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tv   Fareed Zakaria GPS  CNN  January 5, 2014 7:00am-8:01am PST

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>> thank you all for joining us. thank you for watching "state of the union." i'm candy crowley in washington. head to cnn.com/sotu for analysis and extras and if you missed any part of today's show, find us on itunes. search "state of the union." "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. on today's show we have a rock star, a world famous inventor, and some seriously smart people. in other words, the usual "gps" fare. first up, some great panelists so gaze deeply into crystal balls and tell us what 2014 will bring for the world. will there be more wars, more peace, will we all make more money? in the bonus round, what will happen in sochi? then as we start the year, some pointers on success and
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creativity. ♪ from u2's bono and then from elon musk on creativity in business and science and thanks to globalization, we are used to finding coca-cola in the kalahari but is globalization on the way out? one indicator points in that direction. i'll explain. but first, here's my take. it's the beginning of a new year and time for people like me to make predictions. i'm feeling bullish because last year at this time i argued the american economy would recover better than people expected and that's been true. this year i'll make a less clear cut prediction. 2014 will be the year that china faces a fork in the road. it will revamp its economic system, deal with growing problems and set itself up for
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another decade of growth and stability. or 2014 will be the year that the great chinese miracle hits a serious road bump. perhaps perhaps. it seems odd to speak of problems and the need for reform in the world's fastest growing big economy but china has built up imbalances in that economy for some years now and they are not sustainable for much longer. even before the financial crisis, china's top officials were aware the economy was unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable. it needed to wean itself off cheap credit and undergo market reforms. since then in response to the global economic snowdown, china pumped more easy money into its economy. the result according to morgan stanley is that china's totals public and private debt is more than 200% of gdp.
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unprecedented level for any developing country. while it used to take $1 of debt to produce $1 of gdp growth takes $4 to produce the same dollar of growth. businesses and local governments have piled on debt. the property boom has accelerated without serious policy changes relatively soon, this is a bubble that is going to burst. in addition, china faces other serious challenges. the average chinese person almost anywhere in the country now experiences serious air and water pollution. they are also increasingly outraged by corruption. the communist party pledged to take on these challenges and revamp its systems of promotion and party discipline to ensure that officials are less corrupt and more focused on ecological damage and not just growth. if in fact the new leaders of china do all of these things, they will face political resistance and backlash within the communist party and from powerful sectors in society.
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the president has launched an anti-corruption campaign who many in china believe it remains a case of selective enforcement and sought to stabilize the party's power by tightening the noose on any critics in the media, universities or even private business people. i'm not ready to bet against china. its leadership has shown itself to be capable of smart resolution. if they manage the transition well, china will emerge stronger and become the largest economy in the world. if they don't, they will likely face a slump and perhaps political tensions that bubble up in the wake of a slowing economy. 2014 in china is the year of the horse. for all of the rest of us, 2014 is the year of china. for more, go to cnn.com/fareed and read my "time" column this week. let's get started.
