if you missed any part of the show, find us on i-tunes. fareed zakaria gps is next for our viewers here in the united states. this is gps, the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. coming to you this week from london. we will start with the brutal killing of a soldier here on wednesday. what was behind it, how should we react? i will give you my take. and has austerity in britain failed? we'll ask the ft's martin wolf. then syria, next month the two warring sides are to come together, but is there a deal to be had? we'll ask one of the world's top syria experts. also, we seem to be back in the cold war, russia kicking out an american official. was he really a spy? i'll get the inside story from a

real life james bond, a former officer of the british secret service. plus, big data. that's the extraordinary amount of information that's been collected about you and me and all of us every second every day. is it a good thing or a bad? we'll ask the guys who wrote the book on it, literally. but first, here is my take. the sheer barbarism of the attack on a british soldier in woolwich is really beyond comprehension. the alleged murderers are said to have hacked the victim to death, waited for the police to arrive, and seem to encourage people to videotape their brutality. and yet we must search for some way to think what appears to be our future. you see, terrorism used to be about something big and dramatic. but perhaps because groups like al qaeda are on the run, their people hunted, their money tracked, their hideouts bombs, this woolwich, boston, have become the new faces of terror,

a few people, disturbed or fanatical, radicalized by things they have read or watched, who decide to commit evil. how do you detect this kind of danger? it seems impossible. now, keep in mind, this was the first terrorist killing on british soil since the london bus and subway bombings in 2005. in fact, since the madrid and london bombings, there have been just three islamic terrorist attacks that have killed people in western europe, woolwich, the equally gruesome 2012 murders in france that killed french soldiers and children and a rabbi, and the killing of u.s. soldiers in frankfurt. europe's governments have been doing a good job with policing counterterrorism work, and that might explain the relative calm of recent years. they've also done a much better job than in the west at reaching out and helping to integrate their muslim communities. and the communities have been responding much more strongly against these isolated acts committed by murderers in the name of islam.

the muslim council of britain issued an unequivocal statement condemning the latest killing, supporting british soldiers, and urging the police to do whatever it needed to unhindered and unhampered. that is precisely the kind of statement all leaders of muslim communities need to make whenever one of these attacks take place. i understand that some should not be held responsible for the action of a few madmen. the trouble is these madmen claim that they are killing in the name of islam and someone has to refute their claims as often as they make them. now, the alleged murderer in woolwich claimed he was retaliated against british soldiers killing muslims in afghanistan. i wish that muslim leaders would make the point that british and american and other allied soldiers are in afghanistan at the invitation of the democratically elected government of that country.

they are defending that government and muslims every day from terrorist attacks and insurgent warfare. if these people want to protest the killing of muslims, they should direct their wrath at the taliban and al qaeda and other jihadi groups because they are the ones killing muslims and many others. we need to hear this message more often and more loudly. let's get started. ♪ let's get right to it with my panel here in london today. we'll talk about terrorism, economics, politics, much more, anne applebaum is columnist for "the washington post." and pew liltser prize winning historian. martin wolf is the chief economics commentator at "the financial times". welcome both. what do you make of the woolwich attack?

>> it's amazing how few of these attacks have been made over the years. where people use islamic fundamentalism. they illustrate how difficult it can be to integrate people, immigrants, foreigners into a society whether like britain or america which has a different set of values. for whatever reason, these nigerians, one of whom was born in britain, attach themselves to this foreign form of islam and used it as an explanation for carry out a terribly bloody and unnecessary attack. much as the boston bombers also selectively chose -- used a kind of foreign ideology to justify what they did. you know, there's a large question about how to stop them, how to track them, but there's also a question about how people like that can be better integrated into our societies. >> should we even think of it as terrorism or is it just in a sense a murder by some crazy guy? >> it's difficult to know what language to use.

