somebody wanted to, to, to, to, to play a little with our heads, they would cut strategically, cut the cables. 'cause you don't wanna cut your own. Uh, the United States is okay because we have so many cables and there is a thing called, uh, you know, there's a built in recovery, uh, system. And if one cable gets cut, the other cables take up the slack.

It might slow down a tiny bit, but in general it's okay. But a continent like Africa, with so many countries within Africa. Is very vulnerable to an attack. 'cause there are actually only two main cables. There are lots of other little cables funneling off the two main cables. But if they were cut Africa and therefore really the rest of the world would be in serious, serious trouble.

And the, so there are men and women who go, go out on these boats. Uh, they spend weeks and weeks at sea and they fix our cables for us using, guess what? Nuclear fusion. It is crazy. It's crazy. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. It's like, I didn't think I had enough to worry about until I read your book. And now, now my worries have expanded exponentially.

Colum: I know, isn't it? I I, I mean, I, I, I feel bad. I kind of wanna write something that, that I, here's the deal. I honestly set out to write about repair. Because I do think we live in broken times. I think you're correct. I think that the times we live in are, are, you know, that, that they're, they're anxiety inducing and there is a brokenness and a shattering that's going on.

And one of the things that I would like to be able to do as a novelist is to gather up all those little shattered pieces and make some sort of mosaic out of them. And in certain ways, that's what I do try to do, but in other ways. By highlighting this, the, the, the, this particular problem. I understand that, that, that, that is an extra little corner of the mind, uh, that's gonna be taken over wondering, is my internet going gonna go out tonight? It's not just internet because we're really, what we're talking about is hospitals, uh, and, you know, all sorts of like intimate, uh uh, health communications and all sorts of things, uh, that, that, that could be at risk. But the other thing is, let's praise the people who go out to sea and, and, and, and let's remember that behind the internet, there actually is a hardware I.

There are cables and there are there, there, there are buildings and there are pipes and there are switches and a whole ream of things that we tend not to think about, uh, when it comes to our, our daily set of communication. So there are a lot of heroes out there, uh, who are doing the work. 

Zibby: Have you seen the documentary about looking for Ernest Shackleton's?

Boat. The endurance 

Colum: I've heard, I've heard about it. 

Zibby: You should watch it because it's about, it has some similar visuals, if you will, of boats and crews and waiting and if you don't go right to the exact spot, you have to start again, the hours and hours of hoping and waiting and wondering if you're everybody's sleeping and the tides and all of that.

So I feel like. I had that visual in my head,.. 

Colum: Right? 

Zibby: Thanks to, thanks to this. 

Colum: But, but if, say, did you ever drop a, um, drop anything into the ocean like a, a coin or a ring or anything like that? You know how hard it is to find even in shallow water. 

Zibby: Yes. 

Colum: Now, imagine if you're searching for a wire, which is one and a half inches thick that has been snapped, and then by a landslide, and then that landslide has covered it.

Sometimes for, for kilometers and buried it down deep in the ground so that you can't actually find it. Now you can ping electronically to find the general location, but not the specific, uh, location. And so what they do is lower a wire with a hook upon that wire and troll the ocean floor. It's called a cutting grab.

Uh, when they find the wire, then they gotta cut it, they gotta bring it up, and then they gotta bring the other end up and then they gotta fuse them together with new wire. And it's actually that same process that they were using, believe it or not, uh, in the 1850s and 1860s when the very first cables were set down.

And in many ways, the principles are same 'cause the people who are behind that businessmen, guess what? Their, their, their, their, their logo, their tag word was for themselves in the 1850s and 1860s. 

Zibby: What? 

Colum: It was Faster, faster, faster. Now you can just hear the, the, the, the, the, the, the Bezos and the musk and the, and and, and the other people of the world and, uh, the, the, the business people saying Faster, faster, faster.

But I can shave off a picosecond. Or, uh, you know, a milli milli millisecond, you know, I will make, you know, tens of, tens of millions of dollars. So it is very much about speed. You know, if that connection between Hong Kong and London is slow or it gets interrupted, it can cause panic in all sorts of ways.

And, and then ultimate question is philosophically is why do we rely on this? 

Zibby: Mm. 

Colum: Is, is it the machines that are the problem or is it our relationship to the machines and what you said earlier was really nice. Yeah. But to, to go away and to take a book and to not be beholden to, you know, the chips, the silicon chips that are, you know, beaming into, into my head is quite a, quite, quite a lovely moment.

I, I think we have to rediscover, uh, some of that, uh, or else we're gonna be in trouble. 

Zibby: Yes. Thank you. I agree. You know, you mentioned earlier that this is in part about repair and it is also about the repair of one man, and you see that as he goes through recovering alcoholism. You see all of his past traumas, the loss of his mom.