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you have heard my take on what to look out for in 2014, now let's get straight to a great gps panel to get their pro dickses. zanny minton beddoes, bret stephens, ian bremmer and anne-marie slaughter. what do you think is going to be noteworthy? >> i'll stick my neck out. i think global economy will get better. it will improve and grow faster largely because of an acceleration in the u.s. economy. that sustained acceleration that we've hoped for and that hasn't happened yet will happen in
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2014. >> 3.5% to 4% growth? >> 3%. close to three rather than around two. i think headwinds from financial crisis, paying down of debt is over. mortgage credit is increasing. consumer balance sheets are in good shape. corporate balance sheets are in excellent shape. fiscal tightening that's dragged down growth this year and in previous years is abating. budget deal is important. it's more sensible fiscal policy. push tightening down the road when the economy can do it. underneath it the u.s. economy has some really big strengths whether it's the shale gas revolution or competitive labor force or traditional strengths of this free market economy, i think they will come for the fore. it's not going to be mourning in america. it will feel grim but a lot of debate will be that many people don't see the benefits of the stronger growth but i think there will be stronger growth. >> second biggest economy in the
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world. i think it's a moment of reckoning. chinese will either make big reforms or it's difficult to imagine how you can keep this easy credit, easy money going. what do you think? >> i completely agree. i think that the appointment has been a turning point for china. and i think we're seeing that in what he's doing in financial reform, in free trade zone in shanghai and anti-corruption in trying to create more transparency of senior leaders. >> the one thing he hasn't done is eased up on the accelerator of easy credit that is currently fueling 8% growth. >> he hasn't yet. not quite yet. but what we all also see him doing is putting in place a national security council that is focused internal security, gives him control there. he's going hard on western press. why? because as he starts to engage in the more difficult types of
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reform that you're talking about to create weakness and vulnerability for the chinese communist party, he doesn't need a national security council that will kick the can for a year but he needs one if they have serious political leaders in provinces or elites in state owned enterprises that say i don't want to go. he's going to have that capacity. this is a leader that has creatcreate ed consensus at the top. it may not work. this is unprecedented stuff. >> i don't want to -- we'll see. internationally he's been playing his hand very poorly. it's hard to think of more useless provocations than china could make against the japanese, against the philippines, against vietnam and increasingly against the united states as well in sore far as our treaty obligations are involved. >> you're looking at this from the international point of view. i'm much with ian. this is all about domestic politics. all of those provocations are ways of buying himself
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credibility with the pla. with the army. with the chinese army. and similarly, i think he's just shown that tom friedman just wrote an open letter saying do not ban "the new york times" and bloomberg reporters because you need free press. what does he do the next day? he says i can investigate my own corruption. i'm putting an elite senior communist party person on it. >> i think the billion dollar question here is chinese aggression in its neighborhood a sign of weakness and insecurity by the leadership or is it a sign of confidence and strength? i suspect it's weakness. >> you can talk about china but i want to ask you a simple question. is fear of the collapse of t theuthe euro off the table? >> it's off the table for the moment or collapse is off the table. whether the membership will stay the same over the next two,
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three, four years i'm less sure. i think 2014 will be a year where europe won't face financial collapse but it won't grow again. it is basically a stagnant region. i think risk of the euro area becoming like japan was the past two decades is very, very real. >> that could be a drag on the u.s. economy on the global economy. >> i think the euro was a serious concern for the u.s. economy when it hit global financial markets. that goes back to your fear will the euro break up. i think that probability is very, very low. europe is a stagnant place. it's been a shrinking place. the fact that it is stagnant is not great for the rest of the world but it won't drag the rest of the world down. >> it will increase because we're stronger and we're more competitive because we have shale gas and they don't. >> especially manhattan real estate. >> that too. >> when we come back, we'll talk about manhattan or at least more about the united states directly. what will it look like in 2014? .