obviously it has a terrorist purpose. they expressed it very clearly, as i understand it in the video. they said that's what they want to do but it doesn't seem to have any really deep political purpose. there's no organization here. seems to me unfortunate and tragically something one has to live with. >> this week we saw something very unusual, martin, which is the imf actually asked the british government to borrow 10 billion pounds. my image of the imf is the guys with the whip always telling people not to spend too much. the imf is saying please borrow more. is this a sign that britain's austerity experiment really has failed. >> let's be fair to britain's austerity experiment which i am known to disagree with. the imf has said you should do a bit more spending now and little less spending in a year or two. what they've talked about is really small beer. i think the government through

away a policy option and it's made it difficult of borrowing more, of doing more public investment. that option was open to them, they had this option and got rid of it. shock, they didn't expect this, that the economy basically flat lined, stopped growing, recovery was aborted, the policy the bank of england has been pursuing is not effective partly because our banking system is not fixed. >> how does the austerity debate look to you? >> i think it's important to understand there are different austerity debates and what's happening in britain is not the same as what's happening in greece or the united states. the politics and the economies are different. in greece, for example, the greeks don't have the option of borrowing because nobody will lend to them. their ability to borrow is determined as much by the bond market and by their relationship with germany as anything else.

they're forced to undergo a budget cutting process which probably they should have undergone a decade ago which is really more of a basic reform process. that's not quite the same thing as what's the argument in the united states or the argument here. so whether austerity works or doesn't work, it depends what is the purpose and what is the goal. and it plays out differently in different parts of europe and the world. >> the country you live in much of the time, poland, has had pretty strong growth. >> poland has had strong growth all the polish economy is closely linked to the german economy, and if the german economy declines, it will be bad news for poland but poland has had a very good five years, it didn't have a recession. >> the polish prime minister gave an extraordinary speech. this is a conservative who said britain is in danger of becoming irrelevant if it doesn't jump into europe more fully. since he is your husband, i was wondering do you agree with him? >> yes, actually, i do agree with him.

i think that britain has the opportunity still to be a leading power inside europe, and because of the particular nature of the tory party and because of the nature of the argument, it is at risk of eliminating itself. if britain is going to spend the next two or three years renegotiating its relationship with europe rather than taking part in the central debates everybody else cares about, it will be irrelevant. it's certainly not irrelevant now, but it's already close to making itself less important. what other europeans are talking about is not what britain is talking about, and people know it. and i think the polish foreign minister's speech reflected what a lot of other people think. >> i think we could end up out of this. there is a possibility if this goes badly wrong that we will end up -- >> that britain has a referendum and withdraws from europe entirely. >> tactically brilliant decision by cameron to get the tories off

his back right now, but after a renegotiation. so he's promised implicitly all the rest of europe will be interested in negotiating with britain in the middle of the enormous economic crisis. the one thing they want to do is have a complicated negotiation with britain about fish. you can't imagine this pursuit going well. he will go to the party and say i've renegotiated and it's wonderful now. they will say no, it isn't and the tories will be split in this referendum, completely split and we don't know what the outcome will be but his party could be shattered and we might end up because the british people are pretty grumpy and not well led on this. it's strategically a nightmare. >> i think it was a mistake for him to propose a referendum. >> a final thought. we look at the united states and it seems glum and gloomy and dysfunctional. >> a great choice. >> but from here it sounds like we should be more cheerful. >> oh, you can find gloom and dysfunction really in almost any part of the world nowadays. that's the beauty of the year 2013. >> i agree with that. >> martin wolf, anne applebaum, pleasure to have you on.

up next, will syrian president bashar al assad commit to peace as secretary of state kerry asked this week? does he have any incentive to do so? right back. that's true. ...but you still have to go to the gym. ♪ the one and only, cheerios ♪ the one and only, cheerios

next month in geneva syria's warring parties, the government and the opposition, will both take part in a peace conference, but is there really any hope of a negotiated peace? u.s. secretary of state john kerry this week called on president assad to make a commitment to peace, but is war the only viable option for assad? joining me now to help answer these questions is professor east politics from the london school of economics. welcome. so first answer that first question, does assad have an incentive to make peace? >> yes, i think he does. of course, on his own terms. he wants a political solution. he wants basically syria to be in charge of this particular political solution. he wants the outside position to be marginalized. he believes the extent of powers of turkey, qatar, and saudi arabia, are funding the most extremist elements in the position. >> and obviously he wants to stay in power. >> oh, absolutely.