The sad image of her at the top of the stairs, which like has been now emblazoned in my brain and his son being far away. I mean there are lots of things that he is holding onto and even when you show his progression of how it's getting easier for him to climb up the stairs and he's not as winded, and you, you see the like lifting of the heaviness of him as he goes on this mission.

Tell me a little bit about that character and his development. 

Colum: The character was interesting 'cause I mean, um, you know, often I write about, um, uh, about other things in other places. My last book was a Paragon. It was about an Israeli man and a Palestinian man who become friends. I've written about, you know, all sorts of different situations, the Romani people, uh, living in Europe and, uh, and often I've gone sort of elsewhere.

I do go elsewhere with this book, but my main character, um, is a sort of, uh, white, middle-aged, uh, Irish man. So, um. Supposedly not too far from me, but he's actually, he was a difficult character to write, to be honest with you, because I was aware that I didn't want him to be like me. He's a little, little darker and, and, and, and, and, and he has, you know, a, a number of difficulties.

Um, but it was interesting 'cause um, he spoke to me in, in, in, in, in all sorts of new ways and I had to go. Chasing him at times. And his, his whole thing is that he's a bit like, well, he's a bit like, uh, Jay Alfred Ro from the TS Elliot poem. You know, he is one of those lonely men in shirt sleeves, hanging outta windows.

And, and the poem actually fits in beautifully with the novel. You know, do I dare to eat a peach? I've heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think they will sing to me. And then of course, the last line of that poem is, um. Until human voices wake us and we drown, referring to the bottom of the sea.

So, um, in many ways I do use, um, the Elliot, uh, there's, there's undertones of Elliot, there's undertones of Conrad. There's some vague undertones of Great Gatsby, um, that are going on. But ultimately, this is a very modern tale. It takes place right now, you know, and it's what's happening in the bottom of our, the bottom of our seas.

Zibby: My gosh. There's also some humor when he meets Conway and, or somebody calls him and says, like, you know, Hey, hey, big guy or something, and you are like, okay, maybe I've won a few, but I don't really like being referred to that way. 

Colum: Right? That's right, that's right. Yeah. Uh, you always gotta have a, at least a, at least a touch of humor there.

I mean, he is Irish after all, and he has to, uh, he, he, he, even though he, he, he's, he's heavy on the beer and all these things. There are moments of recovery and, and, and, and I don't wanna give the game away, of course, but, but, but at the end of the book, I think he escapes, uh, with a, with a sort of realization.

Uh, it's not all, you know, uh, with the I's Dotted and the T's crossed, but he does emerge, uh, from this situation with a sort of new knowledge about, 'cause that's what books are about. Books are about the human heart and uh, you know what Faulkner talked about when he talked about. Love and pride and sacrifice and compassion.

But as you say, also, I mean, uh, you're gonna live this life. You have to have a bit of fun too. You have to have a sense of humor. You have to, you have to look at the world and, and even in all its darkness and, and, and, and find some, some, some little thread of light. So that's what I did, uh, with this character, Anthony Fennel.

But then there's another Irish character who is the captain, or not the captain. He's the, he's the chief of mission actually. Um. On, on the ship, which is close to the captain, and there's captain and there's chief admission. And chief admission looks after the technical aspects of the, of, of the wires. And, um, he's a very mysterious character and he sort of remains mysterious for, for, for, for a lot of the book.

And that's sort of intentional because, um. You know, in many ways what this book also talks about is what we don't know. Mm-hmm. And what we can't know. And, and despite what all, all the ways that, that, that, that, that we look at each other and we communicate with each other. Do we really know each other, uh, in the end?

And how is it that we can get, get to know each other? Do we have to go back to our sort of, uh, original selves, uh, in order, in order to get to, so even these two Irish guys who were out on a boat in the middle of nowhere together. They can't communicate in the ways that they, they, they, they, they really want to communicate.

Zibby: Hmm. Can you do a quick background update? Like how did you become, and I've obviously read your backstory and everything, but can you just share how you became this type of writer, author, novelist, nonprofit founder? Like where did that come from? 

Colum: My favorite, uh, answer to any question nowadays is, I don't know.

You know, because I, I, I, because I actually think it's, it, it's, it's really honest because a lot of time we just don't know where this stuff came from. It's sort of built up and, you know, I started out as a journalist and in my early twenties I started publishing books. Then in, in, in my late twenties.

This is book number 13 or 14 for me, I think it's 14. And, you know, I keep going on and I, I love exploring new territory. I. Knocking myself off balance and even knocking my reader off balance with a different sort of story every time and even a different form. This is simpler, more straightforward, more chronological, uh, book than, than, than, than than what I normally would write.