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>> we are back. we're looking forward to 2014, the one thing we know is the united states has the biggest diplomatic possibility in 34 years with iran and one of the huge moments. what is going to happen? >> i'm going to stick my neck out. that's the point of these kind of shows. i think we will get a deal with iran. i really do. i think the domestic politics and economic situation in iran is such that they have a great interest in getting a deal and we certainly do. when that happens, it won't change everything overnight. but that's going to redraw the geopolitics of the middle east. if we could talk to iran, just think what the pullout of troops in afghanistan would look like. suddenly we would be talking to
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iranians and to indians and pakistanis. you would have a regional group. similarly, naturally we have been closer to iran than we have been to saudi arabia and for a long time iran was our ally and we would suddenly be working with both turkey and iran on a host of questions where iran could actually play a very positive role. that's not going to happen all next year. if we get a deal, and i think we are, the implications of that deal will shape the next decade in the middle east. >> bret, you thought this temporary deal was worse than munich. something of an exaggeration. do you think this deal could happen? >> i think anne-marie is right. we could get a deal. iranians are interested in a negotiated settlement that allows them to become a threshold nuclear state, which is dangerous and effectively tantamount to being a nuclear state. what we're going to get from that deal is not a reformed iran, not an iran that will be
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prepared to work with us on anymore friendly basis than putin's russia has been since the so-called reset but we're going to lose three if not four core friends who have seen us as a work against influence and saudi arabia an ally of the united states for 70 years, egypt and also israel. >> more allies of the united states when we had close alliance with iran. why is it impossible for the united states to do what anne-marie is talking about where we have good relations with saudi arabia and iran as we had in the '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s and 'sef70s. >> is it a country or a cause? the place you're speak of is a country an ordinary set of interest. my contention is that it has been for 34 years a cause with global interest and profoundly
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ideological view of the world. i don't think that changes with this deal. >> sochi, what is going to happen? what does russia look like in 2014? >> i think there's a big difference between what the interest are of saudi arabia and israel in an iran deal and against it and they should be and what americans interest is in an iran deal and they're in favor of it because we want to extricate ourselves from it. syrian people don't care if they'll get killed by chemical weapons or convention. we need to identify the differences. those interests are changing. on russia's sochi, this will be a geopolitically interesting olympics. we already know that there are a lot of folks that aren't showing up. we heard that from the french. we heard that from obama. we heard it from biden. there are going to be some gay
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american athletes that are showing up to show american diversity. putin will not like that. we're tweaking this guy. sochi will be a daisaster. they spent more on this olympics than the last five winter olympics together. there will be a big cleaning of house. i think there will be a next western face for putin. he's been coming over and talking nice to americans asking for cash. the fact is that putin had a fantastic year in 2013. russia has not. what has russia won recently? they won snowden. they won assad. god bless them. they can all all of them. the fact is this is not helping russian people. their budget right now balances at $117 a barrel when oil prices even if there isn't an iran deal are coming down and if there is,
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my god. so this is going to be interesting. >> a quick thought on the iran thing. your prediction for 2014 would be that israel will or will not strike? >> i've been making this prediction on this show for so many years that it will strike that i have to stop and ask myself what has kept it from striking? i think the issue has been capacity. can they actually do the job and the internal politics because even at the highest levels of the israeli security cabinet there are doubts about whether they can accomplish something that is worth the candle so to speak. >> the america that world will watch most attentively is janet yellin. what will she be like at the fed? everyone has assumed that she'll be much more comfortable with a very expanding monetary policy but the fed already began
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detapering. >> she'll be similar to where the bernanke fed was. in style, she'll be calm and considered and very well respected very fast and if as seems plausible her number two will be a top notch team there. i think that it's a tough thing to do. this shift from starting to taper to then indicating that you'll continue to taper without scaring financial markets, they messed it up in 2013. summer of 2013. taper shot was a misstep by the fed. they did the introduction of actual taper this month extremely well. so far so very good. they convinced markets that tapering is not tightening. the test is can they continue that. much depends on how the u.s. economy does. i think she and the fed have every capacity to do that well? >> when you look around the world, what are you watching in 2014?