i have no doubts in my mind that he and his associates believe that they are winning the fight. they have survived more than two years in a very powerful campaign by regional/international powers. they have gone on the offensive. if you meet with assad's people they tell you they are winning this war and any political settlement will reflect the balance of power on the ground. >> do you buy that? you've been there. you know a lot of people. on the round right now, do you think that assad has recouped and is actually in a stronger position? >> look, assad is not winning. the opposition also is not winning. assad has survived two -- the most two brutal years any political dictator can make. his military machine remains intact. in fact, he's gone on the offensive. he has made some major gains on the ground. his allies, hezbollah and iran, are deeply committed to his survival. iran and hezbollah have made it very clear assad is a red line.

the russians are deeply invested in syria, and he has a social base of support, and the emergence of radical elements within the opposition i would argue has consolidated the social base of support for assad inside syria. >> so other minorities in syria, the druze, armenians, are more now committed to the assad regime because they fear al qaeda-type organizations. >> they don't like assad. they don't like the dictatorship that exists in syria, but there is no alternatives for many of the minorities including the kurds, the jews, and the christians. the emergence of the militant organization has really basically shifted public opinion on a large scale inside

syria, the western countries as well. remember, one of the major reasons why the united states is reluctant to basically provide arms for the opposition, because they fear not only the arms will fall into the wrong hands, but they fear that the militant elements within the opposition have the upper hand within the armed coalition inside syria itself. >> you have been very prescient, accurate about forecasting what is going to happen in syria. two years ago you said assad will not fall when everyone thought it was going to be a matter of weeks. even the white house was predicting it. yet you have been adamantly opposed to u.s. intervention because you argue that u.s. intervention will actually make things worse. why? >> fareed, it started as a political uprising. it mutated into an armed internal conflict. now it has become an open-ended war by proxies. wars by proxies. on the one hand, you have israel, you have turkey, qatar, and saudi arabia. on the other hand you have iran and you have hezbollah, not to mention the basic disagreements between the united states and russia. it's an open-ended war by proxy. one of the major reasons why the united states and russia now

have intensified their effort to find a diplomatic solution is because of the fear not only the potential of syria breaking out, but the expansion of the conflict into a regionwide conflict. there is a real risk. it would take a spark to ignite a bigger clash, a bigger fire that basically will most likely devour not only syria, neighboring countries, lebanon, jordan, iraq, and israel would become involved. >> so american intervention would probably mean from your point of view a wider war and a much more bitter one. >> and you suggesting that america's direct military intervention, yes. i have been arguing that the united states should become much more politically engaged, and i think what we are seeing in the last few months is that the united states now has intensified its diplomacy with russia. it's trying to convince its regional allies to give the proposed peace conference in geneva a chance, and that's suggesting the russians will play game on this particular score. there is a light at the end of

the tunnel. there is no military solution. that's the question. i mean, of course, the united states can destroy syria, but at the end of the day you want to preserve a unified syria. we want to preserve the social fabric inside syria itself. so even though, even though the odds are against a diplomatic breakthrough, the alternative is the potential breakup of syria and the regionwide conflict, and that's why it's the only light at the end of the tunnel in more than two years. >> is there any way you could have a diplomatic solution, a political settlement which does not keep assad in power? because i think it would be very difficult for the united states to accept any deal where assad stays in power. >> i doubt it very much. i would like assad to go today, not tomorrow. assad is not going to go anywhere because the reality on the ground favors assad today. in fact, the opposition -- the political and the armed opposition inside syria is in a terrible bind. pressed between iraq, the high expectation, we will not talk to assad unless assad steps down

and the reality on the ground, the balance of power, which neither side has the means to deliver a decisive blow and the regional and international balance of power. iran and hezbollah are deeply involved in syria's killing field. turkey and saudi arabia and qatar, and that's why it's becoming more complex and that's why despite the painful reality that the opposition has to sit down with the syrian government, there is no other alternative because there is no military solution to this raging conflict inside syria. >> sobering thoughts. fawaz gerges, as always, pleasure to have you on. >> up next, what in the world, what america needs to do to ensure the next generation of growth. my answer next. cker and had them show us. we learned a lot of us have known someone who's lived well into their 90s. and that's a great thing. but even though we're living longer, one thing that hasn't changed much is the official retirement age. ♪ the question is how do you make sure you have the money you need

to enjoy all of these years. ♪

now, for what in the world segment. in britain as in much of europe, the debate about austerity rages on. this week the imf actually urged the british government to delay its plans to cut spending and raise taxes and instead to borrow and spend money on infrastructure.