But, but it's also apparently simple because at the end it's a bit of a head scratcher, sort of, um, intentionally. But I also am involved with this incredible foundation, as you say, and it's called Narrative Four, where we bring young people together from around the world. Uh, to step into one another's shoes and to tell one another's stories.

And that is in this epidemic of loneliness and isolation, which we're suffering. Uh, one of the most important things that I am involved in, uh, at, at any point. I mean, it's really quite, um, quite wonderful. So we're, we're, we're in 42 countries, but we're all over the United States and then we're in Ireland and Mexico, 12 countries in Africa and various other places, and it's spectacularly successful.

Because, in a good way, because it just, it just works. And we love stories and, and stories can be fun and and powerful, but also because it does break through those issues of stereotypes and borders and boundaries and, and, and, and, and young people are really searching for something that exists outside that, uh, that, that, that small machine that, that, that, that we hold in our hands.

And often when we find them, um, it's the first time they've had a real chance to tell a story to somebody that they dunno. This is really powerful. It becomes an act of empathy. And not only do they tell their story, but they, they, they, they hear their own story told back to them by the other person. So guess what?

Like, we'll bring kids together from places. Like say, and this is a real example, uh, the South Bronx and Eastern Kentucky. Now these kids are terrified of one another. They're completely terrified. 'cause these kids are black and or immigrant. These kids are white and or Cherokee. These kids are urban. These kids are rural.

These kids are blue politically. These kids are, they'll go on and on and on, on and on. But guess what? When you get 'em in a room and they exchange, not an idea. Because ideas are polemical, but a personal story, that's when they begin to melt and to begin and begin to understand in a curious way, actually, that the world is messy.

Mm. And that the messiness is, is, is a good thing. 'cause that young girl in the South Bronx who's wearing a hijab that you just thought has only 1, 1, 1 train of thought, and, uh, is suddenly revealed as somebody who has beneath their hijab, uh, a pair of. iPods and she's listening to Beyonce. And guess what?

The young boy who's driving the pickup truck with the rifle in the, in the back rack of the, uh, you know, down the Kentucky roads, he's also listened to Beyonce. And, and then there's this point of weird commonality where they come together and say, oh, maybe you're not as different to me as I thought we were.

And this is the crux of where our. Actual repair will come in because I do believe that like the cables we have been sabotaged in a way. Yes, we've had to sabo the sabotage of, of an alien thing almost in the pandemic. But we've also been isolated by corporations and by people who own the information and by people who make a lot of money by keeping us fearful and fearful of one another.

And when that fear breaks down. It can do so through stories and through literature, that's when something really magical can happen. So, you know, and stories can be dangerous too. You and I know that stories can take away your house or your country or your mortgage or your identity, but stories can also be super powerful and healing and miraculous when they are properly asserted and shared, uh, with one another. So that's my, my hope. I'm an optimist, uh, in the face of all the evidence, only because I'm actually a pessimist first. 

Zibby: I feel like you need to go into government or something. I feel like you have to like, get in there and start making like big changes and spreading this everywhere and like scaling this in as big a way as humanly possible.

Colum: I would love to do that. I mean, but can you imagine, you know, trying to get like members of Congress to sit back, it would only take an hour. It would only take an hour because really they, they, they are polemical, but if they knew just a tiny bit about one another, uh, whether they're red nor blue or green, or purple or whatever else it happens to be. And for example, it becomes very difficult to slam a missile into a marketplace when you know the name and, and the story of the woman who was, uh, you know, managing, uh, the, the marketplace and or if you know, even just the tiny bit about her or, or even culture.

But you know, we're invested in, you know, our governments are invested in, um, you know, uh, extending our ignorance. And this sounds, you know, almost, uh, like one, you know, a conspiracy theories not, it's not, I mean, um, people are making money off, off keeping us, um, uh, apart, uh, from one another. And, um, you know, one of the things that we can do is, um.

Well, you know what? All the, all the great philosophers say it at the end of their lives. You know, all, you know, all the great thinkers to be kind, to be kind, to be kind. And that's kind of the philosophy that I think that, that we could practice so much more. 

Zibby: I love that. Oh my gosh. Thank you. Thank you for leaving this on a hopeful, inspiring note to to, to counteract the fear and the worry.

Thank you so much. And I am just ridiculously impressed by you and your intellect and the kindness, and you know, we just, we need a lot more of that. So thank you. 

Colum: Well, thank you. Thank you. And thank you for the chance to talk and, and, and, and good luck. And I hope we talk again soon. 

Zibby: Me too. That would be great.

All right. 

Colum: Cheers. 

Zibby: Best of luck. Take care. Okay. Bye-bye. 

Colum: Bye-bye.