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>> i'm going to -- i'm watching among other places kurdistan. it may seem unusual. what you're seeing is turkey pushing closer and closer to the iraqi -- kurdistan in northern iraq. that's driven by turkish domestic politics. that's a tremendous flash point in iraq and also with respect to syria because as syria falls apart, you have kurds in syria. >> one of the most oil rich regions in the world. >> absolutely. i actually think you could have a real flash point crisis between turkey and iraq possibly with iran playing in there around the issue of the kurds. it's where i would watch. >> what are you looking at? >> i'm looking at american allies. not canada and mexico because they can't go anywhere economically. you get right under that group and everybody is in play. i'm looking at indonesia. i'm looking at saudi arabia. i'm looking at south korea. france. germany. britain. all of these leaders that feel
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like american commitment to them is really open to question and how is that going to be articulated in their economic policy, the diplomatic policy and their security policy. those are things i'm looking at. >> quickly? >> this is precisely why you want to be mindful of what your allies want because a world of foreign policy freelancers is very dangerous for the united states and that's what we're getting from too many countries to count. very briefly, we should say something about mexico and the change of the oil law which i think is going to have profound strategic effects on the north american energy market. you don't want to call it independence but you want to call it security. a major step forward for mexico. >> they are opening up the oil industry, which should make it more productive which should make -- >> 75 years of misbegun socialism. >> i'm looking at india. i'm looking at brazil. two elections next year.
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as you know much better than i, mody is a man who is a hindu nationalist looking very likely to do extremely well and favored because he's deemed to have a more business friendly approach to the economy. quite what that means will be interesting to watch. brazil interesting. i think interesting to see how that plays in with the world cup. is brazil a catastrophe or do better than expected and one place. scotland. scotland will be interesting. scotland will vote on whether to leave the united kingdom. i predict it won't that in my little world that will be interesting in 2014. >> we will hold you all to this. up next, what in the world. here's a big question for 2014. have we reached the end of globalization? i'll tell you the answer when we come back. also, one-on-one with a rock star.
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u2's bono is on the show. hestnut the modest first floor bedroom in tallinn, estonia and the southbound bus barreling down i-95. ♪ this magic moment it is the story of where every great idea begins. and of those who believed they had the power to do more. dell is honored to be part of some of the world's great stories. that began much the same way ours did. in a little dorm room -- 2713. ♪ this magic moment ♪ ♪ this magic moment you wouldn't have it she any other way.our toes. but your erectile dysfunction - it could be a question of blood flow. cialis tadalafil for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment's right. you can be more confident in your ability to be ready. and the same cialis is the only daily ed tablet approved to treat ed and symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently or urgently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain,
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now for our what in the world segment. at the start of 2014, let's look at one of the great trends of the last century. you could be sitting in chicago, illinois, right now but your tv was probably made in japan, your sneakers were likely manufactured in china and your coffee might be from kenya.
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globalization impacts every single thing around us. here's my big question. have we reached the end of the globalization? let me explain. a steady trend in congress. global trade has expanded at twice of the global economy. global trade grew on average by 6.2% per year according to the world trade organization. during the same period, the world's gdp was growing at nearly half that pace, 3.7%. but a strange thing has taken place in the last two years. growth in global trade has dropped dramatically to even less than gdp growth. the change made me wonder. has the incredible transfer of goods around the world reached some sort of pinnacle. have we exhausted the drive toward ever more globalization. it's a fascinating thesis. the world has seen historical developments in the last few decades. internet, china opening up, fast
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and cheap travel, all of these trends led to a massive acceleration in global trade. but could the next big invention say 3-d printers end the need for more and more trade? imagine a world where you need a new faucet in your restroom and instead of going to the local store which sells faucets made in china, which contributes to global trade, now you just printout your own faucet sitting at home or at a local store. are people also getting more interested in local products compared to global brands? joshua points out in an essay in "fortune" that local sourcing for food and restaurants is on the rise. is this simply a pause or could it be more than that? the answer will depend on politics. the last time the world saw a consistent period where the growth of global trade lagged behind global growth was in the
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1920's, '30s and '40s. it was in response to the great depression and disruption of the gold standard. at one point und, the united st began imposing import duties. it was aimed at protecting domestic farmers. it led to a steep drop in trade and a wave of counterprotectionist measures by other countries. the world learned its lessons from the great depression but not as well as it should have. according to independent think tank global trade alert, we're in the midst of a great rise in protectionism and the 12 months proceeding may 2013, governments imposed three times as many protectionist measures than moves to open up. anti-trade policies are at their highest point since the 2008 financial crisis according to the peterson institute, the rise of measures cost global trade
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$93 billion in 2010. >> it's so agreed. >> there might be some good news on this front. last month the world trade organization passed a deal to cut red tape in customs. it's a small start and there's a lot more to accomplish. globalization and trade have produced huge benefits for people especially the poor who have been able to make their way out of poverty in a faster growing and more connected global economy. but globalization won't keep happening by accident or stealth. politicians will have to help make it happen. up next, two great conversations about creativity and innovation. first with bono and the other with a man who wants to make traveling to mars a reality for human beings. elon musk. the founder of the spacex. stay with us for these fascinating interviews. [ bottle ] okay, listen up!