i think the data now is increasingly convincing that the keynesians have been right. cutting spending in the kind of recession we've gone through will only hurt growth, not help it. since i have been long advocating large investments in areas like infrastructure, job training, and science, i'm delighted. and yet it's too soon to celebrate. because spending on its own is not enough either. in order to ensure sustained growth in the long run, countries also need to engage in what economists call structural reforms, lowering tariffs, opening up protected industries, making it easier for new businesses to start up, streamlining regulations. in japan, for example, agriculture is so inefficient because it's rice farmers are protected by a nearly 800% tariff on imported rice. in greece before the crisis began, workers in its vast state owned industries worked 35 hours a week, were paid for 14 months a year and could retire with

full pensions in their 50s. some of the best anti-austerity voices, including paul krugman and his influential blog are now dismissing the idea there's any idea for structural reforms. that these are simply plans to hurt workers and help greedy capitalists, but looking over the last several decades, reforms have been a crucial path to growth. just look around the world. after the asian economic crisis, the countries that opened up their economies grew strongly. chile's free market reforms in the 1980s and '90s set the stage for its long boom. mexico's deregulation over the last decade has been paying off. one of the reasons that rich countries like canada and germany and sweden are doing so well these days is that in the wake of their own economic crises in the 1990s, they undertook major market-friendly reforms and made their welfare states more sustainable. are all these changes in policy irrelevant to the countries'

subsequent successes? in europe countries like greece and italy will not get sustained growth simply from stimulus spending and easy money. most have rigid labor markets, high labor costs, and inefficient and protected industries and guilds. without change these economies might get a temporary boost, but they'll remain uncompetitive in the long run. italy ranks 73rd overall on the doing business survey from the world bank behind many emerging markets. these countries have to shape up their economies to make goods and services the world wants at competitive prices. the story of japan's stagnation over the last two decades is complicated, but some part of japan's failure to get sustained growth was that it never engaged in reforms of agricultural, retail, and other protected industries. keep in mind that between 1991 and 2008, the japanese government spent $6.3 trillion on construction alone, larger

than the total size of its economy. that's why prime minister abe has been very clear that for japan to sustain its current revival, it must enact the changes that the country was unwilling to make in the last decade. it is true that many of the people urging austerity programs were also urging countries to engage in reforms, but the two are not connected. it is possible to be in favor of investment and reform. in fact, that's what europe and america need to ensure the next generation of growth. for more on this, read my "washington post" column this week. you will find a link to it on cnn.com/fareed. up next, is the cold war back on? inside the story of an alleged u.s. spy who tried to recruit a russian intelligence officer. right back. [ male announcer ] this is kevin.

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...and we inspected his brakes for free. -free is good. -free is very good. [ male announcer ] now get 50% off brake pads and shoes at meineke. hello, everyone. a look at our top stories right now. british police say they have made more arrests in the killing of a british soldier. three suspects were arrested yesterday and another today in connection with the murder of lee rigby.

that taking place on a london street. the family made an i emotional visit today to the site where he was killed last wednesday. in san antonio, texas, two women are dead after swept away by floodwaters. ten inches of rain swamped the city over the last two days. crews are searching for a 17-year-old boy still missing after this torrential rainfall. floodwaters are receding today and the weather is clearing up. president obama landed in oklahoma 30 minutes ago. he is going to tour the damage from that monster tornado and meet with families in moore. they have lost so much there. he is expected to speak in the 2:00 p.m. eastern hour. we will bring you those remarks live as it happens. will the president's role as comforter in chief divert attention? more straight ahead.

