Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher are joined by Tom McCarthy, author of the contemporary classic, Remainder, as well as of the novels C and Satin Island, both of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He is also the author of the collection of essays Typewriters, Bombs, and Jellyfish and of the literary study Tintin and the Secret of Literature, and is the “General Secretary” of the “semi-fictitious organization” the International Necronautical Society (INS), which has exhibited art around the world.

McCarthy’s latest book is The Making of Incarnation, a novel that follows the hunt for a box that has gone missing from the archives of a time-and-motion pioneer named Lillian Moller Gilbreth. Gilbreth’s studies in movement helped birth the era of mass observation and big data, but did she also discover the “perfect” movement, one that would “change everything”?

Also, Natalie Diaz, author of Postcolonial Love Poem, returns to recommend poet Desiree C. Bailey’s What Noise Against the Cain.