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>> i'm candy crowley in washington with a check of the headlines. much of the united states will be in a deep freeze over the next few days. temperatures could drop as low as 30 degrees below zero in parts of the midwest and great plains today. that's where the green bay packers are hosting the san francisco 49ers in what could become the coldest football game in nfl history. the weather is also causing havoc at airports nationwide with more than 1,500 flights canceled. new york is set to ease restrictions on marijuana use. governor andrew cuomo plans to sign an executive order making medical marijuana legal in the state.
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cuomo's plan will allow 20 hospitals to dispense to certain patients. kerry says they won't send american troops back to iraq. heavy fighting in iraq's sunni anbar province in recent days posed a serious challenge to the shiite dominated government. those are your top stories. "reliable sources" with brian stelter is at the top of the hour. now back to "fareed zakaria gps." >> i recently had the pleasure to talk to two of the most creative people in their fields. two people whose creativity has brought them each great success. ♪ they are bono, the lead singer of u2 and elon musk, who heads two of the most innovative disruptive companies in the
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world. electric car maker tesla and spacex which manufacturers and launches rockets and spacecraft picking up where nasa and others have left off. i saved some of the best parts of each of those interviews for you today exclusive parts where i talked to them about their creativity, where they find inspiration. ♪ first up, bono. what do you think makes somebody creative in the sense that you understand it? writing of songs and thinking up tunes. >> i can only speak from my own experience but observing the species up close as i have over the years. i think it's often emptiness and
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a void and attempt to fill the void is art and the artist is the person who is making up for absence. if you were completely of sound mind, you would not need 70,000 people screaming i love you a night to feel normal. it's the god shaped hole someone called it once. >> how does a song come to you? >> performing for me comes on like a twitch. i have no choice. the song writing piece is different. it comes out in two ways. despair and attempt to put things right that have been wrong or joy, just overflowing -- my cup over floweth. when things are going well in my
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life or our family, i write naturally. i just can't stop writing. but also when i'm in a hole, i'm in a corner, i try to write myself out of it. >> you told me once that sometimes you just get up with a tune in your head and you don't know where it came from. >> yeah. the arrogance of artists is to be really despised because it is a gift. you wake up with a melody in your head or whatever and in that sense it's like inherited wealth or being born with a beautiful face. you should not be made arrogant by something you didn't create yourself. so the talent is latent. i guess my father was a tenor. a fine singer. he loved to paint. he loved shakespeare. he loved to act. i got all of that in me. it's very easy for me to write. unfortunately it's not easy for me to be great at it.
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that is the most maddening part of creativity is that i can't seem to figure it out how it works. with u2 for many years, even in the studio, if you saw us, you would laugh. it was just this dysfunctional musicians making horrible noise and eventually it comes together at some sort of top line melody appears in a harmony and we get to something special. it was easy to tell special from the crap. >> a lot of the song writing or music that we associate with those days and through you is often political. nowadays it seems less so. why do you think that is? >> it's hard. politics as bob dylan calls them topical songs, they can often be very, very boring. we've written some good ones.