now back to "fareed zakaria gps." with all the spy stories in the news of light, you would be forgiven if you thought we were still in the middle of the cold war. first was russia's recent expulsion of a u.s. diplomat. reading like something out of fiction, the alleged effort by american ryan fogle involved a wig, clandestine e-mail dress addresses, and large sums of cash. a major london spy story reared its head again. in 2006, a former kgb officer was killed here by plutonium poisoning. he had upset his former bosses in moscow, so many fingers pointed in that direction. but last week a judge presiding over the inquiry agreed to a british government request to exclude evidence relating to the possible involvement of russian state agencies.

what is going on? to talk about all of this, a former spy, matthew dunn was a field operative in mi-6, just like james bond. he's now the author of "the spy catcher" series of novels. and edward lucas is by day the international editor of "the economist" but he's also an author of "deception: the untold story of east/west espionage today." thank you for joining us. so matthew, the wig, the cash, do spies really move around like this? the whole thing seemed unbelievable. >> yes, they do. when i have deployed overseas, i used wigs. some of the props that were found in the case of fogle when they're laid out on table, they can look amateur itch and bizarre. but they are the props of the trade. typically they work 99.9% of the time. >> you have also written a book on russia, so is there something interesting about this story, about it being russia? are we just playing out the cold war or is there particular

reason this is happening in russia? >> i think the really interesting thing about this is not that america spies on russia. it's not that the cia has officers at the american embassy in moscow. it's not that they try and recruit russians. that's their job. it's not even that surprising they get caught because espionage is about taking risks, and when something works, it looks brilliant. when it goes wrong, it always looks like a terrible bungle. what's really surprising about this is the fuss the russians made about this. they didn't need to go down this public humiliation route. they named the cia station chief in moscow and that's a really big breach of diplomatic protocol. they had this public humiliation of television which looked like something out of the cold war. i remember when michael sellers a cia guy in moscow in 1986 was caught and he was paraded in just the same way, also with a wig as it happens. this shows to me that the temperature is dropping sharply in american/russian relations and it's dropping shortly because russia wanted them to drop.

they need this anti-western narrative to feed to their own people. >> do you feel it's true ordinarily when spies are found out by governments, particularly major governments, there is a kind of agreed upon set of rules about how you handle it and, you know -- >> yes. i mean, i completely agree with edward. i think that we spy, they spy, that's what we do. it seems very bizarre and clearly at a time where relations between russia and the west in general are quite fraught at the moment with different issues, not the least concerns about syria, et cetera, it seems a bizarre thing to do, to make such a public spectacle of this operation. we all know russia operates in the united kingdom, in the united states. we have not done similar to them. so it is an unusual situation. >> so let's talk about the most interesting case of the russians

operating in the united kingdom. it seems, the litvinenko case, what do you make of the case? >> he was a former security official. he was not a spy as some people say. he was more like an fbi agent in a way. and he annoyed the kremlin in lots of ways. he had been involved in domestic battles where the complained about the role of organized crime inside the russian security service. he then defected very publicly. he was coming out with very caustic criticism. so there were lots of reasons the russians didn't like him but none of them to me quite justified this extraordinary use of plutonium, an expensive, rare, very painful poison. in effect they used a radioactive weapon, a weapon of terror against a british citizen in broad daylight in the streets of london endangering lots of other people. that was an extraordinary thing. i think we still don't quite understand what the russian motivation was.

what we do know is the british government doesn't want it get into detail about how they know about it, and that to me suggests they were tapping russian phones, reading russian diplomatic communications, bugging russian officers. they have some information which gives them the certainty that russia was involved and they don't want to expose the sources and methods that got them that information. >> do you think that the nature of espionage in a post-cold war world is different? i should ask you this, matthew, in the sense of when you're trying to recruit people and during the cold war there was sort of an established idea that the westerners who were recruited, it was usually a mixture of ideology. it was radical left wing types and there was always a certain amount of cash. what's the game now? >> well, for reasons you have just outlined it's become far more complex. as a case officer when you're looking to recruit somebody, the term we use is motivation. what potentially could make that person work for us. of course, an individual's motivation these days can vary enormously. it can be ideological. it can also be financial.

it can be a grudge held against their employer, personal problems, a range of different issues, and try to establish what their motivation is the key thing one does prior to making what we call an approach to a potential recruit. >> what do you think? >> i think that money is a huge motivator. money and ego will get through to most people. there's also the confoundabilities when people have personal misconduct, a drug habit or other sort of worries in their private life although blackmail tends to not work so well because it makes them resentful. i have written about lots of spies the russians have run in the west, and quite often it's something as simple as people who have been passed over for promotion, have a grudge against their employer. so the russians are very good at recruiting spies. i think they're better at this than we are and all we won the cold war we tend to think we won it on all fronts. i think we had a couple

speck dak lar successes duri-- successes during the cold war, recruiting the head of the british department of the kgb, but a lot of times they are spying on us and they have continued to have huge victories even after the cold war including running the top guy dealing with russian and the fbi and a top guy dealing with russia and the fbi. i'm not sure we've gotten to the bottom of why they're so much about thor at it than we are. >> matthew dunn, edward lucas, thank you for joining us. up next, big data or big brother. how information about you is changing the way the world works. right back. ♪ chances are, you're not made of money, so don't overpay for boat insurance. geico, see how much you could save.

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more than 98% of the entire world's stored data is stored data is stored digitally. according to my next guest, if that data were recorded on cds and stacked in five piles, each of those piles would reach all the way to the moon. all of this information is floating around and now being used in extraordinary ways. it's been called big data. my guests are experts on it. kenneth cukier is data editor of "the economist," and viktor mayer-schonburg is a professor at oxford's internet institute. together they are authors of "big data: a revolution that

will transform how we live, work, and think." welcome. what's the big story here? we've always had data. why is big data a quantum leap? >> first, we have vastly more data than we ever had before. that's new. secondly, we have more data on things we never had rendered into a data format before. it was always informational, but not data. so you can take where you are, location, as one example. words in books that are now digitized and also datafied. when you think about social media platforms like facebook, it datafies ours relationships. >> you have a new example about the flu. which i thought was fascinating. where you talk about how google and big data allowed you to actually figure out -- allowed people to figure out where flus were breaking. >> yes, indeed. think back at the h1n1 flu crisis we had and the centers for disease control in atlanta and the united states wanted to

find out where the flu was and they asked doctors to report every flu case, but by the time they had collected all the information, calculated it, two weeks went by and that's an eternity if you have a pandemic at hand. google at that time thought they could do better. just by looking at what people searched for online. >> so the words would be something like -- >> what the search terms would be, yes, so they took 50 million search terms and correlated it, looked for correlations with historic flu data, and discovered that if you put 45 of those terms together and look for when and where they were being searched for, you can actually predict where the flu has been and is spreading almost in real time. a two-week advance to the centers for disease control. >> just so i understand it, the idea would be that they would look and see let's say the words are things like cough, flu, the search terms, they could figure out if there are lots of people asking -- searching for these terms, it must mean that that

area has an outbreak of flu. >> you're absolutely right, but going into it, google didn't know which terms were the one that signified that the flu was in a particular region at a particular time. so they tested 50 million different words, and with big data filtered out the 45 ones that were the best predictors when combined together in a mathematical model. that's the beauty of big data. >> the thing i was struck by was you talk about how big data has completely transformed the way you even think about computers, that language, artificial intelligence, the ideal translation was if you are trying to translate something from english to german, the commuter would be trying to mimic the logical structure of german but now it's all correlation. >> well, that's exactly right. in the past we tried to teach the computer how language worked and tried to enshrine all of these things in software code is really hard whether it's a code or language. the new approach is to rely on

data and statistics and turn the problem into a math problem. it's probability. what is the likelihood a word in one language is the best alternative to a word in another language. to do that you need to pour in lots of data, lots of different translations. >> every document you can find in both english and german and the computer just keeps looking at those and correlating. >> that's right. so every document would go in, for every book scan translations from the libraries, they put that in as well. in the past when we tried to do that with millions of pages, it worked well but not great. google avails itself of billions of pages of documents and it works very well indeed. >> when you see these computers that are beating contestants at quiz shows like "jeopardy" or even chess, is that the approach being used? >> yes, indeed. statistical approaches to solving problems are very, very