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they have to come from a place. if you set yourself a task to write a song, i don't know how ever great the song will be. the great songs kind of write you. i might be sitting here with you and say this is on my mind. i'm very concerned about what's going on in this geography. you would think i would write a song about it. it's not like that. there's a whole other thing going on in my personal life, a whole other thing going on in my unconscious and it is what is going to come out. sometimes they will connect those two things. we'll write a song for example i wrote a song called "walk on." ♪ the song is about hurt but it's not literally about hurt but you're always writing songs to yourself to get yourself through
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something so -- >> so it's more about looking inside of you rather than looking at the world. >> it's a funny thing. it's the same with singing. you know, sometimes you're on stage and you're singing and you'll be thinking about dry cleaning although i find it hard to believe mick jagger thinks about dry cleaning but other times it's you. you're one and the same. as an irish poet said, the dancer and the dance become the same thing. it's slightly magic. i know you probably don't want to believe in that because it can be a lot of nonsense. a lot of hate and the way artists talk. i caught myself here even now sounds like such malarkey. you see people on the grammys saying, you know, i want to thank god for that song.
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don't blame god on that song. that's your song. and so but there is some magic and something unknowable about art. >> you are deeply steeped in poetry, opera, art. do you think is that a prerequisite? >> i don't know. i've seen it come out of people on the street. i've been in corners of africa where you see someone doing amazing work. i don't know where it comes from. it helps though. irish people love language. our revenge on the english language was to make it our own. in the case of beckett was to chop it up and make it minimal. in the case of joyce it was a chewing gum. stretch it and pull it. and with oscar wild it was
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different than english had been spoken and more ornate. our relationship with the english language is a testy one but it's done well for poetry and playwrites and hopefully strong writers. >> do you get more creative over time or less? >> well, i'm looking at gravity right now as a rock 'n' roll band and there's no one that has done their best work who has been around no band for 30 years. i don't know. we'll see. but you know what, that's not true of a filmmaker or novelist or poet. why is it true of a rock 'n' roll band? i'm humbled that in our little post-punk combo from dublin that maybe our best work may be to come even if the odds are against it.
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>> let's hope that your best work is to come. bono, thank you. pleasure to have you on. >> thank you. up next, elon mosque, the founder of spacex. where does his creativity come from? we'll find out. liking your flat. fedex one rate. really makes my life easier. maybe a promotion is in order. good news. i got a new title. and a raise? management couldn't make that happen. [ male announcer ] introducing fedex one rate. simple, flat rate shipping with the reliability of fedex.
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elon mosqusk is one of the t creative business people i know. he starred spacex to perfect technology to get a colony of humans started on mars. last year he released into the public domain his ideas for a concept he calls the hyperloop getting people from los angeles to san francisco in about 30 minutes. i wanted to know just where that sort of creativity comes from. so i asked him. people think of you now as something of a dreamer. you are dreaming about life on mars. you are dreaming about people being carried in tubes from city to city. do you think that imagination plays a large role in your life? >> absolutely. i think with respect to creativity, a lot of it is just trying really hard. what i find most often is how do i be more creative?