promising because now we have the ability to collect, gather, store, and process much more data than ever before. we're not talking about thousands of data points. we're talking about billions of data points, and if we do that right, there's so much value, there's so much hidden insight in those data points that we can now reap. >> what is the thing that's going to surprise us most about this big data revolution? >> i think there's two sectors, health and education. health is quite obvious because right now when we take medication, it's designed for the average human being. but we are not the average human being. you are different from me. and so it would be much better to get the exact dosage right and get the medication that works best for our metabolism, for our bodies, but that requires a lot of data and it requires a lot of analysis. we're getting closer to what we call personalized health care. similarly with education, we simply didn't know when pupils read textbooks what part of the textbooks they liked most, what made most sense for them and with which parts they struggled.

now with ebooks like the kindle or the ipad or other tablets, we can gather that data and then analyze it. so for the first time textbook authors, educators, teachers, and schools will find out what educational materials really work. >> how do you know when somebody is reading a book on a kindle? what they struggle with? >> so, for example, in our book that we just did, amazon tells us what people underline most in our book, and i would never have guessed the sentences that people underline most. so it is a unique lens into how readers understand our books and it's phenomenally helpful for the authors but also for those who have to choose which book to use. >> this is a fascinating revolution and we're just at the beginning of it. thank you both very much. up next, a moat to get from london to america. i'm not talking about the atlantic ocean. i will explain. hmm, it says here that cheerios helps lower cholesterol

as part of a heart healthy diet. that's true. ...but you still have to go to the gym. ♪ the one and only, cheerios ♪ the one and only, cheerios

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the damage left in the wake of the tornado in oklahoma is nothing short of stunning. now, the united states is home to some of the most violent tornadoes in the world, but by no means does it hold a monopoly on tornadoes. this map shows you they occur all over the world from the pacific rim in asia to western europe, south africa, and argentina, and that brings me to my question of the week. which nation has the most tornadoes relative to its land area? hello, everyone. i'm fredricka whitfield. we want to take you to moir, oklahoma, where the president

has been surveying the damage. >> the people of moore and people of oklahoma have been dealing with over these last several days. there are a couple of acknowledgments i want to make, but let me begin by just saying that whenever i come to an area that has been devastated by some natural disaster like this, i want to make sure everyone understands i'm speaking on behalf of the entire country everywhere. fellow americans are praying with you, they're thinking about you. and they want to help. and so i'm just a messenger here today letting everyone here know you're not alone, that you've got folks behind you. obviously, the damage here is pretty hard to comprehend. our hearts going out to the families who have been impacted, including those who have had loved ones who were lost. and that was true for the parents of some of the children here at plaza towers elementary

school. there are a number of people i want to especially thank because they have engaged in some heroic efforts in dealing with this disaster. first of all, governor mary fallin, thank you so much for your quick response and your outstanding work. mayor glen lewis, the mayor of moore, who has been mayor here before when there was a disaster. and because of his strong spirit and sense of community, has been able to help lead the community through the disaster. we very much appreciate your work. representative tom cole. not only is this his congress n congressional district, but more importantly, this is his home town. for him, this care es a special sadness, but also a resolve in terms of trying to make sure that the city of moore bounces back. mayor mick cornett, oklahoma

city, neighboring friend. we appreciate him being here. craig fugate is here. and obviously, we're very proud of the work he and his fema team have done. suzy pierce, superintendent of schools here, thank you for your leadership. amy simpson, i want to especially commend. plaza towers elementary school principal as well as shelly mcmillan of the briarwood elementary school principal. they were on the ground when this happened, and because of their quick response, their keeping a level head, their putting kids first, saved a lot of people. and they're still going through some tough times. you know, i can only imagine being their husbands who are here, and the panic that i'm sure they were feeling when the tornado first struck. but i know