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have you tried. >> you think people are too risk averse to really try? >> they don't send their mind in that direction, which i find strange. literally the first order of business is to try. >> do you find when you hire people, you are looking for people who have that mindset who are willing to try stuff? >> yeah. what we look for at spacex is evidence of exceptional ability. >> defined how? by grades? >> right. grades is a fairly obvious way but very often it's not the person with the good grades but there are other things in their background that they've done that are exceptional. they created something when they were a kid that was some cool technology or maybe they won a robotic competition or won a state science competition. >> that would be more important than grades? >> yeah. in college you can kind of game
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the system. pick courses that get you high gpa. but they're not demonstrating necessarily creativity or out of the box thinking. >> how do you feed out of the box thinking? do you feel like -- do you do anything to try to feed creativity? >> yeah. i try to do that at the company. if they're not trying to do radical improvement, that's not acceptable. >> do you feel like you draw some inspiration from nonscience? you have a deep grounding in science. where else do you look? >> i'm a big fan of history. i like a lot of things. history. literature. arts. interesting to read history and
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say what happened to various civilizations. civilizations clearly have a life cycle in history. and to think, okay, what could we do to make the life cycle better? we can't live forever but we want to live as long as possible. >> who are your heroes when you look -- do you look at inventors? i notice in spacex a lot of the conference rooms are named after really serious physicists. are those your heroes? >> i'm a big fan of people who made a positive impact on civilization. i really love ben franklin. that guy did so many incredible things. he did what was needed at the time it was needed. >> do you look at yourself that
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way? it seems like you look at the world and see a problem and try to come up with a solution. you start with the real world. >> i think if one isn't grounded in reality of that and physics is the law. so if you're doing something that violates the fundamental laws of physics, then you're almost certainly wrong or you're going to get a nobel prize. you're much more likely to be wrong than get a nobel prize. >> people look at you and know that you're supposedly the inspiration for "the iron man." >> i'm a partial inspiration for the movie version of "iron man." >> what do you say to kids if they want to become you? >> if you want to do things like me, you have to learn to be good at technology. study engineering, physics, that kind of thing. understand how the world works.
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and try to be as accurate as possible about that. like i said, also try to be creative, which means just try to think of things that haven't been done before but that would probably make the world better. it requires a lot of mental effort to do that. i don't just come up with stuff willy-nilly. occasionally but it's rare. you do have to think. if you haven't thought until your brain hurts, you haven't tried hard enough. >> elon musk, a good point to end on. thank you. thank you. up next, why we're number one. i don't mean america. i mean something right next door to my office. to my office. i'll explain when we come back. t at 1406 35th street the old dining table at 25th and hoffman. ...and the little room above the strip mall off roble avenue. ♪ this magic moment it is the story of where every great idea begins. and of those who believed they had the power to do more.
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dell is honored to be part of some of the world's great stories. that began much the same way ours did. in a little dorm room -- 2713. ♪ this magic moment ♪ i have a big meeting when we land, but i am so stuffed up, i can't rest. [ male announcer ] nyquil cold and flu liquid gels don't unstuff your nose. they don't? alka seltzer plus night fights your worst cold symptoms, plus has a decongestant. [ inhales deeply ] oh. what a relief it is.
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about a month to go until the sochi winter olympic games and it brings me to my question of the week. what country has won the most winter olympic medals to date? a, norway, b, germany, c austria or d, the united states. stay tuned. we'll tell you the correct answer. this week's book of the week is "the cannon diaries." he was a great strategist. these diaries reveal him to be something very unusual in mirk. he's a beautiful writer. now for the last look. we've been inundated in recent weeks with lists of the best of 2013. best movie. best song.
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cutest cat. but one of these lists hit close to home for us. columbus circle right outside our studio here won best roundabout of 2013 according to the british roundabout appreciation society. who knew there even was one of those. digging deeper, we learned that the roundabout is a thing to be appreciated. according to america's department of transportation, replacing crossroads with traffic circles leads to a 35% drop in crashes and a 90% fall in deaths. so unless you drive like chevy chase in "european vacation." >> there it is. i can't seem to let to the left. >> we suggest the world build more roundabouts in 2014. the correct answer is a, norway, with a count of 303 medals. the united states is in second with 253 medals. of course when comparing
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norway's population of just 5 million people to the united states' population of 317 million, norway's count is that much more impressive. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i'll see you next week. stay tuned for "reliable sources." what happens when you mix a liberal year in review with some bad jokes, a rabid reaction from pundits and a response from a former presidential candidate? you get the biggest media story of the week. we'll examine why it happened and what it says about cable news. later, tech gurus kara swisher and walt mossberg reinvented themselves. they'll be here to tell us why and we'll talk to the guy from gawker who knows how to get you to click. i'm brian stelter and this is "reliable sources."